The Sultans of Spin
p2pnet.net News:- Some call it imparting spin. Others say it’s trying to turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse.
Either phrase means attempting to present a negative as a positive, and it’s something Big Four record label cartel reality adjustment specialists excel at, as Ed Felten points out.
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Entertainment Industry Pretending to Have Won Grokster Case
By Edward W. Felten – Freedomn to Tinker
Most independent analysts agree that the entertainment industry didn’t get what it wanted from the Supreme Court’s Grokster ruling. Things look grim for the Grokster defendants themselves; but what the industry really wanted from the Court was a ruling that a communication technologies that are widely used to infringe should not be allowed to exist, regardless of the behavior and intentions of the technologies’ creators. The Court rejected this theory.
Last week the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing (a video stream is available) on the Grokster aftermath. This was a chance for witnesses representing various interests to put their official spin on the Grokster ruling. All of the witnesses praised the ruling and asked Congress to wait and see what develops, rather than legislating right away. But different witnesses put different spins on the ruling.
The entertainment industry line was presented by Mitch Bainwol of the RIAA, Fritz Attaway of the MPAA, and Gregory Kerber of Wurld Media (a music distribution service). Their strategy was essentially to pretend that the Court did give the industry what it wanted, and that P2P technologies were now presumptively illegal unless they had cut licensing deals with the industry. They didn’t argue this directly, but the message was clear. For example, they tried to draw a line between “legitimate” P2P technologies and others, where legitimacy was apparently achieved by signing a licensing deal with major recording or movie companies.
For example, in response to concerns from Mark Heesen of the National Venture Capital Association about venture capitalists’ fears of financial ruin from investing in even well-intentioned communication technology companies, Mr. Kerber said this:
It’s very clear how you get investment. The rules are there. We’re a P2P — we’re a real peer-to-peer — it’s centrally controlled, we can control that … we can respect the copyright holder’s wants during — through a contractual process.
And the way that investors realize that is when we go out and get deals with the record labels, movie studios; and … the venture capitalists do their due diligence, they call and they find out that … the content owner of these assets [says] yes, we will allow this to be transferred and distributed and sold … within — on the network.
So … it’s very, very clear. If you have a contract with a major label, indy label, movie studio, publisher, what they have said is, we will allow the content to be sold in this manner across our network. So I’m a little confused by — there’s an absolute clear path for an investor to understand what’s right and wrong in the process.
It’s a simple message. Investing in technologies that have been blessed by the entertainment industry: right; investing in other technologies: wrong.
But it’s not what the Court said. The Court rejected the proposition that P2P or other communication technologies can exist only at the pleasure of the entertainment industry.
Despite this, we can expect to hear more of this rhetoric of “legitimacy”. And when P2P technologies continue to exist and be popular, we can expect calls for legislation to control the scourge of “illegitimacy”.
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August 4th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
“…but what the industry really wanted from the Court was a ruling that a communication technologies that are widely used to infringe should not be allowed to exist, regardless of the behavior and intentions of the technologies’ creators. The Court rejected this theory.”
Thank goodness the court has at least some semblence of sanity. Take bittorrent for example. It’s just a protocol really. HTTP is a protocol, and can be used to infringe (and often is). Should we thus get rid of HTTP? Same with FTP. Make a really stupid law like the entertainment industry wants, and suddenly it’s not just the p2p software creators that have to worry, but pretty much anyone and everyone that makes and application that communicates over the internet would be at risk of frivilous lawsuits, no matter how that application goes about doing it. Why not just shut down the internet altogether while were at it? I bet the industry would not mind that at all.
August 5th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
Seems p2pnet likes to attack Wurld Media and I hate to call you out on this but,
Is it because of your advertising relationship with Wayne Russo and Blubster? .
Plablo Santo the developer behind Blubster is also the developer behind Mashboxx and Wayne Russo is the Mashboxx CEO and Andrew Lack a Sony VP set up operation Tapas to legitamise p2p and got Pablo and Wayne to set up MashBoxx.
Wayne has also publicly denigrated Peer Impact. (Wurd Media’s p2p network).Mashboxx still hasnt seen the light of day and Peer Impact is well out of the gate anouncing they are out of beta today.They must be hurting waynes bussiness plans if he has to stoop to trying to deride the competion.
Also p2pnets’s other advertisers like Bearshare ,Warezp2p are creating paid download models for thier networks and Bearshare are the poster boys of Intent Mediaworks .
I used to think p2pnet was a place to get well balanced p2p news but unfortunatly my opinion has changed .
August 13th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
Rumor is Mashboxx has no technology Wayne has been launching for 18 months they are saying it will be another 18……..