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Six years on, they switched their focus to ISPs, hoping to suborn the largest providers in countries such as America, New Zealand and France (with its so-called HADOPI bill) to name three, as corporate copyright enforcers, paid for by the companies themselves.

New Zealand, the first to cave in, now appears to be having serious second thoughts.

But although the end result is by no means certain, France is apparently determined to institute a plan whereby local ISPs will both supply the Big 4 with potentially incriminating evidence against their own customers, and act directly against them.

French economist and lecturer Jacques Attali, former special advisor to president François Mitterrand who in 1984 created the European research programm Eurêka (MP3 format), and author of Noise: The Political Economy of Music.

He also wrote an Open Letter to Artists in the French edition of Slate in which he kicks off with, “Many artists seem not to accept that the Internet opens up tremendous creative possibilities for them, that the proposed French bill called HADOPI, which seeks to ban free downloading, does not seek to protect them but to reserve most of the value they produce for select companies.

“Few recognize that another system of payment, based on the infinitely layered nature of the internet, would assure them better profits and  greatly improved social recognition if they take hold of it before the business who are now fighting against them rally first.”

Click here for the complete French version, or here for a Google translation.

The war against our kids

To slightly paraphrase Alan McCright, aka Curmudgeon At Large, writing about the situation in New Zealand, do governments represent and protect their citizens? Or do they, “despotically chuck the peoples’ rights out the window in order to placate grumbling, paranoid, billion-dollar corporations whose sole reason for existence is to make money? Should the rights of such corporations be protected? Certainly! But NEVER at the expense of the basic civil rights of the people which a government is required to protect! Such corporations are acting purely in self-interest.”

The French are famous for idolising their kids but nonetheless, in part, the Hadopi bill, “also seeks, outrageously,” to indoctrinate school children,” says Attali.

“Am I exaggerating?” – he asks, suggesting anyone with doubts should read Read Article 9/bis/(nouveau)/: Article L . 312-9 of the education code, which ends with »»»

Within this framework, they are informed, predominantly in the context of software patents and internet for middle-school students, of the risks related to the usage of public communication services online, on the dangers of downloading and the illegal availability of cultural works for artistic creation, as well as the penalties incurred in the case of a breach of trust as defined in article L.336-3 of the intellectual property code and counterfeit offense. Instructors are also informed. [I'll try and get another translation of this - Jon]

Attali adds:

“It is ridiculous not to understand that internet access constitutes a fundamental right, and  that schools must teach children how to make use of it and not distrust it. And if schools endeavor to do the opposite, they will not succeed but continue instead to accelerate the discredit that is threatening them.”

But tragically, this is nothing new.

Every man, woman and chlld who likes music is a potential Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain, and Warner Music (US) victim, but clearly, children — the consumers of the future — are the targets with the highest priority.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

March, 2009

p2pnet news | Daily Top 10:-

RIAA thumbs its nose at judge – 1,517

Heartland Institute spams Canadian schools – 301

RIAA lawyer Gabriel named as a judge – 245

New RIAA bid to block Net neutrality – 184

Malay blogger charged with sedition – 179

UK pot smokers face 5 years in jail – 174

RIAA chutzpah – or stupidity – 171

Canada’s wireless crisis – 158

RIAA in deep trouble with new case – 69

6 teens beat girl for YouTube video – 66

Cheers!

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p2pnet news | Daily Top 10:- We’ll be featuring a Daily Top 10 stories post at the end of every day (except weekends), as well as a Monthly Top 10, we posted yesterday.

So here’s the first, as of 12:01 pm Pacific

Vanessa Hudgens and Miley Cyrus rule on p2pnet – 1,500

Is Google Earth a BIG White Elephant? – 278

Huge CRIA audiomaxxx.com screw up – 250

Why does Harvard escape the RIAA? – 137

isoHunt sets Hollywood straight – 88

Frostwire on Gentoo – 80

6 teens beat girl for ’shock’ YouTube video – 79

Canadian copyrights: five myths – 77

Swedish man fined for copyright infringement – 73

Edison Chen online sex-pic scandal – 71

Cheers!

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p2pnet news | Daily Top 10:- You’d have thought the RIAA or maybe the MPAA, would’ve led any p2pnet Top Stories list, especially since our ad survey clearly put the Big 4 extortion unit at the top of the list of reasons why people come here, with P2P and Freedom as second and third.

One of the things I do when I pack it at the end of the day is check out Awstats to see which stories were the most read and for months, Vanessa, Miley and [wait for it ] Barney the Revolting Purple Dinosaur have consistently scored as numbers one, two and three.

Interesting, but annoying since I’ve decided a daily Top 10 might interest some readers. But who’s going to want to know if the same two or three stories show up in the top slots every time.

p2pnet is wholly and solely a news and information blog and as such, has always carried a large range of posts on a large range of subjects.

It has not ever, and never will, carried illegal mp3 downloads, advocated counterfeiting or duplication for the purposes of selling the results on underground markets online, or anywhere else, or countenanced any other type of illegal activity.

p2pnet’s Orb Torrent Site Tracker at the top right of the page is exactly that: a torrent site tracker showing how many listings of a given song/performer are currently available, and a drop-down panel of some of the sites where they’re listed. And that’s all.

“A BitTorrent tracker is a server which assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol,” says the Wikipedia, also noting, “A tracker should be differentiated from a BitTorrent index by the fact that it does not

Soundcards and software synthesizers

In the Mission Statement, I say p2pnet.net went online in August, 2000, and, “was the first Internet web page to carry daily, frequently updated news, stories, features and commentaries on digital media, distributed computing and associated technologies and events which haven’t been spun, filtered and pre-digested by vested corporate interests. It places special emphasis on freedom of speech and p2p sharing.”

