Letters to the editor don’t work. Street demonstrations and protests don’t work. Appealing to the people we elected to serve us most definitely doesn’t work.

Individuals around the world have recognised the desperate state we’re in and that if it’s going to change, they’ll have to change it.

With that in the wings, last Sunday “There’s a new freedom of speech site online”, I posted. It’s called AnonNews. “Anyone can post to the site, and moderators will approve relevant posts”, it says, promising >>>

No censorship takes place!

For information, edits, moderator applications, and everything else join the IRC channel or visit info@anonnews.org. Press can contact press@anonnews.org (we are not an official press platform, but we’d gladly answer questions about AnonNews, or, more broadly, get you in touch with other Anons).

Help translate the AnonNews.org interface into YOUR language: http://piratenpad.de/DeoWaZ36iP (no registration required, fully anonymous) .

Behind it is an Anon I’ll call Joe. He’s based in Europe. No surprises there. North America isn’t exactly a place where movements for freedom, or freedom of speech, can survive.

He and I had an email exchange about AnonNews and his plans for it and what struck me was his overall attitude. It is, I think, typical of many, if not most, of the people who call themselves Anonymous, individually and collectively.

The lamescream media persist in trying to claim there’s some kind of mysterious central body that’s in overall control. The Guardian called it a “cabal”. But the truly unique aspect of this song for freedom and change is: although the voices are in unison, there’s no actual choir and no actual conductor.

I’ve spoken to a number of Anons and it seems clear to me that if Anonymous is a first-time phenomenon, equally unique is the fact it is, like P2P itself, completely decentralised.

‘I care a lot about things like freedom of speech, and honesty … ‘

The creator of AnonNews is a freelance web developer, programmer, and web designer.

“I care a lot about things like freedom of speech, and honesty, which is pretty much the main reason I got involved with Anonymous”, he told me. “I keep the amount of paid work to a minimum.

“I invest most of my time in various non-profit projects like AnonNews, a non-profit social network [still in its very early stages] and more locally, a refurbishment project which basically consists of collecting old computer hardware, refurbishing where possible, installing Linux, and giving them away to people who can’t afford it. ”

So are you a part of an organisation? – I wondered.

“A  very important thing”, Joe stressed. “If I say anything regarding Anonymous as a whole, it’s my personal view and opinion. Anonymous is not an actual group of people. Anyone who decides to sail under the banner of Anonymous, will be Anonymous.

“There are no official spokesmen or representatives, nor will there ever be. One person cannot define Anonymous, as Anonymous will be whatever people want it to be. This is a concept that many media fail to grasp (or, as someone very nicely worded, they are used to simple ‘take me to your leader’ approaches), and it’s very important to keep this in mind.

“Anonymous could be called an anarchistic group, meaning there is no central governance. Anyone can set up something, and others may join, and they may develop their own way of keeping things in control. However, no one will ever be able to speak for the movement as it is simply too diverse.

“In true unofficial Anonymous wording: ‘We are your brothers. We are your sisters. We are you, we are everyone around you. We are Anonymous’.”

Questions. Answers.

Newton: What was your aim in starting AnonNews?

Joe: Basically I want to provide a centralized and reliable platform where people can stay updated on pretty much everything about Anonymous. “Groups” within Anonymous, by lack of a better word, can post press releases to keep both the people and the press updated on the latest projects and operations. External news sources can be added, and voted up and down, to give people a quick overview of which articles present an accurate view of the “movement”. For example, a very recent article by The Guardian on a hierarchy within Anonymous [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/16/wikileaks-anonymous-hierarchy-emerges] was massively voted down in only hours after being added. That gave a very good indication that the article was not accurate at all. Not only do these votes give an idea of the accuracy of the article, it also shows the average opinion about certain events.

Currently on top at AnonNews is an article about a Dutch man being released several days after being arrested for involvement with Operation Payback. It clearly shows that the release of this ‘Anon’ was very well received by Anonymous. The last section is pretty much a list of sites representing “groups” within Anonymous, and several other related sites. For every item in every section, comments can be added. The press release regarding a DDoS attack on Time.com was received very negatively in the comments section, and I believe that is one of the reasons the mainstream media did not pick up on this as being a “real” or serious operation.

Newton: Do you have anyone working with you?

Joe: I do the entire development of the platform itself on my own; however, currently there are about 20 moderators who continuously monitor submitted entries (and a bot in the IRC channel, announcing new entries). While external articles are immediately visible on the site and monitored afterwards, press releases and related websites are reviewed prior to being published. This is mainly to avoid the publishing of unrelated submissions (quite a few Wikileaks-related submissions come in that are not in any way related to Anonymous). For the translation of the interface (which is currently being worked on), pretty much anyone can contribute and there is no real staff. The entire translating goes through an “EtherPad”, a collaborative notepad that several people can work with at the same time. Anyone can anonymously contribute to the translations by translating something into his own language, or by correcting mistakes. And of course the content is being provided by the users, also anonymously. In a broad sense you could say the entire world works with me on the site.

Newton: Did you set Anon News up as a permanent site?

Joe: That is certainly the intention. This site is not actually in any way related to AnonOps or Operation Payback, other than providing a platform for them as well. Several press releases have already appeared on AnonNews about causes that are not in any way related to Wikileaks or AnonOps/Operation Payback, and that’s exactly what I’d like to see. Anonymous has previously been involved with various other things like Project Chanology (an anti-Scientology movement) and the original Operation Payback that was about filesharing, rather than about Wikileaks. It’s not a new movement in the sense that it didn’t exist before, yet it will never be the same because there will always be different people contributing to it. I am certainly intending to keep AnonNews running, no matter what happens, for any future projects sparking from Anonymous as well. The power of Anonymous is that anyone who wants to sail under that flag, is automatically part of Anonymous, so new projects WILL always spark.

Newton: Are you looking for help?

Joe: For the development of the platform itself, I think any help would be counter-productive as the project is too small to actually have any benefits in collaboration. However, when everything is completely “finished” (right now I’m working on the multi-language interface, as well as language filters and tags), the source code will be released so anyone can use it. Moderation help is always welcome, and those interested in moderating (which does not require any special knowledge) are always welcome to send an e-mail or join the IRC channel. Translation efforts will always be community-based, and these will be announced on the website. Pretty much anyone can contribute to that. The same goes for submitting content. If you are bored, feel free to find articles about Anonymous on the web (these do not have to be recent, and they don’t have to be specifically related to Operation Payback either) and submit them on the site.  The only thing I really need some help with at the moment is hosting. Although everything runs fine now, I can’t be sure that the hosting company / datacenter won’t freak out about the contents on the site (which may be, in some cases, controversial) and as I’ve seen in the past few days, the DDoS protection could use some work. Add to that that I don’t have a massive income, and any help with hosting would always be welcome

Newton: Were you involved with Anon(s) or Operation Payback before the launch?

Joe: I had already been researching Anonymous before the entire Wikileaks Cablegate story started to play out, but to be honest I hadn’t even heard of Operation Payback (which was about copyright, rather than Wikileaks, originally). I guess I could say I have always been involved with Anonymous as an entity or movement, since I have always fought for the same goals that Anonymous is trying to achieve in general; freedom, and in most cases freedom of information and expression. Even when it didn’t “exist” yet, people were essentially already striving for the same goals.

Newton: Have you heard from anyone on 4chan and/or OP?

Joe: To be honest, I’m not even sure how I got involved. I think it was through the Wikileaks IRC channel that I learned of Operation Payback. I certainly didn’t find it on 4chan, which I don’t even visit very frequently. Anonymous may have originated from 4chan, but I don’t think there’s any relation still left between those two.

Newton: Some sections of the lamescream mainstream media are suggesting there’s a growing, and unhappy, division between Anon(s) and Operation Payback and indeed “To show your support for freedom, kindly halt any and all activities that would give Anonymous a bad name. Including, but not limited to: – Black Faxes – DDoS Attacks – Spam TL;DR cut that shit out” said one of the posters on Anon News [http://www.p2pnet.net/story/46913].

Joe: A “growing division” is, I think, not even possible. As described earlier, Anonymous is not really a group, so there is nothing to be split. Some may agree with a specific move, some may disagree, and there’s no reliable way to give any numbers on how many people agree or disagree with a plan. The only thing you can measure is the “average opinion” of the mass.

Newton: Do you believe the traditional press really understand what’s now happening online?

Joe: I’m fairly sure they don’t have a clue. The problem with a large part of the traditional press is that they see “the people” as consumers, and not as individual human beings with their own opinions and views. In Anonymous they see things like terrorists, “hackers” (which is entirely the wrong word), or people who just like taking down websites. They fail to see what Anonymous really is; a collective of people who want to stand up for their opinion, and fight for their freedoms. Either to gain them, or to keep them.

They aren’t seeing the objectives; just the methods.

It also appears they are completely unable to grasp the concept of Anonymous as being a non-hierarchical, anarchistic entity. Instead they are still looking for the “leaders”, as is illustrated by the Guardian article I mentioned earlier. They fail to see there simply are no leaders behind Anonymous itself. The only “leaders” there are, are those that lead a specific operation or project. And even then, not all projects have leaders.

Newton: On November 17 I ran a Q&A with an OP spokesperson [http://www.p2pnet.net/story/45762] when I asked, “Is there any kind of formal, or informal, central council? If so, who ’sits’ on it and how are they nominated?”

“There is a small group who are comprised of original activists, along with a collection of botnet owners and service administrators (people who host the IRC/Website as well as those who moderate and manage/develop them)”, was the reply. “Other people participate in researching news articles and law constructions, while others — like me — are participating to write about these events/actions. A month later, “Inside Anonymous, the Guardian has found that the organisation is more hierarchical — with a hidden cabal of around a dozen highly skilled hackers co-ordinating attacks across the web”, said the newspaper [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/16/wikileaks-anonymous-hierarchy-emerges].

Do you believe there’s a secretive cabal organising things?

Joe: I think there is indeed some sort of organization here, although it is certainly not secretive, and no enforced authority takes place. As far as I know, the “organization” pretty much consists of whoever contributes to the project. The Q&A you mentioned already listed service administrators, and there are undoubtedly more people involved. However, I think the group of people organizing this may change at any moment. All this is just a guess, as I have no clue who is organizing things, and to be honest it isn’t important. As long as everyone participating keeps using common sense, and works towards the same goal, the organization is not important; it’s the action and the results that count.

Also, a very common misconception is that anyone involved with this matter is a “hacker”. The first pitfall there is that someone who breaks into systems isn’t actually a hacker, but a cracker. The second problem with that idea is that the people who are behind the organization of, for example, a DDoS attack, do not need any technical skills to do so. Communication skills are way more important here.

Newton: For the first time in history, people aren’t only making more and more choices, they’re making their choices stick, I say here – http://www.p2pnet.net/story/46415. Would you agree?

Joe: I think this is not the first time this happens. There have been many revolutions in the past, and some of these choices have stuck. Only this time, there’s the internet; a global communication mechanism that enables people around the world to communicate in real-time, even those in censored countries like China. The internet enables people around the world to see the bigger picture, and make choices on a larger scale. A “global revolution” is really possible now. It’s not just one right we fight for now, it’s humanity as a whole, the entire spectrum of rights. This entire affair with Wikileaks and Julian Assange isn’t the cause for this massive change you can see on a global scale, it’s just a catalyst. While even ‘civilized Western countries’ are starting to look more and more like police states (camera surveillance, central databases of biometric data, arresting protestants through the use of police provocation, etc.), the “resistance” amongst people is growing as well. At one point, as we’ve seen in for example Greece, it just blows up. And I believe that’s a good thing, as it reminds those in power why they were supposed to have power.

As someone (I can’t recall who) said, “governments should be afraid of their people, not the other way around”.

Newton: Right now the site seems mainly to comprise posts from people submitting their ideas. Will it eventually have news, article and commentary posts?

Joe: The aim of AnonNews is to be completely independent and uncensored (although not unmoderated), and not taking any sides. While it’s clear from the above questions that I very much agree with the direction Anonymous is currently going in, a press release speaking out negatively about these actions won’t ever be censored, as can be seen from the Operation TrollFox press release. As long as something is done under the banner of Anonymous (and in the case of press releases, has acceptable grammar), it can be posted to AnonNews. An idea is already floating around to have a “writing” section that will contain theory, news, and other written pieces from Anons, but this will only be implemented when the main platform is completely stable and working. All content on AnonNews will always be user-submitted. In some cases, people already write up analyses or critical posts regarding submitted content, and place these in the comments section.

In short: there are no plans to have any kind of editorial staff on the site, anyone can submit content. If there’s enough demand for a certain feature, it will appear. In fact, Indymedia (at least the Dutch version, I’m not sure about the rest) is a very good example of what I’d like AnonNews to be: just an open platform, and nothing else.

Newton: Do you believe the Anon and OP projects are temporary, or that they’re here to stay?

Joe: While Operation Payback is a project with a certain goal and purpose, and will cease to exist as soon as that goal is reached, Anonymous will never disappear. Anonymous is not a “new” movement. It’s simply a new name for freedom fighters, who in this case use the internet to communicate and collaborate. Freedom fighters have always existed, will always exist, and should always exist, be it under the name Anonymous or something else. Anonymous as a name may cease to be used but the “movement” will never die.

Newton: Back to AnonNews itself, what kind of script do you use?

Joe: Quite a few people have been asking that. I’m not using a script though, everything is self-programmed, as it should be for any serious website. It’s pretty much made to be as light-weight as possible, and even with thousands of visitors a day the server load is almost zero. It should run on pretty much any device. Also, for those interested, an XML feed is available (http://anonnews.org/xml.php) and an RSS feed will soon be added.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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December, 2010

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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Under the Operation Payback banner, they  launched a series of distributed denial-of-service  (DDoS) attacks against the the US Copyright Office, Hollywood’s MPAA, Big Music’s RIAA and BPI and other ‘trade’ groups, and the jackal-like lawyers using copyright to extort ordinary people.

The cartels responded, flaunting their control of agencies meant to protect people, not corporations, by siccing the FBI onto Operation Payback.

What do the organisers want? Not much. Simply for people to be treated with consideration and respect, not as criminals and thieves by the real criminals and thieves — those who run the entertainment industry and software cartels, corrupting as they go.

But money isn’t the currency of the 21st digital century. Knowledge and information are. And ordinary people, until this decade distained as cash-cow ‘consumers’, now control and, for the first time in history, have free access to, both.

We’ve been David for long enough. Now we’ve become Goliath.

“I’ve been expecting an Operation Payback-type movement for a long time”, I said to a spokesperson for the group, going on, “ Is this the beginning of something, or the end?”

Anonymous: We hope it’s the beginning of the end of the abuse of copyright and the lack of transparancy within the entertainment industries. We presented Operation Payback as returning the favor for AiPlex’s DDoS attack on torrent sites. In the time that the operation developed, we found out that a lot of people strongly disagree with the current copyright/patent laws and censorship, and find that payback against one company does’t compare to the reign of the entertainment industries.

Newton: I get the impression many, if not most, of the connections are made on IRC. Would that be correct? If not, how are communications managed?

Anonymous: A lot of the communication is managed over IRC. Also, forums, bulletin boards and image boards (like 4chan) are often used. Of course, facebook and twitter shouldn’t be forgotten. Many visitors in our IRC contact (MSN, Google Talk, Skype, AIM, etc) their friends, telling them to join in.

Newton: I grabbed a couple of sentences from the TF post which said “We can safely conclude that this Anonymous group doesn’t have a broad shared set of ideals. Instead, it is bound together by anger, frustration and the desire to be heard. Their actions are a direct response to the anti-piracy efforts of pro-copyright groups. Aside from shared frustration, the people affiliated with the operation have something else in common. They are nearly all self-described geeks, avid file-sharers and many also have programming skills.” Is that an accurate summary? Or are other people from other walks of life also involved?

Anonymous: Yes and yes. Many of us do have very strong ideals, others are just in for the riot. A lot of people in there do have the “geekyness”, where others are rather interested in our motivations. Anonymous are all of us, geeks, normal people, children, parents, politicians. What everybody has in common, is that they think that something should be done about the corporations exploiting both artists and customers.

Newton: When I write about the changes being wrought I often quote Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, written in the mid-1990s when the net was only just beginning to take hold. In a recent post  I pointed out the book’s central character is Tyler Durden who says to ‘Them’: “Remember this. The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you’re asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.” I added the executives, politicians and ‘creators’ should have that in neon lights, hanging on the walls in their offices. Does any of this ring bells with you?

Anonymous: The quote fits in this context perfectly (and is also an accurate answer to the previous question as well). This is just a small angry mob among many. Right now, the entertainment industries are sueing their own customers. Eventually, it will end with their customers all in prison, broke or refusing to pay, or — as in this case — they start a rebellion against them. We hope that they see it not just as an angry mob, but as a reason to decide to find alternate ways.

Newton: Who am I talking to at the moment? An individual? Or a hive, so to speak?

Anonymous: I act as spokesman for the organizing group within the operation, though there are others who might express their thoughts as these questions are viewed and answered collectivily. Before interviews are taking place, we discuss the highlights and ideas we would like to get to the media. Usually, some other people check the interview for both factual and grammatical/spelling errors.

Newton: How are Operation PayBack actions brought to life?

Anonymous: When people in our IRC channel make suggestions, there asked to justify why they think who should be attacked (maybe by referring to media articles that a copyright firm, entertainment company or such went to extremes, like sending 5000 lawsuits [Hustler], legally blackmailing people [ACS:Law]), we do some research in their backgrounds, we probe there employees, business interests and servers/services. If there is no easy way of getting the media to the hard work (like leaking ACAPOR’s email systems), then our alternative is Denial of Service, a date and time are arranged, a attack poster is usually produced, the imageboards (4chan/7chan/711chan/420chan/808chan) are notified, Twitter and Facebook are updated. Then we see what happens.

Newton: For years I’ve been writing about the way in which the corporations are mind-raping our kids in their school classrooms. Is there any way I could contact OP to get something happening to the sites which purportedly exist to ‘educate’ children and their parents? In other words, is OP available to people at large? And if it is, how do they get in touch?

Anonymous: DDoSing only works up to a certain level. Like we see in the media now, our attacks are getting old and less worth mentioning. The only long-term solution would be to start or help in awareness actions. This could be starting a news blog about copywrong, joining the Operations’ IRC channel or website, or publicly questioning their motives. Even sending a postcard, written by a small child asking nicely if they can share a song with their friends might motivate people to start the discussion.

Newton: Is there any kind of formal, or informal, central council? If so, who ’sits’ on it and how are they nominated?

Anonymous: There is a small group who are comprised of original activists, along with a collection of botnet owners and service administrators (people who host the IRC/Website aswell as those who moderate and manage/develop them). Other people participate in researching news articles and law constructions, while others –like me– are participating to write about these events/actions.

Newton: At various times I’ve suggested the people being persecuted are the ones the persecutors depend on for their survival. At the moment, all the OP action appears to be online with sites as targets. Will it ever move offline, do you think?

Anonymous: All things come to an end. With new people, our focus shifted from just attacking websites to making copyright reform proposals and make people aware about what’s really going on. Eventually we will either fade out of the media attention, or continue with a different strategy and/or different name. As long as there are people to support the cause, the operation will continue to exist in some sort of way.

Newton: If OP is completely decentralised, how are projects organised and implemented?

Anonymous: When I first heard of this operation, I noticed that without actual coordination, a lot is achieved. Most people have the same way of thinking, the same way of reacting. It works as some sort of a Darwin-effect: good ideas are repeated by other people, bad ideas are just ignored or forgotten. Targets are presented, posters are made, websites attacked, without actually one or a few persons planning that. I think it’s the chemistry of a couple hundred anonymous people that keeps us going.

Newton: The FBI is going after OP personnel (if they can be called that). Is this worrying?

Anonymous: Not at all, we believe that the FBI have very little power in this specific case, assuming they are actually investigating, which we can’t see the benefit of for the U.S. tax payers. Besides that, what would they want to achieve? That would only fuel the discussion that the U.S. government tries to gain absolute control over its people, eventually referring to the Fight Club quote. Besides, many people do not even live in the U.S., we spotted visitors from Canada, Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Great Britain, India, China, Japan, New Zealand, just to name a few. Judge and jury can also decide that this is a protest rather than a viscious attack, which may lead to unexpected results. Besides that, people can always claim that they didn’t know about their computer being “infected by/with a botnet”. There is no evidence that says otherwise.
The only people who should be worried are those who have been conducting “other” activities (such as hacking). Our service hosts may have a hard time working through all take-down notices, though we believe that both groups be smart enough to avoid or evade legal actions. Still, visiting a website, or saying something on IRC that is considered “implicating” is, as far as we can understand with our common sense, not enough to either shut down a server or arrest a visitor.

Newton: Will OP ops branch out to, say, pharmaceuticals? And will politicians who are obviously serving the cartels rather than the people who put them into office ever be targeted?

Anonymous: The Tech Herald published our newest plans last week. We intend to direct the focus of the operation to public awareness campaign(s). Our statement contains, for example, the following proposals: [See the end of this Q&A for the proposals.] We trust that those politicians will be exposed. Whether that is by us, by rogue groups or by competitors doesn’t matter. Eventually somebody will find out and something will be done. We’re just here to get the show on the road. We may not be able to do anything. But we do the thing we CAN do: motivate people to get on with this. The more people read and know about this, the more there can be done about it.

Newton: Do you have a principal goal?

