The SCOTUS decision for MGM-Grokster will soon be handed out. The conventional wisdom holds that the sacred cow of a precedent that the landmark 1984 Betamax decision became for the tech industry may not remain in its existing form. This because the SCOTUS smells a rat in Grokster and any precedent that allow the Groksters of the world to facilitate massive copyright infringement, which they do. They may punt it back to the 9th Circuit. Not many believe that they'll leave Betamax untouched.

I won't be so foolish as to predict an outcome. The one prediction I will make is that this will eventually end up in Congress' court. If the tech industry feels a chilling effect from any new precedent, you can be sure they'll be having their lobbyists push for Congress to shore things up for them. Vice-versa for the copyright industry should they be the clearcut loser.

Alas, I won't be able to fan whatever flames come out of the decision. I'll be out of the country on vacation for a few weeks starting Monday, and this will be my last column until late July.