MeVsWorld

The Pirate Bay are currently being sued for 1.6 Million Euros by the Ifpi.

The pirate bay have never hosted or distributed copyright material and this has been the main reason for legal complications in the many futile attempts by industry representatives to have the site shut down; they instead provide links to user submitted torrent files which are essentially road maps that can be used to locate the source of a particular file. This action marks just one of many increasingly desperate attempts to win a case and create presidence so that the way can be cleared for similar action; but at what cost is this legal precedence going to come if successful?

One particulaly unpleasant potentual side effect can be seen in the ongoing Shareaza saga. The full story can be read here on Shareaza’s official site, however the short version is as follows:-

2002 - Shareaza software designed and build by a sole developer as a file sharing, file management and media player tool with many completely legal uses.

2007 - Summer - A trusted Shareaza end user who was looking after the domain name www.shareaza.com was threatened with a $2.5 million lawsuit and was forced to give up the domain name.

2007 - Christmas - Shareaza.com went live with a fake version of the program claiming to be 100% legal. This software contains spy-ware. The  website also activated a pop up in official Shareaza software prompting an upgrade to the fake - potentially harmful version.

And finally - In January 2008, active iMesh representations were changed from “MusicLab LLC” to an off-shore “Discordia Ltd.,” followed by three distressing actions:
1. Their website was changed to original but deceptively similar graphics to their site, labelled “official” but with less incriminating text.
2. Their lawyer sent a threatening letter to Shareaza’s community forum admin, on grounds of a new user’s post that had previously been deleted. (It remains the sole communication received.)
3. And their lawyer filed for the “Shareaza” trademark in the US.

OK: Big problem with this - If these actions are allowed to succeed precedence will be set and it will be possible for large companies to destroy any free / user maintained product that threatens its commercial counterpart. Microsoft will be able to destroy open source office applications by simply challenging a non profit group of users and volunteers for the trademark rights. The recording industry will be able to destroy unsigned bands and musicians giving away music that may detract attentions from one if its profit generating artists.

The possibilities are endless and extremely frightening so if you like home grown applications / underground indi music, and solutions to problems not available in main stream applications be afraid!

And I have no idea where figures are coming from. The 1.6 Million Euros claim by Ifpi is interesting because falling music sales are pretty much in-line with retail slumps globally. I personally don’t believe there is any way for the music industry to prove that file-sharing detracts from sales. I can however think of a few scenarios in which industry generated red tape detracts from sales; a few quick ones…

1) I want to download an album from iTunes, put it on my memory stick and plug it into the USB port of my car stereo. I can’t!
2) I suddenly have the urge to watch a film that has just been released in DVD. I want to download this film. I can’t, simply because I do not live in the USA.
3) I want to watch TV episodes of my favorite show online - I can’t because again, I am in the wrong country.

I am willing to pay for all these things, they are not available PURELY because of red tape and licencing issues. Would you drive to a store or simply fire up a point to point application and grab what you want that way?

The frustration of not being allowed to access certain things others can does also create a level of bad feeling towards publishers and media creators, making it easier for the end user to steal.

From another point of view, figures claiming to represent loss to the industry do not reflect the viral marketing benefits p2p sharing has on the very industry that is fighting to shut it down. I know of a good number of people who have downloaded or been sent part of an album from a band they had never heard of, only to discover they love the music and want to own every album available.

Of course with no way to trace these figures the industry will sweep this side of the argument under the carpet, but everyone with a little understanding of marketing will know that this will no doubt account for a significant percentage of legal sales.

Too often in the last few years have large companies been able to push smaller players out of the way with no opposition, inflict unfair practices on end users and increase their market share with actions that could possibly be proven legal (by anyone with enough money to fight them) and I fear it is a trend set to become far worse if these smaller actions are allowed to go un-challenged.