Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 28th, '05

[JackSpratts]

Editor’s Note: A recent advocacy piece in a music industry trade paper took aim at Creative Commons (CC), the alternative-copyright consortium. Here is the original article by Billboard Magazine attorney Susan Butler as distributed by Reuters, followed by two responses from CC. - Jack


Music Biz Wary Of Copyright Sharing Movement
Susan Butler

An innovative approach to sharing and licensing copyrighted material is spreading around the globe, gathering millions of creative works under its umbrella.

The movement, spearheaded by a nonprofit organization called Creative Commons, is little-known in the music industry.

Yet sponsoring groups in 31 countries have adopted the Creative Commons approach. Sponsors in nearly 40 more countries are said to be in the process of launching the project.

For the most part, the various Creative Commons licenses have been applied to academic material and blogs. In many instances, creators permit others to make use of their works

without compensation. In other cases, new works are donated to the public domain.

As Creative Commons chairman and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig travels the world encouraging international adoption of Creative Commons, the movement has begun to arouse concern in the music business. Some industry leaders say that the group's approach -- applauded by many -- is in effect a Trojan horse that could erode copyright protection or harm unwitting artists.

"My concern is that many who support Creative Commons also support a point of view that would take away people's choices about what to do with their own property," says David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers' Assn. and former chairman of the Department of Justice's Intellectual Property Task Force.

Creative Commons dates back to 2001, when a number of figures from the academic world recognized that there was no mechanism in place to inform Internet users how to easily locate copyright owners. Nor was there a way for Web users to determine whether works posted on the Internet -- essays, articles, photographs, poetry, music -- could be used freely as public-domain works or in some ways without the copyright owner's permission.

The group began developing standard licenses that can be linked to works on the Internet, indicating that the copyright owners permit certain uses without compensation. In this way, other creators who want to use or build on the works can do so without tracking down the owners or hiring lawyers to do so, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer science professor Hal Abelson, a Creative Commons board member.

While authors were initially licensing blogs, scientific articles and educational materials over the Internet, the Creative Commons has more recently been encouraging the music community to support the project online and offline.

At least one widely circulated CD has been developed using Creative Commons licenses. Wired magazine approached artists to provide music under the Creative Commons licenses for a CD distributed with its November 2004 issue. Sixteen agreed, including David Byrne, Beastie Boys and Chuck D.

Hilary Rosen, former chairman/CEO of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, also has expressed support for the Creative Commons in speeches and in an article in Wired. (Lessig is a contributing editor to the magazine.)

Despite such displays of support, critics like the NMPA's Israelite believe Creative Commons intends to undermine copyright protection through its activities in courts and legislatures.

"Lessig and his followers advocate a shorter copyright term," says attorney Michael Sukin, a founding member of the International Assn. of Entertainment Lawyers.

The Creative Commons was founded on the ideas of Eric Eldred, an Internet publisher who filed a court challenge to federal legislation that extended U.S. copyright protection for an additional 20 years. Lessig argued the case for Eldred before the Supreme Court, which upheld the law.

"I think the biggest issue that Creative Commons really tries to point to is the fact that for the sake of a very small percentage of works that do have high value, we're locking up everything else so our intellectual soil becomes nutrient-poor," says Tim O'Reilly, who publishes technology books and supports the group.

While Lessig and other board members acknowledge that they support a shorter copyright term, they say Creative Commons is separate from their activities as individuals.

MIT's Abelson says his point of view comes from his science background. "If the term in 1920 was what it is today, we would just now be freeing up the work that discovered that there were atoms. I don't want to speak for artists, but for the progress of science it just scares me that you lock this stuff up for 100 years."

Abelson adds, "We're not like a lobbying organization. We've been trying pretty hard for Creative Commons not to get involved in that kind of stuff."

Yet Israelite and Sukin say that it is hard to separate the individuals from the organization.

This blurring was evident when RIAA and Motion Picture Assn. of America members, music publishers and songwriters argued the Grokster case before the Supreme Court, seeking to reverse the federal appellate decision that held peer-to-peer operators Grokster and StreamCast not liable for their users' infringements of copyrighted music.

Fifty-five amicus (friend of the court) briefs were filed, many by professors. Rather than filing a brief as a professor, Lessig submitted one on behalf of Creative Commons.

The brief, which proposed affirming the appellate decision against RIAA and MPAA members, described the Creative Commons as a group with an award-winning project endorsed by many, including ex-RIAA chief Rosen and former MPAA leader Jack Valenti. It also listed as supporters the artists whose music was on the Wired CD.

