[IP] Same as it ever was
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: May 28, 2005 8:52:21 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Same as it ever was
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[Note: Salon's take on the EliteTorrents FBI takedown of earlier
this week. Worth reading! DLH]
Same as it ever was
George Lucas can sleep easy tonight. The FBI saved "Star Wars" from
the evil rebels of the Internet file-sharing alliance.
By Andrew Leonard
<http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2005/05/27/bittorrent/index.html?
source=RSS>
May 27, 2005 | Haven't we seen this rerun before? A particular
version of file-sharing software becomes popular. The entertainment
industry starts paying attention. Lawsuits begin to fly. A few people
get their fingers burned, and then we do it all over again. Napster,
Kazaa, Grokster and now BitTorrent -- the names change but the story
doesn't. The software will get better and the busts will get bigger.
Same as it ever was.
The latest news in the file-sharing wars was delivered via a press
release from the Department of Justice with all the solemn
portentousness of an announcement that a major terrorist had been
captured. "This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the
United States against leading members of a technologically
sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents."
Ho-hum. It's not as if we didn't see this coming. Yesterday's big
bust was inevitable from the moment the first geek gave BitTorrent a
test drive, painlessly shared a huge file, and thought, wow, this
works pretty well. BitTorrent is a fantastic way for Internet users
to share the job of transferring huge files back and forth. But it's
also a tool that, so far, has made little pretense at offering
privacy. Those who upload and download files -- and given the way
BitTorrent works, pretty much everyone who uses the service is doing
both at the same time -- can be tracked. But naturally, every bust
like yesterday's only encourages more programmers to try to figure
out how to make it less easy to trace who's using the software.
What precisely prompted this most recent crackdown? Given the
suspicious timing, it appears to be the horrifying news that "Star
Wars: Revenge of the Sith" was being made available six hours before
it started appearing in theaters, and that all told, some 10,000
copies were transferred before the authorities quashed the rebels. As
of Tuesday, "Sith" had only raked in some $339 million worldwide, so
something clearly had to be done. After all, "Internet pirates cost
U.S. industry hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue every
year from the illegal sale of copyrighted goods and new online file-
sharing technologies make their job even easier," said Michael J.
Garcia, Homeland Security assistant secretary for immigration and
customs enforcement.
Hundreds of billions! Wow! It's amazing anything gets produced at all
in Hollywood or Silicon Valley with those kind of losses! But hang on
a sec. Come on. Please. The very idea that the people downloading
"Star Wars" to watch on their computers might somehow be dissuaded
from shelling out for the movie in theaters is so ludicrous that any
movie studio executive who even hints at believing it should be
locked up in a stockade and forced to watch nothing but Anakin
Skywalker/Queen Padme love scenes in a permanent loop. OK, I confess,
I don't have quantitative evidence to back this up, but I'll lay good
odds that the Sith-stealing fanboys at EliteTorrents are the exact
same people who will see the movie multiple times on the big screen,
buy the DVD, own at least one light saber already, and otherwise will
work all their lives to ensure that George Lucas' descendents live on
easy street throughout the 22nd century.
Here's a news flash, folks. Call it the First Law of Piracy. The most
popular albums, movies and TV shows are precisely the ones most
likely to be shared on the Internet. It is a sign of success, not
failure, that the demand for "Sith" was so high. And while we're at
it, how about a Second Law: The First Law will be true for all time
and there is nothing that entertainment industry executives can do
about it, no matter how many lawyers they throw at the problem, no
matter how many fines are assessed, no matter how annoying the
digital rights management schemes they come up with, or how many
times Congress and the judiciary kowtow to their bleating. Any
phenomenon that hits big in the culture-at-large will be copied and
shared online. Which leads us to the Third Law: This isn't about
right or wrong, legality or illegality. It just is.
I'll tell you who the most bummed-out people are today, excluding
those whose doors were knocked upon by FBI agents. It's not the would-
be movie stealer, desperate to avoid paying $10 at the theater. It's
the person who missed "American Idol" last night, or the season
finale of "Lost," or the second part of a two-part "West Wing" rerun,
and is now freaking out because he or she is terrified that plugging
the words "Lost" and "BitTorrent" into Google will be laying out the
welcome carpet for a posse of federal officers.
It should go without saying that these are the same people who'd
likely be happy to cough up a few bucks if they had the ability to
head over to some iTunes-like service and dial up the show they
missed. If iTunes has proven anything, it is that the existence of
widespread piracy points directly at a marketing opportunity. Where
there is desire, there is money to be made.
Well, to all those bummed-out TV fans, all I can say is, have
patience. Your day will come. Soon. Our future will be one in which
everything we want will be available to us at a low enough price to
seem worth paying. Because that's the only way the entertainment
industry is going to survive.
This may mean that there is less money to be made overall by the big
studios and the mega movie stars and the platinum pop artists. Tough
noogies. Average real wages are falling in the United States, most
likely as a result of intense global competition. Share the pain,
folks! The same factors that make it possible for an Indian
programmer in Bangalore to compete with one in Silicon Valley -- the
Internet, high-bandwidth telecom lines, the easy ability to share
digital information -- make it possible for entertainment consumers
to gain access to whatever pleases them, quickly, cheaply and
unstoppably.
[snip]
About the writer
Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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