It may not be discussed as openly as it was perhaps a year ago, but piracy in regards to downloading is still a hot topic. How do I know it when I'm not seeing new articles about it splashed across the different news sites? It's quite simple. The search history of my analytics service shows it to me every single day.
Illegal file sharing (more accurately described as copyright infringement) has been plaguing copyright holders since bulletin board systems started and speeds were limited to sub-1 kbps transmission rates. That was the 1980s. Welcome to 2007 where entire movies, television episodes and software packages can be downloaded in their entirety in a matter of minutes.
While the USENET has always been a bastion for file sharers, it wasn't until the original Napster showed up that the RIAA started suing to protect the interest of the music labels. Napster was shut down in 2002, but the publicity it generated also generated clones and other types of file sharing services. One of these, Kazaa, has been the service the RIAA has primarily targeted the users of. The rest is, as they say, history.
Bram Cohen designed the BitTorrent protocol in 2001, distributing the very first client for it and using it on his own website. It didn't take long for other programmers to create clients of their own, using a variety of programming languages. The clients run on all manner of computer platforms, including Linux and Windows.
The advantage of the BitTorrent clients, and the protocol itself, is that "torrents" can be used to distribute anything in a very efficient manner. It saves the host a ton of bandwidth by using the upstream bandwidth of each computer that's downloading the file, and all of it happens seamlessly. There are literally thousands of legal torrents out there along with the illegal ones. Does the fact that piracy is being aided by this particular protocol make it evil? If you listen to the RIAA, the MPAA and other such types of organizations, you would think so. The real answer is the complete opposite. The problem is that the companies fighting piracy haven't adopted a business model that takes advantage of the protocol. Instead, they'd rather sue to protect the income stream they're comfortable with. The income stream they have control over.
There was a gaping void left by the shutdown of Napster, and websites that index torrents along with Apple's iTunes store, have filled that void. The entertainment industries were caught napping and with their pants down.
My favorite BitTorrent client is µTorrent. It works flawlessly on Windows XP, which I still use. I understand it works very well on Windows Vista too. Recently, while I was setting up my new computer, I downloaded some software packages on the old computer and burned them to CD. I then used those CDs to install the software on the new computer.
Before settling back down with Windows XP, I installed and tried to get Debian Linux to work for me. While I couldn't use it right then, the fact that Debian provided complete CD and DVD downloads via torrents made that determination much quicker than FTP. I'd say at least 10 times quicker.
I attempted to download the OpenOffice.org office suite from their website, but only FTP was available. Knowing how slow FTP was compared to BitTorrent, I searched for the suite using the search engine at ScrapeTorrent and found it quickly. It downloaded fast and I had it installed on the new PC within half an hour.
This is what the BitTorrent protocol is all about — fast downloads of the files you're looking for. Sure you can download illegal copies of movies, TV shows and software, but that's only part of what can be done with the protocol. Other software clients, not only BitTorrent clients, are using the protocol to distribute media files of all kinds. In my book, there's nothing evil about that at all.
Have you ever written something that isn't within your areas of expertise and regretted writing it? Does an article keep coming back to haunt you? This has happened to me three times so far. Short of deleting the original article, there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.
When I wrote Downloading Pirated Anything Is NOT Illegal, I opened up a veritable can of worms. Steve of Ramblings from the Marginalized submitted it to Digg on March 20th, 2007. According to my stats at the time, it was viewed more than 11,000 times that day. It was at the top of the front page for hours.
On July 18th or 19th (depending on your time zone), someone visiting from StumbleUpon decided to stumble the article and it received another 4,000 page views before it slowed down. I wrote about it in my article, Yesterday – Another Banner Day for Untwisted Vortex!
Approximately 8 hours ago, someone visiting from StumbleUpon spotted it again and gave it a thumbs down. It might has well have been a thumbs up because it's been viewed more than 400 times today. I have no idea how many visitors it will generate before it slows down again.
I specifically excluded the article from my "Popular Posts" widget, along with quite a few others, because that's not the kind of image I want to project for my blog. I realize that some bloggers would just about kill for traffic like that, but it's not the kind of traffic I'm looking for. Perhaps I'm "looking a gift horse in the mouth". According to the latest statistics from Google Analytics, that article alone has generated more than 55,000 page views.
This has been all over the news for a couple of days. Last Monday (it's Thursday morning here in the Philippines), US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proposed "The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007" to members of Congress.