Although Rosen supports the Creative Commons approach to licensing, she tells Billboard that she was not aware her name was used in the brief.

"Neither Jack nor I endorsed the Creative Commons brief before the Supreme Court," she says. "Obviously I don't approve, obviously I don't think it's appropriate, and I certainly don't endorse their view in" the Grokster case.

Israelite says that often when people give away their own property under a Creative Commons license, "it is really an argument why others should be forced to give away their property."

Still, many industry experts praise the group for creating its licensing mechanism.

"If a creator wants to dedicate his work to the world or wants to allow others to use it with the promise to credit the author, there has been no mechanism in place to provide public notice," RIAA president Cary Sherman says. "The Commons approach would basically solve this problem."

Lessig says, "We thought it was critical to build standards that become interchangeable and understandable across jurisdictions."

On its Web site, Creative Commons offers six basic licenses, eight special licenses and a core licensing engine.

The basic license deals have various options for authors, including offering works for mere attribution (credit), restricting use to noncommercial purposes, permitting adaptations (derivative use) and requiring users to "share alike" if they make changes.

The special licenses cover music sampling, music sharing and contributing works to the public domain.

Each license comes in three versions, which Lessig describes as the human-readable form in language understandable to lay persons; the lawyer-readable license in language for courts to enforce in each jurisdiction; and the machine-readable form that embeds information for Internet search engines.

Critics of Creative Commons say that offering these licenses to artists without encouraging them to get legal advice or explaining risks is dangerous.

Andy Fraser hates to think what his fate might have been had Creative Commons existed when he was a young artist.

Fraser entered the business in 1968 at age 15, when he became the bass player/co-songwriter for British rock/blues band Free. Two years later, while in the dressing room after a bad gig, he started bopping around telling his bandmates, "It's all right now." After about 10 minutes a song was born, with co-writer/singer Paul Rodgers contributing lyrics.

"All Right Now," released on Free's third album, "Fire and Water," became one of the most-performed songs in performinbg rights organization Broadcast Music Inc.'s repertoire of about 4.5 million works. The song has been played nearly 3 million times -- the equivalent of repeatedly playing it for more than 28 years.

While Fraser has written more than 150 songs, continuing royalties from radio and TV use of two compositions -- "All Right Now" and "Every Kinda People" (first recorded by Robert Palmer) -- generate most of his income. Had he given up his rights to those early hits, he would not have the resources to cover his treatment for AIDS.

Such a decision might have been tragic. Fraser says he has been kept alive by medication, radiation therapy and experimental medical treatments -- largely paid for with his song royalties.

"No one should let artists give up their rights," he says.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...PYRIGHT-DC.XML



Worst "Journalism" Ever.
Matthew Haughey

This Reuters article on critics of Creative Commons is just about the most ridiculous article I've seen about CC to date. It reads as if the president of the National Music Publisher's Association knew the author and basically wanted to get a anti-CC article out there. It contains a few quotes from CC board members and CC supporters (including Hilary Rosen and the current RIAA president) but generally lets the songwriter representitive dub the movement a "trojan horse" and claims that when you license a song under CC "it is really an argument why others should be forced to give away their property." (my emphasis) Then the article confounds the Eldred case into Creative Commons because Lessig is behind both but the real gem is at the end.

They cover one songwriter that found success. Nevermind that Tim O'Reilly's quote in the same article explains how 1 in a million songs are successfull and that CC exists for letting the other 99.999% of people that didn't hit it big share their works with the world. In a wonderful bit of journalistic gymnastics they mention how this successful songwriter has contracted the AIDS virus, and bring it all back to Creative Commons. I quote from the article:

Had he given up his rights to those early hits, he would not have the resources to cover his treatment for AIDS.

Such a decision might have been tragic. Fraser says he has been kept alive by medication, radiation therapy and experimental medical treatments -- largely paid for with his song royalties.

"No one should let artists give up their rights," he says.

That's right, you just read a Reuters article try to make the claim that Creative Commons can kill those living with AIDS.

So to recap, the only legitimate point made in the article is that a musician may not know what rights they are giving away, and I'll grant you that it may be true, provided an artist ignored the page explaining the licenses and the page explaining the rights in all licenses. While the article contains comments supportive of Creative Commons from music industry giants like the RIAA, the article's author turns some minor confusion about a name appearing in an amicus brief into unwanted support for a supreme court case that is somehow CC's fault and the author lets the songwriter association president call the movement names, construe that it is unfair to artists, and finally, twist some emotion out of a ailing songwriter, equating a CC license with a death sentence.

