[d@DCC] MPAA releases the lawyers...

[Tim Meehan]

Russell McOrmond said:

>Note: this message not aimed at the author of the letter I'm replying to

And to make it extra clear, I'm not Jarnis. :)  I don't post to Slashdot
anymore, only lurk.

>  I worry about all these cases being misinterpreted as cases about P2P.  
>P2P should always be understood as clearly legal when used for
>non-infringing uses.  The more we allow people to confuse the two (and the
>more people seem to be suggesting they are forgiving infringing uses --
>something I do not!), the worse things will get.

Perhaps part of the reason for this is that most new users approach P2P to use
as an infringing tool in the first place. Think Christmas morning.  Dude (or
dudette) got a Dell from Dad, but not the latest Dido or Destiny's Child.  Most
of these popular songs are available as snippets or low-bitrate streaming
versions on their label websites.  Eventually, though, they discover that these
files can't always be burnt to a CD, and try Kazaa, WinMX, BitTorrent, etc.  And
then gorge themselves on audio, movies and porn for a couple of weeks.  Then
once they have all the popular stuff, they might find themselves at a record
store or artist's site buying a CD.

A music fan with obscure tastes won't find much of what they want on P2P
networks -- most of the stuff I've seen there (it's been a few months since I've
looked, though) are top-40 albums, DJ mixes and current movies.  Try finding an
art-house flick or indie band and you'll likely be out of luck.  

>People breaking the law is why the chicken-little "the sky is falling"  
>legacy industry is able to go to politicians and have any credibility.  

Don't forget too that some police forces are beginning to highlight how P2P is
used for trading child pornography.  I think regulation (or at the very least a
hard-to-spoof identification system) in P2P is inevitable because of that factor
alone.

>If these advanced communications services were only used for non-infringing usage 
>we likely would never be seeing any of these bills attacking our rights.

As mentioned previously, P2P is introduced to most people in an infringing
context, and I don't know how you can change that. Most internet users are
pretty independent and immune to most forms of social marketing.  Eventually,
though, I find people get tired of it -- especially if becomes more trouble than
it's worth.

To take a similar example, most of my friends who used to pirate satellite got
legal accounts or switched to cable once the ECMs got more and more frequent. 

As for those "you're STEALING!" ads, they  had little effect...as one friend put
it: "Advertising on TV is seen as BS -- and also as a fair trade-off for getting
the show, regardless of if it's off the air, over a cable network, whatever.
People that hack systems tend to do so because they watch a lot of TV.  So when
these CAAST ads are shown, they're seen in an especially negative light.

-Tim