Please stop misrepresenting filesharing as a crime. It’s not**; however much you’d like to wish it were.

Crimes:
Murder, arson, robbery, assault, DUI etc. Prosecuted by the state. Punishable by death or imprisonment.

Civil infractions:
Liable, slander, breach of contract, copyright infringement etc. Sued by individual legal entities. May lead to the award of damages under tort.

Please spare us your ethical analysis of what you consider to be right and wrong. Centuries of legal precedent does it much better than you.

**For non-commercial reasons, anyway.

(sigh) You can’t make this shit up.

We are talking about ruining your life.

There is music in the public domain – such as recordings of church choirs which were never copyrighted. Considering how easy it is to be trapped in copyright infringement, this is a solution.

do you have permission from the copyright “owner” to use that as your nickname?

we’re still waiting to hear from Sam I Am on the same query.

In a true capitalist market, the price the market will bear for a consumable will settle marginally above it’s cost of manufacture. If I believe you are making an excessive profit margin, I can choose to compete with you, taking a smaller profit on the basis that the lower end price will attract higher sales. Likewise, so can my competitors, until the profit margin is squeezed as tight as anyone will bear.

Because of this mechanic, society has developed restrictions which attempt to allow a degree of protection for new ideas. Patents and copyrights offer a limited degree of protection from competition to allow new ideas an opportunity to flourish for a specific window of time after their creation.

Unfortunately for the music industry, the ‘cost of manufacture’ of music, in a digital sense, is nominally zero. To supply another with a copy of a small digital file is such a trivial undertaking that it would be difficult to calculate how many thousandths of a cent it costs. At this point, attempting to attach a profit margin becomes ludicrous.

That is why the music industry cannot win this fight. They are basically trying to compete with altruism. Filesharers are under no individual obligation to allow uploads. Indeed, many don’t. But those that do, do so for several reasons. First and most obviously, they recognise that without uploaders, p2p could not survive. Many get a great sense of satisfaction from helping others to acquire new media. Some simply enjoy knowing that they are helping to destroy a distribution cartel that, through it’s actions, has shown itself to be morally bankrupt and fully deserving of oblivion.

Technology is not going to save this failing business model, it will end it. For every attempt to legislate or to monitor, there are an army of volunteers who make it their personal mission to restore freedom of expression. But there are some trends which are certain to continue. Bandwidth will increase. Storage costs will fall. Music is comparatively small. In the near future it will be possible to download and store the whole back catalog of everyone anyone’s ever heard of, in its entirety, with trivial effort. Or copy it. Or share it with your friends. When that day arrives the ‘industry’ will be reduced to what it can produce day-on-day.

Of course artists deserve to be compensated. But desperately trying to legislate your industry back into an ill-deserved position of absolute market strangulation is not going to fly. As far as I can see, blanket licensing is about the only plausible, sustainable model left to try.

Old Music is dying. I just wish it would hurry up already.

The issue is distribution. If I buy an tomato at the store, I can take that tomato down the street and re-sell it legally. Or give it away, or split it into pieces. Or make tomato sauce out of it and do the same with that derivative work, etc. I had it, did something with it and now I don’t have it anymore.

But digital media changes the game. If I buy a physical medium like CD or an album, tape, etc., I can legally re-sell it, or give it away. (Splitting it up gets harder because it renders the physical medium useless). But the law does allow me to make an electronic version of that medium to backup the physical medium or to time or place shift the consumption of the data stored on that medium for my own use. That’s called fair use and the courts have sided with that.

The big media companies have always fought the ability to make that backup copy or time/place shift the consumption. They sued Sony over the VCR because of it and Sony won. (Now the shoe’s on Sony’s other foot and they don’t like it much but you reap what you sow). But it is legal.

But copying the medium and re-selling it or giving it away while keeping the original is not fair use, never has been, never will be. That is called distribution and unless you are authorized to do that it is illegal. No amount of “bits are be free” or “it’s free publicity” or “it’s for the good of mankind” will change the fact that it’s illegal.

The wrong thinking in the argument is the support for the way that the media industry has tried to subvert and slow down that fair use. If the RIAA really wanted to stop that piracy they would go for criminal rather than civil cases. Their problem is that there is a much higher standard for evidence in a criminal case and the law doesn’t recognize “making available” a criminal act. You have to show proof that actual unauthorized distribution took place. And you can only recoup actual damages, i.e. $1 per track. They know they can’t meet the higher standards so they do this in civil court. You want to stop pirates, show them coming out of their houses in handcuffs.