I'm sure Reuters will be getting a Pulitzer for this bit of drivel.

update: Lessig has more to say and mentions previous (and similar) articles from the same Billboard Magazine reporter. Also, it occurred to me that the ailing songwriter in the article could still be alive and paying for medications through royalites, if he chose a non-commercial Creative Commons license for his song. As they say, share your music and good things often follow.
http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2005/...journalis.html



First We're A "Virus," Now We Kill People With AIDS
Lawrence Lessig

Matt's angry about an article in Billboard that is being distributed by Reuters. The article deserves some context.

Last December, Billboard published a piece by its legal affairs editor, Susan Butler. The piece opened with a quote from Michael Sukin, "founding member of the International Association of Entertainment Lawyers," saying that Creative Commons had emerged as a "serious threat to the entertainment industry." The piece then asserted:

The nonprofit organization--also known as Creative Commons--urges creators to give up their copyright protection--which lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years under U.S. law--by selling their copyrights to the commons for $1,according to its Web site. In return, the authors receive certain rights that they can use for either 14 or 28 years, or they can donate all rights to the pubic domain for everyone to use.

The "movement," Sukin stated, had "spread like a virus" and "U.S. copyright income" could be at risk.

The hyperbole from Mr. Sukin -- a lawyer -- was funny. But what struck me in the article was the assertion by Butler that "Creative Commons urges creators to give up their copyright protection" in exchange for $1. I couldn't begin to understand what she was talking about. Obviously, our licenses enable artists to choose to waive certain rights -- while retaining others. (Remember: "Some Rights Reserved"). But they are licenses of a copyright; they couldn't function if you had "give[n] up" copyright protection. The vast majority of creators adopting Creative Commons licenses keep commercial rights, while giving away noncommercial rights (2/3ds). It's hard to see how waiving noncommercial rights would do anything to "U.S. copyright income."

So I contacted Butler to ask her what she was talking about. We connected over email, and she said she'd check into it. She then pointed me to the Founders' Copyright, which indeed does offer $1 in exchange for someone limiting a copyright to 14, or 28 years. I had frankly forgotten about the way the Founders' Copyright functioned, mainly because nothing we do today has anything to do with that license, as Evan pointed out in his birthday wish for the still-born license. As far as I knew at that point, precisely 3 works have been licensed under this license (my own books). O'Reilly is processing more. But to describe the work of Creative Commons as this is either to listen to Mr. Sukin without checking the facts, or not to care about the facts. You could say, for example, that Billboard is a publication that publishes letters to the editor, and that would technically be true. But obviously, though technically true, it would be a totally false characterization of what Billboard is.

I therefore suggested the story should be corrected. It wasn't. Instead, a month or so ago, we learned that the same writer had been assigned to write an "indepth" story about Creative Commons. I thought the idea a bit odd. I raised its oddness to the magazine. According to their standards of truth, what Susan Butler had published before was correct. They were confident that she would produce the same again.

That, of course, was my fear as well.

The Billboard piece is beautifully written -- indeed, it has a cadence to it that is masterful. There's a tide -- in and out -- of good, crested with criticism, all building to the part that got Matt so angry -- as he put it, the suggestion that Creative Commons "kills people with AIDS."

Yet it's very interesting to map the structure of the argument. The piece has some quotes from me, and Hal Abelson in support. It quotes two people opposed. One of the two is Mr. Sukin again. The other is David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association.

Israelite doesn't actually say any about us. He's worried about the people we hang around with. As he says,

"My concern is that many who support Creative Commons also support a point of view that would take away people's choices about what to do with their own property."

And later, Butler reports,

"Israelite says that often when people give away their own property under a Creative Commons license, 'it is really an argument why others should be forced to give away their property.'"

I love it when people tell me what my argument "really" is. The whole premise of Creative Commons is that artists choose. We give licenses to creators. How exactly empowering creators is "really an argument why others should be forced to give away their property" is bizarre to me. By this reasoning, when Bill Gates give $20,000,000,000 to help poor people around the world, that's an argument for socialism.

Sukin's criticism is even more bizarre. Butler quotes him as saying "Lessig and his followers advocate a shorter copyright term." The link this point has to Creative Commons is left obscure by the author. The RIAA believes it is appropriate to sue kids for downloading music. They're supporters of Creative Commons. Does it follow that Creative Commons supports suing kids for downloading music? There are a wide range of supporters of Creative Commons, many of whom disagree about many matters fundamental. I should think that's a virtue of Creative Commons, not a vice.

