Privacy or Piracy?

This is my first post to hawaiistories.com and my 5th day in Honolulu. I thought I would take the oppurtunity to address something rather controversial.

It seems the Music Industry and the Motion Picture Association are not too happy with the millions of people all over the world who are using their products without paying their dues. I'll admit I'm one of those people who loves to download and listen to MP3's rather than pay $19.99 for a CD and learn that the whole thing was crap. Now if I download the music and like it, then and only then will I go out and purchase the product. Same with movies, I like to download movies and watch them before I go out and spend $20 on a DVD or a VHS.

Now the various sectors of the Entertainment Industry claim that they are losing anywhere from 2% to a whopping 25% of the market that they previously monopolized. They say downloading movies and music is wrong and even worse, illegal!? But without a customer base, there is no market!

I don't see the difference between dowloading music VS. putting a cassete tape in the radio and pushing the record button whenever you hear a song you like. Well actually I do see the difference but I dont see the wrong in it. People are not stealing music and movies, we are "sharing" whatever movies and music might be in our private collections. If my friend lets me borrow a CD and make a copy of it, that is perfectly legal. But if two people (or two million people) from different parts of the world who have never met before decide to exchange their private movie or music colletions through an online sharing program, they are quick to call it piracy!

The Entertainment Industry is appealing to Congress and Senate (the Good Gov they payed for through all these years) in hopes of tracking down internet users who share movies and music online. They want to subpoena the information of internet providers to learn which customers might be exchanging their precious pirated products. They want to go strait for the users (their former customers) who have discovered the technology they hoped to keep secret for all these years.

So is it Privacy or Piracy? Should the technology work for us or them? I think it's clear what side of the line I stand on. What do you Think?

Comments

Welcome, James, and wow, quite a passionate debut!

On privacy, I expect one of the bigger cases would be the RIAA vs. Verizon. It's hailed by many as the first time Goliath (the RIAA) is challenging another Goliath (Verizon), rather than the little guy.

Even under the DCMA, technically ISPs get "safe harbor" (a.k.a. common carrier) protection — even if their networks are used to commit a crime, they are not liable.

However - and it's a big however - once the ISP knows a crime is being committed, the RIAA alleges (and some legal experts agree) that it must do something. ISPs feel "something" is shutting down the account in question (something that's happening more and more frequently, especially in the case of big-time file sharers). The RIAA wants their cooperation in an investigation to ultimately press charges.

The fact that the investigator is the RIAA and not government law enforcement is not insignificant. Telephone companies aren't liable for threats made over the phone, but they are expected (or compelled by subpoena) to help police, the FBI, and the like identify or locate the caller. The RIAA, as of yet, is not a government agency. Thank god.

On piracy? File-sharing isn't exactly piracy (which is usually large-scale unauthorized distribution for gain - and few file sharers are making money doing what they're doing)... but you're right, there is also a significant difference between filesharing and what you do with a CD player and a tape deck for your friends.

With file sharing, you suddenly have ten million friends... and they all get perfect, exact digital copies of the original.

It's important to note that taping "Friends" for your friend is not the same as making a copy for yourself, which is all that's covered under the oft-cited 1992 Audio Home Recording Act. But, it's also true that content producers and creators didn't do much about casual copying done with photocopiers, tape decks and VCRs. All technically forbidden, not "perfectly legal" as you might think. But when was the last time that Kinko's employee asked for your authorization letter from Random House?

Scale matters, though. You better believe Sony goes after mass-piraters who make a million copies of Spider Man and sell them in New York. But now millions of individuals can do the same thing with Mariah Carey's new CD from the comfort of their living rooms. User 'napsterrulez' might not be making a profit, true, but that's a million copies of "Charm Bracelet" that won't be bought.

Bottom line for now? The law is still fuzzy on where the line is drawn between "casual copying" and "piracy." So as it stands, I'd say, neither those who say it's wrong and those who say it's an unconditional right are correct.

And I admit, I love file-sharing MP3s. I haven't bought a CD in, quite literally, years. But. I'm not pretending I'm in the clear, nor gloating over "sticking it to the man" - you're damn straight file-sharing has deprived music stores and the labels of more than a few sales.