The other issue is the move by the media companies to “choke off the distribution at the pinchpoints (ISP’s)”. Technologists are not dumb. They have always found a way around whatever obstacle that has prevented the flow of bits. And they are vocal. When Comcast tried to “choke off the distribution at the pinchpoints” the animal awoke and it was loud. That one act may have been the thing that saved Net Neutrality better than any other argument could have. Or when it was shown that AT&T bleeped out comments from a performer during a concert and the reaction was swift and brutal (big companies DO NOT like to issue apologies). I have no doubt that any attempt at “choking” anything off will be bypassed and derided, voted down and ridiculed until the companies that try that submit to the consumer will. Just look at where DRM is heading.

Finally, iTunes was successful for a lot of reasons but I think the major one was this – they gave customers what they wanted. The media companies (particularly music) committed this crime on themselves. And fundamentally, the big 4 music labels are the biggest contributors to their own demise.

Napster was successful and spawned an entire P2P industry because it allowed people to do the one thing that the music labels would not – it allowed them to get that one track on the radio that they just had to have. The Top 40 is not the 40 biggest albums, it’s the 40 biggest SINGLES. The radio stations (paid for by the labels) plays singles. And people would hear Baby Mo Mo’s latest TRACK and would just have to have it. But they didn’t want to have to get the other 12 not so good tracks and pay $18 for the privilege of getting the one. So they turned to P2P.

Apple saw this (I may be attributing too much intelligence to the lightening that struck this board room discussion, but I don’t think so) and proposed a way out of the mess to the labels. Let us sell individual tracks, fairly priced, oh yeah, and albums too, and we can win back sales where you now have piracy. Yes, yes, fine, whatever, we don’t know what else to do, says the labels. And over a billion tracks later iTunes is wildly successful. Sam thinks so too.

But the problem for the labels was that instead of getting their cut of a $18 sale, they were only seeing their cut from a $1 sale. A lot of people would buy the entire album, and some would maybe buy more that one individual track, but the vast majority was that one Baby Mo Mo track that was all over the radio. The labels cut themselves off at the knees to stem the loss of blood from piracy and amazingly continued to bleed.

The real reason that the labels are losing money is that they let the business model change without understanding the implications or having a solution to supplement the change. Instead of crying “it’s the pirates, it’s the pirates” they should be crying “We sell buggy whips and nobodies buying buggies!!!”

Either be special, adaptable, anchored, or be specialized. That or die.

NOTE: For more information, read “The World Is Flat”, chapter six. It will explain global economics to you with a lot of good information.

The essence of sharing lies in giving someone else the opportunity to experience or acquire something due to your actions. I can share my sports equipment so others can experience the game. I can share my time through charitable programs. (The big brother program, Habitat for Humanity) I can share information. (driving directions, teaching, stock tips, bomb instructions)

I believe file sharing falls within this last category. When I give directions to someone else am I illegally taking something from the map industry? If I teach a child math am I stealing from a paid tutor? In both circumstances I am sharing information that someone else would like to profit from. Audio and video files are merely forms of information, directions to create patters of light and the excitations of air molecules, that someone would like to profit from. There may be legal or moral complications when sharing some forms of information but it is sharing nonetheless.

“If one of us is to have it, the industry is entitled to one sale. If two of us are to possess it simultaneously, they are entitled to two sales. And so on. As consumers we have every right to share our stuff with others as long as we don’t kid ourselves and try to keep it for ourselves at the same time.”

Following this logic, I cannot teach math and retain the ability to do it myself. I cannot give directions to the mall and remember how to get their myself.

“I can share my LEVI’s jeans with you, too. I can wear them through the week and you can have them on the weekends. But we can’t share a pair of jeans at the same time, right? Now imagine if there was a web app I could go and download for free that replicated 3-D objects the way we can replicate copyrighted music or movies via p2p.

(Side note: this is not so far off, actually, scientists are working on 3-D printers that create perfect digital 3-D replica’s so brace yourself, it’s coming.)

Now imagine that I install this app, then scan in my brand new 501’s, and in a few seconds out comes a perfect thread-by-thread, rivet-by-rivet copy of my jeans, so perfect even Levi Strauss himself couldn’t tell the difference.”

Cotton and dye are not information. The market here is for cotton and dye. Those who can package cotton and dye in the most desirable form will profit.

On a side note, wouldn’t it be wonderful if anyone could design and share there own clothes and share those designs with their friends without having to build a factory and get distribution deals?

“It’s academic if filesharing reduces sales, enhances sales or effects sales not at all. We have no right.”

I’m of the school of thought that says my right to punch ends at the other guys face. If one is doing no harm, one has every right to continue to do no harm, so maybe that question isn’t academic.

“Taking something through an improper channel that you know perfectly well was intended to be sold is just wrong, folks, and we have no right to do it.”

