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>Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 21:39:10 -0700 (PDT) >From: Lauren Weinstein>Subject: [ EEPI-Discuss ] Congress threatens actions against > file-sharing firms ... > >http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/29/AR2005072901794.html > > The head of the Senate Commerce Committee warned online > file-sharing companies this week that if they do not crack down > on piracy and pornography available via their networks, Congress > will force them to act. A few comments about this: (1) Pornography is really a red herring here, added for rhetorical purposes to cast aspersions on P2P systems in general. They also like to connect P2P systems with terrorism and crime gangs, equally spuriously. This stuff is baldly distracting in intent, purely part of a nefarious and self-serving issue-framing strategy. Even piracy itself hasn't been definitively demonstrated as a dominant activity on P2P (personal use without sharing could easily dominate the incidence of offering to others, both in terms of (a) numbers of people offering anything to others, and (b) proportion of what people use personally that is offered to others). The issue here from a legal perspective is actually not the downloading for personal use (much fuzzier legal precedents) but rather the *offering* of content to "millions" of others. The data presented so far are not empirically convincing at all, especially with the RIAA lawsuits that may well be inhibiting the incidence of offering. (Granted, it doesn't take a majority of people offering to provide value to those downloading -- the "80/20" rule applies generally here. But given the state of law in the system right now, the legal arguments are not slam-dunk by any means.) (2) Putting pressure on *companies* that build P2P software does nothing to address open-source P2P software that is replacing company-driven products as a platform for P2P activity, especially open-source SW created overseas (pay increasing attention to international treaties moving forward). If policy is going to be productive, it has to at least have a chance of being effective, and it must address the correct targets. I think the causal theory put forth by the "conventional wisdom" or "received view" (i.e., PR from the content control industry, aided and abetted by unquestioning mainstream journalism) is fundamentally flawed, which undermines any policies based on that theory -- or else it betrays those policies as having more important ulterior motives that we should pay attention to (the unspoken ancillary effects are the more dangerous ones). In short, what seems to be threatened by these Senators would not actually constrain the incidence of P2P activity, while it could certainly impinge further upon civil liberties. (3) Mitch Bainwol rejected collective licensing paradigms (even voluntary forms) out of hand as a non-starter -- just who is obstructing productive solutions here? I understand why he is taking this position, but that doesn't make it right for the country or for the world or even for individual creative people (as opposed to the large corporations that aggregate ownership of content rights). (4) The Senators appear not to understand the true realities and motives at work here (or they may be responding to what they perceive as the public understanding of these issues), which is of course the goal of those propagating the conventional wisdom. Score one point for the content control industry against the public interest (especially as propagated by the mainstream media -- the reality of what happened at that meeting is that there is no legislation pending to address this stuff, and the meeting probably amounted more to rhetorical grandstanding than actual informing of the public). But, the game is far from over. The truth will set you free. Dan _______________________________________________ EEPI-Discuss mailing list information: http://lists.eepi.org/mailman/listinfo/eepi-discuss