1. Your two articles describe P2P software as being produced by the “tech industry.” But you’d have to really broaden your definition of “industry” to cover the reality that an important source of this software is people writing it for the fun of it. One might say, hobbyists. In fact, the BitTorrent protocol and its original and I believe most widely used client were written by a guy in his spare time. So even if you get rid of all the offenders like Grokster — and they did have it coming to them — you do nothing to eliminate the P2P networks. It takes zero capital to produce this software.

And, on a related point, I hope the world knows that P2P networks, BitTorrent in particular, are used extensively for perfectly legitimate purposes.

2. I’d really be interested in hearing more from your perspective on the reluctance of the labels to release more songs to download services like iTunes. It baffles me. I’ll bet the RIAA has done a survey to see what percentage of the totality of its members catalogs are available on the P2P networks, and I’ll bet anything the answer is 100%. So what do they have to lose? Anything they release won’t add to the availability of illegal downloads, where everything is already available, but it will enable people with the morals to resist illegal downloads to buy their music.

Seen from this perspective, DRM really does not help anything. I fear they are fantasizing a future in which all new releases, including CDs, are locked up with DRM that will prevent copying. But it only takes about five seconds of thought to see that a technical means of preventing copying is an impossibility.

So I’d really be interested to hear your insights into what kind of thinking is holding them up from making their full catalogs available.

Semi-arts related questions:
Do you read webcomics, and what is your opinion of different revenue models used by webcomic artists? (Subscription vs t-shirt sales vs print publication vs advertising)

Have you tried iRate? (CC music autodownloader, essentially.) Do you like it?

*ok, obsessively focused on their own point of view or downright hostile.

Google (GOOG: news, chart, profile) has shelved its ambitious library project — to scan every book in the world — for three months to allow copyright holders time to opt out of being scanned and included in Google’s index.

The scanning of books has been suspended so that “any and all copyright holders can tell us which books they’d prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library,” said Adam Smith, Google’s print product manager, on Google’s blog.

But the Association of American Publishers says that the opt-out option is not good enough.

“The rights of copyright owners, like those of patent owners, are established within an opt-in framework, rather than an opt-out framework,” said Allan Adler, vice president of legal & government affairs at the trade association, in an e-mail.

“This means that, subject only to specific limitations established by federal law, the rights of a copyright owner are exclusive to the copyright owner and cannot be exercised by anyone else unless and until the copyright owner has opted in to such an exercise by a prior grant of permission.”

Since launching Google Print nearly a year ago, Google has relied on fair use to defend the legality of its activities, attorneys said.

Google’s plan to halt this project comes nearly a year after launching Google Print back in October 2004, calling it a way “for publishers to make their books discoverable by the millions of people who search on Google.”

The problem with an opt-out framework is that “anyone and everyone” would be able to “freely reproduce and distribute copies of a copyrighted work unless and until the copyright owner becomes aware of the activity and objects to it,” according to Adler.

It is still unclear how much money Google can make with its ambitious library project, but apparently making money has been the least of its problems.

read more rants: thunt.net

In the days ahead, I’d love to hear your thoughts on two subjects:

– How did you come around to embracing Creative Commons, and do you see any evidence that the RIAA and MPAA share your enthusiasm?

– What are your thoughts (expressed in some of the posts above) about the advent of grassroots media, and how these expressions of personal media (podcasts, Magnatune, etc.) will play with the traditional music business in the years ahead?

Take a look, for example, at Ourmedia.org, a free, nonprofit grassroots media community. (I’m the co-founder, and Larry’s on our Board of Advisors.) Any thoughts about how, or whether, the music industry should be working or collaborating with sites that nourish bottom-up creativity?

Ms Rosen do not be swayed by the text of these heathen currs. The RAII was correct in pursuing Grokster given the unprecedented commercial advantage and gain that it recieved from infringed materials.

Also do not worry of the arguments for free content. As long as there is a public policy in favour of one controlling ones own work there shall be avenues to control it and prevent others from doing the same without licence.

Surely you must agree that Sony has been put in context. Value neutral copying has been taken from observation of what is being copied to the means of the copying. The intent, the authorisation, the motives of the person behind the technology and not the technology itself shall hold sway.

Thank god now vicarious and contributory copyright infringement are decided on a legal basis and not on a technological one.

I guess the point is that copies will have to show a public policy in support of allowing peer to peer or similar file sharing displacing artist rights rather than relying on the presumption that technological innovation is in itself a public policy motif.

ACS

“Wait. There’s “Hollywood” or “the labels” on the one hand, and then there are “artists” on the other. They are not the same.”
Larry Lessig from:
Peter Wayner Interviews Lawrence Lessig
Posted by timothy on Wed Jan 16, ’02 12:15 PM
from the names-are-familiar dept. on /.

Disregarding the context in which this quote occurred, do you have a position or opinion or belief that you follow, today, as to the above issue? Also, is your position or opinion or belief that you follow different than say, eight years ago?

The only “mainstream artist” the web has given us to date is Johnny Knoxville… and what did he do? First chance he had he signed a contract with “the man,” got a show on a Viacom network, and used that infamy to springboard into movies.

The internet is a great enabler, but this notion that you “own” bits just because they pass through your computer is about as absurd as the notion you own the seas because you drink water. People have to eat and people want “stuff.” An artist could fill the world with “free music” but that ain’t likely to be accepted as currency when that artist orders a big mac and fries.

The internet has been around in reasonably mainstream fashion a decade now and there are more people with broadband then even had internet access just a couple of years ago. So where is this rising tide of high quality “free content” so many of you keep refering to? I personally walk that walk more closely than 99.99% of you, and I have yet to see it.

One way to counter this may be for music organizations to use the system of affiliate marketing to encourage website owners to make money from the process of file – sharing. If this is advanced, we may see a day where the majority of sources have this system.

My point is that the market and not just law will determine the future of file sharing.

As to what to talk about..Tell us about you. Who are you, really?

As for pushing towards the future, I have one question, “would you support a world where record companies no longer held any control over distribution?” I’m taking my ideas from The Future of Music and Promises to Keep. Record labels would still need to exist to cover promotion, booking, and help facilitate artist collaborations. Def Jux is a perfect example of this.

Distribution would be covered by numerous technologies. Recond labels would become more like real estate agents – pushing the product into new markets. The actual transaction would be directly between the consumer and the band with various companies acting like paypal does for ebay transactions. Mere blind facilitation.

Let’s face it: if you sell your music on iTunes, why bother giving 50%-90% of your profits to a record label? All you really need is a good publicist.

No you think this model has any merit? In the begining, record labels were merely folks who had the capital to pay the pressing costs. Now that we have the internet, what function will they serve?