There is one part to the piece, however, that does bothered. Not the dramatic flair at the end (this is Hollywood, remember. What would a story be without a villain killing a victim with AIDS in the end). The extraordinary part to me was the following:

The brief, which proposed affirming the appellate decision against RIAA and MPAA members, described the Creative Commons as a group with an award-winning project endorsed by many, including ex-RIAA chief Rosen and former MPAA leader Jack Valenti. It also listed as supporters the artists whose music was on the Wired CD.

The piece then goes on to describe an apparent conversation that Butler had with Rosen, in which Rosen apparently objected to how she understood how her name was used. The reporter thus becomes actor, stirring up a controversy about whether the target of her piece has misbehaved.

Here's the brief. As you'll see when you read it, we mention Rosen and Valenti in the section titled "Interest of Amicus" -- a part of an Amicus brief which explains who the organization filing the brief is. What we say is this:

"The project has been endorsed by former MPAA president Jack Valenti, and by former president of the RIAA Hilary Rosen."

No where in the brief do we suggest that Rosen or Valenti supported the argument we make in the brief. What we assert is that they endorsed the "project" -- which they have.

More extraordinary is the statement about the artists who were on the Wired CD. Again, here's what Butler wrote:

"[The brief] also listed as supporters the artists whose music was on the Wired CD."

Here's what the brief says:

"As part of a feature about Creative Commons, Wired magazine has released a CD with 16 tracks licensed under a Creative Commons license by artists including, among others, the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Gilberto Gil, Chuck D, and Le Tigre."

Notice, the brief says nothing about the artists being "supporters" of Creative Commons. It simply lists who was on the CD. Butler's statement -- that we listed them "as supporters" -- is just false.

Now you might think, well, cut her a break. She's just a journalist writing for Billboard. But again and again, Butler reminded me that she had in fact been a practicing lawyer. Her editors indicated the same. So I don't quite know how to understand a lawyer who can't read an amicus brief -- or for that matter, a lawyer who doesn't know the difference between putting something "into the public domain" and licensing it. These could well just be mistakes, of course. But they are surprising from someone with the experience she has.

The fair criticism of the article is that we don't do enough to warn people, or to push them to consult a lawyer first. That's a good point, and we're thinking about ways to enable referrals, and to do more than we already do to educate. Help here would be greatly appreciated.

It's also true, as Butler says, that there's a "blurring" between Creative Commons and the views of people like me (though my view of course is far from the view criticized by Israelite). I'd love -- really really love -- to find someone to replace me who might erase such a blur. I am not Creative Commons. It was not my idea. I am just devoting as much time as I can to push its message, and the tools it enables. I'd be very happy to find a way to spend less.

My favorite part of the article is the quote from Cary Sherman at the RIAA. God bless that man. As he is quoted,

"If a creator wants to dedicate his work to the world or wants to allow others to use it with the promise to credit the author, there has been no mechanism in place to provide public notice," RIAA president Cary Sherman says. "The Commons approach would basically solve this problem."

Exactly right. We're giving artists free tools. What they do with them is their choice. There are many who believe, as Butler quotes Andy Fraser to say, that "[n]o one should let artists give up their rights." "Let." Read that word again: "let."

In my view, it is the artists who have the rights. And no one should take the role of deciding what we "let" artists do. Neither should anyone interfere with artists doing what they think best. Of course, and again, education is key. No one should be tricked. No one should waive rights without understanding what their doing. But neither should anyone think themselves entitled to wage war against artists doing what artists choose. Or if they do want to wage such a war, then let's at least be open about the paternalism in the position. If we're not going to "let" artists select Creative Commons licenses, then are we going to "let" them sign recording deals? Because I promise you this: there are many many more artists who are upset with their recording deals than with the spread they've enabled using Creative Commons licenses.

Butler's first article stated that Mr. Sukin is "lobbying" against Creative Commons. It's time we have an open conversation, Mr. Sukin. I challenge you to the sort of duel decent people engage: a debate. Let's let both sides be heard, and let's then "let" the artists decide.
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002903.shtml


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Women Take Center Stage In Brazil's Funk World
Adriana Garcia

A female sexual revolution driven by a thumping bass and racy lyrics is shaking Rio de Janeiro's slums.