Again, can I not teach my child math because a tutor wishes to profit from it?

“The online markets will sort out under digital distribution in the years ahead but only after piracy is brought under control. Digital commerce is our future and so there is no way the governments of the world can afford to allow piracy to become a norm. This is no “evolving market model” like the horse and carriage being supplanted by the car. You still want and you still take the exact same horse, you just don’t pay for it anymore. And if you were LEVI STRAUSS?

You’d know and finally understand that your hard-earned business was stolen through a sheer lack of ethics……..right out from under you.”

The online markets will respond to current market forces, you can wish to change those market forces but wishful thinking won’t beat a good business model. If I were Levi Strauss I would invest in a great new design website that would allow it to profit from current market conditions and I’d only bitterly blame human nature if I had already failed and decided to do nothing about it.

“If you don’t like the law, tell your congressman. But if you didn’t pay for it then in my book you have no right to possess it. Not morally. Not ethically. Certainly not legally.”

I am a proponent of civil disobedience and small government. If you can violate the law while acting in your best interests without physically harming anyone why not? I do not like others trying to impose their will upon me. If it is your position that a law is wrong, it is your moral and ethical duty to take a stand in some way.

“We complain about the cost of gas or milk or blue jeans, too, but you don’t see a crime wave hijacking gas stations or supermarkets or LEVI’s stores. Why? Because THAT takes balls. It takes courage and conviction – however wrong headed – to fill up your tank and then drive away unpaid.”

We don’t do that because taking something by force that no one offered you is not the same as copying information from the internet that is freely available, whether you like it or not.

“Humankind suddenly didn’t wake up one day and decide to throw out a thousand years of moral and ethical development and start to steal for a change. Only the p2p’ers did, the ones who think they are being clever, the ones raised poorly by their parents who saw no conflict with ‘three clicks and full ownership’ of the entire Rolling Stones catalog at no charge to anyone.”

Few p2pers believe they retain full ownership of what they have downloaded. Notice that most of the p2p community decries others profiting directly from downloaded works unless expressly permitted.

“The irony is that these organizations have sunk millions and millions and MILLIONS into education at colleges, trade shows, concerts, you name it, since 1999. The real truth is that the RIAA and the MPAA have bent over backwards for years trying to right this mess without resorting to legal means. The p2p community is just unwilling to learn how the law works in this area and the disaster we have today is the direct result.”

The RIAA/MPAA’s message was obviously unconvincing if everyone whom it was intended for rejected it.

“So Freethinker, at this point I support additional education and whatever measures need be taken to make the law clearer, but I will never support illegal activity as a market force just on principle. There are legal, fair ways to do this and in my view freeloading is not one of them. We need to return to paying for product so our people are paid for the work they do.”

Now on a side note, I do not download music or movies via p2p networks. I am sick of hearing about how these companies whine that they want it how it was. They believe they are entitled to succeed in an evolving market place whether or not they are willing to evolve with it. What they need to realize is no one is entitled to success. I am not, you are not and they certainly are not. I invite them to remove their heads from their rectums, discover what consumers are willing to pay for, and exploit that market before the existing markets are closed to them.

so now there can be no doubt: sam and his employers are now on the right side of the argument. ours.

but i’d still like to know: as jon wondered in another message to sam…Sam, do you have permission from the copyright “owner” to use the name “Sam I Am”? you’ve never answered that question.

Everyone can rest assured that Sam is a changed man now. After all he shared his ideas and by his own definition, he lost ownership/possession when he chose to share them. So now Sam doesn’t believe a word of what he wrote.

Can we turn “piracy” into business? Yes, by becoming the best “pirate” website on the net,.

bittorrent in a way “throws out” (makes available, really) all the pieces at once. it’s a crap shoot as to who gets what from whom as all pieces are being shared and sent and received in millions of different directions at the same time.

person A may get 50% from me; person B might get the other 50% from me. but then those two people might send and receive their needed 50% from each other or other people, and it will have nothing to do with me.

it’s not the same as creating a pair of jeans (as you claim is what the future holds – “it’s coming”. you can recreate those jeans exactly as many times as you like, and then give them to other people.

that’s your definition of sharing. and as you pointed out, it’s not the only definition of sharing.

but it doesn’t wash in the p2p world as i’ve just educated you about.

so my definition of sharing matches sam’s first “attribute” that’s the one that’s key because i can only know for sure that i’ve shared part(s) with others, but i can never be sure if i’ve ever actually shared the entire thing with any person(s).

that’s KEY, sam. you’ve skewed your own twisted definition to meet your needs and justify your opinion and those you work for (RIAA/MPAA, etc). if you understood anything about how p2p (bittorrent in particular as it’s by far the most popular p2p technology) you would realise you and your cohorts don0′t have a leg to stand on because it is absolutely impossible to prove that i directly gave all of my bits and bytes to a single person.