Anonymous: Our primary objective is to raise public awareness; these attacks and threats publish better than peaceful protests. With the attention, people will at least gain insight in the facts as they are presented, and the facts how they really are. This is not about artists being paid, but industries getting their actual profit from suing people. That is a reversed world. People only complain about the situation. We make people aware that something can actually be done about it. We may be known as “evil DDoSers”, but we did put “scammy” firms like ACS:Law out of business for sending people unfounded law threats/bills. We achieved that ISPs are now more careful about handing over their customers’ IPs; the Ministry of Sound even dropped their legal case against BT because of that. We are not against entertainment or their industries; we are against the way that copyright and patent systems are abused. While we have little or no experience with communicating with lawmakers, other people might have, and those people can decide to help us with what we started.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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Operation Payback banner – Payback is a bitch!, October 30, 2010
siccing the FBI – FBI launches 4chan/Anonymous ‘investigation’, November 10, 2010
TF post – Behind the Scenes at Anonymous’ Operation Payback, November 16, 2010
mind-raping our kids – Brainwashing your child: mind-rape in 2010, November 10, 2010
Tech Herald – Anonymous plans to slow DDoS attacks, outlines patent and copyright reform, November 9, 2010
case against BT – BT Deletes Records of 20,000 Suspected File-sharers, Ministry of Sound Pissed, November 3, 2010

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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She’s taken up residence in Sidney, near BC’s capital, Victoria, and close to p2pnet’s palatial headquarters about an hour-and-a-half north of Victoria.

“I spent a lot of time talking to people in Saanich and the various Gulf Islands over the summer and there has been a tremendous amount of encouragement from people in the community to move there and to run there,” the Toronto Star has May saying.

The story says apart from a,”whistle-stop train tour through Ontario and the Maritimes at the beginning of the campaign and a bus ride through Alberta followed by a second train trip from there to Vancouver near the end, May expects to spend all her time in the riding and to concentrate her efforts on the uphill battle to defeat Lunn”.

“What’s your message to people in BC?” – p2pnet asked the Green Party leader in a brief Q&A.

“I’m reaching out to every voter who feels disengaged, despairing and disenchanted (not to mention disgusted) with the current political scene,” she said.

“We are in the clutches of non-stop electioneering, when we need good government.  The prime culprit is the entrenched partisanship of each leader and the party discipline which keeps MPs in line.  In other words, we are sacrificing democracy to politics.

She went on »»»

We can change the disrespectful, combative style of politics, to a more respectful and cooperative parliament.  We are in a multi-party system, destining Canada to more and more minority governments.  That is not necessarily a bad thing (look at the Lester Pearson years), but only if we figure out how to drop the partisanship and work in the interests of Canadian communities, the nation and the planet.  By electing the leader of the Greens in Saanich Gulf islands, the voters will have sent the first real change agent into the House.  My goal (in addition to a litany of solid policies and programmes) will be to give voice to all the millions of Canadians who want to see a grown-up Parliament, with thoughtful people working for the common good.  All those people are actually in place, but they are locked in mindless partisanship.  As MP for Saanich Gulf Islands, I will work tirelessly in the interests of the local communities within my riding, as well as to restore effective governance.

p2pnet: How sure are you of winning a seat here on Vancouver Island considering you’ll be up against established candidates from the  other three national parties?

May: No one in politics should be “sure” of anything.  I’m sure of this. The voters in Saanich Gulf Islands deserve better representation than what they are getting.  The majority of voters in this riding yearn for change.  As leader of the Greens, running a major and serious effort to unseat Mr.Lunn, I represent the best hope the majority of voters have had to consolidate their hopes for a better world . I’m not asking people to give up their traditional allegiances to Liberal, NDP or even Conservative preferences.  I’m running a quite non-partisan campaign in search of a grassroots coalition.

p2pnet: What do you think of Pirate Parties and the fact it looks as though Canada and soon join other countries in having one of its own?

May: Did you notice that the Pirate Party in the EU Parliament has joined the Green Caucus?  We don’t need a pirate party in Canada. The greens are championing those issues. We shouldn’t further fracture the efforts of Canadians who want to restore real democracy, including in undemocratic copyright rules.

p2pnet: It’s now acknowledged that in this 21st digital century, the net is a primary communications vehicle. How familiar are you with it, and to what extent will you be using it in your campaign? And do you have an internet / digital media adviser?

May: Greens are very much at the forefront of digital communication and digital democracy.  We have open blogs and discussions on our site (without any censorship…)  I do not have a specific advisor on these topics. I would love to have one!

p2pnet: According to the Toronto Star, environmental and social justice activist and website publisher Stuart Hertzog, “will contest the nomination and has also filed a complaint with Elections Canada accusing the Greens of pouring central money into the local riding association to support the May campaign and take away his fair chance at a fight”; and, “in a complaint Hertzog said he filed Thursday, he alleges the party’s federal council illegally transferred $62,000 from a special fund it set up to get May elected — after it decided this spring that winning a seat for the leader would be the priority in the next campaign — to the electoral district association, and that it is being used to finance the nomination campaign.” What’s your response to this?

May: When Stuart announced he would run for the nomination in SGI, I took him at his word that his goal was to ensure that grassroots democracy was alive and well in the Green Party.  As Leader, I have to approve the candidacies of all candidates across the country, and I approved Stuart.  I cannot imagine doing anything different.  The Green Party is the only real grassroots political party.  Where I’m profoundly disappointed in Stuart is in his decision to start throwing mud, in the worst tradition of the old line parties.  While it is true that the national party has loaned money to the Saanich Gulf Island Green EDA, those funds are no more available to me than to Stuart.  As soon as he contested the nomination, work to be prepared for my campaign in the next federal election — plans to start immediate door to door canvassing for example — were put on hold until the nomination is complete with the vote on September 19.  I think Stuart should be ashamed of himself for making groundless accusations without first asking me for the facts. His allegations may tarnish the Green Party’s reputation. I expect an apology.

Definitely stay tuned.

Follow p2pnet on Twitter.

Toronto Star – It’s official: Elizabeth May to run in B.C., September 8, 2009

p2pnet news view

Their client is Boston student Joel Tenebaum.

Led by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, the team of CyberOne students has taken on the RIAA muscle, including Matt ‘The Dentist‘ Oppenheim, the shadowy ex-RIAA attack lawyer who officially left the extortion unit years ago, but who’s still somehow never far away.

One of his more infamous quotes is, “the Fourth Amendment does not apply to (the RIAA)”.

This time around, “I sat across the table from Matt Oppenheim,” Joel told p2pnet.

” He informed me that he was among the people who shut down Napster.  There was also a direct phone call to my cell at work from someone saying he was the client who then proceeded to try to bark me down into some kind of settlement, and who would NOT let me hang up the phone.”

The Harvard team is dealing with a group of highly trained, highly paid, highly experienced lawyers. But its members are doing a lot more than merely holding their own.

They also have their own site, Joel fights back, and on it there’s a post from the parent of one of the RIAA’s sue ‘em all victims.

It reads, in part »»»

My daughter is a student at college. She as also received a letter demanding $4100. before Jan. 19 or face legal action. Since the school did not fight the request and handed over the students i.p addresses. They have referred her to an attorney. When she contacted him he wanted $5000 for a retainer. 21 students received the letters, that`s over $100,000.

“Good luck and stick it to those greedy !@$#@!,” it adds.

January 19,though?

How can it possibly be?

According to the RIAA, it stopped suing people in December last year.

And the RIAA never lies.

Q&A with the Harvard crew

The on- and offline media have been covering the battle since Day One, but very little has been said about the team members themselves. So with Debbie Rosenbaum’s help (as always), p2pnet asked them a few questions.

[Front: Jimmy Richardson, Anna Volftsun, Daniel Choi.  Back: Jen Dawson, D. Yvette Wohn, Isaac Meister, Aaron Dulles, Joel Tenenbaum, Raymond Bilderbeck, Matt Sanchez, Debbie.]

p2pnet: How familiar were you with the RIAA sue ‘em all cases before becoming involved in this project?

Joel Tenenbaum: Maybe I’d heard about suits once or twice, but hadn’t given them much thought.  Considering how many people are involved and what’s happening to them, the story has managed to stay remarkably quiet.  I think it’s hard to be young and online and not be aware of the RIAA strategy.  Sharing music is such an ordinary act, or at any rate used to be, that when the RIAA made in dangerous, everybody took notice.

Aaron Dulles: Imagine that, under the color of law, some conglomerate of corporations began suing people over ordinary everyday real world acts? It’s pretty easy to notice.

p2pnet: The University of Maine Law School, the San Francisco University Law School and the Franklin Pierce Law Center were already providing legal help in RIAA lawsuits. Were you aware of this and if so, did it have any bearing on your decision to act for Joel Tenenbaum?

Debbie Rosenbaum: I’ve actually reached out to the students and faculty at all of those law schools.  I’m also in touch with quite a few of the lawyers in some of the other high profile cases.  We’re in touch with everyone who is on our team, and we’re trying to figure out a way to achieve synergies.

p2pnet: How was the team selected?

Matt Sanchez: The team originally was composed of interested members of Prof. Nesson’s CyberOne class at Harvard Law School.  From that team, Debbie and Matt stayed on for the next semester, joined by a new group of students selected for their interest in the case.

Aaron: The team is largely self-selected. Although we’re not all geeks-gone-lawyers, I think that everybody on the team, including Prof. Nesson, has a strong respect for how technology is changing the world around us.

p2pnet: When was Joel first approached?

Mid-2008.

Matt: We took this case because we learned of Joel’s situation and wanted to help him. We didn’t come up with the idea of defending a file-sharing case before meeting Joel.

Joel: I’d already been fighting pro se.  When you’re in a lake, flailing, pretending to know how to swim, whether to take the life saver doesn’t take much thought.

p2pnet: Joel, Did you have anyone else lined up?

Joel: I’d nothing else and knew no one.  My mom and I were about to meet with a bankruptcy lawyer.

p2pnet: Presumably, you see this as a part of your studies and if that’s the case, how valuable is it?

Aaron: Indisputably this has been valuable to me as a first-year student.  Civil procedure, as any first-year can tell you, is sometimes painful. The ins and outs of federal procedure are now vastly more important to my everyday work. It’s all well and good to study the opinions of judges tasked with examining the legal theories of each party, but it’s equally instructive to see and participate in the crafting of those legal theories.

Matt: This case is a great opportunity to get real-world legal experience. Law school simply does not teach the day-to-day workings of a legal case.

Raymond Bilderbeck: As well as providing a great hands-on experience of the procedural details involved in litigating an actual case, I feel like the dynamic of the litigation team is great training for my future career as a lawyer. Even though we’re only humble law students, we’re all encouraged to voice our legal and strategic opinions on the progress of the case: this is great preparation for the future, when we will each have to be willing to voice our opinions in professional environments that are considerably more intimidating than our current litigation team. At the same time, we have to formulate those opinions in ways that will persuade other members of the group – as well as the “senior partner” (Professor Nesson) – if we want our views to have any practical impact on the case. That’s an experience that you don’t often find in the formal law school curriculum.

Anna Volftsun: I find it an incredibly valuable experience to see the practice of law first-hand and the profound effect that it is having on the life of my client Joel.

Debbie: Part of what makes professor Nesson so unique in the legal education is that he demonstrates that law does not exist in a silo that it is shaped by culture and context and media.  This experience has single-handedly taught me more about law and lawyers and procedure and strategy than any other class I’ve ever taken at harvard law school.

p2pnet: Would you recommend other universities do follow your examples?

Matt: Absolutely. There are far more people with legal problems than there are available lawyers, particularly given that most individuals can’t afford a lawyer.

Anna: Certainly. Internet copyright issues affect all of us and the people directly affected should be the ones involved in these cases.

p2pnet: How much help did you get from professor Nesson / others, and who were they?

We’re a student-driven team but a faculty-led initiative.  Professor Nesson is the captain, but we’re all part of the ship’s progress.  We debate furiously, but he ultimately has the final decision on all work product and strategy.

p2pnet: Is this strictly an in-house thing, or is the effort widely known around Harvard?

Aaron: I wouldn’t say it’s widely known, but it’s certainly no secret. Just like the team, the people who are in the know tend to be those with a better understanding and appreciation of the role of technology and how it’s changing our lives.

Debbie: Actually, part of what makes this project special is that we have engaged students from a variety of schools at Harvard. We’re working with budding journalists, undergrads, computer science students, and even a team of students at Harvard Business School.  The buzz around our case is becoming viral and a ton of students are eager to get involved and/or demonstrate their support.

p2pnet: What’s the general reaction to this from other students not studying law?

Responses we’ve gotten have generally been along two lines:

1) “Way to go!  Fight those [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted]-ers.  They’ve been screwing over fans and artists for years.”

2) “Way to go, Harvard, you’re sanctioning stealing and killing the music industry.”  Sometimes they add something like, “I wonder how Professor Nesson feels about the fact that I just stole a copy of his book, Evidence.”

Aaron: I find that most people I talk to are supportive. There appears to be wide agreement on our theory that the legal regime, and the industry’s litigation tactics, put defendants in a rather unfair position by effectively denying them equal access to the protections and processes of the law.

Anna: We’ve gotten a great deal of support from the internet community through our website and twitter feed. The responses I’ve personally gotten are generally positive.

p2pnet: Will you be taking on other cases?

Matt: We we’ren’t sure whether we’ll take on any other cases. For now we’re focusing on defending Joel to the best of our abilities, which will set precedent that will help others.

Debbie: We have been approached by a variety of people who are desperate for representation against the RIAA; surely, ethere is no shortage of individuals who need legal help and cannot afford it.  Unfortunately, we’re a team of only 6 law students who have classes and other full time commitments.  Because this case has attracted so much media attention, we hope that we’re helping to set a positive precedent that will directly help all those who we can not personally serve.  While we have received some heat from advocates for not taking on more clients, we just don’t have the manpower or bandwidth to take on anymore at this time.  We hope that by making a big splash and by defending Joel to the best of our abilities, we’re serving far more than a single client.

p2pnet: Has this experience put anyone off taking up lawyering as a profession?

Matt: Nope. This is exactly what I want to do: help people overcome their legal problems.

p2pnet: Have you heard from any members of the RIAA team?

Joel: I sat across the table from Matt Oppenheim.  He informed me that he was among the people who shut down Napster.  There was also a direct phone call to my cell at work from someone saying he was the client who then proceeded to try to bark me down into some kind of settlement, and who would NOT let me hang up the phone.

p2pnet: Finally, if you could give the RIAA and Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA three pieces of advice, what would you say?

D.Yvette Wohn: When you want to read what the latest news on your artist is, where do you go? To the library? The bookstore? Probably not. You go to the Internet. And you read articles. For free.  The fact of the matter is, content distribution for a lot of things like text and music, have changed. For those of us in the legacy industry (and as a journalist I would know) it is hard to swallow, but the last thing we should be doing is seeking people to blame.  Especially people who had no commercial interest in the content. If newspapers banded together and sued you for every copyrighted article you read online, what would happen?

Joel: The flexibility of the internet is a profitable tool, not a pervasive threat.  As I’ve said before, a broad base of passionate fans would eagerly reward innovation and good will.

Aaron: It’s plainly evident, and intensely distasteful, that the RIAA has found a way to wield the law and courts to effectively create a new stream of revenue. But I think neither the courts nor the public will stand for it too much longer. It may require some creative thought on the part of the industry, but they should focus their efforts more on adapting to the changing landscape rather than stubbornly holding on to the old ways of a world we no longer live in.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

April, 2009

restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.

But they more often than not originate in Nigeria where, one has to suppose, they form an important part of the economy, thanks to lots of bribes payoffs to people who should be putting a stop to them.

A little while back, I had a 419 scum-mail purporting to be from Caroline Jabah in Darfur.

That’s supposedly her, caressing a wall and dark-haired (left), and trying not to fall down the stairs, and blond.

‘Building a robotic tractor’

Nigerian 419 criminals have been sucking people in for years and you`d think by now, anyone who can read a newspaper, watch TV, listen to the radio or go online would be wise to them, I wrote last year.

A 65-year-old Australian widow, a first-time Net user, was seduced out of $60,000 in successive online romance scams, I said in another post.

She’d joining a website for seniors and was approached by ‘James’ who was claiming to be an English professor of physics who, “was building a robotic tractor,” said Australia`s Sunday Mail.

But James turned out to be one of a gang of Nigerian scammers targeting dating sites.

The victim emptied her husband`s retirement fund, re-mortgaged their house and took out a loan on the family car to raise the cash.

Back to Caroline

The way it works is: victims are lured into forking out ever increasing amounts as the scam continues, and I figured I’ d go along with Caroline up until the moment she asked me for my first ‘payment’.

I’d posted her earlier messages on p2pnet, and sent her the link, hoping she’d respond with a comment post.

She didn’t, but we exchanged two more emails, the second to last following my missive to her with the page links.

She replied:

“Dear Jon – Nice to hear from you. I’m fine! How are you doing today? hopefully you are doing fine. I read your mail and very happy that you accept to help me. anyway, here is to hard on me and i need help for my well being. If you want to help do whatever comes out of your mind. And i will appreciate it. i’m still waiting for you. Thanks. Caroline.”

But, “i’m still waiting for you,” I said, “And I’m still waiting for you to tell me how much you need to get started. Cheers! And all the best … Jon”

Yesterday, I received this »»»

Dear Jon

Thanks for your mail. Meanwhile, how are you doing today? Nice, I know.  I may need about 280 or 300 dollars to start. I will be happy if you do it for me.

I will reward you abundantly if help me.

Thanks
Take care
Caroline

Nigerian Criminal Code

That would have been the start of something big — for the guys behind ‘Caroline’ – and I would have ended up in the hole for thousands of dollars.

Millions of these scum messages go out every month, and presumably, enough people are sucked in to make it worthwhile.

Says the Wikipedia »»»

The number “419″ refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: “Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating”) dealing with fraud^. The American Dialect Society has traced the term “419 fraud” back to 1992.^[7]

The advance-fee fraud is similar to a much older scam known as the Spanish Prisoner scam in which the trickster would tell the scam victim that a (fictitious) rich prisoner had promised to share (non-existent) treasure with the victim if the latter would send money to bribe the prison guards.

Insa Nolte, a lecturer of University of Birmingham’s African Studies Department, stated that “The availability of e-mail helped to transform a local form of fraud into one of Nigeria’s most important export industries.”^[9]

Embassies and other organizations warn visitors to various countries about 419. Countries in West Africa with warnings cited include Nigeria, Ghana,^[11][12] Benin, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)^, Togo, Senega^l and Burkina Faso.

Countries outside of West Africa with 419 warnings cited include South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands.

It goes on »»»

Many operations are professionally organized in Nigeria, with offices, working fax numbers, and often contacts at government offices. The victim who attempts to research the background of the offer will often find that all pieces fit perfectly together. Such scammers can often lure wealthy investors, investment groups, or other business entities into scams resulting in multi-million dollar losses. However, many scammers are part of less organized gangs or are operating independently; such scammers have reduced access to the above connections and thus have little success with wealthier investors or business entities attempting to research them, but are still convincing to middle-class individuals and small businesses, and can bilk hundreds of thousands of dollars from such victims.

If the victim agrees to the deal, the other side will often send one or more false documents bearing official government stamps, and seals. 419 scammers often mention false addresses and use photographs taken from the internet or from magazines to falsely represent themselves. Often a photograph used by a scammer is not of any person involved in the scheme. Multiple “people” involved in schemes are fictitious; the author of the “WEST AFRICAN ADVANCE FEE SCAMS” article posted on the website of the Embassy of the United States in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire believes that in many cases one person controls many fictitious personas used in scams.

A scammer will introduce a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as “in order to transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Could you help us with a loan?” or “In order for you to be allowed to be a party to the transaction, you need to have holdings at a Nigerian bank of $100,000 or more” or similar. More delays and more additional costs are added, always keeping the promise of an imminent large transfer alive, convincing the victim that the money they are currently paying will be covered several times over by the payoff. Sometimes psychological pressure is added by claiming that the Nigerian side, in order to pay certain fees, had to sell all belongings and borrow money on their house, or by pointing out the different salary scale and living conditions in Africa compared to the West. Much of the time, however, the needed psychological pressure is self-applied; once the victims have put money in toward the payoff, they feel they have a vested interest in seeing the “deal” through. Some victims believe that they can cheat the con artist. This idea is often encouraged by the fraudsters who write in a clumsy and uneducated style which presents them as naive and easily cheated by a sophisticated westerner.[citation needed]

The essential fact in all advance-fee fraud operations is that the promised money transfer never happens because the money or gold does not exist. The perpetrators rely on the fact that, by the time the victim realizes this (often only after being confronted by a third party who has noticed the transactions or conversation and recognized the scam), the victim may have sent thousands of dollars of their own money, and sometimes thousands or millions more that has been borrowed or stolen, to the scammer via an untraceable and/or irreversible means such as wire transfer.

And »»»

The spam e-mails perpetrating these scams are often sent from Internet cafés equipped with satellite Internet. Recipient addresses and email content are copied and pasted into a webmail interface using a standalone storage medium, such as a memory card. Many areas of Lagos, such as Festac, contain many cyber cafés that serve scammers; many cyber cafés seal their doors during afterhours, such as from 10:30 PM to 7:00 AM, so that scammers inside may work without fear of discovery.

Nigeria also contains many businesses that provide false documents used in scams; after a scam involving a forged signature of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in summer 2005, Nigerian authorities raided a market in the Oluwole section of Lagos. The police seized thousands of Nigerian and non-Nigerian passports, 10,000 blank British Airways boarding passes, 10,000 United States money orders, customs documents, false university certificates, 500 printing plates, and 500 computers.

During the courses of many schemes, scammers ask victims to supply bank account information. Usually this is a “test” devised by the scammer to gauge the victim’s gullibility.

Scammers often request that payments be made using a wire transfer service like Western Union and Moneygram. The reason given by the scammer will usually relate to the speed at which the payment can be received and processed, allowing quick release of the supposed payoff. The real reason is that wire transfers and similar methods of payment are irreversible, untraceable and, because identification beyond knowledge of the details of the transaction is often not required, completely anonymous.

