Filesharing and DRM: September 2003 Archives
September 26, 2003
OpenP2P.com has an article/interview titled Independent Label Go-Kart Records Embraces MP3s which is quite interesting. A quote:
Instead of suing little girls and filing ridiculous lawsuits, we here at Go-Kart have decided to embrace this new MP3 technology, and have unleashed the first commercially sold MP3 CD… We feel that this format is the perfect way to promote bands, rather than take away from them.
They even include instructions on how to burn the mp3s to other CDs. Greg Ross, who runs Go-Kart, seems like an entirely sane person. Along with services like irate radio, CDBaby, and Dell's (hopefully good) upcoming music service, it looks like within a few months you won't need to illegally download songs you want, which is a definite improvement. (As Greg notes in the interview, filesharing services suck for finding what you want anyway, so I'll be happy when there's a good, my-rights friendly service where I don't have to worry about getting 4 minutes of a 20-second loop or digital bleeps and bloops instead of (say) Sheryl Crow's cover of Cat Stevens' First Cut Is The Deepest. Of course whether Dell will be the first big service to sell big-name artists and still manage sane DRM settings is an unfortunately open question.)
September 9, 2003
There's a good article in Slate called An Offer You Can Refuse which discusses the current state of P2P and the RIAA's utterly BS amnesty. Among other interesting factoids is that even if you take their deal, any other copyright owner can then subpoena the RIAA and use the amnesty information to sue you themselves. Charming, yes?
The really interesting point the author makes is to point out that activity is starting to move off of the current major P2P nets. He mentions EarthStation 5, a Palestine (as in the Middle East) based network that uses anonymization etc to try to hide who's downloading and sharing what. Another trend I've noticed is a move to "semi-private" nets, where a community (online or offline) will provide a secret, password-protected P2P net for its own use. While this does slow down the diffusion of new material, it doesn't do so by a whole lot because of the six-degrees-of-separation problem; many people will belong to multiple nets, and will thus help move material across community boundaries. Several colleges and universities have these kind of nets (both official and unofficial), as do numerous online forums.
There are a couple of decent articles on anonymous filesharing here and here.
A wise man once said that "The Internet views censorship as damage, and routes around it." So far he's right. First noticed this via Instapundit.
There. I posted. Happy? :)
