[Despite the uncontested praise for the high court's decision, it soon became clear that associations between P2P technology and illicit file-sharing activity were still being drawn: ] With this ruling, the Supreme Court has set an important message that the law does not allow companies to induce others to steal,.. Given that millions of Americans have downloaded or swapped files using peer-to-peer technology, the Department of Justice observed that it appears many people have come to view piracy over peer-to-peer networks as different, and less objectionable, compared to stealing a physical copy of a CD or DVD from the store. By holding companies that promote copyright infringement by clear expression, or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, the Supreme Court has made it very clear that stealing is unacceptable.
Daniel K. Inouye