Telephone numbers used by scammers tend to come from mobile phones. In Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) a scammer may purchase an inexpensive mobile phone and a pre-paid SIM card without submitting subscriber information. If the scammers believed they are being traced, they discard their mobile phones and purchase new ones.

In Benin, Nigerians operate scams with Beninese cooperating in the schemes.

Some crime syndicates employ fraudsters in the United States who conclude “deals” or threaten victims who try to leave deals.

In addition to requiring payments, the fraudsters may use the victim’s bank details and signature to withdraw money for themselves. In extreme cases the victim may be lured to a place where he or she may be kidnapped, have assets plundered, and then be murdered.

My final message to Caroline?

“Hi again: Please read the story here and get back to me. Thanks, Jon.”

Will she respond, do you think?

No need to stay tuned.

Cheers!

Jon Newton – p2pnet

March, 2009

“Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG`s RIAA seem to have gotten things a little backward in their fight with Harvard law students, their professor, Charles Nesson, and alleged massive online file sharer Joel Tenenbaum, their client,” I said recently, going on:

“Normally, the corporate music extortion unit attacks victims’ parents first, and only then goes after their real target, the children.

“This time, however, Joel’s mother and father, Arthur and Judie Tenenbaum, have been dragged into it.”

But the RIAA hadn’t, in fact, abandoned its Standard Operating Procedure.

In a Q&A with p2pnet,  “My parents found out about it before I did,” says Joel, who’s currently at Boston University pursuing a physics PhD.

What does he think of the RIAA lawsuits?

They’re a, “gross extortion of a generation”.

Subverting American schools

Harvard professor Charles Nesson, colleagues of his and students he’s teaching, “are leading the way in demonstrating plainly and unequivocally to Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US) and their RIAA they have no business trying to subvert American schools in the interests of corporate profits,” said p2pnet recently, going on »»»

Nesson has, gone to bat for an RIAA defendant in Boston, entering a case in which he will be taking the RIAA on directly, squaring off against Timothy Reynolds, Eve Burton, and Laurie Rust, the same Denver, Colorado, lawyers trying to dismiss UMG Recordings v Lindor in Brooklyn, said Recording Industry vs The People`s Ray Beckerman recently.

The Massachusetts case is SONY BMG Music v Tenenbaum, one of the hundreds of cases consolidated in Boston under the caption London-Sire v. Does 1-4.

The Big 4`s RIAA is, in the process of bringing to bear upon the defendant, Joel Tenenbaum, the full might of its lobbying influence and litigating power, says Nesson and his crack team of CyberOne students on Harvard`s CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion blog.

Ten days ago Nesson and his team stood up for Joel’s parents, Arthur and Judie Tenenbaum.

The recording industry wanted to use a US court to force Arthur and Judie to produce their home PC for corporate inspection.

The trouble is, not only wasn’t the computer used for the alleged transgressions took place, Arthur and Judie didn’t even own it when Joel lived with them.

p2pnet Q&A with Joel Tenenbaum

p2pnet: – What kind of Music do you enjoy?

Joel Tenenbam:- I like: Elliot Smith, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Janis Joplin, Nine Inch Nails, Simon & Garfunkel, The Kinks, Beatles, Unity Reggae Band, Shostakovich, Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin, and I have a soft spot for doowop and a capella as genres.

p2pnet: – Is your family musical?

Joel Tenenbaum:- My mother is a professional harpist and everyone in my immediate family plays at least one instrument.

p2pnet: – Do you play an instrument and if you do, are you in any kind of a band or group?

Joel Tenenbaum:- I play piano, drums, and I can play a few songs on guitar and a weak “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on a half dozen other instruments.  In college I played in orchestra.  In high school, some friends and I pretended to form a band that could have been named “No Talent and No Effort”. If you’d like to hear my college piano recital, I’ve made the mp3s
available: http://physics.bu.edu/~jesusina/piano.html

p2pnet: – When did you first learn you were being singled out for special attention?

Joel Tenenbaum:- In early college.

p2pnet: – How did the news affect you?

Joel Tenenbaum:- I worried.

p2pnet: – Did you tell your parents and friends from day one, or did they learn about this later?

Joel Tenenbaum:- My parents found out about it before I did.  They received the letter.  I mostly avoided telling my friends about it.  Until it showed up in the Boston Herald.

p2pnet: – What do your friends at Goucher have to say about it?

Joel Tenenbaum:- 

• “I’m praying to St. Thomas More (patron saint of lawyers) that your case goes well.”
• “Stick to those bastards.”
• “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

My friends in Boston say things like:

• “What’s going to happen?”
• “What are they going to do?”
• “How can they sue you for a million dollars?  Do you have a milliondollars?”
• -”Are you going to go to jail?”

And my advisor says:

• “I’m worried how this is going to affect your research.”

p2pnet: – According to Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music, Sony BMG and their RIAA, anyone who shares corporate-owned music with someone else without first paying them is a criminal and a thief. How do you view sharing?

Joel Tenenbaum:- It’s not something I’ve done in a while.  Any true music fan will agree that the artists deserve compensation.

Before Napster, it was a challenge to discover new artists or albums.  To guarantee you weren’t wasting $16, you had to limit yourself to what you and your friends knew.  Everyone had the experience of buying some shit album because its one good song was on the radio.  I never would have discovered Elliot Smith and bought all his albums on iTunes had a friend of mine not shared a few songs with me.  Traditionally, you learned about new music through your friends.  Sharing seems to me the natural extension to that.  Pandora impresses me as well.

I grant that a record company and an artist do not get paid when a song is shared, and that there are people that exploit this to avoid paying for music.  That’s the cost.  But the record companies quietly omit the benefits which accrue to themselves: free advertising.  Sony BMG used to actually (and illegally) pay radio stations to play the music they sold (payola).  That fact attests to the value of advertising.

p2pnet: – You’re said to have downloaded at least seven songs and made another 816 available via Sharman’s Networks’ Kazaa P2P file-sharing application. How how did you find out about it ?

Joel Tenenbaum:- It was the next thing everyone was using after Napster was shut down.

p2pnet: – How long had you been using it?

Joel Tenenbaum:- Probably a couple of years.

p2pnet: – Did you know when you bought it that unless you specifically closed the music folder, you’d be sharing online whether you intended to not?

Joel Tenenbaum:- I don’t think I knew this *when I got it*.

p2pnet: – I understand you offered to settle for $500, but the music companies demanded $12,000.

Joel Tenenbaum:- Actually, I offered them $5,250 at one point.

p2pnet: – Would you have paid if you’d had the money?

Joel Tenenbaum:-  I don’t know what I would have done.  After dealing with these people, it seemed worth it to file for bankruptcy on the principle.

p2pnet: -  When did professor Nesson and his students take you on as a client?

Joel Tenenbam:- I believe Professor Nesson’s first appearance with me was in court September 23rd, the day before my 9-hour deposition.

p2pnet: – Do you think the music industry settlement plan is helpful to students, perhaps saving them from having to face the same kind of difficulties now confronting you?

Joel Tenenbaum:- I think the “music industry settlement plan” only shows how much this is a full-time business to the record companies.  I wouldn’t call the bureaucracy of hourly paid operators who shuffle you around when you say you can’t pay, routinely lose anything you fax to them “easy to deal with”.  It also costs them less to pay operators hourly than lawyers, so I hardly think they’re set up for our benefit.

p2pnet: – Most victims heard from people working at settlement centres designed to get them to pay the RIAA to go away. Did you have the same experience?

Joel Tenenbaum:- Yes.

p2pnet: – Before the labels decided you were ripe for attack, did you know about their sue ‘em all campaign?

Joel Tenenbaum:- No.

p2pnet: – Do you believe American schools are right to be cooperating with the labels?

Joel Tenenbaum:- They’re just being practical, unfortunately.

p2pnet: – What kind of effect is this lawsuit having on you and your studies?

Joel Tenenbaum:- It is seriously draining time away from my research and will probably end up delaying my graduation from the PhD program.  See comment above from my advisor.

p2pnet: – What would you say to other American students similarly lined up as alleged illegal distributors of online music?

Joel Tenenbam:- Could you recommend good music for me, along the lines of Janis Joplin?

p2pnet: – What would you say to teachers and administrators?

Joel Tenenbaum:- Admins, don’t fold when you’re in the right.

p2pnet: – Were you, or are you, a customer of any of the labels?

Joel Tenenbaum:- I own a 101-disc changer that I used to use.  I’m willing to bet these labels sold a good number of the CDs in there.

p2pnet: – If you could advise labels and their trade associations on what to do and how to do it, what would you say?

Joel Tenenbaum:- There are better ways to do business.  You’ll find yourselves maligned far less and profiting far more.  You can distribute music with advertisements, release music that only lets itself be played a certain number of times, etc…  To paraphrase professor Nesson: “The architecture of the internet is code, and that architecture is limitless.”  The internet is better looked upon as a tool for business than a weapon against it.  A broad base of passionate fans would eagerly reward innovation and good will.

p2pnet: – How’s Professor Nesson?

Joel Tenenbaum:- Magnificent.  I’ve been very fortunate to have him.

p2pnet: – How are his students that are working on the case?

Joel Tenenbaum:- They’ve been wonderful. They’re very talented and yet very down-to-earth.  Shubham, Nnamdi, Matt, Isaac and Debbie have been great.  (Sorry to anyone who’s name I don’t know who I left out).

p2pnet: – How would you like this to end?

Joel Tenenbaum:- I’d like the gross extortion of a generation to stop.  I’d like these lawsuits to cease being a full-time business and money tree for the record companies.  I’d like the artists to continue to be rewarded for the talent, effort, and emotion they pour into their work.

My fairy tale perfection ending involves Antonin Scalia reading a unanimous decision striking down the statute as unconstitutional, chiding the record companies for not knowing better.

And a celebratory dinner with free beer afterward.

p2pnet: – What’s the worst part of this process?

Joel Tenenbaum:- Obliterated privacy.  They want unlimited access to the hard drive contents of every computer I or my family has ever owned, none of which is involved.

I’d rather they not look through every image, text file, Word file, video, and sound recording I’ve put on my computer in the last six years.  We’re going to see if we can prevent this.

p2pnet: – What’s the dirtiest part about what they’re doing?

Joel Tenenbaum:- In many cases, the students they sue end up settling so they don’t have to reveal the mountains of porn they have to their parents and the general public.  I’m sure this blackmail isn’t an accident.

For more information, please visit: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/riaa/.

Stay tuned, and don`t forget to check out the team`s Facebook page.

 Jon Newton – p2pnet

Harper heads up a minority government with the federal Liberals and New Democratic Party of Canada in opposition to keep him in check.

He’s praying that, with little to choose between his government and the Liberals, he’ll be returned to office, this time with a majority.

It’ll be seriously bad news if either party is elected. But there is an alternative.

The NDP is the only one of the three major federal parties that’s figured out which way is up, recognizing the vital importance of the Net and cyber communities, which are a growing hour by hour and exerting more and more pressure on events on- and offline.

So it’s no surprise the NDP is also the only party to have named a spokesman specifically to address digital issues.

Here, digital culture spokesman Charlie Angus lays it on the line in an exclusive p2pnet editorial »»»

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was forced to call an election because the opposition parties wouldn’t give him a free pass on his upcoming agenda. Funny thing was, Steve hasn’t told anybody what his agenda is. But it doesn’t take a political scientist to know exactly where this right wing crew is going more war, more oil sands production, and a whole lot less government programs that benefit average people.

What does this mean for the digital innovation community? Plenty. And none of it will be good — that is, of course, unless average citizens work together to change the “agenda”.

And this election gives us a real opportunity to put issues like Net Neutrality and reasonable copyright on the election agenda.

‘Dubious record on digital innovation’

First, let’s look at what we’re up against.

On the eve of the federal election, Harper made the decision to kill the celebrated New Media Fund. The $14.5 million program had been established to move Canadian arts into the digital realm and ensure a strong Canadian cultural voice on the internet medium.

All summer the Conservatives have been hacking their way through various arts and cultural programs. Some say, this pre-emptive war on the arts was a way of reassuring the hard right wing base of this Conservative government that the government hasn’t gone “soft”.

Seen from another angle, however, the slashing of the New Media fund speaks to the fact that this is government is deeply suspicious of anyone who has the means to speak outside the narrow message box created by the pointy-heads in the Conservative war room. And this is where the Conservatives’ dubious record on digital innovation becomes very disturbing.
Conservative Senator Marjorie LeBreton summed up this flat-earth mentality succinctly when speaking in the Senate: “Honourable senators, I have been asked about Facebook before. I never look at Facebook because I do not understand the technology. I think the concept is dangerous.”

It’s a bizarre confession to make but it does give a fairly chilling view into a party that simply doesn’t like average folk being able to network, exchange information and create virtual communities without having to pay a major corporation for such rights.

Which is why, anyone interested in the future development of the digital “Commons” in Canada needs to be concerned about the potential for a Conservative victory.

‘Do some campaigning to get rid of these guys’

Under Stephen Harper, Canadians are being force-fed US-style copyright legislation. His “law and order”  agenda is right onside with the secret ACTA negotiations. And his laissez-faire approach to the Telecom giants will do nothing to protect any vestiges of Net “neutrality” in Canada.

This election will be crucial for the future of digital innovation in Canada. So folks, its time to move beyond click and point and get out there and do some campaigning to get rid of these guys.

As the Digital Spokesperson for the New Democratic Party I’ll take the risk of seeming “partisan” by stating the New Democrats have been the only party to consistently and forcefully speak out on issues of copyright, digital rights and Net Neutrality. In fact, we’re the only party with a designated point person for digital issues.

We’ve brought forward anti-Net throttling legislation. We’ve consistently spoken out against DMCA-style copyright legislation. We’ve worked with artists, educators and innovators on the need to find a reasonable consensus between fair use and ensuring that artists (as opposed to corporate lawyers) benefit from copyright. As well, this summer, we led the fight against the Telecom giants who are gouging consumers with text messaging fees and onerous contracts for I-phones.

‘We’ll bring forward Net Neutrality legislation’

In the next Parliament, we have the opportunity to move Canada back on track in terms of digital and cultural development. We’ll throw out the regressive Bill C-61 copyright legislation and bring in legislation that will protect the privacy of consumers, while ensuring artists are able to receive compensation for their work.

We’ll bring forward Net Neutrality legislation to ensure the Telecom giants can’t “throttle” your use of the internet.

We’ll support innovation in the growing digital realm.

We’ll also make sure that Telecom giants aren’t given a free reign to gouge you on your cell phones or force you into onerous, long-term phone contracts.

But to succeed, we will need more MPs in the House who understand the importance of these issues.

There are key urban ridings across Canada where the issue of copyright and Net Neutrality could spell the difference in winning or losing the riding. This provides a unique opportunity to the arts, education and innovation community to get active and organized. The Conservative party needs to know that the digital community will push back against their corporate agenda.

As well, the Liberal party needs to feel the heat so they won’t continue sitting on the fence while these key issues are being decided. Above all, it will be vital to elect representatives who understand the importance of digital culture and issues.

Key battlegrounds

I’m going to highlight some key battlegrounds for digital activists to consider:

Peggy Nash Parkdale High Park. Her election victory in 2006 over Sam Bulte, has been seen as the first grassroots backlash against the industry lobbyists. These issues will be playing out again in the 2008 election.

Bill Siksay Burnaby Douglas. Bill has spoken out consistently against Bill C-61 and co-sponsored the NDP’s Net Neutrality Bill.

Michael Byers Vanouver Centre. The famous author has spoken eloquently on copyright issues and is facing off against copyright luddite Heddy Fry.

Tom King Guelph. The well-known artist and radio personality has written on the need to make copyright and digital issues a factor in the House of Commons.

Anne Legacé Dowson Westmount. Anne has received the personal endorsement of Cory Doctorow from Boing. Boing it doesn’t get any cooler than that.

Needless to say, this election will be a crucial time for Canada.

Once the cards are redistributed in the next Parliament it could be possible to move ahead with legislation that will embrace digital legislation rather than trying to make it illegal.

Stay tuned.

p2pnet news view

Never heard of him? You should have, says Rick.

“If you’ve flushed a toilet, taken your dog for a walk or even cleaned out your RV’s holding tank,  he’s probably involved,” he says.

Buster is the chief lawyer and spokesperson for the MPAA, Manure Producers Association of America, for whom the medium is the message »»»

Q:  What does the Manure Producers Association do?
A:   My organazation represents six major companies who hold patents on a number of techniques for producing manure in this country.  From treating Steer and Chicken manure for gardening and farming to sewer treatment facilities around the United states.

Q:   Most Americans have never heard of your group.  How long have you been around?
A:   The MPAA has been around for only a few years.  Cowpie express Inc. and Hitthefan Inc. were the first two companies to patent their processes.  Cowpie started in LA centering around Hollywood and Hitthefan got its beginning in the Washington DC area.

A:   Why those areas?
Q:   Those Cities are the biggest producers of manure in this country.

Q:   How did the MPAA start??
A:   Well I was working as a legal advisor to the Entertainment Industry when we started suing children, college students and single moms to recoup the massive losses the industry faced because of these common criminals.  Their pirating ways and total disreguard for laws of our land was a black mark against every God fearing, law biding, patriotic multi-conglomorate corporate entity in America today.  Going into the manure business was a natural for a guy like me.

Q:   Your orginazation is currently lobbying congress for tougher manure laws?  What’s that all about.
A:   Well, as you know, we’ve been having a big problem with Manure pirates lately.  People are taking it upon themselves to produce their own manure.  They’re composting garden waste, recycling and treating their own sewage in private housing developments and just letting their dogs roam and crap at will.  In most cases, using the same techniques that the companies I represent have owned and patented for years.  These pirates are stealing our technology.

Q:  Let’s talk about the bill.  It has a camping provision in it?
A:   Yes, If you want to go camping it must be in a MPAA approved camping facility where we can recycle your garbage and other human wastes.

Q:  What about the pet provision?
A:  That’s one of the most misunderstood provisions of this bill.  All we’re saying is that your domestic pet should wear a sanitary collector at all times and emptied in one of our MPAA-approved collection barrels where it would be picked up regularly like the weekly garbage.  For a small fee of course.  Now the bill has a provision for farm and range animals.  The animals must be registered then our collection vehicles will come out once a week to sweep the area clean of all manure and waste.  Again, for a fee.

Q:   What if the Farmer wants to use the manure for their crops?
A:   They buy it from us.  This bill is necessary to combat the rampant piracy going on in the manure industry today.

Q:   Why is producing your own manure bad?
A:   Why?  It’s common sense.  Think about it.  If we allow lawless americans to produce their own manure whenever they want, not use our public restroom facilities, pay the taxes tacked onto their sewer bill, use our campground facilities, or take care of their animals accordingly, thousands of jobs would be at risk.  Hard working families who rely on the manure industry for their bread and butter.  This would lead to bankruptcys and forclousures on mortages.  In time the industry would implode from within creating the most devistating depression since the 1930’s.  Tens of millions of Americans would have to resort to using outhouses and other unsanitary means.  desiase would run rampant, another plauge would surge through america.  I don’t know about you but that’s not the kind of America I want to live in.

Q:  So what are you doing to stop this?
A:    Well first is this necessary legislation.  Then we need to enforce it.

Q:   You have your own enforcement team?
A:   Yes, our verison of MP’s, manure police. They work in conjunction with the FBI and the Department of Justice to bring these hardened criminals to account for their crimes.  I got this idea from the Entertainment industry who have their own private police force.

Q:   Isn’t having a private police force doing the work of law enforcement agencies unconstitutional?
A:   Not when the corporate cartels involved in the entertainment and manure industries get done lobbying congress to change the laws.

Q:   What else are you doing?
A:   Taking a page from my friends in the Entertainment industry, we are now filing thousands of lawsuits in civil court to stop these pirates from producing their own manure and making them pay for the damage they’re causing the industry.  We own the rights to manure production, and we’re going to protect them.  We’re also going to the public school system where we are teaching our youth to respect patents.  We teach our children that stealing manure production techniques is just like walking tinto a store and shoplifting.

Q:   What about private schools?
A:   That’s a challange.  Private schools are not as enlightened as the public, government run, school system.  Public schools offer a wider range of experiences for our children, like million dollar sports departments which enhance a healthy competitive atmosphere, and allowing private corporations like ours to come in and teach the kids at taxpayer expense.  All private schools want to do is educate.  things like math, reading, history.  how boring.

Q:  Aren’t these heavy handed tactics creating a backlash among your customers?
A:  Customers?  People who violate our patents, produce their own manure without our consent or control, taking money from our pockets are not our customers. All we want is a harmounous coexistance between our business, government and the public where everyone wins.  What’s so wrong about that?

What indeed

. .Stumble It!

New York Times – xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, August , 2008

p2pnet news Advertising | Mobiles | Freedom:- They say no publicity is bad publicity and that certainly appears to be the case as Rogers rogers Canadian consumers.

For all the, “griping over pricing plans for Apple Inc.’s new iPhones, the exclusivity contracts the big telecom carriers have signed with the computer giant to distribute the coveted touchscreen devices are paying off as planned,” says the Globe & Mail.

“AT&T Inc. in the United States and Rogers Wireless Communications Inc. in Canada have exclusive rights in their respective countries to sell Apple’s updated iPhone,” it says, going on, “And each is taking heat online from customers for the pricing packages they’ve put together, as well as for their reluctance to offer the phones without lengthy contracts.”

But, “Even with the public relations headaches and the fact it had to shoulder the costs of a recent price cut when Apple decided to make the iPhone cheaper, you won’t hear AT&T complaining. Publicity is firmly on its side and consumers are expected to fall in line.”

