I read this interesting article and this one on music during one of my quests into the world wide web. That article reflects what I had already thought could be the case with P2P and file sharing but which I dismissed as too radical a view on the issue. Besides, being on the other side of the law, I thought maybe I am a little too biased for the topic. But now I can rest easier knowing this view was actually proved right.
I used to think that the software and the media industries are not losing money at all because of P2P file sharing or even pirated CDs. I have even read many interviews in DIGIT on how various people are moving to original version software instead of the bootlegged one in order to avoid the headache of missing features, files, etc. So people who want to buy an original version and have the money to buy it still buys it. Those who want the software but don't/can't pay for it, swaps it with the peers on the Internet. So essentially, there should be no effect of Peer-to-Peer pirating on the sales of such products. But the company quarterly postings report severe losses, mainly attributed to P2P. What's going on? Which figure is lying?
I don't know much about this, but my two cents thought says that I believe that the music and software just lost the new buyers of their products who would have liked the product, had the resource to do so but would have preferred to have the copy while idling in their chair.
There can be no doubt that P2P has started receiving all the lime-light. New P2P architectures and applications are aiding more faster, comprehensive, up-to-date and anonymous file sharing. In such a scenario, existing copyright technologies fail to prevent illegal copies to be made. The media and software industries are boiling over watching their products being swapped between countless users without paying royalty. Sure, there were a few arrests and cease-and-desists but that's not going to stop another P2P technique from providing more anonymity to the bootlegger. The cat-and-mouse chase can go on forever, with the media cops catching up with the bootleggers somehow, but can't this be avoided? Why is it happenning?
A long time ago, when men were men, women were women, small furry creatures from alpha-centauri were small furry creatures from alpha-centauri and Objects were real, physical objects, the concept of object ownership was simple: Anything that you created, grew, planted or staked was yours. Period. Everyone was happy. The birds chirped. Leaves rustled and Life was beautiful. That is, until someone came up with mangled-looking scrawls called "Programs" that would inevitably crash big boxes called "Computers". If the ancient law of ownership, that made people's life oh-so-happy, were to be applied to them programs, no company could have made a single dollar. This was the time when security people can get away saying things like floppies and "Dongles" without getting wierd looks from other people. This was a time when the Internet was an obscure science-fiction rumored to be mentioned at some big university. This was a time when file sharing involved two environmentalists writing on a single sheet of paper.
Times definetly changed and here we are with the same old copyright protection laws offering a paper-thin resistance against copying when multi-megabytes can be downloaded and uploaded for million others to download and upload. P2P and other disruptive technologies may have made many illegal software owners.
In a recent article I read, the cops in United States were having a problem: Illegal aliens (foreigners, incase you let your imagination wander) are at large and their huge number makes for a large suspect pool for the cops to investigate everytime a crime occurred. The security advisors came up with an utterly surprising and clever plan: Instead of ignoring the presence of illegal aliens among us, let us recognise them and provide them with alien driving licences. Now this may come as a shock to a lot, but the idea has a clever base to it. Since the aliens can obtain a licence, the good people of the lot will come forward and let themselves be testified as good citizens. The remaining of the lot will contain the bad eggs. This will atleast reduce the number of fake driving licences and other documents and at the same time give the good guys a chance to prove themselves.
Applying the same logic to our case, instead of trying to ignore the fact that illegal software owners will be around always, why not come up with copyright laws that acknowledge such users' presence and invent some kind of compromise-plan to keep their numbers at bay? I am not sure if such a scheme would be the best, but it sure seems a good change of perspective to me. I think Microsoft has come up with something like that in distributing future software updates to its Operating Systems.
PS: Okay, the title of this post doesn't have anything to do with the content, but it seemed cool :)
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