‘It’s good to see the little guy win’
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- “My favorite news story of the week broke last Friday”, says Wayne Rosso on his The MusicVoid blog column.
“A 26-year-old kid named Allan Ellis (right) was cleared of conspiracy to defraud the music industry — whatever that means,” he says, going on, “A jury of 12 unanimously voted a ‘not guilty’ verdict after a 2-week trial at the Teesside Crown Court in the UK.”
You’ll recall Ellis had around $300,000 in his Paypal account when “UK police staged a dramatic raid on his house in 2007,” said p2pnet recently. “He was running a music site with some 200,000 site members. So the money must have belonged to the labels. Right? Goes without saying.”
Rosso continues >>>
There were a lot of colorful accusations thrown at Ellis by prosecutor Peter Makepeace referring to the defendant as a “cunning”liar. Makepeace appears to be quite the zealous defender of the music industry. I’m sure he has a bright future ahead of him in the private sector if and when he decides to leave public life. I can think of at least two organizations that would love to have him.
Meanwhile young Mr. Ellis’ lawyer claimed that back in 2004 when he first launched Oink, he had no idea that he was doing anything dishonest. I’m not so sure I buy into that one, Allan. Come on now, you didn’t grow up in a cave. And 5 years ago the whole world knew about the Napster and Grokster cases. But the old pirate in me is kvelling a little over the verdict.
I don’t know why I feel that way. I guess it just feels good to see the little guy win one. Let’s face it—it’s not that frequent. I have no idea how courts in the future will react to the verdict. Since it can’t be appealed I’m sure that it will set some sort of precedent.
Clearly the industry is not too happy with this. I don’t blame them. Seems like it could really come back to bite them on the ass. And how this affects Lord Mandelson’s Digital Britain proposals is anybody’s guess. It’s too early to tell. And what kind of ripple effect, if any, will this have in other European courts?
I think that the real message here is much more profound than legal precedent. What it tells me is that the average Briton is no friend of the music industry. And by extension all content owners. It’s as though the public is telegraphing their distrust via jury nullification.
Up to now the music industry has been looking for government to do their dirty work for them. But waiting for governments to act is often akin to waiting for Godot. And the one thing that politicians are influenced by other than special interest money is an angry electorate. They don’t want to piss off their constituency.
Instead of constantly using the stick to solve their problem, the industry has to start growing bigger and better carrots. A kinder gentler touch would be nice as well. The bottom line is that the business has to be a lot more consumer sensitive.
An industry that has been cut in more than half over the last 10 years and is consistently losing 10%-20% every year — consistently — with no end in sight has to do a lot of self-examination. The truth is that it’s not totally due to piracy. There are a lot of factors at play.
“And by the way, Apple can’t solve all their problems either,” Rosso adds in The MusicVoid.
“But that’s another story.”
(Cheers, Wayne, Jakomi and Jaysen)
..… and identi.ca
p2pnet music downloads – and stuff
The MusicVoid – Bringing Home The Bacon, January 19, 2010
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