The story even has happily complacent AT&T spokesman Michael Coe stating:

“I mean, you know, from the time that the iPhone was first announced it’s been the most written about device probably in the history of the industry.”

Say NO to Rogers

However, Canadian consumers aren’t taking it lying down and as various entities and individuals are finding to their cost, what the Net bringeth, the Net can also taketh away.

Two online petitions are currently running, one (http://ruinediphone.com/) asking for $2 donations to “get more bandwidth, more exposure and more impact,” with the other, Rogers Canada iPhone Data Plan, saying >>>

We, the future users of the Apple iPhone, living in Canada, would like to see an unlimited data plan at a reasonable price, comparable to those seen in the United States, prior to the Q4-2007 release of the iPhone in Canada.

Increasing numbers of users have paid several hundred, and in some cases more than $1000, during one month for data usage that would have not been charged extra on any other North American carrier on their best data plan. Some customers have posted messages about their Rogers data overage costs at the following forum websites:

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=580161&page=3&pp=27

http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?p=164173

Admittedly, ruinediphone was going up and down like a yo-yo. But $2?

The site’s organisers don’t say what they’ll do with whatever’s left over after they’ve paid the bills, but they today said 25,141 people had said NO to Rogers.

Meanwhile, at 5:52 am Pacific, the other petition showed 8,197 signatures.

Will Rogers get away with it here as AT&T did in the US?

Stay tuned.

. .Stumble It!

Globe & Mail – Carriers cheerfully take heat on iPhone pricing, July 2, 2008
aren’t taking it lying down – ‘F*CK YOU ROGERS!’ iPhone protest site down, July 1, 2008

p2pnet special:- Running p2pnet can be very satisfying and one of the nicest emails I’ve had this year came from Susan Crawford.

Wikipedia describes her as a, “prominent media internet legal scholar and professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law” and p2pnet has been fortunate enough to carry a number of her posts.

She’s famous on- and offline, “for her pithy, lucid and very much to-the-point views on Net events of many different flavours,” we posted in 2005, but more recently, she’s become famous internationally as one of the main movers behind OneWebDay, a now-annual event.

“Will you be a OneWebDay Ambassador?” – she asked me a little while ago.

No worries. It’s an honour and a privilege.

So what exactly is OneWebDay? It’s a wonderful way to focus on the Net as the world’s most powerful means of communication.

But there are forces which would would like to subjugate it, bringing it under their total and exclusive control.

Not if Crawford and the people supporting her and the OneWebDay movement can help it.

“Every September 22 is an Earth Day for the internet,” she explains.

“It’s a day to celebrate, educate, and activate – do good works and raise consciousness about the threats to the internet around the world.”

For the 100 days before OneWebDay, “we will be anointing/calling on 100 OWD ambassadors to each take one day to talk to their community about their values – and how those values tie to OneWebDay’s 2008 theme of participatory democracy,” says the OWD Ambassador site, going on:

“The idea is for the ambassadors to introduce new people to OneWebDay, while we in turn introduce them to the wider OneWebDay family.”

In a short Q&A, “What inspired you to come up with it?” – I asked Crawford >>>

Susan Crawford: It seemed to me that we were at risk of taking the internet for granted. Meanwhile, many different forms of pre-internet businesses (including law enforcement, Hollywood studios, and telephone companies, just to name a few) were waking up and arguing (and acting) as if they should be in control of internet communications. Most people who use the internet don’t understand that it’s not the same as a telephone network. I thought we needed to make these issues visible, and make the people who care about the future of the internet visible to one another. I didn’t do this alone – a lot of people have gotten involved over the years. This is the third OneWebDay.

p2pnet: Is there any one thing above all others you hope it’ll achieve in 2008?

Susan Crawford: I’d like to see more involvement by people in developing countries. Connectivity and censorship are major issues, and I’m hoping the word will spread beyond the developed world both online and through groups like the Internet Society. A top priority is involving schools and kids.

p2pnet: And is there any one thing you’d ask people to do to make it a success?

Susan Crawford: I’d like to see people getting involved by going to http://www.onewebday.org/base/index.php/OneWebDay_in_a_box and hosting meetings to talk about internet issues in their homes or classrooms. Lots of tiny events like these, particularly involving young people, will help awareness grow around the world.

p2pnet: Censorship in many and varied forms is increasing as large corporations and self-serving administrations strive to gain control of how the Web is used, and by whom. What can OneWebDay do to help stop this?

Susan Crawford: We make progress when we make things visible. Earth Day, for example, didn’t take off until we saw a picture of the earth from space – a fragile blue marble in a black void. We can’t *see* the threats to online communication in our day-to-day lives – OneWebDay can help make specific control problems visible, and raise consciousness about the power of network operators in many countries to constrain internet access.

p2pnet: With this in mind, what role can OneWebDay have in the Net Neutrality battle?

Susan Crawford: OneWebDay is a platform for use by anyone. It’s yours. It can be used to raise awareness about the risks to the open internet – press conferences, rock concerts, teach-ins, anything. To the extent that groups want to use OneWebDay for activism about Net Neutrality (which is no longer just a US issue) the day can provide a useful focus for these efforts – useful for press coverage.

p2pnet: Blogs are only now really coming into their own. How important are they to the growth of the Net as the principal communications vehicle of the twenty first digital century, and in OneWebDay as a manifestation of that?

Susan Crawford: The big idea is “up” – uploading our own stuff online. Blogs, video sites, photography – there’s an explosion of user-generated content online. Part of the goal of OneWebDay is to encourage everyone to leave a bit of themselves online. Although the internet seems to be a collection of machines, it’s actually a deeply-human network, optimized for human communication. Let’s not take that for granted- it’s not a broadcast network.

p2pnet: OneWebDay is a massive undertaking with scores of famous people such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the web, involved in it, and promoting it. Given that, how important are ordinary people to it, and what can they do to get involved themselves?

Susan Crawford: We’re all ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. One of the great things about the Net is how it empowers all of us to communicate freely. Everyone is important to OneWebDay. To get involved, go to OneWebDay.org and click on “40 Ways to Celebrate OneWebDay”. The theme this year is online participatory democracy – so here’s an idea – send an email to the mayor and ask him/her to proclaim OneWebDay in your city.

p2pnet: Can children also play a part?

Susan Crawford: Absolutely – children are key to OneWebDay. Something like telling a story online, or creating a class wiki – labeling these things OneWebDay and telling us about them – these would be great OWD events. Try to imagine what the world would be like without the internet.

Would you like to be a OWD ambassador? Or do you know someone you believe should be included? Email volunteer@onewebday.org

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

. .Stumble It!

p2pnet news | Freedom:- Before the Net, it was almost impossible for ordinary people to make themselves properly heard, unless they were involved in a movement with a certain amount of clout, say, had access to the mainstream media, or were unusually aggressive.

But that was then.

Ottawa Gal had been posting comments to p2pnet for years, and I don’t think she’d be angry to be described as an ordinary person – a mother and a wife.

She’s also a dedicated surfer and one day, she decided she’d had enough of what she decided was completely unjustified traffic throttling on the part of Bell Canada.

So she wrote about it in depth and in detail and p2pnet published the results under Bell Sympatico P2P Black List.

The rest isn’t history quite yet, but it’s getting there because as a direct result, Bell and other major Canadian ISPs such as Rogers and Videotron are learning the painful, for them, lesson that in this era of instant online communications where people can talk directly to each other, bypassing the traditional media, it doesn’t pay to mess with your customers.

At government level, industry minister Jim Prentice dismissively passed the buck for dealing with corporate traffic “management” or “shaping” directly back to the ordinary people who’d elected him, telling them if they wanted anything done about Bell, they’d have to do it themselves: he wasn’t about to step in on their behalf.

Fortunately, however, another federal politician didn’t, and doesn’t, share Prentice’s views.

Charlie Angus is the NDP digital culture spokesman. He believes the ISPs are accountable, and he’s said so repeatedly and in no uncertain terms.

Ottawa Gal had a number of questions for Angus.

Here’s their virtual conversation >>>

Ottawa Gal: Below are the costs of the three major Canadian ISP competitors (hidden modem fees included):

• Bell-Ontario: 49.95$ – with 60-gig limit and pay for use bandwidth
  
• Rogers-Ontario: 47.95$ – with 60-gig limit and pay for use bandwidth
  
• Bell-Quebec: 43.95$ – with 30-gig limit and pay for use bandwidth
  
• Videotron-Quebec: 60.95$ – with 20-gig limit and pay for use bandwidth

Is this collusion — price fixing or bandwidth fixing, by the major players?

Charlie Angus: The NDP is very concerned about the issue of giant telecoms being able to price gouge consumers. This gouging could happen in a number of ways. First, the issue of throttling 3rd party ISPs raises serious questions about anti-competitive practices. If smaller, more price-friendly competition is removed from the market, the telecom giants would be able to set artificially high rates for internet service.

Another area that’s of great concern is the move towards tiered pricing for access. The NDP understand that a tiered pricing may be necessary to address high bandwidth use by certain consumers or businesses. However, such pricing needs to be transparent and competitive. Without clear ground rules in place, telecoms will be able to easily gouge users who have come to rely on high transfer rates of information. As well, telecoms could be in a position to artificially slow down streams while pushing frustrated consumers to accept higher priced service in order to ensure higher speed response.

it’s also disturbing that Bell has also announced that it will remove any maximum monthly rate cap for service. This sends a signal that consumers may end up paying through the nose for service they take for granted now. In the area of cell phone usage, there have been nightmare stories told by consumers who have been hit with phenomenal bills because their children were using laptop video games via a cellular connection – and then were hit with roving phone bills costing many thousands of dollars.

There must be some consumer-protection checks in place for any such steps taken by the telecoms.

Ottawa Gal: Below are the costs of four of the most popular smaller independent Bell wholesalers:

• Teksavvy 1: 29.95/month B/W 200-gigs
  
• Teksavvy 2 39.95/month B/W Unlimited
  
• Acanac 1: 18.95/month B/W Unlimited
  
• Acanac 2: 33.95/month B/W Unlimited
  
• Electronic box: 34.95/month B/W unlimited
  
• Velcom: 34.95/month B/W unlimited

(Note Acanac charges 18.95 for first time users, then 33.95/month after your 1st year trial)

These companies manage to stay in business and continue to do very well. They’re favorites because they have no bandwidth limits and they’re affordable. One price and that’s it. No hidden modem fees or extreme B/W fees. Bell gets the lion share of their income, in excess of 60% ($20 to $24) per month, per connection, of the monthly stated cost (above) from the wholesalers. So the wholesale ISP in effects has to make ends meet with around 10$ per user. Bell has now filed in court for the removal of the CRTC mandated tariffs (fighting to remove the set cost of providing services to the wholesaler).

Bottom line, Bell wants to be able to charge the wholesaler whatever it wants. If Bell gets its way, it’ll be able to decide which wholesaler gets what price, allowing it to play favorites, with all that implies. Apart from creating potentially serious conflicts between and among competitors, which would bounce back on users, it could well put lower income Canadians at an extreme disadvantage, possibly forcing them to pay double the amount that they pay now for internet. Do you think this is justifiable, or even fair for Bell to try and use the courts to increase costs across the board, which will affect everyone in Ontario & Quebec?

Charlie Angus: Bell’s move to remove tariff limits on the independent 3rd party ISPs must be challenged. If left unchecked, it would allow Bell to simply price its competitors out of business. As it stands now, the 3rd party ISPs rent bandwidth from Bell. If the consumers use up maximum bandwidth, the ISP finds itself in the situation of either having to rent more bandwidth or dealing with degraded service. This system works. Once again we return to the need for transparent ground rules so that Bell, as provider of the bandwidth, is not able to act in an anti-competitive fashion against its 3rd party ISP competitors.

Ottawa Gal: If Bell wins in court and the CRTC wholesale tariffs are eliminated, might that mean the end of an affordable high-speed Net in this country, given that it would be extremely unlikely smaller, innovative competitors would still be able to offer $19 or $30 high-speed internet connections? Would this not set the precedent for all other Canadian Telcos across Canada to do the same?

Charlie Angus: If Bell’s challenge against the 3rd party ISPs is successful it will send a clear message to the boardrooms that the giant telecoms can set the rules for the internet and that consumers will have little choice but to go along with them. The innovation agenda in Canada has been based on the simple fact that consumers and innovators are in the driver’s seat when it comes to determining content, not the companies who run the pipes. There is a clear interest within large, vertically-integrated telecom/entertainment empires to turn the internet into a 21st century version of cable TV. In order to do so, the telecoms will need to be able to decide which traffic is advanced and which traffic is slowed down.

It’s interesting that at the same time that Bell is telling the consumer that the days of unlimited downloading is over, it is also trying to sell consumers on unlimited downloading for a monthly fee. Questions are also being raised as to whether the cleared bandwidth space from throttling will be filled by video streaming from the major telecoms. The major telecoms are moving in the direction of pushing VOD services. Questions need to be asked about the possibility that they will intentionallay degrade service for their internet-video competitors raises serious anti-trust flags. At the end of the day, the fight of traffic throttling is a fight to determine whether the consumer or the telecoms will be in charge of determining content priorities.

Ottawa Gal: When Bell-Sympatico started throttling bandwidth last November, there was outrage within the user community and many people abandoned the company in disgust. Now Bell is about to force wholesalers to adopt traffic shaping, legal disgust of many (most) wholesalers. Do you agree this is anti-competitive? If you do, why hasn’t the Competition Bureau stepped in? Why hasn’t Industry Canada?

Charlie Angus: I’ve raised serious concerns about whether Bell’s net throttling practices have the potential to gouge the consumer and whether it crosses the line into anti-competitive practices. The NDP recognizes that a certain level of ‘network management’ may be necessary at times to ensure that the digital highway flows efficiently.

However, it’s incumbent upon the CRTC to lay down clear rules for both ISP providers and the consumer, so that everyone is working from the same playbook. In the absence of such a set of rules, the internet will become a world of a few corporate winners (the giant telecoms and the entertainment industries who pay for high speed service). The losers will be customers, 3rd party ISPs and Canada’s innovation agenda.

Ottawa Gal: Around the same time Bell started discriminating against the users of P2P applications, principally, the CBC released an episode of ’Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister’ which was specifically intended to be downloaded and shared. To their dismay, large numbers of Net users found out it could take up to 11-hours to download while people in Europe and even the States could download it at full speed in a matter of hours. Do you think Bell’s throttling had a detrimental impact on this specific trendsetting example of Canadian enterprise, and that it might echo down the line to have a more serious impact on Canadian content yet to be created?

Charlie Angus: The decision by CBC to release ‘Canada’s Next Prime Minister’ via BitTorrent is a prime example of how innovative technology is often perceived first as a threat but then quickly moves into the mainstream.

Readers can recall the hysterical denunciations of VHS technology by Jack Valenti and the Hollywood lobby in the 1980s. As well, Youtube was derided as a ‘pirate’s haven’ before becoming the vehicle of viewing choice for both consumers and industry. Imagine if Hollywood had been successful in shutting down VHS technology – they never would have reaped the phenomenal sales of the emerging VHS (and then DVD) market. The question today is whether the giant telecoms should be able to monkey with technologies that were initially denounced as pirate-ware but are now moving clearly into the mainstream. Innovation on the internet takes place because there has been a net neutral response to the flow of information. it’s vital that such a standard remains in place.

Ottawa Gal: How can new entrants into the internet market compete when a throttle is forced, and if Bell has it their way, no regulated cost that Bell can charge them? Do you think this is competitive, open and free market?

Charlie Angus: The NDP is very concerned that by allowing the telecoms to usurp the unilateral decision making rights on the flow of information on the internet, the innovation agenda of this country will be impacted. Therefore, Canada needs to ensure that innovation-driving competition in the digital market continues to evolve on networks that are governed by a clear set of rules that ensure fairness for all internet users and stakeholders.

Ottawa Gal: Why, in your view, is industry minister Jim Prentice ignoring the Canadian people? You seem to be our only person in Parliament who sees what this is doing (and going to do) to the Canadian people, and the only one voicing concern. Many people are saying the reason that the government’s silence is related directly to the fact these major players (the big Telco) play a huge role in political funding. Can, do you think, the Canadian people be assured this isn’t the reason our politicians are remaining silent?

Charlie Angus: Industry Minister Jim Prentice is simply on the wrong side of the issue on net neutrality The fact is that the CRTC already regulates the area where Bell is throttling – that’s their internal “ATM” network and the 3rd party ISPs that make use of this network. The telecoms, for their part, have moved to unilateral regulation in the form of capped usage, tiered-pricing and throttled traffic. The question is not whether regulation will occur but whether there will be scrutiny of such activities.

I believe that politicians who are on the wrong side of this issue will pay the price as consumers across Canada become increasingly vocal about the need to protect the ‘little guy’ from the arbitrary actions of the telecom giants.

[Ottawa Gal, who says she wants to continue being anonymous, works in a university, likes her cat, reality TV, and Doctor McDreamy. Her favourite web sites are the Michael Geist blog and p2pnet.net. "Privacy on the net is also important to me," she says. "I need a tinfoil hat " She's also the mother of, "two darling little girls who tore down my ceiling fan thinking it would be fun to hang from it." So she advises parents to, "never have an armchair around from which little ones can reach fans". (No one was hurt )

Charlie Angus --- that's him above right, raising awareness through song ---- is a Canadian writer, broadcaster and musician, who turned to politics in 2004 in the Ontario riding of Timmins-James Bay. Apart from his interest in the traffic shaping controversy, he's also raising awareness of the plight of First Nations school children in northern Ontario.]

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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p2pnet news P2P | Interviews:- If you’re Canadian, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re stuck with one or other of the five ISPs which seem to rule the Cyber waves in this part of the world.

But a small (for now) start-up is taking on the Big 5 .

Ottawa Gal, who recently brought p2pnet readers news of the Bell Sympatico P2P Black List, came across TekSavvy, founded in 1998, while she was working on her story. So she thought it’d be a good idea to have a word or two with TekSavvy president and CEO Rocky Gaudrault.

Says Ottawa Gal:

“IMHO, this is definitely something for Canadians to look at as a reasonable alternate internet service provider whose business plan, business ethics, and pricing plans includes customer input for their long term survival,” going on:

“I’ve been following many topics in the DSLreports Teksavvy forum, and in it I found some issues that raises eye-brows in relation to what Bell-Sympatico is doing to its users and how it affects Teksavvy. So it seemed logical to approach them with this Q&A.” >>>

Ottawa Gal: What got you into the ISP business?

Rocky: We started as a Internet Development firm and due to the ups and downs of the development world tried to find alternative means of income that would stabilize the monthly income. In came DSL!

Ottawa Gal: How is the business doing, and is it what you expected?

Rocky: We’re doing very well. Through our efforts, we’ve been in Bell’s top performers list and have been ranked as North America’s top on DSLReports Good-bad-ugly board for some time now. As far as expectations, it’s hard to say as the business plan we’d developed with DSL in it predicted much of this growth. Hehehe. However, I was gunning much higher than expected! Didn’t think we’d actually hit the mark!

Ottawa Gal: What do they think about file sharing and file sharers?

‘Rocky: This is a loaded question. From an ISP perspective it’s a loose, loose. You have people who download/exchange for the right reasons; the problem is with those who don’t. What you have to consider is data has a finite cost, so someone downloading movies for free. Well, not quite. We’re actually paying for it in the end. To add insult to injury we then have to spend on the HR needed to receive and pass on copyright infringements and such. In Canada they currently have no leg to stand on, so as far as due diligence, we simply figure out who the individual is and pass the message on.

Ottawa Gal: Do you or will you ever cap, throttle or impose a limit on ‘unlimited’ accounts?

Rocky: We don’t plan to remove unlimited accounts but have just recently put plans to correct the high downloading as of the New Year. The pay per play strategy will have to become a more mainstream reality as, with people understanding how to exchange files and also with the increase in both streaming and online activities/speeds. You can’t help but have a correction.

Ottawa Gal: Bell-Sympatico forced you to remove the log-in only accounts. What do you think of this? Will they come back? Will you fight this?

Rocky: Bell Sympatico didn’t specifically/officially force our hand on this. The discussion came about with a few of the Bell management and the end result was to hold off on the login-only services we know how Sympatico will deal with abusive accounts. Our goal, in the end, isn’t to harm Bell, and if the login does so, we’ll pull it and work with them to reinstate it with mutually acceptable conditions. In the end, all DSL wholesalers are part of the Bell family in some shape or form as, if it weren’t for them, the consumer would not even have an option! The cable companies have made it abundantly clear that they’ll resist things to the end on letting others in. They’ve placed a rate template for wholesalers, through the CRTC, that doesn’t make sense, so DSL is the only way.

Ottawa Gal: Yes, I have seen the Cable tariffs on the CRTC’s web site. It’s an outrageous cost. They are pricing out any competition and making sure there is no competition on their cable via whole-sellers. Would this have been an avenue that you would have reviewed from a business standpoint? Do you foresee the CRTC ever doing anything about these costs in the near future?

Rocky: If there CRTC would have made it a viable option, yes, we would have looked at it very seriously. It would be nice to offer options to the client base but, unfortunately, as it stands, it’s not feasible just yet. One can only assume the CRTC will only sit by so long before they force changes as it’s not much of an option right now. The only option currently that makes financial sense is to resell them (we’d make 25% on each account), but then we’d have no control over the quality or much of the policies. Which is something we’re not willing to hand over?

Ottawa Gal: To what extent will the larger Telco, Bell-Sympatico, go to prevent access to their customers they deem ‘Network Abusers’? Will they go as far as to not activate them on the Dslam, hence preventing any other whole-seller from servicing them? Or will they just ban them from their own Sympatico service?

