Piracy Scandals

Sony has experienced some piracy problems. Sony Computer Entertainment America's senior VP of marketing, Peter Dille, has admitted that the PlayStation Portable has been hit hard by piracy with as many as 50 million units in the marketplace potentially having been compromised. Due to some of the video games that Sony produced, the software that these games hold makes it easier for someone to copy the software. The admission comes at a point when Sony is finally giving the handheld platform a significant boost, with a string of key titles set to hit the shelves this year, including Assassin's Creed and MotorStorm but Dille agreed that older hardware could pose an ongoing problem for genuine software sales.

In June of 2005, MGM faced some piracy problems with Grokster. In MGM v. Grokster, the high court overturned a ruling that had barred Hollywood and the music industry from suing Internet services used by consumers to swap songs and movies for free. The decision was one of two key Internet-related cases that the Supreme Court handed down. The justices also overturned a prior ruling that required cable operators to open up their high-speed Internet lines to rivals. In Grokster, the court did not address the question of whether the technology at issue in the case -- known as file-sharing, or "peer-to-peer"  is illegal. Rather, the justices focused on the actions of the peer-to-peer software companies named in the case, Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., the maker of file-sharing software known as Morpheus, and whether they encouraged the illegal use of their technology. This case involved Grokster accusing MGM that they provided movies and songs for free when they really weren't.