The New York Times’ Jon Pareles weighs in with an eloquent column about the real world implications of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Grokster. It’s a short read, check it out here.

The court found that the file-sharing companies Grokster and Streamcast could be sued for copyright infringement because they offered marketing and technical advice that clearly induced their customers to share files illegally, so the companies could attract larger numbers of users and thus more advertising.

The court did not give the movie and recording businesses much ammunition to attack the Robin Hoods of the Internet: those software geeks and culture fans who really just want to share. They are online right now building Web sites that don’t make a dime and spending hours writing and editing “”mp3 blogs”" – Web page collections of downloadable songs. They hook people up, basically because they can and because people want access to art.