You want name-calling? File sharers are "thieves" and "pirates." The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are "evil," and one commenter to a recent CNET News.com story said the RIAA sought nothing less than world domination.
For years I have sought not world domination (I leave that to James Bond villains), but rather a pragmatic, middle-ground voice in this debate. I thought I had found one in 2002, when a nonprofit public advocacy group called Public Knowledge was born. I knew the founder, Gigi Sohn, and I respected her greatly. I still do. But it was what Gigi said back then that really resonated with me.
At an event her new group held with the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., in May of that year, Gigi gave a speech about how most of us weren't represented in the digital content debate. She promised to use her group to bridge the gap between the content industry and the file sharers. She said she would speak for citizens and consumers.
I had been covering the high-tech policy community as a reporter for years by then, including a stint with News.com, so I should have seen the red flags. For instance, one should always be wary of someone claiming to speak for consumers. You and I are consumers, but can you remember the last time you voted for a "consumer representative"? I can't either.
Gigi speaks for some consumers--those who enjoy obtaining unauthorized content for free from P2P networks. She doesn't speak for consumers like me who want digital content, but want to pay for it. Why not? Because by defending those who distribute it for free, she stymies offerings at a price point other than free. Gigi argues that P2P shouldn't undermine CD sales or movie theater attendance because digital content online isn't directly comparable. But free content on P2P most certainly undermines the sale of comparable content on industry-approved sites.
Gigi also speaks for some corporations. On her Web site, she acknowledges corporate funding but won't name the companies. She has been directly aligned, however, with major Internet service providers and consumer electronics groups who profit from the broadband and hardware sales resulting from P2P use.
Another warning sign I overlooked with Gigi was her list of advisers. On that initial list in 2002 was a D.C. attorney named Adam Eisgrau. I'll confess that I had no idea who Eisgrau was in 2002. But he later burst onto my radar screen by founding P2P United, a trade group for just about every P2P company except Kazaa. Eisgrau is still a Public Knowledge adviser, which helps explain why, when covering the Induce Act debate earlier this year as a reporter, I would get off the phone with Adam, get on the phone with Gigi, and hear exactly the same words spoken to me.
There's nothing wrong with Gigi planting her flag with P2P United, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (Fred von Lohmann is an adviser) or with anyone who believes that the digital age is forcing us to abandon longstanding copyright principles. But that alliance is not seeking to bridge the gap between P2P and the content community.
Gigi also misdirects the debate by arguing she is attempting to protect the public domain. I think it's significant that our Founding Fathers ensured copyright protection early on in the U.S. Constitution, recognizing that such protection for a limited time was essential to ensure the "progress of science and useful arts."
One can argue the current protections are too long, as Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig did so--unsuccessfully--before the U.S. Supreme Court. (Lessig is on Public Knowledge's board of directors.) But the P2P debate isn't about the length of current copyright protections. A new music single or a prerelease movie that pops up on eDonkey wouldn't be eligible to enter the public domain for some time under any copyright regime.
I watched the Induce Act debate with some frustration. I sympathized with the bill's backers, who wanted to target companies designed to profit from the criminal behavior of others. I also sympathized with those in the technology community who feared that such legislation could lead to unintended consequences. There were some involved in that debate, including a few software representatives, who tried to work out a compromise. But Gigi made it clear from the beginning that her only goal was to ensure the Induce Act never left the Senate Judiciary Committee. She accomplished that goal and bragged about it in a recent e-mail soliciting donations.
It may be impossible to bridge the gap between red states and blue states. But as we enter the 109th Congress with the digital content debate very much alive, I'll be looking for anyone who wants to join me in seeking that elusive middle ground.
Biography
Patrick Ross works for The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., and its Center for the Study of Digital Property. Earlier this week, the Progress & Freedom Foundation filed a brief with the Supreme Court supporting the RIAA and MPAA in their legal fight against file-swapping software companies Grokster and StreamCast Networks.
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Who funds them and is aligned with them? Yet another in a long, long list of duplicitous, deceiptful, and covert groups pretending to care about the interests of the average person.
