'Copyright' or 'Right to Copy'

India, Politics, Society, Web 3 Responses »
Apr 192009

And, last week the founders and owners of Pirate Bay were found guilty of copyright infringement and :

The Stockholm district court on Friday sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom to one year in prison each for helping millions of Pirate Bay users commit copyright violations of movies, music and computer games.

The court also ordered them to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to international entertainment companies, including Warner Bros., Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.

While many of us may turn down our noses on the illegal DVD guys who stands at the street corner and hawks his illegal DVD’s – most of us have used p2p file sharing – either mule or torrent - at least once. There is a certain elegance to it. Every copy is as good, there is very little chance of getting shoddy goods, and its a great way to sample and figure if you want to buy the damn thing.

As someone who creates copyright, I am fairly certain that the way around ‘pirates’ or ‘piracy’ is not going after an Areca Nut with a sledge hammer but look at the technology, and embrace it for distribution and reach and figuring how to make money out of it.

Studio’s and IP owners need to understand – that P2P downloading is here to stay. That most people don’t think it is wrong, or even criminal to download something that they haven’t paid for. At the same time, you are also talking about a generation that thinks that corporates have what is coming to them :(

And, finally, in a P2P set up – everyone is a pirate. There is the person who uploads and puts up a tracker. But, the way the file moves across the universe is that – a whole bunch of people, like you and i , have clicked on that particular file – for example – and are dowloading it – not from the central server (there isn’t one) – but from each other’s hard disk.

So if the Stockholm 4 can go to jail for ‘copyright violation’ then so can you and I. The question is how do you track trillions of bits of data being transferred across millions of computers in the world without seriously trampling human rights.

The Stockholm Four

Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and Carl Lundstroem were convicted of infringing on film and music copyrights by making them available over the Web.

The question to ask is, if they made it available on the net, but no one downloaded it, would they still be committing infringement of copyright ?

Corporations have to ease up with the vindictiveness with which they are going after people and sites like this. This is not a bunch of counterfeiters sitting in dark alleys making rip-offs for profit. These are people who are not doing this for profit. They are doing this because they believe – rightly or wrongly – that corporations have become inflated, bloated and greedy and that they are doing a ‘social service’ by ‘liberating’ content. However, misguided the 4 might be – the fact remains it is difficult to see them as criminals. It’s a bit like sentancing someone who threw a shoe at a politician to jail. It’s in the same space of idiocy.

It seems like another David v/s Goliath …. and i can’t help cheering for the Davids …even though i am a copyright owner :)

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Posted by gargi at 7:17 am Tagged with: , , , ,

The State v/s p2p’ers

Uncategorized 1 Response »
Oct 232005

All through last year, and this – p2p sites have been served with notices. This image is going up on some that have been shut down.

It almost seems like a challenge. For everyone of the sites that they shut down a couple more come up. Moving into countries like Poland and Turkey where it is difficult to get prosecuted.

It promises to be an interesting game.

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Posted by gargi at 11:46 pm Tagged with: ,

Blog Day - 31st August 2005

Uncategorized 5 Responses »
Aug 292005

blogday

The mega event of blogdom is here – is around the corner.

What is BlogDay 2005?
BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.

With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. In this way, all Blog web surfers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

Read the original post Nir Ofir, the creator of BlogDay, wrote.

What will happen on BlogDay?

For one long moment on August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post recommendations of 5 new Blogs, preferably Blogs that are different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

Why do we need a BlogDay?

1. Information Overflow! The more Blogs there are, the less time Bloggers spend on reading new weblogs. Because of the overload of information, you miss a lot of good Blogs and Bloggers.

2. Its Fun!

BlogDay posting instructions:

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2005
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2005 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

Join In. Nominate away. It will be fun.

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Posted by gargi at 1:04 pm Tagged with: , ,

The Empire Strikes Back

Uncategorized No Responses »
Mar 272005

About two years ago, I discovered the joys of P2P. After experimenting with kazaa , neo napster , bearshare, I finally settled on e-mule - a great p2p client with a wonderful community thrown in.

In the last two years one of my favourite e-mule sites has been taken off. Share Reactor went down due to legal action. It’s back in a truncated form – as Respectp2p – but its not the same. A whole host of other sites have also gone down too. Presumably for the same reason. Copyright and trademark violation. There are still a few around that offer everything to out of print comics to rare music, foreign films to documentaries, silent films to the latest chart toppers. Incidentally, most of them do not offer microsoft products – as they fear legal action at a different level. Quite like a sledgehammer used to crack a walnut.

There was a time when those who pirated software or movies or music were the sleezy types. Disctinctly non-tech. who would sell us badly pirated VHS or audio tapes. Today, given the nature of technology, every copy is the same as the original. And your pirate has moved from the sleazy back allies to the comfort of the home, where via their broadband connection, the goody lands comfortably on the hard disk.