I don't know how it's going to turn out. I'm just enjoying the ride.

And yes, I'm fully aware that this ride may (if you believe the RIAA, but not everyone does) lead to the collapse of the music industry. And I'm not naive enough to believe that the death of corporate music is entirely a good thing - Sony needs Jennifer Lopez to bankroll Hilary Hahn, after all. (In fact, I think it was our very own Greg who noted that the 95 percent of the artists labels produce lose money - so we need The Backstreet Boys if we want nice studio recordings of real musicians...)

What's the worst case scenario? Who knows. Maybe that labels go under, and artists release and promote their music on their own (in which case, viva la Internet!). Sounds quite ideal... but musicians will no longer be able to quit their day jobs. And I sure wish some artists could make a living out of art.

What I find interesting is that the RIAA claims they're losing so much money, when I've seen more than one study showing that music purchases have increased since Napster.

Plus, the big money doesn't come from record sales anyway. It's all about the marketing, baby- the concerts, the dolls, the product endorsements.. commercial music isn't art, it's performance.

With regard to MP3s, I find that if I enjoy them enough, I'll go out and buy the CD. If it's just one track I like, I try to hunt down just the single.

I wouldn't mind being able to go to a site that held a library of music files, and download my own CD's worth (10-14 tracks) for, say, $10, provided I could have full access to those files for personal use. I don't want restrictions on use, or be forced into using proprietary software. I want to be able to copy the files onto CD to play in my car, or remix a song to play at a party.

What I like best about MP3s in free circulation is that I've been exposed to a good deal more music- types and artists- than before. So I'd suggest the music database I theorized above would have a great big streaming audio "listening station" where you can try before you buy.

Now, if only radio stations would knock off all the quasi-legal stuff they pull (moolah) and actually play some decent music for a change, the good artists might have a chance at quitting those day jobs.

I don't want restrictions on use, or be forced into using proprietary software. I want to be able to copy the files onto CD to play in my car, or remix a song to play at a party.

Absolutely. This is key. I like to imagine the AHRA would guarantee this, but I doubt it.

All modern VCRs comply with Macrovision copy protection, so you can't just copy one VHS to another. DVD players are regionally encoded, so you can't get Monsters, Inc. cheap in Taiwan and play it on your average U.S. home system. Eventually, the powers that be will come up with something for music CDs. Probably an entirely different, non-open standard. And that's going to suck.

(In fact, I think it was our very own Greg who noted that the 95 percent of the artists labels produce lose money - so we need The Backstreet Boys if we want nice studio recordings of real musicians...)

Actually, that number should be 99 percent. The music industry as a whole releases somewhere about 35,000 albums a year. How many of those 35,000 albums are by artists you'd even want to listen to? A very good chance, if you think about it.

I think people who get on soapboxes about how they get to use their entertainment should learn more about how artists get paid when all the bean counting is done -- and I don't mean watching Behind the Music.

If you're livlihood depends on getting $0.07 per song per album, you'd definitely want to think twice about trading a $1 worth of music on album that may only end up earning the artist $1,000 -- that's before deducting costs for marketing, producing, distribution, etc.

The Internet has pretty punched a series of holes into the way the music industry does business, which is a good thing considering the business model for the entire industry is predicated on failure. (Would a car company last if it depended on one line of vehicles to subsidize its entire fleet? No.)

There's too much money in the war chest for the industry to change its ways, but man -- the potential for the five labels to fuck up badly is so ripe. I think they'll ultimately get their way and piss off most of their customers in doing so. (As we've seen already.)

Thing is, I love the idea of file sharing. Most of the existing software out there sucks harder than my last boyfriend, but it's a great way for newer bands and bands from international markets -- Asia, Latin America, Europe -- to cross borders.

All that to say everyone in this issue right, but everyone seem to be aruging the wrong things.

Interestingly, Microsoft seems to think piracy prevention is doomed to failure.

Oh, oops. slash in wrong place.

doomed to failure.

Here's an interesting article by John Dvorak about file sharing and the music industry.

One Buck Forty or Die

I think John Dvorak hit the nail right on the head! It's not about morality, it's about economics. This is America and we want it faster, better and cheaper.

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