Rocky: The current/version 1 of this attempt at biting back has been to stop their service and remove them from the WTN (Working Telephone Number) List. From there they’ve also removed their address from the qualification database. As it stands they’ve taken a hard line to stop and give themselves a change to think about what they want to do next. On the flip side, their current thoughts have been, if these people are abusive on us, they’ll be abuse on all the DSL providers, so in their minds, they’re doing us a favour, and for what it’s worth, there is a little worth to this, as they will for sure cost whoever they go to next!

What Bell might not consider is the potential value of that customer as far as a referral or ally. Many of these heavier users are often tech heads that gladly help others and in many cases will be first to refer or spread the good word about performing or worth ISPs.

Ottawa Gal: I have seen that p2pnets’ article made the front page on DSLreports. In it they have you quoted as saying:

What’s happening is users of Sympatico that are abusive are getting their network access shut off but through login service with us and other ISPs they’re getting back online.’ ‘Bell is now fighting back by trying to find means to shut that address off completely.

So with ‘finding any means’ to shut a user off completely, including if that means refusing you, as the competition, to service them, how does this affect you? What do you think of Bell-Sympatico dictating to you whom you can and can’t offer DSL services to?

Rocky: The plan on this is to work with Bell (see the last half of #6). They’re trying to come up with various solutions to allow both Bell and wholesalers (which shouldn’t be seen as competitors. A Bell sale or a wholesale sale, is still Bell income) to work together on protecting both network and non-abusers from having to deal with abusive users. Those who go beyond the levels of reasonable. The question however remains on that level, what is reasonable? From the looks of it they’ve placed that mark to be somewhere between 200GB and 300GB (we still don’t have the official word, but on DSLR these seems to be the general consensus).

Ottawa Gal: Do you plan on fighting what is forced upon you?

Rocky: Not sure just yet. As mentioned above, we’ve made this far and been successful for various reasons unrelated to Bell, but one things for sure, we couldn’t have been here without their allowing us in! We’re not big on legal anythings and, to date, have always been able to work things out with Bell. We don’t expect this to change. They’re all a bunch of great people working there. The problem is it’s somewhat of a dysfunctional family of sorts (left hand/right hand). We suspect the retail side took a stance without considering the wholesale side (which is often the case).

Ottawa Gal: I have also noticed your user base to be very militant in their support for you, the little guy (like the militant Mac users vs. Dos machine users). How do you react to this?

Rocky: Hehehe. We have an awesome client base! We’ve gone out of our way to try and bring on savvy employees to be able to talk shop with anyone of our clients, knowledgeable or not, so with DSLR being as tech savvy as they come (no pun intended), we grew to interact and work them. There’s no greater group to both my brother and I than the DSLR gang! They let us know when things are or aren’t working. We respect one another and as a result both owners feel very comfortable spending their time there. It’s productive for both Marc and I to hear what the techs want and grouped the constructive criticisms allows us to draw happy mediums on just about everything!

Ottawa Gal: Would you attribute this strong client base to your openness? I mean, every change or idea you have you seem to post it online for all to see and comment on. Do you see this as a contributing factor? I have never seen an ISP do this, and to show their business direction prior to implementation.

Rocky: I think it definitely doesn’t hurt anything. As much as many people treat business as a type of poker game (don’t show your cards), if you do it well enough so that copying you becomes very difficult, then showing your cards isn’t all that big a deal. In order to copy us, you almost have to literally be us. What shines through on TekSavvy is our personality, so even if someone tries to ride our coattail, if they don’t have the same personality, they won’t get the same results. We’re genuine in everything we do, so it makes it easy to discuss things. You don’t have to worry about what you said from one person to the next!

Ottawa Gal: You apparently have the best pricing so far in Quebec and Ontario. Do you foresee almost doubling the cost as the big Telco’s are doing?

Rocky: These questions come just ahead of a few changes coming in the New Year. In order to keep with the new speeds and usage (also heavy users), the unlimited side will get a significant increase, but the Premium side will as a response become much more flexible. So long as we take it in paces and allow the pricing to go in line with the usage, there won’t be a doubling of prices. We’re unique in what/how we do business as we’ve designed a two tiered system, a Premium/Capped and an Unlimited network. We’ve just recently changed from a 100GB cap to now a much more favorable 200GB and changed the per overage rate to $0.25 (completely unheard of in the industry) with a $10/100GB block usage. This will allow the Premium network to grow with the usage and remove much of the larger bandwidth speed issues. On the flip side we’re changing the Unlimited by increasing it by $10/month.

We’re now changing the mentality of how we do things. Instead of having both networks exists separately, we’re now making them work together for the client. Unless you know for sure that you will use more than 300GB/month, you go premium, which is a much better network and one that has better long term viability.

Ottawa Gal: What areas do you service, and is there a cost differences in servicing these area’s?

Rocky: We currently service Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia. ON/QC is serviced through Bell and AB/BC is serviced through Telus. With the help of our friends at Peer1, they’ve managed to create a solution that’s made our transit almost the same in either Province. There are however some pricing differences between the two incumbent (Bell/Telus) territories. Bell has a 256K and 5Meg residential product that we’re selling, while Telus has a 3Meg and 6Meg product.

Ottawa Gal: I see you now service B.C. and Alberta, how do you find it working with another big Telco? Is it more or less the same as dealing with Bell-Sympatico?

Rocky: We don’t actually deal with Bell Sympatico. We deal with the Bell Carrier Services Group of Bell. They’re mandate and roles are completely independent of the Retail (Sympatico) side. In fact, the better we do, the more secure their jobs are, so oddly enough, they want us to beat one and all (including Sympatico in some cases).

There are some pretty major differences at present time between both Bell and Telus when it comes to wholesale DSL You can tell Telus just recently opened the doors to competition as much of the automated functions and procedures that we currently enjoy with Bell aren’t there just yet with Telus.

Ottawa Gal: Any future expansion plans? If so, where?

Rocky: We’re in the middle of finalizing options for possibly heading out to the East Coast currently, so don’t be surprised to see us out there before next summer! From there the debate is do we do the prairies or not . Both MTS and SaskTel pricing aren’t very favorable at the moment.

Ottawa Gal: As an ISP, can you give us some insight into the headaches you experience with the big Telco’s?

Rocky: LOL. Glad you didn’t ask our Tech Support Manager that question! The problem with monopolies is, if you want to play, you play on their terms. As a result, services like DSL have MTTRs of 48hrs, which sometimes gets pushed or reset, sometimes causing 3 or 4 day delays for repairs. We also sometimes don’t get all the maintenance notices, so certain geographies or Central Office might go down, through no control or knowledge of our own. We’re almost never down so considering we’re dealing with 80 to 100 bell tickets at any given time during the day, we’re spending a great deal of HR just for Bell.

Ottawa Gal: I see that you are active daily and at all hours of the day in your forum. Do you ever sleep at all <grin>?

Rocky: Hehehehe. My wife forces me to plug into the wall once a week!

Ottawa Gal: Can the CRTC or Industry Canada mediate or be involved with what Bell-Sympatico is forcing upon you?

Rocky: I’m sure they can, but it will require ISPs to complain. On this particular topic. Would they want to? You complain or sue Bell for essentially protecting you against abusers. You win your battle, spend a lot of money to have to keep paying money after you get the abusive client as they become negative income for having them. :-/

Ottawa Gal: What do you think of the fact that Canada has no regulatory body overseeing ISP’s?

Rocky: Hmm Not sure I’d say that. The CRTC and Competition Tribunal are both working together to try and make things fair for one and all.

Ottawa Gal: Do you think that Bell Canada having ‘five members of the panel, three are current or past directors or employees of Bell, including panel chair, former BCE CEO and Chair Lynton (Red) Wilson’, sitting on the panel (http://mhgoldberg.com/blog/ and http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/cprp-gepmc.nsf/en/h_00001e.html) Canadian competitiveness consultation) of the Competition Policy Review Panel is fair? Do you think this is too much influence towards one single company?

Rocky: I’m assuming this is the same as the TPR (Telecom Policy Review), if not, you have a similar issue there. Problem with Bell is there everywhere. Who can you find that will both understand the industry but not have enough exposure to have been touched by them? The only thing we can do is hold them accountable for their actions.

Ottawa Gal: Many Sympatico and non-Sympatico users are saying this is an abuse and injustice with what Bell is pulling here. What are your thoughts?

Rocky: I’m ignorant of what Sympatico’s currently done to get to this point (shutting people off). If they’ve simply, out of the blue, just turned them off, then I’d say it was of poor taste. As far as what I’ve read so far, they’ve sent letters to notify those who were deemed to be abusive to tell them to lower their usage or be shut off. In trying to keep with Rogers/Videotron/etc. with the increase in speeds came the issue of sufficient backbone coverage in various geographies. Not an easy task to calculate when you’ve tripled the speeds.

Ottawa Gal: Do you think this throttle or invisible download cap by bell at any time of the day may have been influenced by the American industry and lobby groups (ie. RIAA, MPAA and so forth)?

Rocky: No clue. Everything I’ve seen to date with Bell would hint no, as it’s about dollars and cents and if the investors see a bottom-line issue, that’s where they’ll go, and the bottom line would be on the data (a finite cost), not what the RIAA or MPAA think. Again, this is a guess.

Ottawa Gal: How do you think this impacts progress of Internet in Canada?

I think this isn’t all that bad. What you have to consider is, all these countries that are throwing up higher speeds are also putting in blind or soft caps to protect themselves, and as a result ticking off clients. At one point or another Broadband internet will have to align itself with the cost of Data, otherwise there will always be this yoyo game.

Ottawa Gal: How do you react to ‘Network Abusers’ jumping ship from Sympatico to Teksavvy? Is it really too much of a burden to carry them?

Rocky: Believe this has been touched on a few questions up. In brief, we’d just recently adjusted both rates and caps to allow these individuals in and to allow us both (TSI and new/current customers) to grow together.

Ottawa Gal: How do you feel about this ‘David versus Goliath’ ISP issue unfolding, and how do you think the market will react to this?

Rocky: Hehehe. That’s a funny analogy. In this case, David is working with Goliath to make things feasible for both to exist. No stone throwing!

Ottawa Gal: In relation to Dr Michael Geist’s topic, ‘The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada stated it’s a ‘loose-loose’ scenario on an individual basis, but later on you stated that these tend to be the tech savvy users who may bring significant revenue to off-set the costs as a whole (ref: ‘What Bell might not consider is the potential value of that customer as far as a referral or ally. Many of these heavier users are often tech heads that gladly help others and in many cases will be first to refer or spread the good word about performing or worth ISPs.’.

Do you see a correlation in the Industry Canada Study right down to the ISP level on file-sharing or P2P?

Rocky: Wow! You would think, by title alone, that the government would have looked at all aspects, when speaking of impact. There’s definitely some serious collateral damage in this case as, as much as there may be an affect on CD/DVD sales in the music industry, they’re (music industry) putting all of the ‘delivery costs’ back on the ISPs. So, as a result, they save on stocking fees, regular delivery charges through the postal system, marketing materials, never mind the physical CD/DVDs! Their entire cost structure to sell to the marketplace has been substituted with digitize/upload – wait for sale.

So, to your question. No, there isn’t a correlation to this study down to the ISP. If things were to be ‘fair’, then the ISPs would have to charge back to those selling the materials. An all but impossible job, so the ISP is then forced to up rates to accommodate for higher data load. A portion the government and decision makers probably aren’t considering when looking at this side of things. So, in essence, those downloading CDs/DVDs are indirectly paying for some of the music costs by virtue of having to pay a higher fee for their internet access.

… there’s definitely a few missing pieces to this problem!

Ottawa Gal: I want to thank you for the time given for this Q&A and insight into the industry and with what’s happening with one of Canada’s largest Internet Service Providers (Sympatico), and how it affects the small guys and users. I’ll let your wife plug you in now before she assimilates you . It’s been a pleasure and quite the interesting read for myself (as the non-technical user) to have this insight. Thank you.

Rocky: Not a problem, and thank you for the opportunity! I look forward to future discussions on this and other data related maters as the future of the internet will rely very heavily on how we approach the next years to come. Net Neutrality principals are nice, but only if it math’s out on all sides!

References:

1. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19346010-tsi-unlimited-logins

2. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19399703-Solution-for-BandwidthUnlimited-and-better-Premium-too

3. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19404203-Do-you-likedislike-the-new-pricing-as-of-Jan-1st-2008

4. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19376379-TSI-mentioned-as-the-poor-bell-whipping-boy

5. http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13883

6. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Bell-Sympaticos-War-On-Network-Abusers-89140

7. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Bell-Sympatico-Admits-to-Throttling-89082

8. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19362661-Bandwidth-Charge-Update

9. The Good, Bad, and Ugly board of ISP’s; http://www.dslreports.com/gbu

10. http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/en/h_ip01456e.html

11. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2358/125/

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It’s forcing Linux user Scott McCausland, aka sk0t, to install Microsoft Windows while he’s on probation after admitting he uploaded the Star Wars Episode III .

McCausland, an EliteTorrents administrator before it was shut down by the FBI, was jailed for five months and also sentenced to home confinement during which he’s been banned from using Linux.

Yesterday, “Weekend Passing Fast,” he blogged, going on:

This weekend seems to be speeding by… whooosh… there is goes… it is already Sunday (for 2 hours now)… and Monday is my start date for school. It will hopefully reign as a new beginning
for me. I will post more on that topic later.

Today, “I am heading back to school for the first time in a while,” he says,
adding:

I am switching my focus from Psychology to Management Information Systems (MIS),

I start this morning at 11:15AM, I just have to remember to wear long pants… atleast of the first day to cover up my Ankle Monitor. What a great first impression; “Hi, My name is Scott, I just out of prison, and I am on home confinement for 5 months. I like long walks on the beach and furry fuzzy puppies.”

McCausland had a few words with p2pnet >>>>>

p2pnet: You were charged in what the DoJ says is the first ‘criminal enforcement action’ against ‘copyright infringement on a p2p network using BitTorrent technology’. And that lined you up for a possible five years in jail, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release. Obviously, that had to be a frightening prospect. How did it affect you and your family, and what did your friends have to say about it?

sk0t: Well, I was a mess for a while. It was late May 05, and I was in a summer session at my university, and it was just a lot. I withdrew from that semester, and focused on the prospect of a prison term. My family, rightfully so, was shook up about it. But, what could they do? It was a battle in mind hands. So I got a lawyer, and we started the business of working through this. My family was supportive, and my friends were shocked. What else can anyone say? I made the bed I have to lay in.

p2pnet: You admitted to ‘conspiracy to commit copyright infringement’ and ‘criminal copyright infringement’ for loading Star Wars: Episode III before its official release, and landed in jail. Where were you imprisoned, and what was it like?

sk0t: I was designate to FCI Morgantown, located in Morgantown, WV. It was a Minimum Security prison, with the exemption of having a Special Housing Unit (’the hole’, designated at MAXIMUM SECURITY’). It was a typical prison day. Forced to get up at 7:00, (but 99% of the time you were up earlier because the lights were turned on at 6AM). The diversity of the prison was staggering. I was a definitive minority. The food was horrible, the atmosphere was horrible, and the inmates were typical inmates… doing their time. I didnt have a lot of incidents there… but the ones I do, I will save for another time.

p2pnet: A couple of days ago you blogged, “Opinions Needed – So, I am getting shafted by the Justice Department again… Here goes: I had a meeting with my probation officer today, and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me, that is part of my sentence. However, their software doesnt support GNU/Linux (Which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on. Which basically means: MICROSOFT AND MONITORING SOFTWARE or NO COMPUTER. I use Ubuntu 7.04 now, and they are trying to force me to switch.” What kind of help are you loooking for?

sk0t: I’m not really looking for help, I just initially wanted opinions on the whole thing, opinions or comments, whatever anyone wanted to say. I don’t mind when people speak their mind: if you think I am retarded, by all means, post about it. I just wanted to let everyone know what is going on … this is pertinent to a lot of people.

p2pnet: You have an appeal for donations on your website. You state, “I want to inform you all that this money will go to the purchase of Microsoft Windows XP or Vista …” – pPresumably, that’s because of the Linux provocation – and you also say the money will help with, “other expenses related to my situation,” also cautioning people not to donate if there are not “financially stable”. So how much do you think you’ll need?

sk0t: I didnt add an appeal for donations… I added an ‘OPTIONAL’ DONATE link. If people want to donate so be it. I’ll use the money to purchase Microsoft Windows XP or VISTA, (because I still need a computer for school, and the internet. The option of not using the internet won’t work for my current situation). And if I happens to get more money, I’ll use the money for other items relating to my situation … who knows, I might put a poll up to see what I should use the money on. I wouldn’t, however, spend the money frivolously. I know what it’s like to take advantage of a situation, and I know what it’s like to get taken advantage of…

p2pnet: People involved in entertainment industry lawsuits have in the past made similar appeals, some of them raising considerable amounts of money. Do you plan to provide information on how much money you receive and exactly what it’s being spent on?

sk0t: Yes, I’ll provide detailed receipts and information on what the money is being used for. No doubt.

p2pnet: Do you have a girlfriend? And if you have, how has all this affected your relationship?

sk0t: I’ve had the same girlfriend for over 5 years. As you can imagine, 5 months away (while I was in prison) can be hectic on a relationship. But we managed to work through it all, and we both survived.

p2pnet: Back to the case itself, you’ve admitted uploading Star Wars, so what were you thinking about when you did that?

sk0t: I was just doing what I had always done relating to the piracy scene. If I had something, everyone was entitled to partake. I got a hold of the movie, and put it on the site. For that is the way I feel it should have been done.

p2pnet: You now have two felony black marks against you. Do you see yourself as a criminal?

sk0t: I see myself as a normal individual who does what everyone else does … you can say I stole, fine. But hypocrisy is a pet peeve of mine. If you upload something illegal, or download something illegal you are the same to me. And when I hear that downloaders arent as bad as uploaders I just chuckle… because what is the difference. There are lots of downloaders, and in the torrent game, you still seed… so everyone tastes both worlds… I just got caught. I do not condone what I did, I just feel I was handled harshly.

p2pnet: What are your thoughts on P2P and file sharing in general?

sk0t: It won’t stop. Nothing can be done to slow the trend of filesharing and illegally obtaining software, music, movies, and porn. It is here to stay. I am no longer part of that world, but I won’t ever forget it.

p2pnet: On August 8 you posted, “Today was a great day… I proceed in the normal direction at the start of today… I wake up… smooge around a little bit… then sit at the computer. I check my email, check here for any comments and then check my feeds for anything new I haven’t read (there is always something new)… and then I decide to check the status of my school loan application… so even though it is a Sunday, I figure: “What the hell, I will check it out”… low and behold, I was approved… so that is one less thing I have to worry about….” What’s a bad day like?

sk0t: Waking up in prison surrounded by 1,500 people who could care less what you did, who you are, and what you plan to do… loneliness is terrible thing. But if you have read my posts you will notice that I lost a lot of friends with this (almost all)… and it has opened my eyes to a few things.

p2pnet: Things are tough, right now, but but they won’t stay like that forever. What are your plans for the future?

sk0t: I will be returning back to school. My “GOOD DAY” post has proved to not exist. I got some details about the school loan that I was approved for, and it turns out that there were things not mentioned in the credit disclosure. So I wasn’t willing to accept the terms of the loan… back to the drawing board. I will be returning to school and trying to find a new way to fund my education.

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Star Wars Slith movie – EliteTorrents admin jailed, October 27, 2006

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Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.

Now it’s back, and it’s here to stay, say (left to right) Angel Leon, Eugene Kim, Yacine Benzine, Ethan Lu, Fitim Blaku, Cristian Radu and Francis Ho, the multi-national team behind it.

Users can upload, and share, an unlimited number of files, listen to music, create playlists, back up files —- and there’s nothing to download or install.

They have total control of personal data and can keep private information from prying eyes, promises the group.

p2pnet spoke with Leon, whom we already knew through his connection with the FrostWire team, members of the LimeWire open-source community who decided to go their own way with a free, non-profit and independent p2p application when LimeWire started filtering content on Gnutella.

p2pnet: Aren’t you afraid you’ll have the entertainment cartels breathing heavily down your necks, accusing you of facilitating illegal file sharing?

Leon: More and more Internet users are beginning to realize that they should be allowed to share their files however and whenever they choose to. The entertainment industry has been holding back innovation in file sharing for nearly a decade. People have always shared their files, but they’ve mainly been doing it the tedious way; through email or file transfers over IM. The more technologically inclined have relied on FTP or newsgroups, to name a few.

But really, there’s no central place on the Internet which gives these users all the storage and other tools they need to share and backup files easily. That’s where MyBloop.com comes in.

It’s important to mention that we abide by all international laws. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act gives us the right, by law, to run this website. Copyrighted content is taken out when get a DMCA takedown request from the copyright holder.

p2pnet: Why are you offering this service?

Leon: There’s no easy way to send a bunch of files to someone. Often, many of us wish we had access to our own files from any computer with an internet connection. MyBloop offers the platform, the service, the community and the features people have come to expect from a great file sharing website.

p2pnet: Where are you located?

Leon: We’re located in New York, but we’ve incorporated in New Jersey.

p2pnet: Do people simply upload files, and if they do, aren’t they inviting unwanted attention from the entertainment cartels? And what about downloading?

Leon: No one can “download” someone else’s music files through our site. Users can only download music they’ve uploaded themselves. This makes MyBloop a great way to backup files. Anyone can listen to another MyBloop user’s music through their web browser with MyBloop’s Flash Player.

Users can also make playlists with other users’ songs, but we prevent and are against the actual downloading of music, as was made famous by Napster. Moreover, any user can choose to make any or all of their files private. MyBloop encourages users to share their files, but we also fully respect people’s privacy.

p2pnet: Are you talking about any files, or purely independent files which aren’t tied down by copyright?

