In case anyone is not aware, there will be argued a fairly interesting case in the Supreme Court today in regards to file sharing technology. If this is stealing from anyone else’ diary, post a comment, and I’ll be glad to delete.
I’m not sure where I, myself, stand on this issue. MP3’s are pretty cool, and years ago snuck up on everyone. They will not be going away…
I suppose that the interesting argument that I want to see the Supremes resolve may not even be presented today… that of this issue’s relatedness to gun control…
I was listening to NPR’s discussion about the case this morning on the way into work. I couldn’t help but be struck with the fact that this issue is analogous to the logic thrown up by the NRA to defend gun manufacturers.
The technology itself(guns) can be used for both legal or illegal means; sharing non-copyrighted vs. copyrighted material(protection/second amendment vs. criminal activities/murder). Courts, IMHO, have routinely sided with manufacturers that they are not liable for the misuse of their products… this one seems pretty cut and dried, even though you grant the fact that this technology is overwhelmingly used for illicit purposes. Is this not equivalent to allowing 50cal. assault rifles to be marketed in this country for hunting? Any thoughts? I am not terribly opinionated about this issue, but would probably side with those that would not fault or prohibit the technology…
Thank you for stealing time from work to share this with us…. will keep an eye out.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware of this. This is one of those issues (file sharing) that I’m not too sure how I feel about.
I don’t use those services because I’m not keen on allowing others to access my computer remotely. That said, I’m not torn. When there is economic loss, trading in music is stealing. Of course, lots of people did this in the pre-internet days by taping albums or dubbing cassettes for friends. I know that I did. But, distribution was generally to one person and done on cassette tape — which means it was a 2nd generation recording at best. I usually ended up buying my own copy because the dodgy memorex cassette would eventually sound like crap. Record trading now is more of a problem though because with the advent of mp3’s/aiff/wav files and internet distibution, widespread trading near perfect copies of commerical recordings is easy and cheap.
However, I’d be a lot more sympathetic to the recording industry and artists in general if they would have taken this issue on from the beginning rather than waited. They already get money from the sale of blank cassettes and music CD-R’s, so what is it that they want? Also, if the record companies and artists would make their entire catalogs — particularly those recordings that are “deleted” or “out of print” — available for purchase via downloading as a mp3 or aiff/wav file, it would be a good start towards making file swapping less of a necessity.
Until that happens though, I don’t care if people swap files of material that is no longer being sold or not being sold by the copyright owner because nobody is suffering ecomonic loss. A lot of times, a recording is “deleted” or “out of print” because an insufficient number of units are being moved to justify continued manufacture. With downloading there is no longer that issue — there are just bandwidth and storage issues.
I tend to view myself as an amateur archivist as well…;)
… is an extremely useful technology. It should not be banned because some people are misusing it. Go after the outlaws rather than after the means. Quoting from the Economist’s lead article this week:
The Economist had even more praise in the Dec 2, 2004 issue which I’ll go find in my stack and get back to you with.
Bottom line, I think you are right, it is kind of like suing the manufacturers of handguns for murders committed with those weapons. Does not make sense, to me at least.
The problem the supreme court faces is that whatever decision they make will affect more than just P2P developers. The same ruling could technically apply to FTP developers, copy machines and the WWW itself (one can just click a link and download copyrighted material, such as a news article).
Another issue is consumer perception. The consumer is bombarded with (free) music on a regular basis via the radio, so many tend to think of music as a commodity. That is why movie downloads are not more prevalent.
A third issue is the universally low regard that music industry executives are held (Think of who Nirvana was singing about in the song “Rape Me”).
I tend to think it as the march of progress removing or marginalizing the middleman (the recording industry). Bands have greater freedom to market their material themselves via internet websites, streamcasting, iTunes and live shows. The only real loser is the middleman. It changes the paradigm somewhat, but some bands now are making more money off of live shows than via album sales.
Am waiting for bands to offer the full bonus. As you leave the venue after a concert, you can buy a legal MP3 recording of the entire show along with a link to a website where you can buy pics from that night. How’s that for storing some fun times and good memories?
the 50cal. has been around since the Civil War, and no one, I mean almost no one buys them.
It’s big, heavy, and very expensive to shoot. It’s not something you go plinking with. If a guy wants to shoot down a plane, he can use any high power weapon out there. Even a 50 is only good at certain distances, almost as equal with the other high power rifles.
It seems strange to me that this 50 cal thing, and I’ve been seeing a lot of lately, suddenly gets mentions after being on the market for over 145yrs.
I had never looked at it that way, but once I read the diary the light bulb went on! I certainly hope the Court doesn’t prohibit tech, I can’t say I’m big on file sharing myself, I tend to sample then buy but it’s invaluable to me for that. And also as a way to share out of print music, some of the bands I like go out of print in about a week and a half and as they’re not based in the US it’s really hard to find them in the second hand bin. Thinking about that, I remember one point where selling used dvds was being touted as the end of the industry…
That is the standard the Supreme Court set in the so-called“Betamax case”, back in 1984, when the Court held that the sale of Betamax video recorders (VCRs) to the general public did not violate the copyright laws because the recorders had “substantial non-infringing uses”.
The Court may or may not apply the same standard to Grokster. Some of the justices indicated during oral argument that they might change the “Betamax rule” even though there are “substantial non-infringing uses” in Grokster.
Grokster and Streamcast do not charge for their service, but make money from ads that appear on the screen, lawyers said.
Justice Antonin Scalia discounted the Betamax decision as a guide for the new case. Don’t “waste your time on this,” he advised Taranto. “This court is certainly not going to decide this case based on stari decisis,” he said, citing the Latin term for stay as decided, or sticking with precedent.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy also seemed to be unswayed by the arguments in favor of the file-sharing companies. Can you make a business out of “unlawfully expropriated property?” he asked. “That sounds wrong to me.”
Justice David H. Souter questioned whether the law should permit Grokster and Streamcast to help millions of users violate copyright laws. “Isn’t this a classic case of willful ignorance?” he asked.
Predictably, the Bush administration told the Court they want to shut the popular technology down, so they can protect the enormous profits of the fat-cat media companies:
The lawyer for Grokster and Streamcast urged the justices to stick with the “clear Sony rule.” “It safeguards legitimate uses” for a new technology, attorney Richard Taranto told the court.
It will be several weeks until we find out the Court’s decision.