While I won't go into detail and analyze what's already been publicized about this (see Wired's Proposed Crime of the Century: Attempted Copyright Infringement for a comprehensive analysis), what I will do is point out something that others may have overlooked. I'm focusing on one specific paragraph from their article:
"The bill would also criminalize the intent to commit copyright crimes, which the Justice Department claims brings copyright more in line with other criminal laws. Currently, an infringing crime actually has to have taken place in order for prosecutors to bring a case. The new legislation, if passed, would criminalize the mere attempt."
Does anyone realize the implications this would have on the average Internet user? Current US copyright laws define copyright infringement as a civil matter, except in the case of piracy rings that are covered by another specific law. A civil matter means you can be sued for infringing. What this new bill would do, if passed, would elevate the status of copyright infringement to a criminal matter. All of a sudden, the government can prosecute you AND you can be sued for copyright infringement. Not only that, there are provisions in the bill that would allow the government to seize anything that was used in the infringement.
The most worrisome part of the bill is that attempted copyright infringement will carry the same penalties as actually doing it. That reaches a little too close to home. We all know (or at least most of us) that sharing/uploading copyrighted works without permission is blatant copyright infringement and can result in large settlements in or out of court. We also know that it's not cost effective for the IP holders to chase down and sue those who receive/download copyrighted works because of the limited value of the works in a single instance.
This bill would change all that. The copyright holders would no longer need to sue you. They would just inform law enforcement officials and you'd be incarcerated with only a shred of evidence to support their claims. Just owning a computer with a CD or DVD burner installed would be enough for them to charge you with an "attempt" to infringe on someone's copyright.
Current bittorrent websites continue to index and list illegally distributed copyrighted media over high speed internet connections. The entertainment industries know they can't do anything about it as the law stands today. The websites are not infringing on copyrights because they are not distributing the media themselves. If you elevate copyright infringement to a criminal status, that changes instantly. The website owners and operators, and even the ISPs that provide the space and bandwidth, can be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal act.
Read the article link I provided. Then think about what I just wrote. Do you see a red herring like I do?
Your average Filipino here in the Philippines doesn't make a lot of money. The majority earn less than the equivalent of $200 in US dollars per month. Owning a computer is rare and having a home Internet connection is even rarer. The computers here cost as much as they do in the US. Needless to say, it would take years for the average Filipino to buy one.
One of my neighbors came over this morning to ask for help removing viruses from his computer. His name is Johnny but his nickname is "Jojo". Well, Jojo only uses the prepaid Internet cards like I used to buy before getting DSL. The only reason he has a computer at all is because he works for FedEx on SBMA and they had a program that furnished employees with computers. He informed me that he didn't have any kind of antivirus on his computer. He had both Norton and McAfee at one time, but they expired and he removed them.
It wasn't an easy task. He had to borrow a USB flash drive from one of his relatives, bring it over here, and then I had to download AVG Free along with the definition updates onto that drive. Then I had to hike up a trail to his house. I was lucky that he was running Windows XP and not some older version. I installed AVG onto his computer and had it install the updates from the flash drive. Then I scanned his computer. After scanning for an hour, it found three trojans and one worm. The worm had replicated itself to 136 files on his two internal drives. I cleaned it off and it ran smooth again afterwards.
While it was scanning, we had a chance to talk about how he got the viruses in the first place. Apparently, his son likes to borrow video games from other kids and install them on his father's computer. One or more of the CDs may have had a virus on it. I also found out that Jojo's girlfriend had been downloading MP3s from some nefarious sites. Some of those MP3s were found to be infected during the scan. They displayed as corrupted in Windows Media Player this morning and that's what prompted him to come down and get me in the first place. I was going to explain how to use torrent sites until I realized she was downloading Tagalog music which you won't find much of at those sites.
Jojo asked me if the RIAA could cause him any trouble. At first I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. He didn't realize the American court system doesn't have jurisdiction here and that the RIAA's DMCA subpoenas would never be sent to an agency outside the US. I explained that even if the RIAA wanted to do something, they wouldn't because his girlfriend wasn't uploading anything. Chasing those who download only, even in the US, is futile.
Without a resident antivirus program on his computer, Jojo was asking for trouble. I gave him instructions on how to keep his AVG up-to-date, including paying me a visit at least once a month to download updated definitions for him. When all was said and done, Jojo was a happy camper. As long as he was happy, I was happy to help.
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Blog Appreciation:
I don't always agree with him, but Justin (aka Sirrion) at The Sanctuary is entitled to his opinions, and he strongly defends them. His blog is for adults only. If you can appreciate that, then pay him a visit.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am not a person in a position of authority. I am not a professional writer. This article pertains to the United States of America but may be germane to other countries due to international laws and trade agreements.