Leon: Users can upload any type of file and uploads as many files as they want. If someone wants to upload a new album by Beyoncé they purchased online, or a song they ripped from a CD they bought, they just mark it as a “Private” file once it’s uploaded. This will ensure only the user who uploaded it can access the file. Then that user can decide whether or not to share the private link.

This ensures they’re never held liable for copyright violations, because they’ll be the only user with access to it.

p2pnet: If copyrighted files are involved, do you have agreements with any of the corporate entertainment companies?

Leon: We only have agreements with our users. It’s really their call on what they decide to share, though we do moderate the site. However we’re open to talking to entertainment companies if they want to freely distribute promotional material from their artists. We’re also interested in helping independent artists, and we always accept Creative Common-based playlists. Major labels and independent artists can create an account in MyBloop, make a playlist with promotional music, and talk to us to promote their playlist with links to buy the music on iTunes, MP3.com, etc.

p2pnet: Will you ultimately charge fees, or in some way bundle MyBloop with advertisements?

Leon: Our main service will always remain free. We’re really trying to provide a service that would normally cost users a lot of money if they went anywhere else. The site is driven solely by targeted advertising at this point. We have plans to eventually introduce premium accounts, but right now we’re focusing solely on perfecting the free service.

p2pnet: People have to sign up to use MyBloop, giving their ages, sex, home country and email address. How safe will this information be?

Leon: If you want to just listen to music and browse files, you don’t have to register at all. If you want to start sharing files, we ask you to create an account. We ask for an email address to make contact with you and in the event that you forget your password. We ask for the country you’re located in because we will be expanding to data centers in other countries, and when you download a file, MyBloop will serve the file from the location that’s closest to you. Age is used for filtering adult content from underage users. To prevent showing unrelated, annoying banner ads, the age and gender are also used for showing targeted ads in the future.

No personally identifiable information will ever be shared with, or sold to, a third party.

p2pnet: You say, “You are given complete control, enabling you to easily hide personal documents from public viewing.” How does that work?

Leon: After creating an account, you can access the My Files page and set any file as “Private”. The file will be removed from the search engine and all public listings (top files, new files, etc).

The only way someone else can access the file is if the file’s original owner gives them the URL.

p2pnet: I see you have a bunch of football files online right now. Are you targeting the sports videos in particular, or is this just coincidence?

Leon: Just a coincidence. We’ve got some sports enthusiasts who must have found out how easy it is to share their files on MyBloop.

Fitim Blaku started developing the first version of MyBloop, which only supported pictures, in 2006. He recruited friends of his to help develop and grow the service, which now supports music playlists, videos and every single type of file.

Ethan Lu worked with Fitim and Eugene Kim, re-vamping the core code and database architecture. His main project is developing a new file-browsing interface for the site: Bloop Explorer.

Eugene Kim is from Uzbekistan and has experience in client and server side programming in different programming languages. He linked up with the MyBloop team early on and currently leads the development of the flash uploader and classic uploader.

Angel Leon is a Venezuelan software engineer who, after working for LimeWire.com, moved over to Flycell.com, at the same time, starting the FrostWire development in his spare time for fun. He met Blaku and Lu at his day job and after sharing bite to eat on Broadway, decided their mutual interest in file sharing was worth taking several important steps further.

“I tried MyBloop.com and I wasn’t going to let the chance of being part of something so important go away,” he says. Currently designing and developing the MyBloop API and a top secret project with Francis and Fitim. He’s also a podcaster under the pseudonym of Gubatron and will try to make MyBloop.com a great tool for the podcasting community.

From Romania, Cristian Radu met Fitim and the rest of the group while he was working for New York advertising company. He, too, fell in love with the concept and started helping out on the development side. He’s urrently working on new version of the Bloop Player (Flash Music Player).

Yacine Benzine was born in Algeria and also has French citizenship. His family lived in Ethiopia full while before moving to New York city when he was 11. Benzine focuses on the business, marketing and financial and of MyBloop.

“After years of working on mind numbing web applications and treading the intricate mine fields of office politics, joining MyBloop’s development team was a great substitution for overdosing on Prozac,” says Francis Ho, only partially joking. He’s working on new features for the website and the MyBloop API, as well as heavily cloaked secret project also involving Leon and Blaku.

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Also See:
started filtering content – October 13, 2005

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

AllofMP3.com is a small Russian company which has become the international poster child for attacks on independent music download sites.

By itself, it probably doesn’t represent much of a genuine threat to the labels or studios. But if it’s allowed to survive and prosper, its existence would certainly encourage other entrepreneurs to adopt the same marketing approach – DRM-free downloads at reasonable prices – which would result in serious competition for the corporate cartels which, until the Net became universally adopted, had been able to control virtually everything ordinary people saw or heard.

Competition is good: it promotes free choice. But neither ‘choice’ nor ‘competition’ are words found in cartel lexicons. So a massive, and ongoing, multi-million-dollar campaign has been mounted against AllofMP3.com by the cartels, with the record labels to the fore.

Leading it on behalf of the labels and other vested interests is the US administration, which has brought its full weight down on a handful of people in another country who dare to compete with Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, with the major movie studios and software houses lurking darkly in the background.

In rich irony, only Warner Music can be said to be truly American. And even it’s run by Canadian. The other three members of the Big 4 music cartel are EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, based in Britain, France, Japan and Germany, respectively.

In other words, the US government is generously spending money provided by American tax payers to help four foreign companies maintain an iron grip on a market whose openness would benefit American artists as much, if not more, than artist in other countries.

Nor does it appear anyone in either the United States Trade Representative Office, which is behind much of the US-mounted pressure on AllofMP3.com, nor music industry ‘trade’ organizations, such as the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), have made any effort to talk directly with AllofMP3.com executives to find a way to reach an accord.

p2pnet was able to have a word with the people who run AllofMP3.com.

p2pnet :- Who originally started AllofMP3.com and what was the motivation behind it?

AllofMP3.com:- People love music. As digital audio and mobile technologies improve, interest in digital music will only increase. Several years ago we foresaw this situation and thought we could create an Internet store to provide people – both experienced and inexperienced computer users and audiophiles – with a quality service and a wide assortment of music. We obtained all necessary licenses and started our hard work. What will become of it in the long run, our users will decide.

p2pnet :- Approximately how many users does AllofMP3.com currently have?

AllofMP3.com:- We’ve 5,500,000 registered users.

p2pnet :- You’ve been singled out for special attention by the US administration: “I have a hard time imagining Russia becoming a member of the WTO and having a Web site like that [AllofMP3.com] up and running that is so clearly a violation of everyone’s intellectual property rights,” said US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, according to Reuters.

The story went on, “Schwab’s call for the allofmp3.com Web site to be closed came as the United States and Russia are trying once again to reach a deal on Moscow’s 13-year-old bid to join the WTO. Those talks failed in July, primarily because of agricultural issues and U.S. concerns that Russia was not doing enough to stop piracy and counterfeiting of American goods.”

How does it feel to be a principal target of the American anti-p2p effort?

AllofMP3.com:- It is disappointing that United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab completely and deliberately mischaracterized AllofMP3.com. Furthermore, it is irresponsible to use AllofMP3.com as a negotiating instrument in an attempt to extract concessions from Russia in return for US support for accession to the World Trade Organization.

AllofMP3.com is a Russian business that is in complete compliance with Russian law.

p2pnet :- Do you believe the existence of your site stands in the way of US/Russia trade negotiations?

AllofMP3.com:- We believe we are a not barrier to the conclusion of WTO negotiations and that Representative Schwab has deliberately mischaracterized our company. As a Russian-based company, we operate legally under Russian law. It appears the US government is a willing partner in the campaign being waged by the big record companies that wish to shut down our company. And, unfortunately for us, it appears that the US government also sees AllofMP3 as a wedge issue to gain concessions from the Russian government in exchange for its support for WTO ascension.

p2pnet :- What effect might this have on you as a company?

AllofMP3.com:- At the moment it is not possible to define exact terms and conditions of Russia’s accession to WTO. Until the actual accession, which is not soon anyway, WTO rules do not apply to Russian companies. That is also true for any international intellectual property treaties developed under the WTO framework. It is possible that after Russia joins WTO some changes will be made to the national legislation and also that Russia will ratify some new international treaties. But for now it is too early to talk about effect that Russia’s accession to WTO will have on AllOFMP3.com business.

p2pnet :- Have you had any official or unofficial approaches from your government at any level asking you to stop operations in the interests of international goodwill?

AllofMP3.com:- We have not been contacted by Russian government.

p2pnet :- Have you heard from Schwab personally?

AllofMP3.com:- No.

p2pnet :- If you haven’t heard from her, have you heard from anyone else within the US trade office?

AllofMP3.com:- Nobody.

p2pnet :- Who’ve you heard from within the RIAA, or any of the other Big 4 trade organisations, and what did they have to say?

AllofMP3.com:- Nothing.

p2pnet :- Assuming you intended to keep AllofMP3.com online, what will be your next steps?

AllofMP3.com:- We believe the Russian market will continue to grow given the upward trend in incomes and access to the Internet and our plan is to build our business to support this market. We will grow our business by maintaining a dominate position in the market by providing customers a web-friendly site and great functionality at an attractive price point. Currently, we do not envision moving into other digital products.

p2pnet :- On the voucher story currently occupying the mainstream media’s attention, are you concerned with people advertising and selling Allofmp3.com vouchers on sites such as eBay, or on their own sites?

AllofMP3.com:- We don’t sell vouchers. Any user can purchase Gift Certificate on the site and give it to anybody.

p2pnet :- The Big 4’s IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) is trumpeting the arrest of a Londoner who allegedly worked for Allofmp3.com’s European office. How much truth is there in this?

AllofMP3.com:- The IFPI/ BPI (British Phonographic Industry) turned a person reselling gift certificates into a “European office of AllOFMP3″ in London. After that they initiated the loud “closure” of this “office” and an arrest of its mythical “employee”.

[NOTE: AllofMP3.com said earlier that it's never been active outside of Russia and, "Thus we do not have any offices or employees abroad".]

p2pnet :- I know you’ve been through this a hundred times before, but could you please explain, as simply as possible, how you’re able to legally sell downloads online?

AllofMP3.com:- We believe it is legal in Russia under Articles 44 and 45 of the Law of the Russian Federation No. 5351-1 On Copyright and Related Rights dated July 9, 1993, as amended, (the Copyright Law), which authorizes Russian non-profit Russian organizations for collective management of copyrights (Russian Licensing Societies) to grant licenses to entities such as ALLOFMP3. ALLOFMP3 has up-to-date licenses from the Russian Licensing Societies from the Federation of Rights Holders for Collective Management of Copyright with Respect to the Use of Musical Works in Interactive Regime (FAIR) and from the Russian Organization on Collective Management of Rights of Authors and Other Right Holders in Multimedia, Digital Networks & Visual Arts (ROMS).

Russian Copyright Law allows holders of intellectual property rights to establish non-profit organizations such as ROMS which in its capacity oversees licensing agreements and collects royalties and pays them out to copyright holders, aside from some commissions.

The Russian Copyright Law provides non-profit Russian Licensing Societies with a right to grant licenses and to collect royalties for the use of music without necessarily obtaining permission from the copyright owners.

p2pnet :- Do you get many requests from artists to have you to feature their music on your site? Still on this, have you had any well-known musicians ask you to include their music, and if so can you say, who?

AllofMP3.com:- Yes, we get a lot of new requests everyday. But we’ve no story with well-known musicians.

p2pnet :- One of the favourite themes of the Big 4 is: downloads which, presumably, include music from AllofMP3.com, are polluted with viruses and so on and are extremely dangerous: what’s your response to this?

AllofMP3.com:- WOW! We hear about it for the first time We’ve no viruses on the site nor in media-files.

p2pnet :- Do have a plan to start offering videos through AllofMP3.com?

AllofMP3.com:- No. We didn’t plan it.

p2pnet :- Do you see any hope of coming to terms with the corporate music industry?

AllofMP3.com:- It’s a question of time. Why not?

p2pnet :- The North American media tend to confine themselves to calling AllofMP3.com an illegal pirate organisation: do the Russian media write about you in the same way?

AllofMP3.com:- The Russian media are proud of AllfofMP3 because of its popularity all over the world.

p2pnet :- And finally, do you have any messages for the people who continue to support you?

AllofMP3.com:- Thank you for using our services! Stay tuned!and

=================

UPDATE:

“Ignore the jurisdictional issues for the moment,” says Digital Copyright Canada’s Russell McOrmond in a comment post, going on:

While AllOfMP3.com may be perfectly legal for Russian customers, it is not legal for them to sell to foreign customers. Copyright and licensing need to be analysed domestically, and you can’t say that what is legal in Russia allows you to do something in Canada or the USA.

Canadians should read this closely as this relates to the type of objections that the major labels have against Canada’s Private Copying regime. Unfortunately, unlike in Russia, many Canadians seem to be opposed to this regime as well – they appear to prefer lawsuits to levies for recorded music.

On the other hand, I wish the levies were moved from legacy recording media (that’s how we share music now) and moved to a voluntary system where those who wish to non-commercially share music, movies or television (including mashups) would pay a flat-fee to a collective society (likely through the ISP as part of the monthly service charge to make things simpler).

We also need a compulsory regime for commercial Internet download and Internet radio. I disagree with the industry executives who claim the current system of private negotiations is working out well.

For those in the USA, think of “Save Internet Radio” which is based on the same issue (although it is streaming rather than downloads).

Collective licensing rates are being set so high by the US government that it will drive the big net radio stations to have to make special deals with the major labels. The net result? The redundant labels make a lot of money, and the actual composer and musician makes far less. While the rate was set far too high, the compulsory license had a formula that was far more fair in terms of the percentages that the composer and musician would make.

As is the case for most of the battles involving music these days, the target of the labels isn’t “piracy” but attacks against the interests of composers and musicians. Even though labels are redundant in the new economy (only needed to finance the historically high costs of recording, editing and distributing recorded content), they want to take the lion’s share of any music industry money and keep composers and musicians poor.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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It’s all about freedom of speech which to me is the most precious of all human rights.

Anyone who comes to p2pnet can, in a few seconds, find out I run it. It’s no secret here or anywhere else. I put my name where my mouth is.

Unnamed slag posts, or flames, are one thing. Detailed criticisms are another. They count for nothing unless the writers have the courage of their convictions, openly stating who they are. Authors’ credibility and the value of whatever they’re saying depends absolutely on their identifying themselves and their affiliations, if any.

On p2pnet and many other sites, ‘Anonymous coward’ is short for people who post without registering. Janie, who wrote the original p2pnet cms, included the phrase and I left it there. I don’t take it seriously and I don’t believe most comment posters do either.

However, once in a while ‘Anonymous Coward’ is apt and I think whoever posted the item below fits the bill. It comes in p2pnet’s final days? in which, as I say on the index page intro, “p2pnet has been hit with a massive loss of income – 80%, to be precise. If the site is to survive, the hole has somehow to be plugged and a host found. We’re looking for new funding, and a partner or collaborator. They say as one door closes, another opens. So now we’re looking for the door-knob : )”

Is the poster associated with a corporate entertainment or software company? Who knows? And frankly, who cares? The cartels are big, they’re ugly and and they’re dishonest and corrupt, meaning anything they say can immediately be dismissed out of hand. But the post raises points I’m going to address.

So >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Anonymous Coward: Seems to me your troubles stem more from your inability to provide a product that has value, or be a journalist and your unwillingness to separate your “journalism” from your own biases and advertisers – that’s my opinion.

Jon Newton: Your opinion? Who are you? What’s your email address? Where do you live? Who do you work for?

Anonymous Coward: Slyck seems to be able to support itself.

Jon Newton: And more power to it. But what has Slyck to do with the price of eggs?

Anonymous Coward: Real journalists comply with the ethical code below – do you?

Jon Newton: You didn’t define ‘real journalists’ but I think I know what you mean. However, ‘real journalists’ are a dying breed, ‘real journalism’ is a dying trade and although the code you mention, which I’ve never seen before, reads well, these days, very few ‘real journalists’ (or the publications for which they work) subscribe or adhere to it, or anything like it.

Anonymous Coward: How can you justify not disclosing the identity and motivation of the European group that was so anxious to keep you alive?

Jon Newton: Have I tried to justify it and do I need to? As far as I’m concerned, they helped keep p2pnet online for six months, for which I thank them. But now, for reasons of their own to which I’m not privy, they’ve decided to withdraw the support. I’m sorry, but that’s the way things are and I’m grateful for the help they gave while they could.

Anonymous Coward: How can you justify not disclosing the advertiser that has kept you alive and the influences both have had upon your “work”.

Jon Newton: Is this a statements or a question? The lack of a question mark makes it hard to tell. Anyway, p2pnet’s advertisers are clearly identified, and always have been. And they have zero influence on me or what I write.

Anonymous Coward: How can you claim to be a journalist and have such clear biases against certain of the subjects of your so called “articles” and in favor of those who pay to keep you going.

Jon Newton: Again, is this a statements or a question? Firstly, these days I’m a blogger and, “Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries,” says the Wikipedia. “A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.”

On the other hand, a journalist is “a writer for newspapers and magazines,” and although I’ve been that too, it was a long time ago.

To myself, I’m someone who’s deeply offended by the bald-faced hypocrisy and dishonesty displayed, day in, day out, by the entertainment and software cartels, as well as by many, if not most, of the large, obscenely rich corporations which are doing their best to take over the web and subjugate its users so they can further enrich themselves. And thanks to the Net, I’m able to say so. I’m also terrified by the way in which the same corporations are penetrating our schools and poisoning the minds of our children. And I say so. I’m similarly disgusted with the way in which the administrations, politicians and enforcement agencies who supposedly exist to serve us in fact serve the cartels. And I say so.

I also include as many actual ‘news’ items as I can on subjects I hope will interest people who read p2pnet. I’d like to include more, but I’m only one person. Are the news posts biased? No more so than any similar reports in the mainstream media, many of which are barely disguised advertorials. And advertisers are mentioned only when it’s appropriate.

Anonymous Coward: Is it not telling that you do not have the quantity and quality of readers to attract sufficient advertizing to keep p2pnet going?

Jon Newton: To address the first part of this, you do not have the quantity and quality of readers, I may not have quantity, but I certainly have quality and for you to suggest otherwise is an unwarranted insult to them.

And on the second part, to attract sufficient advertizing to keep p2pnet going, I either ignore or turn down five or six requests a month. If I accepted them, I’d be a hell of a lot better off financially than I am now, but I’d be letting myself and p2pnet readers down. If I had to give odds on whether or not p2pnet is going to survive or go down, I’d says it’s 7-1 in my favour. In other words, p2pnet will keep going and one of the things I’ll do, and which I’ve been trying to do for at least two years, is have separate categories for posts. This will enable me to attract different kinds of ads. At the moment, everything goes into a giant archive which seriously limits p2pnet’s advertising potential.

Anonymous Coward: What does the survival of Slyck tell you about honesty, disclosure and market forces?

Jon Newton: Again, why drag Slyck into this? But since you have, neither Tom nor Ray seem to feel the need to go into detail on whom, or from where, they get their funding. And why should they? It’s their business and no one else’s. But it doesn’t matter because this is an absurd non-question. Slyck’s survival, or otherwise, has absolutely nothing to do with “honesty, disclosure and market forces,” or with p2pnet.

Anonymous Coward: I am really interested to receive your comments on how the disclosures in your article/sob story above allow you to claim compliance with the Canadian journalism code of ethics:

Jon Newton: I never have, and don’t now, claim compliance with the Canadian journalism code of ethics. As to my comments on it:

CEP Journalism Code of Ethics
(A code adopted on 17 December 2004 by the CEP, the Communications, Energy and Paperwork Union, one of the largest unions in Canada, formed in 1992 through a merger of three smaller unions)

Preamble

Journalists report, analyse, and comment on the facts that help their fellow citizens understand the world in which they live. Complete, accurate and diverse information and commentary are necessary for the proper functioning of democracy.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes this by guaranteeing freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Journalists must defend the freedom of the press and the public’s right to information; they must fight any restrictions, pressures and threats that aim to limit the gathering and dissemination of information.

Facts and ideas that are in the public interest must circulate freely.

Our legal traditions give media privilege and protection. We must return this trust through the ethical practice of our craft. A free press should serve the public interest, not personal or specific interests. Serving the public interest must override any desire to favour the financial and competitive needs of news organizations or their parent companies.

The rights and responsibilities of a free press apply to both individual journalists and to news organizations that employ them.

Journalists must take their role very seriously. They must demand of themselves the same ethical qualities they demand of newsmakers; in other words, they cannot denounce other people’s conflicts of interest, and at the same time, accept their own.

This Code establishes the principles that should guide journalistic work in organizations where CEP collective agreements are in force. These principles lay the foundation for a journalist’s most precious asset: credibility.

Therefore, those of us engaged in journalism and newsroom management commit ourselves to: truth, honesty, fairness, independence and respect for the rights of others. To achieve these goals the following principles shall govern our activity in the collection and dissemination of news and opinion:

PRINCIPLES

1) We shall at all times defend the principle of the freedom of the press and other media in relation to the collection of information and the expression of comment and criticism.

I do that. Would that it were so in all on- and offline publication.

2) We shall strive to eliminate distortion, news suppression and censorship.

I do that.

3) We shall strive to ensure that the information disseminated is fair and accurate, avoiding the expression of comment and conjecture as established fact and falsification by distortion, selection or misrepresentation.

I do that.

4) We shall give an accurate account of what people say. Quotations, editing, sound effects, etc., and the sequence in which they are presented, must not distort the meaning of people’s words.

