Open-source P2P projects keep swapping

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legal or financial responsibility. On the other are companies like Lime Wire and MetaMachine, both of which have open-source development products, but have revenue-generating businesses based on selling software and associated products.

Somewhere in the middle are younger companies such as Aelitis, the French company recently formed by developers of the Azureus BitTorrent client, the most popular piece of software tracked by Sourceforge, a well-trafficked open-source software development hub. According to that site, Azureus has been downloaded more than 78 million times, and more than 2.4 million times in the last week alone.

"The open-source guys are always going to be there. I don't think anyone expects that to go away completely."

--Jeffrey D. Neuburger, attorney, Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner

BitTorrent, a file-distribution technology developed in 2002, is widely used to swap copyrighted works such as movies and games. But it's also increasingly used for authorized purposes such as distributing open-source operating system files and was even recently built into Opera Software's Web browser.

Olivier Chalouhi, the founder of the Azureus project, said his team has made few changes since the ruling and will continue to develop and distribute the core swapping technology.

"The ruling never said that P2P technologies were bad or should be avoided," Chalouhi said. "As software developers, and as technology makers, we've not changed anything."

The company has taken some precautions, however. Chalouhi said its programmers had readied a range of "extensions"--essentially add-ons that would add new features to the program--when the ruling was released. In order to be wholly safe, he has decided not to release several of those.

Nilson noted that Shareaza warns people about copyright and intellectual property issues when the program starts up, and that the project asks people not to discuss any illegal activities. Chalouhi said he actively bans users from the Azureus forums who talk about piracy, and he's not about to shutter his work.

"The Grokster (court decision) gives content companies another arrow in their quiver in challenging commercial infringers, the people making profit and selling ads," said the lawyer Neuburger. "But the open-source guys are always going to be there. I don't think anyone expects that to go away completely."

[bit-looter]

speak easy

The entertainment industry can make this very easy on themselves, sell songs online for 5cents a piece and movies for 99cents. Then I wont feel robbed everytime I buy (or should I say download??) those things. Production for many companies have become a very cheap endeveur but none of these companies have any intention of passing those savings down to consumers. You have broadband providers trying to prevent subsccribers from sharing their high speed connections, I guess only corporations are entitled to the benefits of technical inovation.

Wait a while

Business has always set prices - as much as the market will bear. So, while people will pay $1 to download a song, the music industry will keep charging that amount.

But the problem is - intelectual property sale is a monopoly of sorts. Only one record label sells the music, for any band signed to that label. So they CAN keep setting the price artificially high. But slowly, slowly, slowly, the bands can make a difference. If one label is charging less for it's music, and helping to run up huge sales numbers for their bands, the bands signed to other labels may take notice. Perhaps they'd move to the label with lower prices.

It needs the bands to care about more than their bottom line & be aware of the record labels, that are passing on tehcnological savings to the fans - but how many bands care enough about their fans to give up revenue?

[bobby_brady]

Allofmp3 has songs for about 5 cents

You can buy them there. But I still support p2p and plan on using that.

Oh Oh, I bet Cnet gets sued now from the RIAA ah0les. They are storing comments from me about inducing piracy!

Here's what it costs to make a CD

According to independent market Research firm -Almighty Institute of Music Retail, here's the breakdown on the cost of a $15.99 CD -

$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead

So OK - you can save pretty much 80c on "Packaging/manufacturing". Figure to save some but not all 90c on distribution. Maybe there's a cut in "Retail overhead" (don't need a store in the mall) - so figure you're down to maybe $12-$13. You can still see that downloading has done NOTHING to significantly alter the cost of music - Sorry :-(


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[Sentinel]

The Court's ruling and open source

There is a big flaw in the Court's ruling. They say any company that "induces" or "encourages" the users of their software to piracy can be held liable. But they do not provide a means to quantifiably measure de "inducement level" of potential infringers. Just when does a company go over the line with a product that can used for infringement? When a certain number of infringements is detected? It's not specified, at least, not that I heard of. This makes the Court's ruling ambigous. Such ambigous ruling is likely to be exploited by the music/video industry to sue even more P2P developers.

As for the open source people, I would be very careful. Just because the music industry has so far targeted only commercial P2P, it doesn't mean they can't pursue open source, too. Their argument about "not being a company and not having a central authority or controlling entity" is weak at best. There is always a central group of people who are in charge of project, even if authority is shared between them. The members of the central group can still be sued as indiviuals. As for their "noble" effort to ban piracy, it's a nice gesture, but far from convincing. Just who do they think will pay attention to a message at the beginning of the program that says "Piracy is Bad. Don't do it"? Even if there are currently emerging new uses for peer to peer technology (like distribution of open source software), those new efforts are still at a minority. Most people use peer to peer for piracy purposes. One could even say that the very fact that you are making a P2P program is inducing to piracy (because the "over the line" border has not been established). So banning users who talk about piracy, and saying "Piracy is Evil" on the splash screen is only a small protection, which I think would not be much defense in the courtroom.

Now I am not saying to stop making P2P software, either. Just that, in order to continue developing open source P2P, developers need to look for better arguments than "we don't advocate piracy, it's in the license agreement" to defend themselves if they are sued. They should also begin looking for even more new and advanced uses for P2P technology, so that eventually piracy uses will be a minority.

Just my two cents.

[bobby_brady]

You said

"They say any company that "induces" or "encourages" the users of their software to piracy can be held liable. But they do not provide a means to quantifiably measure de "inducement level" of potential infringers."

This is why the lawyers won. You see, in order to make it in the country, you become a lawyer. Not a programmer. If you become a programmer, lawyers are out to destroy your job.

If you can't beat them, join them.

[bobby_brady]

No thanks to 80 year old Rehnquist

Who is trying to hang on at the Supreme Court for as long as humanly possible! These judges, once they get in, they take advantage of the fact, they are in for life.

'5 minutes of Fame?'

Just think about the high court ruling. It talks about a
commercial entity promoting a p2p service for copyright
infringement being liable. You have just written an article
stating that their is p2p software that is available to do this. Is it
a stretch to think that those people / organisation / companies
that bring peoples attention to software that can do this by
stating p2p and copyright infringement in the same article might
also be held liable because they give information on how to do
it. After all Thinksecret.com was found not to be a true media
service because it was on the internet and therefore not
protected as a journalistic service. You guys could be next. The
funny thing is by me making this statement I am adding myself
to the list of people that could be held accountable because I
have linked the two issues as well. Really we are no longer
heading towards a society that the almighty dollar runs. We are
already there. We now live for profit and not make profit to live.
Companies run us. We all move to cities so that we can be close
to each other only to look for our so called 'human right' of
personal space and cut ourselves off from real communication
with people. It use to be said that everybody in the future will
have their 5 minutes of fame. I say in the future every one will
have their '5 minutes of pain'... because someone will bring
legal action against you for some obscure breach of law that did
not exist before you started your action.