In a rare unanimous (9-0) decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a District Court and ruled in favor of MGM, sending MGM's case against the file-sharing service, Grokster, back to the lower court for trial. The ruling seems to have taken all of the experts by surprise, and our host Ernest Miller convenes his own panel to try and make sense of it all.

Beyond just understanding what the court did and didn't do, Ernie along with Denise Howell (host of her own Sound Policy series here on IT Conversations) and Charles (C.E.) Petit explore the decision that says Grokster could be found guilty of an "act of inducement" by encouraging (or not discouraging) its users to share infringing files.

The panel also considers the implications for publishers, software developers, hardware manufacturers and IT shops, and looks specifically at the outlook for BitTorrent.

This program is one of a series, The Importance of...Law and IT, hosted by Ernest Miller.