I will not even go into the industry’s despicable treatment of the rank and file artists who actually create all of the content the suits have so enjoyed exploiting over the years. There’s no glossing over that one Sam. In short, your high moral ground position on P2P would be laughable if it were not so hypocritical and plain repugnant.

This is an egregious moral abuse of our legal system, knowingly extorting citizens who can not afford to defend themselves in court, BECAUSE of that simple fact, to wit: knowing that the great majority of people will cave in simply due to the cost of defending themselves. It is unfortunate that only criminal cases assume you are innocent until proven guilty; civil cases actually force you to prove your innocence and the RIAA is coldly calculating the dollar value of suing all low-hanging fruit.

They know that most judges are severely uneducated in technological matters and are actively attempting to control which judges hear their cases because of that fact. They have self-admitted that their wide net will sometimes catch innocent fish, yet they show no morals at all in attempting to change that strategy. They are greedy and have admitted that they do not believe it is legal for consumers to make backup copies of legally-purchased media (it is) and they think everyone should be forced to purchase an extra copy to listen in differing formats such as on an MP3 player or in their cars (their own words!) They disagree with allowing “time-shifting” of content (TiVo) or allowing consumers to “media-shift” their content (copy from CD to tape,etc). They want you to purchase a new copy for every single device you own! These are undisputed facts from recent and not so recent cases, and goes to showing just what type of people we are dealing with. It is an abuse of our legal system, and proves the hearts of the RIAA principals. They are bad people, not the kind you would likely go and have a drink with after work, obviously not moral upstanding citizens like the great many of Americans are. They are preying and taking advantage of the weak and the poor.

Finally, you have never addressed the fact that the INTENT of downloading a song file is key to whether a law was broken or not. The words “Fair Use” are mysteriously missing from your arguments.

Realize that as a technology expert I (and many others) can and will do everything in my(our) extensive knowledge and experience to ensure that the Internet remains a free place by creating new encryption technologies, new tunneling protocols, new p2p software that utilizes proxy technologies to keep their contents secure and hidden. Yes, even from ISP’s and the government. The supreme court rather recently said in a landmark case that ANY technology is safe and is not illegal as long as there are “substantial non-infringing uses” available (their words) for that technology. This means that since Mozilla, Blizzard, and many other mainstream companies use p2p technology in their products for background file updates, among other things, there will always be a legal and justified use for p2p technology.

Thus, your Orwellian dystopia of a heavily-regulated Internet will never come to pass. I, for one, will work hard to ensure that. And I suspect that I know a tad bit more than you do in this arena. The person above me nailed it on the head: the RIAA believes that every song downloaded is a lost sale, even though that has been proven to be wrong. How myopic. How typical.

When you walk into a store, you notice a sign that says they prosecute shoplifters. Why do they do this? Is it because they don’t want people to have free access to goods and services? Is it because they’re legally entitled to a profit? No. It’s because by taking these tangible items from the presence, shoplifters are in fact removing inventory which the store owners have paid for. Such is never the case in P2P sharing. The only thing that makes it remotely illegal is the copyright act, but even that holds very little ground in the digital age, and it still doesn’t make it the same thing as theft. Copyright infringement, apparently, but not stealing.

He is not referring to the complete definition of ’share’.
From dictionary.com:

“3. to divide and distribute in shares; apportion.
4. to use, participate in, enjoy, receive, etc., jointly: The two chemists shared the Nobel prize.
–verb (used without object)
5. to have a share or part; take part (often fol. by in).
6. to divide, apportion, or receive equally.”

That means you can share an opinion. Share an idea. Share the flame of your candle. Share a love of music. Share a border.
It does not always mean you give up part.

Any hope of turning the clock back and somehow recreating the music business of the 60s, 70s and 80s is doomed. The market has spoken and there’s no money in selling recorded music any more. We the consumers simply don’t want to pay for it any more. Just perhaps there’s money to be made on the AllOfMp3 model and just maybe we’ll pay a small amount to avoid the hassle of file sharing. But it’s unlikely.

Now go down to your local jazz club. There are old guys there playing who don’t make any money doing it beyond enough to buy a couple of beers. They do it because they love music. So just because there’s no market for music doesn’t mean no music will be made. In fact while the mainstream business is floundering there’s more music being made by more people and listened to by more people than ever before. Ever in recorded history.

And finally, enough with the analogies. They don’t work. Music is not Levis.