December 22, 2004

• Eventually the movie / TV torrent scene will mirror the current state of MP3 sharing: several slow, decentralized networks marked by trojans and corrupted or sabotaged files. Of course, the RIAA didn't have to wreck Napster (or Audiogalaxy, or the many other services they shut down before Gnutella and Morpheus/KaZaA came along) to do any of this. In the end, it wasn't suing people or shuttering services that made the MP3 scene what it is today—it's the proliferation of bad files. As has been pointed out previously, the goal of the RIAA and the MPAA isn't to shut down all filetraders, no more than the goal of a retailer is to completely eliminate shoplifting and employee theft. Past a certain level, you reap diminishing returns, and to stop filetrading altogether is a fool's game. The real goal is to make it difficult or unpleasant enough that most people, offered the choice of filetrading or legitimate purchase, will choose the latter. This is why Usenet has remained relatively unscathed despite its longstanding reputation as a haven for warez, movies and music—because the average 14-year-old has no idea what Usenet is, let alone knows how to get Blade: Trinity off it.
• Pesce does have a point. People are already moving to decentralize BitTorrent, and others have done the work to make messaging completely anonymous and deniable at the same time. The only factor that will slow the combination of the two will be the high level of cryptographic expertise needed on the part of the programmers. Most people with the proper skills are academic researchers or NSA employees. As for substantial non-infringing uses for p2p, particularly BitTorrent, how about this one: Using it to quickly and widely distribute video footage from public demonstrations and events, to ensure a public record of what happened so that authorities cannot falsely claim that demonstrators attacked police or were out of control, documenting police brutality and non-broadcast comments by politicians. About a week after I thought of that, in response to the lead-handed tactics of the NYPD surrounding the GOP convention, Blog Torrent showed up. Obviously I was not the only one.
• http://www.bitoogle.com/ Now, someone who already has season 2 of Six Feet Undr get on there and start seeding so I can get above 2k/s, this is ridiclous. And by tat I mean.. stealing is wrong.
• Yes, and copyright infringement is not stealing.
• I liked to use suprnova to catch up on TV shows by downloading earlier seasons, and luckily I bookmarked alot of the torrent sites I used, but this is a shame in that it will slightly set back how much I pirate bad movies.
• Yes, and copyright infringement is not stealing. Do you like to get paid for what you do?
• First you have to answer, what is it that artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc. get paid to do? What product or service do they deliver? The answer's very complex, and speaks to why copyright and intellectual property rights are such a mess right now.
• What product or service do they deliver? Umm, what?
• Don't even think MPAA/RIAA won this round. Suprnova went down willingly (don't know about torrentbits though). They can have leechernova once it became a "grab it an run" mentality over there I stopped using it. p2p isn't going anywhere in fact I would say thy have pissed a lot of people off. Unless they can figure out a way to pull the plug on the internet, p2p is here to stay and they should embrace these new technologies rather than sue countless people to fund their legal defense fund cause this thing they do just isn't working.
