One of the first things law students learn is that interpreting and applying written law isn't always about justice. It's about your talents as a lawyer and, in a best case scenario, finding a fair compromise. The latter was not the case in this week's Supreme Court decision to hold P2P file sharing databases accountable for the behavior of their users and ultimately enable the movie and music industry to sue left and right. The decision will protect the monopolies in how audio and video content is distributed, it will stifle innovation and hurt the interests of users and artists.

Let's be honest about it. We all were attracted by the simplicity of Napster as well as the free and easy way to get virtually any audio track ever published within seconds on your harddrive. And we all knew this wasn't quite legal and wouldn't be around forever, at least until the music industry would wake up from out of its trend-ignoring sleep. We knew music would not be free in the future, but Napster was the first company to come along in several decades that opened eyes: It showed that consumers were ready to use digital content distribution models on a large scale and demanded more than physical media products they bought or rented.

In fact, Napster and other P2P brought an unprecedented wave of innovation to the music and movie business. It caused publishers to rethink their business models, consider other content and distribution options - all to the benefit of the consumer, artists and publishers. For the first time, music publishers and artists were forced to put much more work into all the songs they published on a CD, since consumers could opt to not consume all the gap fillers. It is fair to say that iTunes, for example, would not exist in its current shape, if it wasn't for the fire Napster once lit. In its basic idea, Napster brought a system of possible competition for content publishers. It suddenly brought another option for artists how to distribute their digital content - especially for independent creative work.

But the music and movie industry is not about competition. Music executives knew that P2P could render traditional content distribution - and ultimately publishers themselves - obsolete one day. How do you generate support for such a problem that most consumers really could care less about? You tell them that only commercial download services are about reimbursing artists for their work. Give me a break!

Artists get about five percent of the revenues that are made today with their work in commercial file-sharing databases. The Apples and Sonys take the lion's share of the money consumers pay for music that is much below the audio quality of a CD. Is that the fair compensation the RIAA was talking about all along the way? Somehow, I feel it's not about the artists and consumers in the end. It's all about protecting the publishing and distribution business. It's just not a very popular topic to talk about. Reimbursing artists sounds much better, doesn't it?

While it is common sense that free sharing of music has a limited future, today's decision will remove all motivation for the audio and video industry to innovate. Competition will be simply dealt with in lawsuits. Music publishers basically have reached their goal and we are back in the early nineties - for now. Publishers will determine once again how audio and video is consumed. Innovation will slow down. The outlook for the future: Digital rights management will limit the use of content for consumers more than ever before. Independent artists lose a valuable and often the only efficient distribution model. And all artists can be certain again to depend on music publishers to distribute their creative work or not.

In terms of using written law to reach a compromise for publishers, artists and consumers, the legal system has failed today.