Technology Liberation Front: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » What About File Sharing?
MikeT
· 3 years ago
Tim,
The reason it is not working is that the government doesn't really care about enforcing the law. If IP is property, it should be subjected to all state property laws and local and state law enforcement should be required to enforce it accordingly. Right now we have what, a few hundred cops enforcing the law for the entire country?
We need at least several thousand more cops involved in these investigations. We need to get the state police, campus police and others involved. There is no reason why campus IT people cannot run packet sniffers on their networks and report such activity to law enforcement. Even fining them $10/song would increase the cost to the point that students could no longer do it.
I'm also sad to say it, but I agree with James DeLong that metered bandwidth is the only thing that will solve most of this.
Seth Finkelstein
· 3 years ago
Basically, nobody knows how to solve it all. The immediate problem of DMCA critics is demonstrating the DMCA is a harsh and stifling law, not a workable solution. Solveig's paper is characteristic of the counter-offense, the reply that: 1) Nobody important gets hurt (Felten's "Happy Endings") 2) If somebody did get hurt, they were dirty pirates anyway (DeCSS aspersions)
But this doesn't get us to a solution. I think licensing does have some promise, but it's hard to pursue. I've heard that the idea is discussed at times. But there's a lot of inertia in trying to preserve the old system. I doubt any theoretical proposal would be accepted, and I suspect any experiment would have to keep under the radar. Sometimes the future is utterly unpredictable.
Solveig Singleton
· 3 years ago
I think the interviews with college students may be a bit misleading. Students have a lot of time on their hands compared to normal people. And they often do not pay for their own hardware and software (their parents do, or they use school products). Nor do they have a lot of money to pay for content. So they can afford to mess around with unlicensed P2P; the risk of contracting a nasty virus is worth it, and they have the time to seek out anonymity. And the whole thing is fun for them. Once they get out, on the one hand they will be paying big bucks for their own hardware and software and become more wary of risks to this stuff. And they will have jobs that generate enough money to pay for routine consumption of content. And some of them will be working in fields related to content rights... writing, scientific research, photography, and so on. As with taxes, their opinions on this subject are likely to change as they get older.
The black market in unlicensed tunes is a big one, certainly, but it is small compared to what it would be if we were dealing with a legalized DeCSS and a legalized Napster or Grokster.
I do agree with Mike T that this is to a certain extent Hollywood's big bad businessman villain come back to haunt them. But again, if they are mistaking the market so badly, it is an opportunity for a new breed of creator to come in and do business a different way... and we see some small experiments, but not a lot of well-funded ventures.
I view software developers as being creators along with every other kind of creator. I do not view anyone as expendable; I just do not think all these problems are being cited are on the same scale. Again, I think that trying to come up with boundaries for the market here is in everyone's interest, and it is not going to be easy.
Michael Masnick
· 3 years ago
My two cents on this, which I've brought up before, is that none of this matters in the slightest once the recording industry realizes they need to change business models away from selling music directly to using the music as a promotion to sell other things.
So, I'm less worried about all of this, because I believe pretty strongly that new record labels will come along and make the new business model clear -- and kicking and screaming the old record labels will either figure it out or go out of business.
In such cases, a mechanism for stopping file sharing becomes pointless.
Matt Cline
· 3 years ago
I think the interviews with college students may be a bit misleading... As with taxes, their opinions on this subject are likely to change as they get older.
Ordinarily, I would agree with you. My opinions about various financial issues have certainly changed in the 6 years since I graduated college. I have a lot more money to spend now than I did then.
But I still think CDs are too damn expensive. I'll buy CDs from three artists (Live, Tool, and Joe Satriani), but that's it. If I want anything else, I'll take my chances on P2P, even though I now have the means to buy the CDs.
I'd be happy to avoid the risks and the hassles of P2P. But all of the online music stores have either A) DRM, B) low quality, or C) both. No thank you.
High prices help black markets grow. The music market is no exception.
Tim
· 3 years ago
The friends I had lunch with aren't college students. One of them graduated in 2004 and the other in 2005. So they both have full time jobs and pay for their own hardware and software.