• Umm, what? I rewrote this about five times, and so this may not be very clear. I apologize in advance, but it is a complicated issue—at least, it seems so to me. When you buy a movie on DVD, what are you purchasing? A piece of plastic, if you think of it from a certain standpoint. A plastic disc with a picture on it and an aluminium stratum containing certain etched markings. Its unit cost was probably around 10 cents. It is almost exactly the same as millions of other plastic discs with aluminium strata. Surely, then, you wouldn't pay $20 for one disc, when so many others retail for far less? And yet people do, not because the physical good is of higher build quality or anything quantifiable; it's because of the information contained within. No one in their right mind would bankroll the production of a feature film because they wanted to watch it later, and yet the majority of the costs of making a feature film are borne before a single copy of the movie is ever made. Thus, by the time opening weekend comes along, the movie studio is already looking at a loss in the millions of dollars. The only way to recoup that loss is to restrict the transmission of the creative property it's created, and force people to pay to get past the gates. Now that the internet has made it possible to bypass the gates, publishers and movie studios are left with a major problem: how do we get people to pay for our stuff if we can't control who watches it? But you can see the problem; when you plunk your $20 for a DVD or a CD, you're not paying for a piece of plastic. But you're not buying intellectual property, either; that's about as plausible as paying for an emotion or an idea. Perhaps you're paying for access to intellectual property, for that's the only thing publishers have control over. In the system of ten years ago, access was enforced through the posession of a plastic disc or a videotape; they were like keys to the castle. But in the age of the internet, the walls of the castle have been knocked down, and thus there's no value in access. So, in today's world, if you put down $20 for a DVD, what are you buying? I honestly don't know. In some nebulous way, I suppose I'm compensating the filmmakers for making the movie I've just bought, but the way the contracts are laid out, that's not how it works. I'm not really paying for the good, because I don't care whether the movie comes in the form of a DVD or an XviD file (at least, not very much). I'm not really paying for a service, since I'll see a reproduction of a performance and not the performance itself. Furthermore, by watching the movie, I'm not somehow depriving someone else of being able to watch said movie, like I would if I were at a sold-out performance of a play. Nominally I'm paying for the right to see the movie, governed by copyright law. But copyright law is murky, especially in the light of new technologies. Suffice it to say I don't have to pay the $20 for access, and thus there must be a reason why I would even when other alternatives are available. Currently it's because it's illegal. But is that all there is? Why?
• Do you like to get paid for what you do? A fantastic oversimplification. The vast majority of that which is traded on the internets wouldn't have been purchased anyway. Want evidence? How about the industry's own numbers referenced in this Lessig lecture. Now, if the question is: is it right for people to download everything they like and not buy anything, then we can have a conversation.
• I just thought I'd point out that Blizzard's World of Warcraft beta was distributed using BitTorrent and that they're update manager is their own (really sucky) BitTorrent client. Just one example that P2P does have a legitimate place.
• And I downloaded Knoppix from a torrent about a month ago. Bit Torrent is an incredible technology with tons of potential. I wrote this a few days ago in response to the MPAA's most recent crusade: I have over 10,000 songs on my hard drive. It works out to over 60 GB. Some of it is the product of Soulseek or Bit Torrent. Most of it is either ripped from my dad's large CD collection or ripped from borrowed CD's, either from the library (much of it) or from friends. That is a fuckton of music, I'll admit, and I actually enjoy the vast majority of it, but I find I don't love a lot of it. The stuff I do end up loving I tend to buy anyway, that is, if I can afford to, and if I enjoy a decent chunk of an artist's body of work. I buy more CDs now (now that I have a hard drive to rip 'em to) than I did before, easy. So I wonder, sometimes, about the ethics of sharing music. The legal I don't care much about. In Canada it's still okay to share music over the Internet anyway, so the issue is a bit moot, at least for now. I do wonder about the ethics, though. Is sharing a bad thing? In my case I wouldn't think so. I both listen to and buy more music as a result. Sure, stuff I download or rip that I later determine to be crap won't ever be purchased, but it wouldn't be anyway, so what's the difference?
• A fantastic oversimplification. What's your job, sweetie? Content producer?
• Ah, I see from your user page you wish to be a lawyer. Wow!