Poor women are quitting their jobs as maids and gas station attendants to become singers of Funk Carioca, a musical style born in the tough "favelas" or slums of the famed

Brazilian seaside city.

Known as Masters of Ceremony, or MCs, they draw huge crowds to hear them sing raunchy songs about casual sex. And their earnings have given them the financial independence to make their own demands -- in bed or out.

"Women got into Funk Carioca as dancers, but they refused to stay there as ornaments," says filmmaker Denise Garcia, who has made a documentary about the MCs called "I'm Ugly but Trendy."

The phrase is a mantra of funk diva Tati Quebra-Barraco (Tati Home-Wrecker), the movement's most prominent singer.

Aged 25 and married with three children, Tati lives in City of God, the poor neighborhood where the Oscar-nominated movie of the same name was set.

Her lyrics describe almost all the positions in the Kama Sutra, the ancient Indian book of love.

They include such suggestive lines like "I don't like small lollipops" or "Call me your kitty and I will go woof, woof."

Unattractive and overweight as a teen-ager, Tati said she used explicit sexual overtures to attract men's attention.

"Being neither beautiful nor thin, when I was a teen-ager I could not find a boyfriend," she says.

"But after I started singing these things, they got better," she says, smiling and showing off a slim profile crafted with recent plastic surgery.

She is also an example of economic success for the women of her community, where there are more than 2,000 bondes, or funk groups. As the most prominent of the funkeiras, Tati can make up to 5,000 reais ($2,000) for a show, whereas other lesser known singers get from 100 reais to 500 reais ($40 to $200) per concert.

Brazilian funk was inspired by Miami Bass, the style of hip hop extolling the virtues and vices of sex with repetitive choruses and high speed beats made famous in the United States by groups like 2 Live Crew and 69 Boyz.

It was modified in Brazil with a stronger drumbeat called tamborzao and double-entendre lyrics typical of other genres of Brazilian popular music.

In hillside slums overlooking Rio's beaches, the funk parties draw more than a million people during weekends, says Silvio Essinger, author of a new book on Rio funk.

"This is the real Rio; this is how young people have fun. It's not samba for the older generation," he said.

Funk has other subgenres besides the sexually explicit, he said, including one that praises the gangs that rule the favelas.

The movement's main ambassador, DJ Malboro, has performed at New York's Summerstage Festival and Barcelona's electronic music festival Sonar. His daily radio show, where he plays tamer versions of erotic funk, is hugely popular.

Fame And Freedom

Singing offers the women a glamour profession in poor communities with few idols.

"Nowadays women make their own money, so they don't feel bad about themselves. They work and they have their children. And when you sing or dance you also have a name," said MC Valesca dos Santos, 26, from the group Gaiola das Popozudas, or Cage of the Big Butts.

A woman MC can easily get 10 times more money than working a regular job as a maid, for example, which has a salary of about $150 a month.

Tati Quebra-Barraco now performs outside the slums, sometimes for rich people at the legendary Copacabana Palace Hotel or nightclubs in Sao Paulo. She has more than 200 pairs of expensive Gang jeans, a must-have in the funk world because of their butt-lifting tight cut and lycra.

Most of the "funkeiras" need to perform several times a night to make good money. Their managers drive them in vans from one slum to another all night long. There are plenty of venues as Rio has more than 600 slums among its 6 million inhabitants.

Tramps Versus Faithful Wives

The latest craze in the funk movement pits "tramps" against "faithful wives" -- a rivalry sparked by a male singer whose mistress betrayed him to his girlfriend.

The vocalist, from Bonde dos Magrinhos, then wrote a song calling the mistress "nothing more than a late night snack."

For MC Nem, or Alessandra da Silva Carlos, 19, it was a call for war. "If you think we are a snack, remember we eat you too," she now sings in defense of extracurricular girlfriends.

However, if MCs want to go beyond their communities, they have to play down the sexy lyrics. This means recording a CD and having a song played on DJ Malboro's radio show, which can make the link to popular TV shows and mainstream media recognition.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...IL-FUNK-DC.XML



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Studios Seek Revenge As File Sharers Beat 'Sith' To Screen
Andrew Kantor

"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" hit the theaters last Friday. And at about the same time pirated versions were already available online. (They were also available on street corners in your nearest big city, but that's not nearly as interesting.)

You probably heard about that already.

In related news, Wal-Mart decided to get out of the DVD-by-mail rental business, giving its customers over to industry pioneer Netflix. Blockbuster, which now offers a similar service, is also trying to lure ex-Wal-Mart customers.

