Mp3.com Goes Old School

Searching for its best defense, lawyers for MP3.com seem to have found it in an old 1984 Supreme Court ruling concerning Sony's Betamax VCR. On October 2, the company will use this ruling, which favored Sony and legitimized the new technology, to try to overturn a previous ruling that forced them to remove listings of copyrighted music from its Web site. The original ruling stated that a new technology, even if capable of piracy, cannot be outlawed provided it has "substantial noninfringing uses." The question remains whether or not the argument will work in this day and age, though its not certain why it wouldn't. Stay tuned for further developments in this seemingly endless case.