• The cost of a CD isn't 10 cents. When you purchase a CD your paying for all manner of hidden costs, lawyers fees, transportation costs, costs related to packaging, graphic designers costs, production etc etc. Beyond the costs in producing the CD there is also a margin for copyright/royalty fees to the artist and ... profit. Sure it is a peice of plastic but it also has data on it that someone got paid to make in one form or another. Interesting little statistic in Canada. We pay levies on recording media (something like 24 cents per blank CDR - varies depending on the media btw) CRIA would have everyone believe that they lost $450 million in sales in 5 years due to p2p. But if you boil that number down to lost copyright fee's it only comes to $50 million. The Copyright Board (they administer the levy) has attributed $2.25 per CD in copyright fees. The Copyright Board for the last 5 years or so has collected $30 million a year. The Copyright Board has collected more in levies (for the rights holder) than they would have if everyone bought CD's instead of using p2p and buying blanks. In Canada we pay that levy and in return we were given the right to download music. Looks to me like we are doing a bang up job of compensating the rights holder. oh and for anyone who is interested CRIA requested this levy in the first place as compensation for piracy ;) The trade off was allowing canucks to download. But wolof's "Do you like to get paid for what you do?" is off the mark. It is standard Big Four PR bullshit fed to the rest of us. The artist is paid up front. Record companies aka loan sharks then try to recoup the cost of the contract (plus profit) through sales. The profits an artist makes after CD is released are made through royalties from being played on the air, satellite, internet, cable music, music tours. The record companies aren't exactly angels either in this whole game they continually rip off the artists they sign with BS such as not paying out royalties. Artists who don't come forward and register with Sound Exchange by the end of the year will lose royalties collected on their behalf. The Big Four use p2p as well, they hire marketing companies like Big Champagne to monitor p2p networks in order to determine how to play the market to their advantage. The confusion in my mind over the great debate is intellectual property rights and how far they can extend - who owns what and what rights all the players have. But no matter how it is broken down someone paid someone else to make that music/movie/program. I'd rather spend my money at places like CD Baby who paid out over $10 million to artists than fund the Big Fours terror campaign.
• sorry if that is a little snarky, wolof's snarks set me off
• To add to Beeza, and to let a little more light in about how the industry works: The $18 of a CD goes like this— $9 for the retailer. (leaving $9). Around $2-3 for the distributor (leaving $7- depends on the distributor). About $1 for manufacturing, assuming an 8-page color booklet. About $1 for the producer (producers get paid before the record company). So, we're at $5 for the record company off of each disc sold. But let's look at how much makes it to an artist. That's a little more complicated, as it's taken out against the advance. First, the record company deducts what they call "recoupables." That starts with $4 for each disc sold, for packaging. This became industry standard during the '80s, when they weren't sure CDs would sell. The packaging fee for cassettes is $3, and vinyl is $2. You don't get past this unless you're U2, and can negotiate out of it. So, the artist has $1 left to work against recoupables. Which start out with the promotion budget. Then there's more for the producer. Then there's the living expenses and advances the band has gotten. For a record company, 30,000 copies sold means that they've broken even, and you'll get the option extended on your contract. Usually, the band is still in debt then, and on 30,000 units you can't renegotiate your contract. Mercifully, 30k means that often the record company stops promoting the disc, meaning less recoupables in promo cost (though if the record is still going strong, they'll keep pumping money into it). And, at the end, the artist no longer owns the copyright, and will recieve royalties (usually 2 or three "points," meaning cents on the dollar) once they've cleared out the debt. Most bands never do, and are eventually dropped. Steve Earle said once that he takes the biggest advances that the record company will allow, because he knows he'll never make it back and "If I die while I'm still behind, I've won." As for what you're paying for, ultimately it's the license to listen to the music. And because the traditional distribution model is incredibly profitable for record companies, and because copyright infringement holds as illegal any infringement upon the ability to profit from intellectual property, they have no incentive to change to a more efficient model. So Wolof, I assume you meant that record execs like to get paid for what they do, since artists certainly don't. And since I do not hold "future profit" to be an ethically protected right, I do not find people who download music to be ethically lapsed, as they have not infringed upon anyone's right to use their property (though they have infringed on the right of the holder to distribute or not distribute as they see fit). And for the record- I'm a content producer. And yet, when people share things that I've written on the internet, I'm quite happy.
• As far as SuprNova goes, there were often 0day rips of the movies linked from there. These seem quite clearly criminal, as I believe (though IANAL) recording a movie in a movie theatre or obtaining a digital print from some theatre-worker are both above and beyond simple copyright infringement. This makes me think that SuprNova really had it coming. The issue is not clear to me for things like fan-subtitled foreign movies that have no local distributor. For the longest time Japanese animation enthusiasts had no way of obtaining their crack except by selectively ignoring holders' rights. (Things are a lot better on the distribution end these days, I hear.) Also of note are TV episodes for which the courts have repeatedly held that recording and time-shifting are fair use. What really is the difference between getting your Daily Show episodes from your TiVO or downloading from one of these torrent sites? (Yes yes, we know that the internet makes everything global. So what?)