And I agree that a legalized Napster and Grokster would lead to more piracy. I still don't understand how legalizing DeCSS would increase the amount of peer-to-peer file sharing.
MikeT
· 3 years ago
Solveig, it is just a phase for a lot of people. Owning the CD is a lot nicer than having crappy 128kbps MP3s. Not only that, but there is nothing that will sink a good job faster than a RIAA/MPAA/BSA lawsuit to deal with. The key, as I've said before, is more law enforcement involvement at all levels. Combine that with much lower, but stricter, fines and you've got a winning combination. Most juries won't feel right about hitting up a student for several million dollars of statutory damages for trading even 1,000-5,000 songs. If you dropped the damage down to a few dollars per song, or $15-$20 per movie, I think you'd find juries a lot more willing to make a simple open and shut case out of offenders.
The reason that the lawsuits have proven ineffective so far is that they don't come in a steady stream. It's like a carpet bombing, when what the copyright holders need is a smart-bombing campaign that hits individuals with hefty fines that juries can feel justified in handing down. What I would propose would be campus networks periodically scanning for large bursts of bandwidth and then start monitoring it if they're sustained for long periods of time. Then turn the records over to the local cops who walk up with a ticket for several thousand dollars.
Barry
· 3 years ago
Solveig, there is only one difference that a legalized DeCSS would make: I'd be able to legally use DVD software that allows me to play the disc in any region I want to, or skip past advertisements and the old-and-tired FBI warning. I could even write such software myself, including the features I like and want - and I'd be able to make said DVD software available for free and under an open source license.
Every movie out there has already been pirated, legal DeCSS or not, and they're tremendously easy to find and download, legal DeCSS or not. Will not having to see the FBI warning one... more... time... really induce me to rip off movies? No, of course not. That's ludicrous. But it *does* mean one less avenue for the content industry to force-feed me advertising (notwithstanding the fact that I've already paid them my pound of flesh to watch the content I want to watch).
If you really want to talk about setting up reasonable boundaries, try talking to the content industry. They plead with Congress that DRM is the only way they're going to protect their investment, but when they get the legislation they ask for (DMCA), they can't help themselves but to sprinkle on a little extra "screw you" to the legitimate consumer. They add extra features that force advertising down our throats or impose autodeletion on legally recorded content; or they implement oppressive, buggy, and unsafe DRM schemes (furthermore, ones that ironically violate the licensing terms of open source software); or they implement their DRM without regard for early adopters of new technology. And yes, I have actual concrete examples I can provide of each of those "screw yous" that I just mentioned.
If the content industry could be trusted, then nobody would be complaining about DRM except the pirates. But the content industry is no more trustworthy than the pirates, for the reasons I've already described above, and what you're seeing from legitimate consumers like myself is the beginning of the backlash. My worry is that the backlash won't become mainstream until it's too late (that being when the technology infrastructure relies upon the content industry's chosen DRM scheme being implemented by the hardware).
All Comments
Tim,
The reason it is not working is that the government doesn't really care about enforcing the law. If IP is property, it should be subjected to all state property laws and local and state law enforcement should be required to enforce it accordingly. Right now we have what, a few hundred cops enforcing the law for the entire country?
We need at least several thousand more cops involved in these investigations. We need to get the state police, campus police and others involved. There is no reason why campus IT people cannot run packet sniffers on their networks and report such activity to law enforcement. Even fining them $10/song would increase the cost to the point that students could no longer do it.
I'm also sad to say it, but I agree with James DeLong that metered bandwidth is the only thing that will solve most of this.
1) Nobody important gets hurt (Felten's "Happy Endings")
2) If somebody did get hurt, they were dirty pirates anyway (DeCSS aspersions)
But this doesn't get us to a solution.
I think licensing does have some promise, but it's hard to pursue. I've heard that the idea is discussed at times. But there's a lot of inertia in trying to preserve the old system. I doubt any theoretical proposal would be accepted, and I suspect any experiment would have to keep under the radar. Sometimes the future is utterly unpredictable.