The easiest thing to do is download music. It downloads in seconds if not minutes. If you like the kind of music that I do then it takes a bit longer – because not too many people listen to that kind of music.But, sooner or later it downloads. And that is the essence of p2p. It pulls stuff of other peoples hard disks and ensures that you get it finally. Anyone who is downloading is also sharing. So at any point in time you could have hundreds of bits and bytes of music being shared between multiple home pc’s sitting in various countries and various time zones. Movies, comics, books and software take a bit longer. No wonder the owners of the copyright are worried.

Obviously, something like this impacts the profitability of the copyright owner. So its’ not surprising that they are getting together and suing. The Economist today has an interesting lead on how music industry giants are coming together to sue the technology vendors.

In the article, called Illegal File Sharers under Attack, the Economist wryly observes that:

THE music business should have stuck by Thomas Edison’s technology if it wanted to avoid the threat of piracy. His wax cylinders could record a performance but could not be reproduced; that became possible only with the invention of the flat-disc record some years later. On Tuesday March 29th, America’s Supreme Court will begin to hear testimony in a case brought by the big entertainment companies that is intended to stop the illegal downloading of copyright-protected music and film

Part of the problem is the exhorbitant cost of music/movies. There was a time when a brand new film released on VHS would be available for around $10 or £10. Today, a DVD of a film like Lord of the Rings costs $27 on sale. This at a time when the cost of the DVD as well as the cost of duplicating has both gone down. I would think that in real terms an Indiana Jones film cost about the same as a Lord of the Rings. The consumer therefore is getting screwed. And he or she is getting it elsewhere free of charge at the same quality. Therefore, it is about time that the entertainment industry evoleved a more practical approach to pricing – because i really can’t see them locking down a billion odd PC’s across the world.

And in that sense the Indian entertainment industry has found the best way to combat piracy. It has slashed prices of music CD’s, VCD’s and DVD’s. I can buy a branded VCD for under Rs.100 (less than $2). A branded DVD costs around Rs.200 (under $4). An audio CD costs around Rs. 75. In fact this is less than what I used to pay for branded audio casettes and VHS ‘s a few years ago. There is little incentive to bootleg.

Also, while piracy can be termed ” illegal”, i really can’t see the reason why the industry wants to go after the technology. P2P is what the net was created for. To try and shut down the technology is an exercise in futility. The more they try, the more it will spread.

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Posted by gargi at 10:45 pm Tagged with: ,

Reining in the Frontier

Web No Responses »
Jun 262004

In an attempt to rein in filesharing, the US sentate has introduced a bill to bring heavy penalties, including upto 10 year jail sentances. In an attempt to stifle p2p, they plan also to impose penalties on devices that enable filesharing. This could include devices like ipod.

Wired reports

Technologists and copyright activists were most alarmed by the Induce Act, backed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who in the past five years has received $158,000 in campaign contributions from the television, movie and music industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Critics say the bills would make computer and electronic companies think twice before introducing any device that could conceivably distribute copyright works. Even existing devices and software — like iPods and FTP servers — could run afoul of the law.

“The reality of this is that you’re going to have a world where Hollywood controls technology,” said Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “If you don’t get Hollywood’s approval, no one will fund your project out of fear of the lawsuits.”

At a very fundamental level, the legislators have lost it. Unless you monitor every computer, every electronic device – including the mobile – you are not going to get rid of file sharing. If you introduce that level of monitoring, then there are major privacy infringement concerns. Placing a blanket ban on the development of technology – harks back to the dark ages.

The really serious file sharers seem to be in Europe – Germans, Russians, The Brits, The Dutch , Spainish. There seems to be a growing trend in Asia with Koreans and Taiwanese being fairly active. Most of the stuff on these sites are verified links that let you download films, music, anime, porn, comics, books, programmes, and games. Most of these sites are built around fairly tight knit communities. Extremely active social groups. These are the guys who rip, verify and upload hole chunks of matter.

The way most P2P works today is files shared on 1000′s of hard disks across the world. Each file has an identifier. You click on it and your P2P client starts simultaneously downloading it from other machines sitting in other parts of the world.

How does the US plan to prosecute someone sitting in Australia who downloads a German film – whose rights lie with a US studio – from hundreds of different hard disks across the world? How is the piracy going to stop

Remember the stupid foreign currency and taxation regulations most nations had a few decades ago. Well, the way people used to subvert it was a numbered account in Switzerland or Cayman islands. These nations offered extremely secretive banking arrangements.

Soon, we probably would have a whole bunch of P2Pers’ booking ‘numbered ‘space on servers in similar countries – where cyber privacy is maintained

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Posted by gargi at 11:54 am Tagged with: ,
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