• By the way, it appears that www.tvtorrents.net is having DNS issues, and you should be using www.tvtorrents.tv in the interim. HTH.
• In Canada we pay that levy and in return we were given the right to download music. Looks to me like we are doing a bang up job of compensating the rights holder. Note that the CRIA levy does compensate the rights holder (i.e. the record companies), but from what I understand it does a lousy job of compensating artists. First that $30 million dollar fund sits around for a while. The CRIA is in no hurry to give it away. Then it is distributed on the basis of record sales and airplay, based on percentages. This means that Bryan Adams and Celine Dion, who certainly aren't hurting, get 95% of it. That leaves the remaining few percentage points to be split between everyone else. Even when you start with $30 million dollars that means almost literally nothing going to anyone who isn't already a megastar. The record companies are happy with this system because they don't care how they get their cut of the $30mill, and the current arrangement means less administration costs. The CRIA levy might be an inkling of how the copyright should be fixed, but it is no solution. It's as corrupt as the system it sprang from.
• And since musicians secrete music like the liver secretes bile, they'd be doing it anyway, right?
• Yes. I'm sorry to say, Wolof, but you're way below quota this quarter. We here are getting worried, you know. We don't want to start up the ol' pie-making machine, but if you keep dropping zeroes, we won't have much choice now, would we? Get secreting like a good boy now!
• In Canada we pay that levy and in return we were given the right to download music. That's one interpretation of the law, although I don't think it's the correct one. To my knowledge, the Supreme Court has failed to say one way or another whether paying levies to compensate for copyright infringment makes the act itself legal. I suspect that it does not, although that's just speculation. The reason it's currently legal is actually due to this decision earlier this year. Look, Wolof, I think artists should be paid for their work, but not simply because it's seen/heard/read/whatever. Buying a CD costs money, and it might be money that's wasted if the purchase is made blind. I don't like most of the crap on the radio, so where else should I go to sample music I might like? Before the internets and simple ripping programs came along, I didn't buy any CD's, and I listened to much less music. Is that the best way to do things?
• To clarify, I realize the real cost of a CD, taking into account the costs related to marketing, content production and the like, is quite a bit more than 10 cents; I just meant the physical product itself doesn't cost very much. So far, I think the Canadian model of levies makes the most sense, especially if you believe that creative works enrich society as a whole, as opposed to simply the people who buy them. Of course, lots of people buy blank media and have no intention of copying movies or music, and so the case can be made that they're subsidizing someone else's activities; why should they be made to pay? As for CRIA's levy not working effectively to compensate artists, there are several reasons why this is so. I can't speak to how directors, screenwriters, etc. are compensated (although I assume that because the process is more industrial, that most people like grips, camera operators, etc. are paid a fair wage). Music artists, however, don't often own the rights to their music because of the deal they've made with a record label. Argue all you want about how unfair those contracts are (and in the case of the major record labels, yeah, they are pretty unfair), the fact is CRIA can't just decide to give money to the artists because there's no legal basis to do so. That's the job of the record companies, who pay out royalties to artists as compensation. The second thing is there are other options for using levies to compensate rights holders (for the moment, assume we're in a better world and rights holders = artists). The book publishing equivalent to the music industry's fight against home taping is photocopying. Realizing early on that to stop people from photocopying books was impossible, the federal government instead created CANCOPY (now called Access Copyright, I think) that works on a levy/payout basis as well. CANCOPY actually keeps track of what writers have published, and how many times their works have been photocopied. The numbers are necessarily rough, but the end result is that authors get cheques in the mail about every six months or so compensating them for the reproductions made of their work. The interesting thing about the CANCOPY system, of course, is that aside from the international issues, Bittorrent is a perfect system of reporting usage numbers—any idiot can stare at the seeds/peers counter and get a rough idea of how well a certain file is doing, and trackers keep track of the total number of downloads. If you could somehow find a way to get everyone (or representatives of everyone—say, federal governments) to pay into a fund that would then disburse digital reproduction rights payouts to people, then you've cracked the problem. This will never happen, of course.
