Robert Cringely : ... back to Grokster and the Supreme Court. Grokster wanted to be seen as a common carrier like the telephone company. Just because telephones can be used to plan and sometimes carry out crimes doesn't make the phone company a criminal accessory. But Grokster, the Court decided, was built more with the intention of illegally sharing music than the phone company was built to aid kidnappers. So Grokster IS a criminal accessory in the eyes of the court.

What will happen, of course, is that Web 2.0 will turn the next Grokster into several separate organizations offering different services that use a common API syntax to create a Grokster equivalent. Each of these parts will look more like the phone company and less like Grokster until the Supreme Court won't recognize them as the accessories they happen to be.

PBS | I, Cringely . June 30, 2005 - Accessories Make the Nerd