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Digital Freedom Part 1

As of recently I have been inundated with news and information about various affronts to Digital Freedom, a topic that has always interested me but that i've generally kept on the backburner. The two biggest relevant concerns of mine are 1) the new RIAA campaign to target individiuals sharing a "substantial" amount of MP3s, and 2) the draconian measures proposed by certain members of Congress to punish users engaged in file sharing.

To start, let me elucidate my personal beliefs on the issue of filesharing/music ownership/etc... I always bought the argument that filesharing is if not the same thing, at least similar to making a mix tape. When one created a mix tape, one would record various songs either off the radio or off other tapes or CD's onto a tape that would circulate amongst their community. Music sharing is the same thing but just to a grander scale. Instead of relying on the radio to provide music for one to record, one has various applications to choose from that provide methods of peering into one's friends' music collections to pick and choose songs one desires to download. The music collection derived from this Peer to Peer filesharing effectively creates one's own variable digital radio. From there, one has a variety of choices: 1) keep the MP3's on your computer for sharing or listening purposes, 2) burn them onto a disc for either storage, as a mix, or as a bootleg album, or 3) delete those mp3s because you dont want to violate copyright laws. Then again there is another option, and it happens to be the one that i generally entertain. This option is to keep the MP3's on my computer as a preview of various artists before shelling out $15-20 to buy their albums. For someone who doesn't listen to much radio and who hears about most new music that I like from either friends or the internet, it just isnt plausible to spend an exorbitant quantity of money for a CD just to find out after I buy the album that I don't like it because i had no way to preview its contents and as a result I had to go entirely on the recommendations of various internet music pundits instead of my own informed opinion.

I am a music lover, and I respect artists' rights to their intellectual property but what the RIAA needs to understand is that they are not protecting artists intellectual property by fighting filesharing, they are just trying to protect their greedy distribution practices. Maybe if albums didnt cost fucking twenty dollars each and mainstream radio didn't just play inane drivel 24/7 people like me would not resort to filesharing in order to get informed about intelligent music that they care enough about to go out and buy later. The RIAA is even more full of shit when they claim that filesharers are stealing from artists; if anything people who share music are legitimately progagating artists' popularity and availability. Sure their music is now "available" for free, but when it comes to money, most musicians don't make more than $1 per CD they sell. The vast, vast, vast majority of their profits come from touring and merchandise and consequently the sales of which will increase through the advent of filesharing, due to a larger quantity of people having access to their music. You can't download a concert, or a t-shirt for free, but you can check them out in person after being exposed to an artist via a digital medium. I know from personal observation that it is filesharing that allows me to experiment with music and listen to new things. Personally its been a technology that has both allowed my music taste and my legitimate CD collection to grow.

What is especially worrying is the attitude of the nation's leaders towards filesharing. Not only is the RIAA winning more and more court cases but they are now threatening to expand those lawsuits towards individuals sharing "substantial" numbers of MP3's. Interestingly enough members of Congress namely the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah among others are pandering to the RIAA by proposing unbelievably invasive methods of combatting filesharing. Hatch's proposal is as follows: Filesharers would get two warnings, and then if they failed to cease sharing music, their machines would become legally available for attack by copyright holders and if as a result of the assault there was any extraneous damage to one's computer the attackers would legally be absolved of any liability.

"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said. "There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said. (Quoted from Silicon Valley Article linked in the first paragraph.)

Personally I like the analogy given to this plan by Gwen Hinze, a staff lawyer for EFF: "This is an entirely unreasonable proposal, tantamount to a debt collector sending you two warnings that your car payment is late and then claiming that he is entitled to burn down your garage,"

Thats all for now folks, but stay tuned for a followup article pertaining to a broader issue of internet censorship and various methods of combatting it.

Posted by Nostradamus at June 29, 2003 01:49 PM