The black market in unlicensed tunes is a big one, certainly, but it is small compared to what it would be if we were dealing with a legalized DeCSS and a legalized Napster or Grokster.
I do agree with Mike T that this is to a certain extent Hollywood's big bad businessman villain come back to haunt them. But again, if they are mistaking the market so badly, it is an opportunity for a new breed of creator to come in and do business a different way... and we see some small experiments, but not a lot of well-funded ventures.
I view software developers as being creators along with every other kind of creator. I do not view anyone as expendable; I just do not think all these problems are being cited are on the same scale. Again, I think that trying to come up with boundaries for the market here is in everyone's interest, and it is not going to be easy.
So, I'm less worried about all of this, because I believe pretty strongly that new record labels will come along and make the new business model clear -- and kicking and screaming the old record labels will either figure it out or go out of business.
In such cases, a mechanism for stopping file sharing becomes pointless.
Ordinarily, I would agree with you. My opinions about various financial issues have certainly changed in the 6 years since I graduated college. I have a lot more money to spend now than I did then.
But I still think CDs are too damn expensive. I'll buy CDs from three artists (Live, Tool, and Joe Satriani), but that's it. If I want anything else, I'll take my chances on P2P, even though I now have the means to buy the CDs.
I'd be happy to avoid the risks and the hassles of P2P. But all of the online music stores have either A) DRM, B) low quality, or C) both. No thank you.
High prices help black markets grow. The music market is no exception.
And I agree that a legalized Napster and Grokster would lead to more piracy. I still don't understand how legalizing DeCSS would increase the amount of peer-to-peer file sharing.
Solveig, it is just a phase for a lot of people. Owning the CD is a lot nicer than having crappy 128kbps MP3s. Not only that, but there is nothing that will sink a good job faster than a RIAA/MPAA/BSA lawsuit to deal with. The key, as I've said before, is more law enforcement involvement at all levels. Combine that with much lower, but stricter, fines and you've got a winning combination. Most juries won't feel right about hitting up a student for several million dollars of statutory damages for trading even 1,000-5,000 songs. If you dropped the damage down to a few dollars per song, or $15-$20 per movie, I think you'd find juries a lot more willing to make a simple open and shut case out of offenders.
The reason that the lawsuits have proven ineffective so far is that they don't come in a steady stream. It's like a carpet bombing, when what the copyright holders need is a smart-bombing campaign that hits individuals with hefty fines that juries can feel justified in handing down. What I would propose would be campus networks periodically scanning for large bursts of bandwidth and then start monitoring it if they're sustained for long periods of time. Then turn the records over to the local cops who walk up with a ticket for several thousand dollars.
Every movie out there has already been pirated, legal DeCSS or not, and they're tremendously easy to find and download, legal DeCSS or not. Will not having to see the FBI warning one... more... time... really induce me to rip off movies? No, of course not. That's ludicrous. But it *does* mean one less avenue for the content industry to force-feed me advertising (notwithstanding the fact that I've already paid them my pound of flesh to watch the content I want to watch).
If you really want to talk about setting up reasonable boundaries, try talking to the content industry. They plead with Congress that DRM is the only way they're going to protect their investment, but when they get the legislation they ask for (DMCA), they can't help themselves but to sprinkle on a little extra "screw you" to the legitimate consumer. They add extra features that force advertising down our throats or impose autodeletion on legally recorded content; or they implement oppressive, buggy, and unsafe DRM schemes (furthermore, ones that ironically violate the licensing terms of open source software); or they implement their DRM without regard for early adopters of new technology. And yes, I have actual concrete examples I can provide of each of those "screw yous" that I just mentioned.
If the content industry could be trusted, then nobody would be complaining about DRM except the pirates. But the content industry is no more trustworthy than the pirates, for the reasons I've already described above, and what you're seeing from legitimate consumers like myself is the beginning of the backlash. My worry is that the backlash won't become mainstream until it's too late (that being when the technology infrastructure relies upon the content industry's chosen DRM scheme being implemented by the hardware).