The article I wrote a few days ago, Downloading Pirated Anything Is NOT Illegal, drew way more attention than I anticipated. Had I a clue as to the intensity of debatable territory I was treading on, I would have done one of two things. Either I would have refrained from writing it at all or I would have paid much more attention to how I worded it. It drew a lot of criticism and hostility. Apparently, however, there were many people who agreed with my point of view. As of the time of this writing, the article has been read more than 19,000 times, Digg users have "dugg" it more than 3,100 times and there are STILL people reading it, right now.
Whether I was right or wrong in my assumptions, the issue of downloading pirated material shouldn't be what we're focused on. We should be attacking the things the RIAA is doing right now, things that are sanctioned by government officials who reside in the back pockets of the record labels, subverting the purpose of copyright law in the first place. If we don't stop the RIAA, other industry lawyers will copy their new business strategy of sue first, ask questions later.
There are a lot of Americans that either don't know or are apathetic about the situation the RIAA has put a lot of hard-working Americans into, including themselves. It is for this very reason that everyone who reads this needs to write about it, both online and off. Link to this article, plagiarize it or even copy it word for word, you'll get no arguments from me.
The US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 states the Congress shall have power "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". This is the basis for copyright law in the US. Petitioners in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003) argued unsuccessfully that successive retroactive extensions of copyright were functionally unlimited and violated the limited times language of the clause. Only the naive would believe that a copyright term amounting to the life of the author plus 95 years has the effect of anything less than unlimited. The constitutional clause was obviously designed to reward authors and inventors for their works only until they were compensated in a just manner. As the copyright law stands today, it does much more than that. It secures a permanent income source and stifles innovation.
A few short years ago, the RIAA decided to use the DMCA for its own agenda and to begin suing consumers for copyright infringement. They start by offering to settle out of court for a disclosed amount. If the accused refuses, the lawsuit proceeds. This sounds a lot like extortion to me. So far, the RIAA has sued over 20,000 people and settled with more than 2,000 of them. Some who settled were not guilty of anything but having Internet access and settled simply because fighting in court would have been much more costly.
The RIAA is notorious for suing dead people, children, college students, and people who don't even own computers. Who's next, unborn babies? It doesn't matter if it's within their legal rights to sue anyone, their actions are both ethically and morally wrong. The RIAA wouldn't be drawing the criticism it so richly deserves if it took the time to consider the consequences of its actions (such as causing families to file for bankruptcy protection). Expecting all consumers to abide by copyright law when the law is convoluted enough to confuse lawyers is a risky position to take. Perhaps it's the reason the RIAA continues to lose lawsuits when the defendants actually fight back.
When a challenge to the constitutionality of a law that is unfair and unjust and serves only to make the rich richer fails to change that law, Americans have no recourse but to resort to civil disobedience. If that doesn't have any effect, more drastic measures are required. Are any of you up to the challenge? Perhaps a revolution could change this and a few other injustices being perpetrated in America today.
Take one sensationalist headline on a topic that Digg users are interested in. Add a personal experience, some personal beliefs, a few questions and stir. Wait for someone to submit the article to Digg and 9 hours later, front page!
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am not a person in a position of authority. I am not a professional anything. I am retired. The country in question is the United States of America.
The headline is not really any more sensationalist than the MPAA message on DVDs that says "Downloading pirated movies is stealing", comparing it the theft of a car or a purse. The difference is that their statement is designed to instill FUD. By stating that it's theft, it paints anyone doing it as a common criminal. Downloading a pirated file of any kind can not be classified as anything greater than a copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is a civil matter (except in cases covered by the NET Act in which it can be a criminal matter). If your act of downloading is not covered by the NET Act, you are not guilty of a crime. For the sake of argument, let's exclude the NET Act. The MPAA called you a thief, a criminal. What do you think about that? Especially since, in the case of a civil matter, you can be sued but not tried for a crime.
That's how simple it is, but the **AAs would have you think otherwise. In my previous article Downloading Pirated Anything Is NOT Illegal, I stated that downloading in itself was not illegal. It should have been "not theft" instead of "not illegal". I was being misleading, but no more so than the **AAs.
Truth be told, that article should never have made it to the front page of Digg, especially after all the bad things I've said about Digg users on this blog. I didn't submit the article and I wouldn't have submitted it. I didn't believe it was worthy and most of my articles on Digg usually get buried or ignored anyway.
The article rose to the front page in 9 hours. That allowed plenty of time for it to get buried. If anyone is angry about the comments following the article, or the comments following the post on Digg, you have no one to blame but yourself and your herd mentality.
Summary: Downloading ANY file can be legal or illegal depending on the situation. The situation dictates the legality, not the actual act. Copyright infringement is not equal to the legal definition of theft.