Wal-Mart's logic, or at least it's claimed logic, is that it wants to focus on DVD sales rather than rentals.

I would bet that Wal-Mart's move is a little more forward thinking than that. I think the company knows that the future for movie rentals is severely limited. The rise of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and cheap broadband access send the message loud and clear: The Internet, not plastic disks, is the future of movie rentals.

We're seeing the tip of that iceberg in cable companies' video on demand services. But those are limited compared to what's coming — limited because your only choices are what your cable company provides.

Soon enough you'll be accessing the Internet through your television and grabbing video from more than just Time Warner or Cox or Comcast. You'll have Netflix.com or Blockbuster.com — or maybe the guy next door.

Today's P2P networking is another tip of another iceberg. When you combine broadband, Internet-enabled television, and P2P, you (and Wal-Mart) can see where the future is.

Today "Revenge of the Sith." Tomorrow… well, the world.

The blame game

"Sith" first appeared on the BitTorrent network, the largest P2P networks. A quick check at TorrentSpy, one of the places that catalogs what's available on BitTorrent, showed more than 50,000 people in the process of downloading it.

And that includes not only "Revenge of the Sith," but also "La Venganza de los Sith," and "Die Rache der Sith," for our Spanish- and German-speaking friends.

Amusingly, the Motion Picture Association of America had a press release out on Thursday decrying this fact. I say "amusingly" for two reasons. First, the press release came out before it was common knowledge that the movie was available online — thus the MPAA helped draw attention (and downloaders) to the fact.

Second, there was the release's headline: "BitTorrent Facilitating Illegal File Swapping of Star Wars On Day of Opening." The MPAA is trying to lay the blame for the problem on BitTorrent. But BitTorrent is a protocol — a language, if you will. That's like trying to blame 9/11 on Arabic.

Of course, the MPAA is in the process of trying to shut down file sharing altogether.

ABC News that night apparently had a long, breathless report about the piracy, complete with plenty of MPAA opinion. It's obvious where ABC stands on the issue; it's owned by Disney, which is apparently trying to use its news division to further a political agenda — smart, but still disturbing.

I didn't see the ABC report. I was told about it by Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Virginia, who was somewhat dismayed to see such a one-sided report.

Boucher, realizing that it's Congress's job to represent the people (imagine that!), was quite clear about his stance on file sharing: It's not going anywhere.

The entertainment industry can push all it wants, but P2P networking is simply too good and too important to ban, he said.

"It is impossible for the motion picture industry to legislatively attack file sharing because they don't like the way it's used for movies without attacking it in general," he said. "A broad-fronted attack on file sharing is going to fail."

We have met the enemy and he is us

I also find the MPAA's release funny because of the files that are available on BitTorrent: They're studio screeners — internal. The most popular one has time codes displayed across the top showing hours, minutes, seconds, and frames.

In fact, some of what's available is even labeled as "VHS Screener" or "workprint," neither of which is available to the public. They're used by studios either in making, editing, marketing, or screening the flick.

In other words, the files that are on BitTorrent came from the studios themselves.

I'm not saying that 20th Century Fox did it deliberately. (Although I suppose that isn't incredibly farfetched.) What I'm saying is that it was an inside job.

(The MPAA, by the way, did not return my call for comment.)

The problem of insiders breaking the law and leaking stuff to the Internet is apparently widespread. Just the other day, in an article about the season finale of NCIS, series producer Don Bellisario commented, "Every time we put a script out, the minute it gets to the network and to Paramount Studios, it is online. So someone at our companies, at Paramount or the network, is feeding the information online."

I'm sure the entertainment companies realize this is a problem — that their own people are the ones leaking the content to the Web. Without those leaks, the only way to get these movies out onto the file-sharing networks would be to do the old bring-the-video-camera-into-the-theater trick.

But neither the movie nor the music industry really cares about that. They have convinced themselves that the Internet is evil, that file sharing can somehow be stopped, and they are falling over themselves (made possible by the fact that they are also beside themselves) trying to fight it.

This is a familiar tune. The entertainment industry tried the same end-of-our-industry panic when cassette tapes were first introduced and when the VCR debuted. And both times it shifted its business models, took advantage of the technology, and made billions. (Not to mention the new industries that sprung up — anyone own any Blockbuster stock?)

Boucher is right. It's not going away. P2P is just too good a way of sharing information. It's efficient, it's easy, and it uses the Internet the way it was meant to be used.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columni...-sharing_x.htm















Until next week,

- js.














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