I must admit I don’t follow this to the letter. I sometimes over- or under emphasise statements from politicians, cartel and corporate leaders, and others, for effect and/or to lend weight to a point.

5) We shall rectify promptly any harmful inaccuracies, ensure that correction and apologies receive due prominence and afford the right of reply to persons criticized when the issue is of sufficient importance.

I do that exactly, promptly and prominently, unlike some on- and offline publications which deliberately bury corrections where no one can see them .

6) We shall give people or organizations that are publicly accused or criticized prompt opportunity to respond. We shall make a genuine and exhaustive effort to contact them. If they decline to comment we will say so.

That’s what p2pnet Reader’s Writes are for, among other things. Do I, “make … exhaustive effort to contact them”? Yes, when the situation truly calls for it, but No, when it comes to the cartels and their spokespeople. There’s no point.

7) We shall tell sources who are unfamiliar with the media that their remarks may be published or broadcast and thus communicated to a large group of people.

I do that and when they ask not to be identified, I honour their requests.

We shall obtain information, photographs and illustrations only by straightforward means. The use of other means can be justified only by over-riding considerations of the public interest. A journalist is entitled to exercise a personal conscientious objection to the use of such means.

I comply.

9) We shall ensure that photographs, graphics, sounds and images that are published or broadcast represent reality as accurately as possible. Artistic concerns shall not result in public deception. Edited images and photographs shall be identified as such.

p2pnet pix are often modified in the interests of satire, or to point up a situation. But they’re never meant to deceive and it’s highly unlikely they’ll be taken for anything other than what they are.

10) We shall always credit the originating news organization or reporter so that readers/viewers know the sources of their information.

I’m always at pains to comply.

11) We shall never plagiarize. If we use an exclusive piece of information that has just been published or broadcast by another media organization, we shall identify the source.

See above.

12) Subject to the justification by over-riding considerations of the public interest, we shall do nothing that entails intrusion into private grief and distress.

I fully agree and comply.

13) We shall respect everyone’s right to a fair trial. We shall respect the presumed innocence of everyone before the courts. When we have covered an incident where individuals have been incriminated and prosecuted, we will continue to follow the story as closely as possible, and ensure the public is informed of the end result.

I couldn’t agree more.

14) We shall identify sources of information, except when there is a clear and pressing reason to protect anonymity. When this happens, we will explain the need for anonymity.

I agree, which is one of the reasons I’m bring sued.

15) We shall endeavour to protect confidential sources of information, but since there are no shield laws protecting journalists in Canada we may be ordered by a court or judicial inquiry to divulge confidential sources upon threat of jail. Therefore we must convey that clearly to our sources.

I don’t “endeavour to,” I do. A source’s identity is to me sacrosanct and I would never reveal it, even under a court order.

16) We shall not accept bribes nor shall we allow other inducements to influence the performance of our journalistic duties.

Wouldn’t dream of it. Would that the same could be said of some mainstream media ‘journalists’.

17) We shall not lend ourselves to the distortion or suppression of the truth because of advertising or other considerations.

I agree.

18) Columnists shall be free to express their views, even when those views are contrary to the editorial views of their organization, as long as the content does not breach the law.

I agree.

19) We shall only mention a person’s age, ethnic background, colour, creed, illegitimacy, disability, marital status (or lack of it), gender or sexual orientation if this information is strictly relevant. We shall neither originate nor process material that encourages discrimination, ridicule, prejudice or hatred on any of the above-mentioned grounds.

I comply.

20) We shall not take private advantage of information gained in the course of our duties, before the information is public knowledge.

I agree.

21) We shall not use our positions to obtain any benefit or advantage in commercial transactions not available to the public.

I agree.

22) We shall not by way of statement, voice or appearance endorse by advertisement any commercial product or service save for the promotion of our own work or of the organization that employs us.

I agree.

23) We shall clearly identify infomercials so they are not in any way confused ‘ even by their layout’ with information.

I agree.

24) We shall cover events sponsored by our own organizations with the same rigor we apply to every other event.

n/a

25) We shall not act as police informers or as agents for any country’s security or intelligence services.

I agree.

Cheers! And thanks. And all the best …
Jon

Among mainstream media heavyweights at the forum was Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC Global News division, the man who runs the BBC’s international news services on radio, television and new media.

We had a one-on-one with him when we raised the subjects of DRM and file sharing.

Sambrook told us he’s a former Napster user (the original, not the ‘new’ disinterred version) and that thanks to his online experiences, “I probably spend more on that kind of media now than I did before”. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

p2pnet: DRM is a hot topic, especially after the Sony BMG fiasco which I’m sure you’re well aware of. What are your thoughts on DRM and sharing information, and so on?

Sambrook: I think DRM is inevitable because people have gotten used to the first wave of the internet and to a lot of content being available free because we were exploring the technology. Personally, I don’t think that can last because there are enormous rights issues. Big organizations like the BBC, of course, don’t own all of the rights to all of their content, so I think DRM is inevitable, and I think different organizations will take different views about it.

I think the other point is clearly that a lot of organizations are working out at the moment how they can develop revenue streams in the face of what is a very disruptive technology and business model and DRM offers them a means of doing that, although I think many people will be disappointed to see this, the nature of the internet being entirely free and open space. That openness will be limited and I think there will start to be some fenced in areas, and some rights protected areas, emerging to a greater extent than they are at the moment.

p2pnet: But by its very nature, anything you can see or hear can be copied by one analog or digital means or another. So how will they do that – fence it in?

Sambrook: That’s a very good point, but clearly one of the big issues in the BBC is we’re looking at a seven-day window. You may or you many not agree with that, but put it so your license runs out —

p2pnet: DRM.

Sambrook: Yes. That’s one model.

p2pnet: So after the seven days, will people be free to do whatever they want with the content they now have?

Sambrook: No. At the moment, one of the models the BBC is looking at is: after seven days, it [the license] expires and you can no longer play the content.

p2pnet: So it dies

Sambrook: So it dies. What we’re basically saying is look, through your license fee you can get via broadband or whatever an additional seven days access to something as opposed to the one-off broadcast.

p2pnet: So you’re renting it.

Sambrook: Yes. You’re renting it, if you like, but it’s included in your license fee payment. It then goes onto a commercial model and then comes back some time later and it can be archived after a time which is agreed by everyone. Now, people may have different views about that model and whether it’s going to work or not —

p2pnet: At that point it becomes free?

Sambrook: Yup.

p2pnet: How long before it becomes public domain, then?

Sambrook: We don’t know yet.

p2pnet: Any ideas?

Sambrook: Personally, I’m not involved in that bit so I can’t talk about it. But that’s one model for the peculiar issues around the BBC and public funding, and so on. I think other people will be looking at micro payments for particular bits of content, and I think a number of different models will come forward.

We’re already seeing in the download market you can have your subscription, you can have item payment, you can have all sorts of different levels coming through. Whether it will continue to be mixed economy or whether there will be some norms that emerge, I don’t know. But I think paying for content is inevitably going to remerge through the on-demand technology.

p2pnet: I’m also sure you’re familiar with the mp3 phenomenon with people being sued in the States.

Sambrook: Yes.

p2pnet: Now, as someone who’s in control of news content for a large organization, how do you view the spin that’s being put on this? To illustrate what I mean, in the States they’re saying they’ve quote sued unquote around 19,000 people when in fact all they’ve done is to subpoena 19,000 people, but it’s being reported as though there have been 19,000 prosecutions. So here we have PR versus news. What do you think about this?

Sambrook: Personally, I have a couple of thoughts about this. Firstly, I think we need to cut through the PR and be clear about what is happening and what isn’t happening, and how many people are actually being sued versus how many people are being threatened by subpoena, or whatever else. We need to try and cut through the numbers and find out exactly what’s happening.

My personal view, and it’s not a BBC view, is I think it’s pretty odd for any big company to start to sue its customers and I personally think that’s rather limited in its effectiveness.

p2pnet: And p2p?

Sambrook: I absolutely understand that p2p technology fits the business models of music companies and the movies, and so on, but I don’t think the answer is to sue the customer. I think you have to work out some way of rights management, or rights licensing, or whatever, and come up with a business model that works for the audience as well as it works for you.

I don’t think trying to intimidate the audience into behaving the way you want them to behave is likely to be a very sensible way of going on.

p2pnet: You’re a man who’s in charge of how news is being reported. I’ve seen a number of BBC stories it’s frequently one of my sources when I’m writing stuff in which this thing we’ve just been discussing that people are being sued when in fact they’re being subpoenaed, and the implication is they’re guilty of something, of illegal file sharing. How do you see that?

Sambrook: I’ll have to look at that. I’m not familiar with the individual stories you’re referring to, but I certainly think we need to be very clear about what is happening and what isn’t happening, and what the legal basis for whatever legal actions are being taken should be.

p2pnet: OK. Meanwhile, the people who are being subpoenaed are being labeled as criminals and thieves, and these words are actually in the press materials which are being routinely issued and used. But nothing has been stolen, no money has changed hands, no one has been deprived of something they used to own. But the materials are being used and in the process, the media in other words are supporting the …

Sambrook: It’s a bit like trying to prove a negative, isn’t it. It’s trying to say somebody has downloaded this music, or whatever, on a p2p basis rather than having gone out and paid for it, saying it’s a crime —-

It’s trying to prove a negative. You’re trying to assert that the music companies and artists have lost money they would otherwise have had.

Again, speaking from personal experience, and it’s not a BBC view, I think downloading actually increases my media use and I buy more CDs and more DVDs as a result of having access to them.

I’ll also be frank. I started off using Napster in the early days and decided not to because I came to a personal view that it wasn’t right and I should still feed the music economy by buying stuff. Other people come to different views. But I do think that the whole downloading phenomenon and the idea of having music on your computers and the rest of it, I probably spend more on that kind of media now than I did before.

p2pnet: In Canada, Bare Nakeladies, Avril Lavigne, and other equally well-known artists, have just formed a coalition in which they’re saying to the RIAA in the UK it’s the BPI saying it’s stupid to be suing our fans. We should be wooing them.

Sambrook: It hasn’t been widely reported as far as I know in any of the mainstream media. But I’m sure it will be.

p2pnet: But that’s two weeks ago now. On the other hand, the instant the BPI or RIAA issue a press release that they have no sued more people, the day afterwards, it’s in all the media. Where’s the balance?

Sambrook: Fine, balance. But I think that clearly if the BPI, or whoever, act in some way, on whatever basis, something has occurred on a very topical issue which is of interest and which gets reported.

When Bare Nakeladies, and so on, say they’re not going to do something, it’s more difficult to say someone has decided not to do something as a newsworthy act than to say they have done it. Nevertheless, I do think to the extent that we report this issue, and it’s a very live issue, absolutely, if people are taking the decision that they should take a different strategy in the face of these problems, it’s absolutely reportable and I’m surprised it hasn’t been, but I’m sure it will be.

p2pnet: Are we going to be seeing less, on the BBC at least, reporting by press release?

Sambrook: Personally, I would hope that we never simply regurgitate press releases. We always add some original journalism to it, and I will go on doing that, and this is a very live issue and I’m sure it will go on being reported extensively.

Born and raised in Toronto and the proud father of “three great kids” (7, 5, and 2), he’s the University of Ottawa’s Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, a position he’s held since 2003. Before going to U of O seven years ago, he was at a long list of law schools including Columbia Law School in New York, Dalhousie Law School in Halifax, Canada, Cambridge University in England, and Kobe University in Japan, where he was doing graduate work and some teaching.

His editorial output is prolific. He produces numerous professional publications and writes for Canada’s Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen, and England’s BBC, and p2pnet is proud to regularly run his columns. He’s also on the director and advisory boards of several internet and IT law organizations including the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the dot-ca administrative agency, the Canadian IT Law Association, and Watchfire.

The former chair of a global Internet jurisdiction project for the American Bar Association and International Chamber of Commerce, Geist is regularly quoted in the national and international media on internet law issues and has appeared before government committees on e-commerce policy.

Obviously, with a work-load such as that and three lively children, he doesn’t have much in the way of free time but when he does, he’s a big sports fan who, although he’s an Ottawa Senators season ticket holder, is also a “a die-hard Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan”. And when he gets the chance, he takes in “a fair amount of music” on his iPod, “in addition to a growing list of podcasts.”

One of his favourite bands is Green Day, and he’s also a Springsteen fan.

“I really like Pandora for listening to new stuff,” he says. “I buy music on Apple iTunes and also download occasional stuff. Frankly, most of my P2P downloading tends to be torrents of video files of recent lectures or other video content.”

BitTorrent is his application of choice for downloads.

Do you think Canada will ever be in the same situation as the US where even young children can become CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) victims? – we asked him in the Q&A below.

“I hope not,” he says

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

p2pnet: You’ve become a virtual spokesman for copyright common sense not only in Canada, but in other parts of the world. Is this something you deliberately set out to achieve?

Geist: : No, not at all. My focus has traditionally been on Internet issues and I’m very active on privacy, spam, Internet governance issues. The growing attention to copyright merely reflects its critical importance to the Internet and to creativity and culture more generally.

`

p2pnet: Does the role sit well with you?

`

Geist: : I think there are a lot of people who do great work in this area. I’m fortunate to have some platforms to speak out and educate – such as a regular newspaper column and my blog. These are issues that have not gained significant awareness in the past and I’m happy to help change that.

p2pnet: How much real influence do you think the entertainment and software industries have over decisions made in Ottawa and elsewhere?

Geist: : Enormous influence – they’re clearly one of, if not the single most successful lobbying concerns worldwide as their influence extends internationally, nationally, and even at the local levels. In Ottawa, I think that policy makers are genuinely interested in hearing all perspectives. Once their work turns into a bill, however, we’ll see the power of the lobby come to the fore.

p2pnet: Do you think they have undue influence? If so, should it be curbed, and can it be?

Geist: : They certainly have far more resources than any other stakeholder group. I think it is essential that other stakeholders – particularly those who represent the public interest – receive active support so that their views are heard. In the US, there are many groups (EFF, CDT, Public Knowledge, ACLU, EPIC, IP Justice, etc) that work in the area. We don’t have nearly that kind of support in Canada as I think CIPPIC, the public interest technology law clinic that I helped establish at the University of Ottawa, is one of the only similar groups in Canada.

p2pnet: Is it acceptable for elected politicians to accept benefits from the entertainment and software industries, and to so obviously (and actively) represent their interests against those of their constituents?

Geist: : No. That issue sat at the heart of my very public fight with former MP Sarmite Bulte. These are tough issues and I think it is critical that the process be both fair and seen to be fair. When you have MPs in decision making positions, they shouldn’t be seen to be aligning themselves with any single stakeholder group. It was for that reason that I proposed the copyright pledge. It didn’t say that politicians couldn’t take money from lobby groups – only that they couldn’t take the cash and then directly influence policy by sitting as Minister, Parliamentary Secretary, or on the relevant House of Commons committee.

p2pnet: Have you ever been approached to work with, or for, any of the entertainment or software companies?

Geist: : I talk with many groups and companies all the time. While we may disagree on certain issues, the complexity of copyright is such that your opponent on one issue, may be your ally on another.

p2pnet: Are you able to sit down and have a reasoned, and reasonable, discussion on copyright and other related issues with the people who make the corporate decisions?

Geist: : I am. There are some people who don’t want to talk, but they’re in the minority.

p2pnet: Is it acceptable for the purely commercial labels, studios and software houses to so easily use, and be an integral part of, police and other agency raids and enforcement operations the industries themselves usually initiate?

Geist: : I think true commercial piracy – the sort where commercial operations churn out infringing software or DVDs for sale and profit – is obviously wrong and the law should be used to stop such activities.

p2pnet: Is copyright ‘crime’ a crime at all?

Geist: : I think it’s fair to say that the commercial piracy described above is a crime. I don’t think that the non-commercial copying that we see on P2P networks falls into that category, however.

p2pnet: Would you agree that if the software and entertainment companies were to use p2p technologies for handling and distribution, a reduction both in counterfeiting and duplicating and in costs associated with physical product would follow?

Geist: : I think P2P represents a tremendous commercial opportunity for those groups. I think it has the potential to reduce distribution costs. I’m not sure that it would have an impact on commercial counterfeiting.

p2pnet: Should the cartels be allowed to have a definite presence in schools and universities via their so-called ‘educational’ programs?

Geist: : I think it’s up to the schools to ensure that their students gain a balanced perspective on these issues. Educators wouldn’t tolerate commercial messaging in other areas and shouldn’t here either. It’s essential that educators take that role seriously by educating their students on the full range of copyright issues including their user rights to use works without prior permission.

p2pnet: Do you believe people who share files with each other online are ‘thieves’ and ‘criminals’ as the CRIA, et al, claim?

Geist: : No.

p2pnet: Is file sharing really “devastating” (to quote the CRIA claim) the music industry and its various elements?

Geist: : I don’t believe so. I’m sure it has some impact, but it’s hard to know precisely what that impact is as there’s some evidence that the impact is positive, not negative. Regardless, the decline in sales that the major labels have experienced in recent years is almost certainly about a host of issues that have little to do with P2P, including more consumer entertainment choices, pricing, changes in the retail distribution of music, the decline of radio, and the releases being brought to market.

p2pnet: Do you think the wholesale price of between 60 and 80 cents for a single Big Four digital file is fair?

Geist: : I don’t know. In an open market, the market would set the price. Obviously people like NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer are skeptical that the market is truly functioning appropriately without unlawful and anti-competitive interference.

p2pnet: Does a download equal a lost sale?

Geist: : No. I don’t think anybody would argue that it does. Even the Copyright Board of Canada has valued a downloaded song as a lesser value that the CD version for purposes of the private copying levy.

p2pnet: Are file sharers and counterfeiters equally and jointly responsible for entertainmment and software industry downturns, as the CRIA and other trade-cum-PR units suggest repeatedly?

Geist: : I don’t think file sharers and counterfeiters should be equated – there is a significant difference between the two. As for industry downturns, I’m not sure that those industries are making those claims. For example, the video game software industry is enjoying enormous growth, while the movie industry is experiencing terrific revenues from DVD sales and other new licensing opportunities.

p2pnet: Should parents he held responsible under the law for something their children may, or may not, have done?

Geist: : Well, certainly not for something their children didn’t do. The better question is whether we should hold anyone liable to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for P2P activity. I think not – statutory damages provisions should be amended to address this misuse of the law.

p2pnet: Do you agree that blogs and bloggers are replacing the traditional media as disseminators of news and information?

Geist: : I’m not sure they’re replacing traditional media, but they are obviously having an enormous impact on the dissemination of news, opinion, and information. I think blogs often provide more timely, more informed analysis that you will find in the mainstream media and thus either replace or complement MSM coverage. I also think that we’re seeing a growing convergence between the two – newspapers are starting to look a lot like blogs – take the redesign of the Globe and Mail as an example.

p2pnet: Do you think they’re having, or will have, an influence on what the labels, studios and software makers do?

Geist: : I think bloggers are having an influence on all aspects of society, including public policy and corporate decision making.

p2pnet: Do you think Canada will ever be in the same situation as the US where even young children will become CRIA victims?

Geist: : I hope not. I’m hopeful that Canada can develop a model that benefits all stakeholders and does not resort to damaging litigation that serves no one’s best interests.

p2p news special / p2pnet:

Thanks to the unrelenting, multi-million-dollar Big Four anti-p2p campaign, they’ve been held up as as thieves and criminals by the corporate media corps.

Yet nothing has been stolen, no money has changed hands, not one of the 18,000 has ever been found guilt of anything, and the unimaginably rich Warner Music, Vivendi Universal, EMI and Sony BMG have never been able to uphold their claims that they’re being “devastated” by file sharers.

Nor have they ever been able to substantiate their assertions that a file shared equals a sale lost.

Like Patti Santangelo, Tanya Andersen is a single mother who’s being accused of the wholly fabricated charge of criminal file sharing.

Santangelo is refusing to admit she’s shared even one file and will be the first person to challenge the labels in an open court before a jury.

Andersen, who’s laid RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization) allegations of her own against the RIAA, also flatly denies its charges and since early last year, has been trying to get the labels to check her hard-drive as proof.

The Big Four ‘trade’ organization didn’t want to know. Period. But suddenly, it decided it did, after all, require access to her hard-drive - to all of it. But a judge ruled Andersen could name her own investigator who’d search only for specific files.

And the RIAA will have to pay his or her bill.

Meanwhile, Andersen – pictured here with Kylee, her daughter, and Tazz, their terrier/Maltese cross – used to buy music through BMG, but dropped the service when she was sued.

Now, in this Q&A with p2pnet, she describes how BMG Music asked her to return to the fold because she’d been, “such a great customer”.

They also promised her a free CD if she’d sign up again.

“I think it’s sad that all the beautiful and hard work of artists is being tarnished by these lawsuits,” she told p2pnet.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

p2pnet: You’ve been embroiled in a fight with the Big Four record labels for some time, now. Mark Eilers at their Tukwila, Washington, ‘Settlement Centre,’ claims you downloaded ‘illegal’ digital files. But you’ve said from Day One the allegation isn’t true. Do you have any idea how they decided to zero in on you?

Andersen: No, I don’t. There were a lot of things that went on with my computer during that month – I was down for a week and had to call Verizon to get me back on line. During that time, there was an employee that went in and did some things to my computer – worked my computer from their office; also having me go in and change my ip address several times. I also had a virus that month that I had a hard time getting rid of. I really have no idea. I just know that I never did what they’re saying I did.

p2pnet: Have you ever shared files?

Andersen: No.

p2pnet: Do you know how to share files?