I’ve been sharing music since the mid-90s when I discovered MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), sound-cards, software synthesizers and email, I said when Slyck interviewed me almost three years ago, going on, “I could be an entire band AND use the Net to share MIDI files with people around the world” and, “It meant jamming online. Very cool. So how could I NOT have heard about p2p? And how could I not want to be a small part of this online communications revolution which I could see was going to allow ordinary people take back their rights?”

“What do you believe would be a viable solution to stem the growth of piracy?” – asked Slyck in the Q&A, continuing >>>

Newton: “Record label and movie studio investors should organize a Shareholders Alliance, appoint someone to run it – isn’t ex-HP boss Carly Fiorina looking for a job? – and instruct him or her to disband the RIAA and MPAA and fire the senior company executives. Their collective credibility is far too sullied to be of any further practical use, and they’ve already amply demonstrated they have no clue about how to run businesses in the digital 21st century. The Alliance should then name a very small group to brainstorm how p2p can be made to work for them. This group could perhaps include people such as Jim Griffin, the EFF’s Fred von Lohmann, a representative of the members of P2P United, MUTE’s Jason Rohrer, and ex-RIAA boss Hilary Rosen. Once this group has come up with recommendations, some of the people who were fired could be re-hired to implement them.

Slyck: What should the MPAA and RIAA do to curb piracy’s prominence?

Newton: Given that the MPAA and RIAA are no more than the blunt weapons of the entertainment industry cartels, the first thing they should do is: stop trying to sue their customers into buying. It’ll take a while, but they’ll eventually begin to recover some of the goodwill they’ve squandered. The cartels should then immediately open their entire catalogues to the people they’ve more or less designated as their principal sales fronts, with iTunes and Napster II to the fore. This content should be licensed to distributors (including the current p2p operators) at reasonable prices so people can buy tracks at between 10 and 25 cents per download. The organized criminals – the ‘pirates’ – depend largely on physical product to ply their illicit trades. They’ll find it a hell of a lot harder to operate when music and movie lovers are buying fairly priced music and movies from adequately stocked download sites. The RIAA and MPAA should also stop spending ridiculous amounts of money publicizing the very thing they’re trying to quell. P2p and the digital media represent tremendous opportunities, not death knells.

Slyck: What would be your ideal solution to balancing the needs of the MPAA/RIAA and that of the average P2P and file-sharing participant (consumer)?

Newton: See above, and let’s remember consumers are customers again, and they’re in a spanking new economic territory which has never existed before. They, and not the corporations, have the power of control. It’s called freedom of choice. New technologies always threaten the old, established ones whose owners do everything they can to maintain the status quo. Eventually, though, they cave in, and go with the flow and peace reigns (until it happens all over again ; )

My views are pretty much the same today. Sharing is now, and always has been, a principal form of communications. It doesn’t matter if it’s by word of mouth or electronically and I write about sharing in a positive way because I honestly believe, contrary to music industry statements, but in accordance with a number of authoritative academic and commercial studies, that it’s an effective form of viral advertising and as such, is probably one of the reasons the Big 4 labels and their anachronistic business models are still managing to survive.

But I digress and —

—- to get back to the matter in hand, p2pnet started running under Word Press a little under a year ago —- in July, 2007, to be precise —- and the Top 10 stories as of 8:46 am Pacific were:

‘Vanessa Hudgens nude’ saga continues – 133,980
Hudgens nude: full frontal faux pas – 106,910
Vanessa Hudgens: naked again – 94,807
New Vanessa Hudgens pics online – 65,032
Huge CRIA audiomaxxx.com screw up – 46,312
UK’s www.tv-links.co.uk busted – 37,102
Bloody Barney: Oh, the Horror! – 31,475
Body found: Emily Sander/Zoey Zane?  – 29,176
RIAA student victimisation campaign – 26,996
Barney, Bloody Barney – 25,621

See what I mean?

So what I’ll be doing is leaving out the Vanessa, Miley and Barney posts and listing the next stories in line, and the tag ‘Celebrities’ at the top will be replaced by Daily top 10 (although celebrities will continue to exist as a prefix to stories).

By way of example, at 8:51  am Pacific today the Top Ten list for the last seven days is:

Miley Cyrus naked (almost) – 19,081
‘Vanessa Hudgens nude’ saga continues – 11,804
Hudgens nude: full frontal faux pas – 6,996
More ’scandalous’ Miley Cyrus pix online – 5,645
Rogers ups the traffic throttling ante – 3,977
New Vanessa Hudgens pics online – 3,648
Another bad day for the RIAA – 3,525
Bill Ray didn’t OK Miley Cyrus ‘topless’ – 3,198
Huge CRIA audiomaxxx.com screw up – 2,302
Miley Cyrus sexy bed-sheet scandal: XVII – 2,12

But if I remove references to Barney, et al, I get:

Rogers ups the traffic throttling ante – 3,977
Another bad day for the RIAA – 3,525
Huge CRIA audiomaxxx.com screw up – 2,302
Bell Sympatico P2P Black List – 1,266
6 teens beat girl for ’shock’ YouTube video – 992
SoundExchange artists who’ve lost their money  – 820
Why does Harvard escape the RIAA? – 780
Ashley Alexandra Dupre vs Girls Gone Wild – 749
Canadians vs Bell Canada: CAIP, II – 663
Lindsay Lohen as Marilyn: naked online – 535

And if I leave out all reference to the Ashleys and Lindsays of the world, it’ll be different again.

Or should I just do a completely separate celebrities Top 10?

Anyway, be all of the above as it may, we’ll be kicking off the p2pnet Daily Top 10 sometime next week.

Cheers! And thanks. And all the best …

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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