[d@DCC] NYT on music P2P

[tOM Trottier]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/technology/22neco.html?position=&th=&pagewanted=print&position=

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September 22, 2003
NEW ECONOMY 
Music's Struggle With Technology
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

 
IFE, like television, is full of reruns. And long-time watchers of 
technology trends say the entertainment industry's attack on peer-to-peer 
software - the technology at the heart of the song-swapping mania - 
follows a familiar pattern.

Every technology can, of course, be used for evil or good purposes. Cars 
can be used in bank robberies, and radiation can cure cancer. But many 
new technologies go through a stage of demonization, and communications 
technologies come in for an especially tough hit from people who feel 
threatened by them. 

Long before girding against the Internet, for example, the entertainment 
industry objected to cassettes and videotapes because they would allow 
people to copy music and programming without making additional payments. 
Even FM radio was opposed by the record companies at the outset because 
the high fidelity broadcasts were free. The early defenders of the 
industry did not understand the ways that the power of the new 
communications tool would help them market their goods to a broader 
audience.

The current fight over peer-to-peer technology closely resembles a grand 
battle in the 1990's over encryption technology, which secures the 
contents of communications from prying eyes. In that case, the opponent 
was not the entertainment industry, but the Clinton administration and 
its law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which tried to restrict 
the use and spread of strong encryption ("crypto," in geekspeak). The 
technology was an essential tool for businesses and consumers who wanted 
to protect privacy; because of their resistance to the government 
crackdown, many encryption restrictions have been lifted.

But, at the time, government officials argued that crypto, if 
unrestricted, would bring disaster upon disaster. The Clinton 
administration encouraged the adoption of encryption products with a 
"backdoor" that government could unlock. "Uncrackable encryption will 
allow drug lords, terrorists and even violent gangs to communicate with 
impunity," Louis J. Freeh, then director of the F.B.I., testified before 
a Senate committee in 1997.

Similar accusations have been lodged against peer-to-peer - or P2P, as it 
is commonly known - which also has the potential to become a powerful 
tool for network communications and pooling computer resources. The 
entertainment industry has tried to portray the networks as hotbeds of 
crime and havens for child pornography. Yet many in the tech world say 
there are so many possible uses for P2P that "it's impossible to imagine 
them not being developed," said Lance Cottrell, the president and founder 
of a company that provides tools for enhancing privacy online. "Music was 
just the first killer app, but I think it will be the first of many."

Mr. Cottrell said that efforts to restrict access to P2P technology will 
not deter bad people but the efforts will hinder honest users. "People 
who really desire to steal will find ways of doing it," he said. But as 
with encryption, "restricting it means it is only available to the real 
bad guys."

The potential public benefits - like new computer networks that make 
worker collaboration easier, à la the entrepreneur Ray Ozzie's Groove 
Networks, or clusters of PC's linked to pool their power and resources - 
could be delayed in the P2P fight, just as the tug of war over 
cryptography hindered the ability of business to protect communications 
and databases from intruders, said Bruce Schneier, a security expert and 
author of "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain 
World." "In both cases, a large well-funded organization is fighting the 
little guy."

The similarities do not stop there, Mr. Schneier said, because in both 
cases legal remedies have been sought "to solve an inherently 
technological problem." Those seeking to restrict the new technology are 
using "legal intimidation" to fight their battles, he said. And, he 
predicted, the ultimate outcome will be similar: "Strong crypto would 
inevitably be used. Digital files are inevitably copyable." The real goal 
of the pushback in both cases, he said, is to delay change.

A former government official who fought on the opposite side of the 
crypto battle from Mr. Schneier says the similarities between that fight 
and the battle over file sharing are striking - but so are the 
differences. Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National 
Security Agency, said, "The N.S.A. had a lot of clout, but it didn't have 
political action committees." The entertainment industry's political 
influence has already manifested itself in such laws as the Digital 
Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which made it easier to go after 
digital pirates. 

But file trading has things going for it that encryption never did, Mr. 
Schneier said: ease of use and products that millions of average 
consumers crave. That popularity, he said, could eventually tip the 
balance in favor of the file traders. Federal lawmakers are questioning 
the industry's tactics, and he predicted that politicians at the state 
level - "where intellectual property interests just haven't been active" 
in making political contributions - would begin rising to the file 
traders' defense. When that happens, he said, the tide is likely to turn, 
because "people who have to buy their friends don't have any when it 
matters,'' he said.

"Money is nice, but voters matter," he added.

If Hollywood cares to learn from the crypto wars, the lesson might be 
that it is more realistic to adapt to powerful technology, rather than 
quixotically try to block it. "It's unstoppable," said Elan Oren, the 
chief executive of iMesh, a peer-to-peer file sharing company based in 
Israel. 

Technologies can be stubborn. Efforts to knock them down can send them 
rebounding back with a new twist. In the case of encryption, the 
technology continued to grow more powerful and researchers poked holes in 
the government's weaker alternatives. In the case of peer-to-peer 
applications, the makers have found increasingly clever ways to help 
traders act anonymously, and without a centralized service that can be 
shut down. "That's where the behavior of the industry up to now actually 
got us," Mr. Oren said.

If pushed further, he said, the P2P makers will eventually offer complete 
anonymity for users. If that happens, he predicted, "we'll see something 
nobody wants, including the industry": a cumbersome and expensive system 
of high-tech copyright protection required by law. Mr. Oren said he 
believed that the industry could reshape itself to woo file traders, 
converting them to file payers and saving their businesses. "If we 
convert 10 to 20 percent, it's a huge success," he said. 

But for now, Mr. Oren says, he sees only counterproductive delays, and an 
underlying attitude from industry that seems almost Luddite. "From 1999 
to 2001, if you enabled the R.I.A.A. to have the plug of the Internet," 
he said, referring to the Recording Industry Association of America, 
"they would unplug it." 



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