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    The Court ruled 9-0 that file-sharing services of Grokster, StreamCast Networks and others could be sued for copyright infringement. These services flourished as a way for people to get free music from the Internet after a company called Napster, and its free music service, was nabbed as unlawful. The new services worked differently than Napster, in an attempt to get around the law. Instead of being the source for the copyrighted material, Grokster and StreamCast distributed free filesharing software to users. Customers still were able to get their free music, and the services made their profits from advertising on their Web sites rather than downloads.

    An appellate court figured Grokster was fine, but the Supreme Court said such services can be sued for copyright infringement, too.

    The ruling won’t change anyone’s life, for now. It merely opens the possibility for a lawsuit over which these issues will be argued again. But the Supreme Court ruling is the latest turn in what is becoming one of the trickiest moral and ethical dilemmas of this new century.

    We stand on what’s perhaps the less-than-popular side of the debate over what are broadly known as intellectual property rights — patents, trademarks and copyrights of original ideas. What Grokster and others are doing is wrong. And by extension, those illegally downloading copyrighted songs, movies and text are wrong, too. Period.

    It seems easy enough to justify, of course. The movie stars and recording artists who make it big are among the richest people in the world. Kelly Clarkson won’t miss the $14.95 you would have had to pay for her CD, and Tom Cruise certainly doesn’t need you to pay him to see ‘‘War of the Worlds.’’

    But that’s flawed justification. Respect for intellectual property isn’t merited on a case-by-case basis. If it’s OK to download ‘‘Since U Been Gone,’’ then it’s also OK for Pepsi to hear a great slogan from a University of Iowa marketing student and just use it as their own. And then it’s OK for Mattell to take new game software developed in the basement of a Cedar Rapids’ entrepreneur’s home and use it without compensating the creator. And then it’s OK for the New York Times to reprint this editorial tomorrow and pass it off as its own idea.

    Your ideas, your words, your music, your thoughts are your own. And that’s what intellectual property rights are all about.

    Ultimately, individual attitudes about intellectual property rights will have more influence on the future of Internet downloads than any Supreme Court decision. That’s because the law can never catch up to technology.

    Right now, millions of Americans are sharing billions of files each month, according to information revealed during the Grokster/Stream-Cast case. No doubt someone already has devised a new way of file sharing — a new way of infringing on copyrights — not yet contemplated by the courts. But that doesn’t make it right.