And even if they're not, because so often we find this to be the case, they still get to be tarred with the same brush.
"You have been Armstronged!"
What a surprise! And after all that talk about "middle ground" which actually would be a good place to stand...if it was really there. This is more like the Civil War and it will be settled the same way. By a trial of force; not of arms but of dollars. So my movie and music dollars stay in my pocket until the distribution model improves. Like after the RIAA and MPAA have turned to dust like the dead parasites they are. IMHO...
Peer to Peer isn't anything new, despite all the attempts of various people to make it into something new. UUCP and the FidoNet have been doing Peer to Peer for longer than most of the Peer to Peer users have been able to walk.
When you joined a file distribution network, peers in the local city would exchange files by tlaking to each other. A master peer in each city would communicate to other master peers each night, and files would propogate through the network.
Most networks were legal, but there were some that were pirate networks distributing illegal software.
The only difference between these networks and peer to peer is a difference in time scale. Where as a modern P2P network can establish an instant connection and can propogate the files quickly over highspeed internet, these systems used 9600 baud connections and might take days -- or even weeks -- to propogate a file.
Game developers, and others, tried making unprotected games. What they saw was that the files hit these file sharing networks and went nation wide within days, and hundreds of thousands of copies were distributed from these sites without people ever paying.
And so copyprotection became standard. While copy protection didn't stop these networks from bootlegging the games, it slowed them down considerably buying weeks or months in which users could not casually copy the game, and in which the game wasn't yet "broken" and posted to the software sites during which time users had to actually pay for it.
The folks at Apple, Real, Microsoft, etc. have been in the industry long enough to see this. They've participated in efforts with the government to shut down these rings, etc.
So now you have the MPAA and RIAA wanting to sell content to end users via the Internet, and they are depending on software companies who are already intimately familiar with peer to peer systems being used for piracey who are giving them advice.
And so you get DRM.
Peer to Peer is not new. Nodes in the FidoNet were refered to as peers, files going over the various file distribution systems that used fidonet backbone systems were referred to as peers. The behavior -- identification, negotiation, exchange -- is identical.
All that is different is timescale.
I do not like DRM, and the content providers do not like DRM. Nobody involved in DRM likes it, not even the companies selling it.
But what's been shown is that users cannot be trusted to act honestly. It's been shown for over 30 years now, and it'll be shown for another 30 years.
It is fair to say that most people, given the choice of something for free or something to be paid for will choose the former. Add in whether the act is illegal or not shifts the balance somewhat, but not by a great deal. This is human nature and will never change.
The record and movie companies only have themselves to blame for this situation. Knowing what human nature is, they have ignored that, and continued to operate a closed shop on the provision of music and movies to the masses. Profits are still obscenely high and all the companies have to do is rake in the cash. If prices were made more realistic and a competitive market created that would be a start, but a simple solution for the music side would be to allow legal downloads of complete albums at 96 or 128kb/sec for a minimal fee (a couple of dollars) with a credit to purchasing the full bitrate album. This would allow the user to decide whether the album was worth buying, and of the subsequent retail price were lowered, I doubt you would see as much piracy.
As I said earlier, piracy will never go away, but instead of trying to protect their monopoly, the entertainment industry should be trying to move with the times and make the most of the way things are now before completely losing control.
There is no middle ground. The industry stated that when they started suing.
Their chairperson is Lawrence Lessig (http://lessig.org) and I really recomend downloading and reading his book "Free Culture". It shows how we are entering the new "midle ages" where information is controlled by a few rich entities, and anyone who cannot afford a lawyer is out of the game of creativity. But the real reason to read it is that it's well written and fun to read, and you can learn a lot from it.
I'm one of those activists mentioned in this article - I made phone calls to my Congresspeople and Attorneys General to kill INDUCE and I will continue to do so. Until the MPAA and RIAA stops ripping its customers off for recycled content, suing p2p users and extending copyrights indefinitely, I will continue to do so.
I want the artists to take control of their own distribution channels and to get the lion's share of the profits.
