After joining the RIAA by suing purported copyright infringing P2P users, the MPAA has announced a series of lawsuits against server owners from various P2P networks. According to a press release from the Motion Picture Association of America, suits were filed on four continents against over 100 owners of BitTorrent trackers, eDonkey servers, and Direct Connect hubs used "to index and efficiently deliver files of all kinds."
There will be plenty of comparisons between these lawsuits and previous copyright infringement cases involving Napster and Grokster/StreamCast (the latter of which is being appealed), but these lawsuits are significantly different. The main reason why the RIAA prevailed against Napster was because one could draw a direct line from the Napster software through Napster's own centralized servers to copyright infringing end users. Napster created the software, maintained the central index server, although they did not host the content themselves. Grokster and StreamCast have, so far, escaped punishment because their decentralized model does not require them to keep a central database of files and locations. This makes the MPAA's play here rather curious: rather than attack the makers of the software, they're going after the part of the network that makes it all go.
Early this morning I pored through search results to track down analyses and opinions on the copyright infringement liability BitTorrent tracker owners would face. I failed to find any specific cases where a mock BitTorrent lawsuit was considered, but found good information in an EFF article on P2P and copyright law in addition to the opinion handed down in MGM v. Grokster. Both are excellent reads for information on copyright law and how it applies to P2P networks.
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