• That's one interpretation of the law, although I don't think it's the correct one. Not an interpretation but fact (see: Copyright Act s. 80.(1) for the letter of the law in regards to downloading and/or private sharing). Before the Federal Court decision it was a well known fact that downloading off of p2p was legit. The recent court decision has questioned p2p applications and the fact programs like kluza automatically make files available for upload. The Judge likened applications like this to photocopiers in libraries. See in Canada the legal definition of "distribution" is different than in the USA. Having a program passively sit there allowing others to upload your files does not equal intent to distribute which is part of the legal interpretation for "distribution" here in Canada and part of the final decision. Think your mixing uploading and downloading up. Unless you're using BT they are seperate acts. The Supreme Court doesn't necessarily have to rule on the legitamacy of levies since the Copyright Board functions under the Copyright Act specifically designed to collect levies for all manner of copyright, not just music. The Copyright Boards mandate is to make interpretations of law and create policies under that law. This past week the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the Private Copying Levy was constitutional for blank media but not for mp3 players [source] On the one hand retailers like walmart and futureshop are arguing the levy itself is unconstitutional because they say the levy is a tax and only government should charge "taxes" [but a levy isn't a tax and a tax isn't a levy ;) ] The other appeal was by Apple and other manufacturers of mp3 players. They argued charging $25 in levies on a mp3 player created a grey market and was unfair, the court agreed. Note that the CRIA levy does compensate the rights holder (i.e. the record companies), but from what I understand it does a lousy job of compensating artists. Ahh but therein lies the problem. The artist signs away that right when they enter into a contract. So should I also compensate the artist? Or should I compensate the person who holds copyright to the work? I say compensate the copyright holder (as does the law), which is currently being done. If you think artists are being treated unfairly take it up with the record companies who demand that artists sign away their rights as part of the deal with the devil. I honestly think levies are a part of a solution to allow p2p to flourish but sadly it really isn't about "protecting the artist" but about protecting distribution and the rights of record companies. To me all of RIAA's (et al) freak out is tantamount to the idea that McDonalds would throw a hissy fit because the world isn't purchasing 100% Real Beef as their source of ground beef and lobbying governments to force consumers to only buy their product and throwing in a bunch of conditions which prevented the sale of any other ground beef product. I wish it could work out that way chrominance but the record companies don't want that. At this point in time I believe they want complete control. I don't have the answers to this but I think the "sue 'em all" angle is going to eventually (if it already hasn't started) blow up in their faces.
• must be a limit on number of words. Here is the PS for my last post: smo check out report on business [here] for a quickie alternate view on what the levy was for. The debate (about 30 minutes into the show) was between Michael Geist and the new head of CRIA, broadcast on Dec 15th [WMP]. Also can check out http://canfli.org and their interpretation of sections of the Copyright Act in Canada.
• I misunderstood the original claim, beeza. Sorry about that. Reading things over a couple of times is always a good idea. :) Anyway, I didn't mean to say that downloading is illegal, just that file-sharing (as a whole) may be (although I'm not sure it is, as I've seen some people argue that the levies decriminalize the behavior), and thus systems like BT which force you to upload as you download are probably illegal, unless the "photocopier" argument can be applied to it as well. They argued charging $25 in levies on a mp3 player created a grey market and was unfair, the court agreed. I haven't had a chance to read the decision itself, but from the articles in the Star and the Globe, I'm not sure this is correct. From what I've read, the court ruled that the Copyright Board simply overstepped its authority. From your article: ...it said the Copyright Board does not have the power to impose levies on digital memory that's embedded directly into electronics products. I haven't read anything that says the court rejected the levies because they created a grey market -- although I think the Star story does a good job at relaying that impression -- just that the Copyright Board does not have the power to impose them, at least for now. However, the court also seemed to say that the levies would be constitutional had they been erected legally, so it's only a question of legitimizing them. At least that's the interpretation I get.
• Barlow (EFF) vs. Glickman (MPAA)
• Over 1,000,000 Torrents of Downloadable Books, Music, and Movies