Andersen: I’d heard about people file sharing before this lawsuit was filed against me. But if you told me to go into a program and do it, I wouldn’t know how. Through this lawsuit, I’ve had to educate myself through reading and talking to people to learn about how Kaaza works and about how file sharing works.

p2pnet: Your lawyer says in a, “sweeping and indefinite manner,” the RIAA lists 1,406 file names. This represents statutory damages of either $4,500 or $1,054,500. How much is the RIAA actually demanding from you?

Andersen: The Settlement Support Center that kept calling me told me if I didn’t agree to pay them that they’d be filing a huge lawsuit against me in Federal Court, and would sue me for hundreds of thousands of dollars. When I told them I didn’t do what they were saying, they told me they just don’t end these things and I’d better just pay. Or else. I kept telling them there is no way I did what they said, and could I please see the proof of what they were saying I did. They told me they couldn’t provide that to me at that time. It wasn’t something they did. That, when they filed a lawsuit against me, I could see what they had. He did finally tell me on the phone how many songs there were, named some of them, and told me the user name (which I’d never heard of). I continued to tell him I didn’t do what they were saying. They would just say they’d sue me for hundreds of thousands of dollars if I didn?t enter into an agreement with the Settlement Support Center to pay.

p2pnet: How much are they demanding from you?

Andersen: I’m not even sure, at this point, the exact amount they are suing me for. I just know it’s huge.

p2pnet: Have they told you which files they’re accusing you of sharing?

Andersen: When the Settlement Support Center called, they had told me the names of a few they were accusing me of. It was not until I got served the lawsuit and saw the exhibits that I found out what all I was even actually being accused of.

p2pnet: Have you considered paying to get the RIAA off your back?

Andersen: Nope. I don’t believe I should pay for something I did not do.

p2pnet: Your daughter, Kylee, is nine, now. Does she understand what’s going on?

Andersen: She understands that her mom is being sued, but isn’t sure what all that means. I’ve tried to keep a lot of it away from her. Even though I try that, she’s still heard some things. I found out one day that this stuff was affecting her more than I knew and that she’s heard some of it. One day, out of the blue, she asked me if those people are going to take her mom away and if I’d go to jail. She wanted to know if we’d still have a place to live and food to eat and would we be OK. It scares and confuses her. She keeps asking me if they’re still suing me.

p2pnet: Might she have shared files on your computer without you knowing?

Andersen: No. She was seven at the time – only a few months into the age of seven. She still doesn’t know how to even connect to the internet. She’s always had to ask if she does get on the computer. The computer is out in the living room, and always had been, where I can see it. It also had passwords on it. She gets on the computer to play with her store-bought kid software or has gone on children?s site occasionally, if I help her get on there. She doesn’t even know how to do that herself.

p2pnet: Is the RIAA action affecting her in any way?

Andersen: Yes. She’s scared they’re going to take her mom away for something she doesn’t understand. She’s worried if we’re going to be OK. Plus, she puts up with a mom who has more stress than normal, at times. I try real hard to keep that under control, but it’s pretty hard at times.

p2pnet: When they can’t get to parents, the RIAA is infamous for going after children. Do you know if it’s thinking about a suit against your daughter?

Andersen: No, I haven’t heard of that.

p2pnet: We understand you wrote US senator Ron Wyden and Congressman David Wu, and state senator Gordon Smith, all from Oregon, asking for their help both as an Oregon citizen, and ex-employee of the Oregon Department of Justice. Did they respond?

Andersen: They each responded with a letter that appeared generic in reply. They all told me that, as congress people, they couldn’t get involved in someone being sued in a lawsuit. I could tell by the letters that they didn’t even understand what I was talking about.

p2pnet: What do your friends and neighbors think of the law suit?

Andersen: Most think it is pretty insane and can’t believe this is happening to me. They know I didn’t download or share music.

p2pnet: Do you have any idea at all how the RIAA zeroed in on you?

Andersen: No, I don’t.

p2pnet: Are, or were you, a customer of any of the labels?

Andersen: Yes, I was. I bought CDs regularly and was a member of BMG?s music club. I ordered a lot of CDs from BMG. I cancelled my membership when this happened.

The weird thing is the other day, I received a phone call from BMG Music asking me to come back because I had been ’such a great customer.’ They told me if I signed back up, they’d give me a free CD. I told them No and they asked me why. I told them that maybe they should quit suing their great customers. They guy on the phone told me he didn’t even know they were doing that. (I’m sure he was just a telemarketer and it didn?t matter much to him.)

There are songs out now that I hear and love and would love to buy the CD, but when I see the recording company, I feel sick to my stomach and won’t buy it. It?s sad to me because music used to be something that would relax me and make me feel good – it was a huge joy in my life.

Now, knowing what I know, the entire industry has left me with a different feeling.

p2pnet: What would you say to any of the other people who are being victimized by the RIAA?

Andersen: People can make a difference. I believe that.

Believe in yourself and don’t let someone bully you into paying for something you haven’t done.

. .Stumble It!

He says he’s an advocate for the fans (sometimes called ‘consumers,’ sometimes called ‘end-users’, sometimes called the public)’ and ‘a music fan first, and everything else second’. And as Wikipedia sums it up, he’s been on CNN, CNBC, ABC’s Good Morning America, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Fox News O’Reilly Factor, as well as being widely quoted in a number of national publications.

Von Lohmann has an AB from Stanford University and a JD from Stanford Law School and in a world where lawyers are largely perceived as whores who’ll do anything for money, he stands out not only as someone who’s hard-core  – hard-core for user rights – but also as a genuine visionary at a time when the superlative is seriously over-played.

As the EFF’s senior staff attorney specializing in intellectual property, von Lohmann represented Morpheus owners Streamcast Networks in Grokster vs MGM.

His intelligence and commitment are deeply respected on all sides and as an expert in intellectual property matters, he’s represented programmers, technology innovators and individuals. He’s also involved in EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) efforts to “educate policy-makers regarding the proper balance between intellectual property protection and the public interest in fair use, free expression, and innovation,� says the foundation.

Before joining EFF, von Lohmann was a visiting researcher with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, zeroing in on the impact of p2p on the future of copyright. And before that, he was an associate with the international law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP, concentrating on transactions and counseling involving the Internet and intellectual property.

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p2pnet: Where do you come from?

von Lohmann: I spent my childhood in Southern California (most of it in “the OC”). I’ve been living in the SF Bay Area for most of the last 19 years.

p2pnet: Is lawyering part of your family background?

von Lohmann: No. My father was an engineer, my mother a waitress. Both are immigrants, arrived on these shores with just the contents of their suitcases, and managed to build themselves a pretty reasonable facsimile of the American Dream. I’m very proud to be their son.

p2pnet: Did you ask to join the EFF, or did they invite you?

von Lohmann: I applied for the job. Working for EFF was my dream job since my early days of law school. I’ve described my “conversion moment” in a post at Deep Links as part of EFF15 blogathon. In short, it was John Perry Barlow who inspired me, thanks to his now-classic article for Wired Magazine entitled “The Economy of Ideas.”

p2pnet: How would you describe your role as an advocate for common sense in the digital 21st century?

von Lohmann: I’d describe my role as an advocate for the fans (sometimes called “consumers,” sometimes called “end-users”, sometimes called the public). Intellectual property laws have always sought to strike a balance between owners and the rest of us, all in the name of the public interest. Unfortunately, there are more advocates paid to speak for the owners than for the fans. I’m just trying to right the balance a little. After all, if it weren’t for the fans and end-users digging into their pockets every day to pay for movies, music, software, books, newspapers and magazines, there wouldn’t be any “IP industries.”

p2pnet: Given your ongoing involvements, I doubt if you’re married. But you never know : ) So are you?

von Lohmann: Engaged to be married, actually.

p2pnet: You’re knowledgeable on software and you’re obviously technically inclined. Just how adept are you? And where did you acquire your skills?

von Lohmann: I’ve taken one college-level programming course, which I took while in law school for kicks. It made me realize that I don’t have the patience for debugging code (debugging legal arguments, on the other hand, I enjoy). Otherwise, I’m just an enthusiastic Mac user who tries not to hurt himself when playing on the OS X command line.

p2pnet: Do you use p2p applications for downloads? If so, which ones and for what kind of files? If not, why not?

von Lohmann: Not often. I use Bit Torrent once in awhile to download TV shows that my TiVo has missed and live recordings of my favorite bands. I’m a big music fan and audiophile, so I buy CDs and vinyl. Most of the mp3s floating around on p2p networks don’t have the kind of audio quality I want. Plus, I like the physical object – I actually miss the physical heft of a vinyl record (and recently bought my first turntable in 20 years to get back to it). I’m an old fashioned music fan, I guess.

p2pnet: Do you have time for any serious interests on the side?

von Lohmann: When it comes to hobbies, I’m a music fan first, and everything else second. Those secondary hobbies include indoor rock climbing, sea kayaking, and scuba diving.

p2pnet: What’s your favourite band? What’s your favourite piece of software? And what’s your favourite company?

von Lohmann: Favorite band: Tori Amos. Favorite software: iTunes (which does a surprisingly good job managing my 15000+ song music library). Favorite companies: small American high end audio companies, like Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, Pass Labs, Vandersteen, Wilson Audio, that continue to make equipment that serves the music first.

Most Americans don’t know that some of the greatest stereos are made by American tinkerers!

p2pnet: How does it feel to know you’re a major, and highly respected, player in a world where all too often, only money and political influence decide who’ll speak and who’ll be listed to?

von Lohmann: It’s a great honor and privilege to get paid to work on issues because you believe in them, rather than because a company needs someone to push its interests. If I won the lottery today, I’d come to work tomorrow. How many people can say that? I am grateful to EFF’s supporters every day for making it possible.

p2pnet: What was the most satisfying case you’ve been involved in?

von Lohmann: Ironically, it wasn’t a cyberlaw case at all. While clerking for the federal district court in San Francisco, I worked on the constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 209, which eliminated affirmative action in public employment, public education, and public contracting. My judge, Thelton Henderson, declared the proposition unconstitutional, and while the decision was ultimately reversed on appeal, it remains the case I am most proud to have worked on.

p2pnet: Who’s your favourite ‘opponent,’ so to speak? And who’s your hero?

von Lohmann: I can’t name a single favorite “opponent.” Frankly, I’ve had the privilege of dealing mostly with sophisticated, smart people who work for the Dark Side. Many of them I like and respect personally. But the companies they work for are not in business to do the right thing, but rather to do the profitable thing. In a world of vigorous competition, the customer can often keep companies honest. Unfortunately, where the entertainment (and some parts of the software) industry is concerned, the reality of oligopoly means that the right thing and the profitable thing are increasingly far apart.

As for my heroes, I’d give the nod to the entire EFF Board of Directors – Larry Lessig, John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, Brewster Kahle, Brad Templeton, Pam Samuelson, Joe Kraus, Dave Farber – each is a visionary, each has made a commitment to give back to the public good after finding success in their professional lives. Oh, and Joss Whedon. I’m a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

p2pnet: Have you ever had invitations from anyone in the movie, music or software industries to work for them?

von Lohmann: No.

p2pnet: Will you ever go into private practice, and if you so, in what area?

von Lohmann: I was in private practice at a big corporate law firm in San Francisco for two years. I have no current plans to return to private practice, but you never can tell.

Of ‘piracy’ and ‘pirates’……..

p2pnet: In your opinion, are the entertainment and software industries truly being “devastated,” as they claim, by file sharing?

von Lohmann: The movie industry is clearly not being “devastated” – in fact, they’re enjoying some of their most profitable years in history. Similarly, I see no evidence that the software industry is being “devastated.” There is plainly more than enough incentive today for people to continue investing in the software industry. When it comes to the music industry, I think we simply don’t have enough data to know how much (if at all) file sharing has contributed to the recent downturn. But even the music industry can’t plausibly claim to be “devastated”. Frankly, I’m guessing a lot of airline industry executives would be happy to trade jobs with their record industry counterparts. Plainly, lots of what’s ailing the music industry has nothing to do with file-sharing.

In the long run, I’m certain that file-sharing (and the internet generally) will be a huge boon to the entertainment industries. After all, for a century, every new technology that the entertainment industry started out attacking turned out to be a huge new business opportunity. The player piano, phonograph, broadcast radio, jukeboxes, cable television, VCRs, cassette decks, you name it. I see no reason to presume that the internet will be the first technology in a century that will be an exception to this rule.

p2pnet: Do you think someone who downloads a music or movie file is in effect negating a sale somewhere, some time?

von Lohmann: When tens of millions of Americans are downloading music, one of them will support virtually any proposition. Doubtless, some file-sharers are downloading as a substitute for purchasing. For others, the downloading is driving more purchases. Many policy-makers and economists think that the important question is which response is predominant. I think that’s looking at the wrong thing. After all, if downloaders were given the opportunity to pay a reasonable, up-front, flat fee in exchange for the freedom to download whatever they like, that would create an altogether new way to monetize downloading.

We at EFF have proposed something like this, known by copyright lawyers as “voluntary collective licensing“. Instead of asking whether downloading sells more or fewer CDs, shouldn’t we all be talking about the new business models that might capitalize on this global phenomenon that is clearly great for the fans?

p2pnet: Is it reasonable to mention both ‘pirates’ and file sharers in the same breath – or, put another way, are they components of the same problem, as the entertainment and software industries suggest?

von Lohmann: I think the use of the term “pirate” is inaccurate and unfortunate. “Piracy” has traditionally been used to refer to infringers who are selling counterfeit copies for personal gain. Lumping typical downloaders into the same group as for-profit pirates is a mistake – they are not the same people, are not driven by the same motives, and are a great deal more diverse in age, income, and circumstance.

Pirates are never your customers. Downloaders, on the other hand, are the core of music fandom – they are, like it or not, the core demographic that the music and movie industries will need to please in the future.

Are parents responsible for what their kids do?

p2pnet: Do you agree the music, movie and software cartels are bent on dominating and, ultimately, completely controlling online sales distribution in the same way they control offline markets? If you do, will they succeed? And if not where, in your view, do they stand and where are they headed

von Lohmann: Certain parts of the entertainment industry – the major motion picture studios, the major record labels – are still extremely afraid of losing their grip on distribution. After all, these businesses have depended for decades on controlling the distribution bottleneck. These are the dinosaurs of the copyright industries, and they’ll soon be facing lots of smaller players who will be quicker to adapt to the digital world. The dinosaurs will either need to evolve to become birds (smaller, lighter, more nimble) or go extinct.

Other parts of the entertainment industry – like BMI and ASCAP, as well as some of the MMO publishers – are better suited to making the transition to a world where controlling distribution is not as important as licensing and subscriptions.

p2pnet: Do you agree with the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, IFPI, etc, etc, that people who use the p2p nets to share files with each other are criminals and thieves?

von Lohmann: See my answer above about “pirates.”

p2pnet: Is it acceptable to make parents responsible in a financial or other sense for something their children may, or may not, have done?

von Lohmann: The increasing number of lawsuits against the parents and grandparents of alleged file-sharers is a particularly unfortunate part of the recording industry’s litigation campaign against music fans. There is no precedent in copyright law for holding parent responsible for the infringing activities of their minor children. If the question ever went to court, I believe the RIAA would lose. Unfortunately, the RIAA has made it clear that, if a parent fights the lawsuit, they will simply sue the child directly.

Most parents are unwilling to expose their kids to that kind of ordeal, so they settle.

The cartels and the law …….

p2pnet: Do you think it’s OK for the cartels to ‘work’ so closely with various enforcement agencies in the US and around the world in raids and other operations?

von Lohmann: I can’t speak for what goes on in other countries. In the US, law enforcement has (to the best of my knowledge) largely restricted their involvement to situations involving commercial piracy. I have no problem with that – where commercial pirates are concerned, copyright owners should have effective remedies to seize counterfeit goods before they disappear out the back door. Of course, if we have US Marshals breaking down college dorm room doors to nab file-sharers, the issue would be different.

We’ve been watching law enforcement tactics closely, especially in the cases involving the operators of Bit Torrent trackers, where the tactics appear to be more heavy-handed.

p2pnet: The movie and music industries in particular seem able to have their wants acted upon at the highest government levels. Is it reasonable for them to be able to wield this kind of influence?

von Lohmann: For better or worse, in a modern democracy the political process is responsive to two things: votes and money. For most of our modern history, the copyright industries have dominated the political process with the latter. That won’t change until the fans start making a difference with the former. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, there’s a limit to how much lobbying and political organizing EFF can do. But there are others who are beginning to engage on a more political level. I don’t believe that a majority will ever be “single issue copyright voters.” But even a small minority, with targeted donations and smart political operatives, can bring down members of Congress who vote against them on the issues they care about.

p2pnet: Is copyright ‘crime’ on a par with, say, robbing a bank? Is it a crime at all, and it you think it is, at what kind of level should it be ranked?

von Lohmann: I think most people see commercial piracy as a crime. Perhaps not as bad as robbing a bank, but certainly worthy of criminal sanction. As for noncommercial infringement, I think most people don’t view it as a crime. Fortunately, the US Attorneys around the country appear to agree – there have been virtually no federal criminal prosecutions of “garden variety” file-sharers. The worst possible thing for our civil liberties would be a world where 60 million American music fans are suddenly potential criminal suspects – thanks to downloading music! That would put more Americans “under suspicion,” and thus subject to government coercion, than ever before in our nation’s history.

p2p and distribution …….

p2pnet: How would you greet the contention that if the software and entertainment companies were to start using p2p technologies for handling and distribution, they’d see both a reduction both in counterfeiting and duplicating and in costs associated with physical product?

von Lohmann: If the p2p revolution has taught us anything, it’s that the fans (assisted by technology developers) do a better job distributing music than any record label or retailer ever has. The only problem is that the artists and rightsholders aren’t being fairly compensated. It seems to me that if we concentrate on the compensation problem, and leave the distribution to the fans and new technologies, everyone would end up better off. As I mentioned, EFF has a proposal for how to solve the compensation problem, and it looks as though the record labels may actually be on the verge of experimenting with something similar in the UK by giving blanket licenses to the subscribers of PlayLouder.

p2pnet: ‘It’s only business’ is a popular justification for enterprises or individuals to do something the average person believes is wrong. With that in mind, is it OK for companies, such as Sony, with a major presence in all camps, to be part of the sue ‘em all movement on the one hand, and to be making and marketing equipment – camcorders and burners, for example – used by the people they’re accusing of being unconscionable thieves, on the other?

von Lohmann: It’s a strange place that many technology giants find themselves in. Both Sony and Microsoft are building technologies that help people to make and distribute copies, on the one hand, and are also building DRM systems to restrict what people can do with content, on the other. But you have to remember why technology companies are willing to play ball with Hollywood: because Hollywood threatens to play favorites, releasing their next-generation formats only to those who satisfy their DRM demands. That dynamic can be directly traced to the incredible concentration of market power that we see in the music and movie industries. If we had 5,000 small, competing movie studios, they’d be in no position to tell the technology industry how to build the next DVD player.

p2pnet: Do think there’s room for commercial p2p companies such as StreamCast and Grokster and the studios and labels to sit down together to resolve their differences?

von Lohmann: We’ll see. The trouble, of course, is that p2p file-sharing technologies can be designed and distributed anywhere in the world by virtually any reasonably qualified programmer. That makes it hard to imagine that negotiations alone will resolve the P2P dilemma.

And lastly …….

p2pnet: If you were able to get the movie studios, record labels and software companies to pay honest attention, what would you say to them?

von Lohmann: It’s important to remember that not all of these industries are in the same boat.

To the movie and software industries, I’d say “enjoy your huge profits, but remember that the only way to stay ahead in a Darknet world is by continuing to give customers products that can effectively compete with free.”

To the music industry, I’d say “the p2p horse is out of the barn, so let’s talk about how we can get you fairly compensated for the sharing that is going to continue regardless.”

p2pnet: Do you think it’s acceptable for elected politicians to so obviously accept benefits from the entertainment and software conglomerates, and to so obviously (and actively) represent their interests?

von Lohmann: See my response above about the politics of copyright.

p2pnet: Are the record labels fair to be wholesaling ‘product’ at 65 cents per and up? And should companies such as Apple be sitting still for such charges?

von Lohmann: As in all markets, there’s a price point that maximizes total revenues. I think anyone can see that, in a p2p world, price has to be less than 99 cents per song. After all, Yahoo! is already offering you “all-you-can-eat” music for $5 per month.

p2pnet: Commercial p2p companies such as MashBoxx hope they’ll be able to bridge the gap between ‘consumers’ (as opposed to ‘customers’) and the labels and movie companies. Do you think they’ll succeed?

von Lohmann: We’ll have to wait and see. As a team of Microsoft engineers pointed out in the now-classic 2002 Darknet paper, if you’re going to compete with free, you have to offer the customer something better than what they can get for free. More DRM, restrictions, and interoperability hassles are not the answer. We’ll see what MashBoxx and Snocap will be allowed to offer by the record labels.

p2pnet: Should the cartels be allowed to have the kind of presence and influence that they do in schools and universities?

von Lohmann: I think it’s a great idea to educate younger people about copyright and the difficult policy issues at stake in the debates. Of course, that’s not what the entertainment industries have in mind when they stress “education.” Instead, they want kids to be told, at the youngest possible age, that copying is “stealing.” Our copyright laws have never been that simple, nor the issues so black and white. I would be thrilled if our high school and college students started thinking critically about copyright laws, how they are made, what purposes they serve, and whether they are currently set at the right level. I’m absolutely confident that, in an honest debate about copyright law, students will almost unanimously side with the fans against entertainment companies.

p2pnet: And lastly, do you have anything you’d like to say to anyone who reads this?

von Lohmann: If you care about these issues, please consider joining EFF. We are a member-supported nonprofit. Without the annual contributions of our members, our work would not be possible. So if you think the fans deserve more of a voice against the big media companies, please join!

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win

- Mohandas Gandhi