The Usual Suspects: Fortune Magazine On "Piracy"

[JackSpratts]

If you’d like to a see what the “Establishment” considers a reasonable and balanced look at Peer-to-Peer and the legal and moral reasons why file sharing should be stopped, look no further than this months Fortune magazine.

In a deviously one sided article entitled “From Betamax to Kazaa: The Real War Over Piracy” author Roger Parloff makes the money case for investors while overlooking the other issues, especially the cultural ones. Naturally enough he finds file sharing fundamentally different from earlier technologies like the VCR and therefore should be banned.

That his conclusion seems preordained comes as no surprise. We are talking about media giant Time/Warners’ Fortune magazine after all, the bible of capitalists. But it's an old argument with so many hidden holes it’s anxiety provoking just stumbling over them. It’s perverse reading fun though. Sort of like playing Where’s Waldo when your score determines your tax audit.

“Why did the studios ever think they might be entitled to compensation for consumers' personal use of their works within the home? Try looking at it this way. What entices people into stores to buy VCRs is, in part, the prospect of taping copyrighted shows. If so, why should equipment manufacturers hoard all the profits, rather than sharing them with the copyright holders?”

Well…In the case of Peer-to-Peer the “VCR” is free and profit is zero. Even the networks P2P users are migrating to are ad-free, have no real income streams or any hope of seeing them and the groups themselves are run by volunteers. But that dances around a fundamental point. In America we don’t tax industries (people actually) because other industries play parts in purchase decisions. When I buy Michelin tires the company doesn’t send a check to Oldsmobile because that’s where the tires wind up. I pick up furniture that works well in my 100 year old house but that doesn’t mean the carpenter's descendents get a piece of the profits. He got his money when he built it. We all do work that benefits someone but to tax all of us for that reason alone smacks of communism and is demonstrably unworkable - while to tax us simply for the benefit of a few is unfair. He’s right that things have changed since the Betamax case but there's some snow in the video obscuring his picture. P2P changes things so thoroughly that in time the funds media companies may stand to lose - or gain - might come to be seen as one of the least important effects of file sharing.

The article is good for one thing though, letting you know where things stand with the people in charge at the moment.

- js.

[multi]

Well…In the case of Peer-to-Peer the “VCR” is free and profit is zero. Even the networks P2P users are migrating to are ad-free, have no real income streams or any hope of seeing them and the groups themselves are run by volunteers. But that dances around a fundamental point. In America we don’t tax industries (people actually) because other industries play parts in purchase decisions. When I buy Michelin tires the company doesn’t send a check to Oldsmobile because that’s where the tires wind up. I pick up furniture that works well in my 100 year old house but that doesn’t mean the carpenter's descendents get a piece of the profits. He got his money when he built it. We all do work that benefits someone but to tax all of us for that reason alone smacks of communism and is demonstrably unworkable - while to tax us simply for the benefit of a few is unfair. He’s right that things have changed since the Betamax case but there's some snow in the video obscuring his picture. P2P changes things so thoroughly that in time the funds media companies may stand to lose - or gain - might come to be seen as one of the least important effects of file sharing.

thats well put..

heaps of people are still using their VCRs..and even renting VCR tapes
one of my favorite hobbies in the 80's was hooking 2 VCR's together and copy cult movies from the video stores...when i watched them..
and later on in the 90's had a VCR that would do insert edit, and made hours of cut up video(eg. an edit every few seconds ) that would go with just about any music..
(not really an original idea but anyway would drive u a little mad if u watch it too much .)but used to be ok for the music i was making with drum machines and samplers at the time..

a little beside the point but..cutting up images and sounds of maybe 100 or a 1000 different artists work spanning a centuary and mashing them all together to form something else...will never be considered a viable peice of art for some reason..but litttle by little i see the rich and wealthy artists getting away with this sort of thing in ther advert...i mean video clips

but if some new noname artist tries of corse they get sued by all these copyright sharks..

people like disney got their start by using this sort of "aquired material" idea..
the letterists of the 50's and the dada of course..and the italian futurists from the early 1900's...all using aspects of this and various fringe elements over the years inspired me i guess.. stuff like throbbing gristle and early cabaret voltaire
blah blah ...sorry
i guess your post lead me into thinking about this..

i guess.. my point is people have been mixing and matching all sorts of copyrighted material for their own entertainment for a long time now...

once apon a time multi media to me ment
working with mixed media...
now multi media means all the graphics stuff i have on my computer..

[Drakonix]

I think that the VCR argument (for P2P) is one of the best. Apparently, the movie industry must think so to, they don't like hearing VCRs and P2P filesharing equated.

The movie industry tried to kill the VCR touting it would destroy them. Their scheme didn't work, VCR's are still here - and the industry is still thriving. It was pretty much the same thing with the introduction of cassette tape recorders and recordable CDs.

Commercial pre-recorded movies on VHS previously cost between US$60 and US$120. Folks didn't like that price and started copying videotapes, accepting a quality loss in the process. Lots of people were doing it. A local music/video store was selling blank VHS tapes by the case, from piles of cases on several pallets sitting on the floor.

The industry tried copy protection on video tapes, but soon there were devices that removed the undesirable signal that ruined the copied movie. People rented movies and copied them. Hmmm. This storyline sounds really familiar, doesn’t it?

I was one of the many people buying blank audio cassettes and taping from radio and vinyl records - and buying cases of blank tapes and copying movies from TV broadcasts, DSS, and rented videotapes.

The industry turned it around (for movies) by selling pre-recorded VHS movies for under US$20. Suddenly, folks were less interested in copying videotapes and the pallet loads of blank tapes in stores went away. OMG a fair product for a fair price (with some annoying advertising) , and they treat it like it was their own novel idea.

I remember when music on CDs were first available. My Dad and myself called them "Condom Disks" in reference to the price tag. Buying music CDs and (a rapist) using condoms were a similar idea, you got shagged but it didn’t cause pregnancy or disease. We purchased very few music CDs, even though we liked the better sound quality they had.

With great anticipation I waited until CD burners and blank CDs became available and reasonable in price. My goal was to make CDs containing the songs I wanted. The tracks were all from CDs I had purchased.

Then came Napster, and we all know where that storyline goes. Using Napster increased my interest in music - simply because it was available and (whole songs) could be sampled for free. As I acquired more tunes, I ended up buying more CDs to get the tracks I liked in higher quality. Downloaded songs were replaced with higher quality versions ripped from purchased CDs. The result was going from buying two or three CDs per year to US$100-$400 worth of CDs per month. The volume purchasing of CDs stopped when Napster's problems with the RIAA started. Now, I'm back to purchase of 3 or less CDs per year. I guess this is what the RIAA is talking about when it blames P2P for a decline in CD sales.

The demand for recordable CD and recordable DVD devices and related software supports a huge industry too, with an intent to run profitable businesses. Now instead of pallets loaded with cases of blank VHS tapes, there are whole isles in stores devoted to blank CD’s and blank DVDs.

Oh well, a stack off 100 blank recordable CDs or DVDs is a lot easier to carry than a case of blank audio cassettes or a case of blank VHS videotapes, and the media is less expensive.

The movie and music industries know the rules, they just don't like being bound by them.