The real solution is to institute a monthly fee and perhaps a small tax on CDR's and DVDR's that exempts p2p users from lawsuits that is then distributed as appropriate to labels/studios.
Of course it will never happen because then they won't be able to rip us off any more. How sad.
I agree very much with previous posts that the control over my media is for the first time controllable by me and that the recording industry has without a shadow over any doubt destroyed any kind of "middle ground" once the lawsuits started....lawsuits against 14 year old girls! Please!
What this whole thing means is that the people (i.e. the masses) are just as influential and powerfull as major cooperations and governments. People on mass tend to eventually get what they want, and the people of Earth HAVE stated quite clearly what they want. It is upto the RIAA and MPAA to evolve or wither away.
How many blacksmiths lost their jobs and livelyhood due to the technological evolution of the automobile replacing the horse-drawn carriage? Wouldn't you agree that this was for the better? .....This industry MUST evolve.
No lawsuit or legal influence can change the fact that THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN.
All frustration aside though....
An understanding needs to be had that both sides feel moraly and ethicly bound by their actions. This creates tension by it's very nature. Just like anything else. It is essentially the same thing that lead upto the Boston Tea Party. Now, they have the money, the power, and the means.....they need to lead by example (be the better man) and make changes that are just and right and correct in order to make money AND give the people what they want. The artist NEEDS to get a higher percentage and this particular business model NEEDS to be changed to conform to current AND future technologies. The major television networks are experiencing a similiar situation....the internet HAS changed things. The powers that be just don't seem to want to except this and deal with it appropriately.
The way I see it, the real problem is with the RIAA/MPAA (aka Hollywood and certain major cooperate entities), NOT the people. The people have only (just simply) stated what they want.
What is needed now are REAL solutions. No amount of lawsuits will mean anything in the scheme of things. There has been an idea floating around for years about an internet tax that would pay for use of copyright material. Now I'm not saying this is the right answer, or that it could work in all situations (because it wouldn't), but would most people be willing to pay 3$/month for the ability to download any mp3 they want legally?
All of that aside, I want to get back to my subject, being that we need innovation. Sadly, even if a person/group was to come out with the end all be all solution, getting it passed as a law in all major countries with internet service seems impossible. We can also forget about getting it implemented in a timely manner in a country such as the U.S..
I think this will be something we will just have to ride out. I have no idea what will happen, but at this moment in time, p2p groups seems to be slowly gaining the upper hand (even with all of the lawsuits, there have been some court cases that have ended in a positive way for p2p - and more on the way). I will be very interested in the LokiTorrents (BitTorrent Technology) case, assuming it goes to court. Also Grokster (FastTrack Technology) and various copyright-related groups will speak in front of the Supreme Court on March 29th. As to date Grokster has already overcome 2 cases (original case + appeal), so hopefully they will be able to complete a hat-trick.
- DRM standard, not rent seeking
- by February 1, 2005 2:22 PM PST
- As others have suggested, the PFF can be ignored. It's just another Heritage Foundation think tank with a veiled political agenda, not a genuine consumer protection agenda (unless you think privatization of everything is consumer friendly). What's really happening here is that the content industry is trying to protect a failing business model with the law/regulation. The only way to solve the problem for consumers and business is to encourage adoption of a universal DRM standard. A few antiquated business models may fail in the process. But that is truly the road to sanity in the digital liberties debate.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- Fallacy
- by Fray9 February 22, 2005 1:31 PM PST
- The problem with that thinking though is that DRM is inherently flawed.
- Like this
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(13 Comments)Anything you can do to data someone out there smarter than you can reverse.
DRM schemes can be removed, all digital data must be converted to analog in order for our human senses to percieve it.
In that instant the DRM no longer exists, and the audio and/or video can simply be recorded again without any protection.
The only sane solution is with a tax even though we all hate taxes bitterly.
Once thats in place we can begin to ensure that the artists doing all the work are the ones who recieve payment for it.
I think the industry average for a hit band netting $1 million in profit to recieve as payment is about $20k (you could make more working at a 7/11).