What do you call such a service?

Well, it depends on the domain. If we place this service in analog space, we would call it a public library. People donate used books and media, and the library loans them out to the patrons for free. Libraries are valuable institutions, and they have an important role in facilitating exchange of knowledge and cataloging our cultural heritage. No one in their right mind is going to say they are harmful.

What if we put such a service in a digital space, and allow people to donate and lend out digital copies. Do you know what we call such a service? Well, maybe I’m off base here but I’d call such a service a torrent tracker. You may disagree, but think about this for a second.

Isn’t a torrent site at least a bit like a gigantic public library with a very broad selection and limitless supply of copies of the content you are seeking for. Aren’t file sharing sites simply a translation of the analog concept of a public library into twenty first century digital landscape of the web? Aren’t they nearly the same in spirit and mission? Both types of services aim to facilitate sharing and spreading of knowledge – it’s just that one can do it much more efficiently than the other.

Tell me what is the difference between these two scenarios:

1. Going to a public library, taking out a movie, watching it and then bringing it back
2. Downloading a movie from a torrent site, watching it and then deleting it to make space on your HD

The main difference is the method by which you obtain the movie and the format in which you obtain it. On one hand we have an analog method of distribution and a physical copy (a DVD). On the other hand we have a digital distribution and a digital copy. The digital download is faster, and the digital copy is more durable (it does not wear out due to use). Other than that though, the two scenarios are very similar. In both cases you get to see your movie free of charge. In both cases the copyright holders don’t get paid. And yet somehow one of these scenarios is considered a “lost sale”. Something is wrong here.

One could argue that in the first scenario you are compelled to return the physical copy back to the library. There is no such compulsion in the second one. Then again, I could argue that a library patron could easily copy the DVD before returning it. Besides, duplicating a library owned DVD for personal use still does not affect the copyright holder. It does not make them any poorer.

So if you take a stance against file sharing, and argue that it is harmful to copyright holders, then wouldn’t you also be able to say the same about public libraries? After all they are in the same business of distributing copyrighted content for free. Are they exempt from scorn and hatred only because they are fairly inefficient at what they do? Or do copyright holders tolerate them just because they are sort of built into the fabric of our society and are protected by tradition and existing social norms.

I leave you with this little nugget: if public libraries did not exist, would it be possible to establish a library system today? Or would they be facing the same legal issues as said file sharing sites? Think about this. I believe you know the answer to these questions. What does this say about the current effort to squash and de-legalize file sharing? Are we really doing the right thing here? Or are we killing a wonderful new emergent public institution that is still in it’s infancy?

Even my dad, who barely knows how to turn on a computer said this verdict was ridiculous. He saw it covered on the news and started shaking his head. He just could not believe one could get sent to jail just for “helping people to find other people to share with”. Cause that’s what Pirate Bay was doing, and the court case made it abundantly clear. Their service was not much unlike that offered by Google, which also indexes and often caches torrent files. My dad’s reaction gives me a glimmer of hope here. He sort of represents the non tech-savvy general population. So if he doesn’t get it, there are more people out there who think the same way.

Hollywood was probably celebrating the whole weekend because of their big crushing victory. They feel like they accomplished something, but did they really? Let’s look at the outcome of this case:

1. They will never get the money because Pirate Bay operators just don’t have this much money
2. No one is going to jail yet because the case is being appealed
3. Pirate Bay is still running and operates outside of Sweeden where it can’t be easily raided
4. The site may stay up even if it’s operators lose the case in the highest instance of the court

In other words, nothing has changed. People are still exchanging copyrighted movies and music on Pirate Bay. The only thing that changed is the reputation of the four young people who started the site. They became beloved online celebrities and heroes of the Pirate Party. Also, thanks to this court case and it’s media coverage millions of people got introduced to Torrents and will probably try file sharing for the first time in their lives.

But let’s for a second assume that the worst possible scenario happens. Pirate Bay is shut down, and it’s creators got to jail for a year. What happens then? I can tell you exactly what will happen. Pirate Bay’s user base simply migrates to Mininova, Demonoid, SumoTorrent, ISOhut, BitSoup, Torrentz, TorrentReactor, TorrentDamage, TorrentBytes or one of few hundred other smaller services. They disperse and strengthen user bases of these other websites. People who were very involved in Pirate Bay community might even branch off and create a spin off site – for example “Mini Bay”, to continue the theme set by Mininova which appeared after Suprnova was shut down. Either way file sharing will continue as usual.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again – Piracy is a social phenomenon. Websites such as Pirate Bay will keep spurting up, because there is insanely huge demand for them. People want to be able to download (not stream – fuck streaming) copyrighted content that is un-encumbered by DRM and not have to pay for it.

You can’t legislate this huge underground market away – RIAA and MPAA have been suing both file sharers, and file sharing website operators and protocol creators for many years now. They have revised US law several times to suit their needs. And yet despite all this effort, the number of people who indulge in illegal file sharing continues to grow. All their work seems to have the exact opposite effect from what they actually set out to do. Piracy becomes more rampart, and more mainstream every year.

I understand that it is only natural for these corporations to try to protect their business model. But so far they have been very unsuccessful at bringing about any sort of positive, long lasting change. While they win most of their legal battles but it is becoming painfully clear that they are losing the war for hearts and minds of their customers. The very people who they depend on for income are just now starting to feel the sting of their anti-piracy frenzy. Pissing off your customers is a dangerous thing to do.

Clearly, this is not a way to fight Piracy. File sharing comes natural to people. It is one of those crimes that is actually easier to commit than to resist. It takes an act of will and strong principles to resist the temptation in face of mounting peer pressure. You want to see a movie or listen to a song for free? It is a single mouse click away – and chances of you getting caught are actually smaller than chances of having a plane fall out of the sky and land on your face.

How do you combat that? You compete with the pirates on your own turf. It is your content, and despite of what you may think you really do have an upper hand in this battle. If you make an attractive offer, people will buy from you. If you call them thieves, and put DRM on their media they will just go back to piracy – it’s that simple. The best place to start is to review Kevin Kelly’s 8 generatives. Keep them in mind at all times. Change your busies model to reflect them.

It’s all about training people to use you over their favorite torrent website. If they think they get a better deal from you, they probably won’t mind spending a little bit of money to get superior quality product. Except, or course for the people who just want the stuff for free. This is another thing to remember. Most pirates are not your customers. They won’t buy from you, no matter what you do. Even if you started giving out your stuff for free, they would still get it from the torrent sites, rather than from you.

What do you do about them? Nothing! Fuck them! They are not your customers. They are not your concerns. You are in the business of accommodating people who want to give you money. If you start chasing after people who don’t want to give you anything, and demand payment you are bound to fail. You will never see a cent out of these folks, but all the time you spend chasing after them is the time you could be spending pampering your customers. Think about it.

So next time you have an urge to spend few mill to buy a legal victory in a foreign state and get absolutely nothing in return, please resist it!

Let me give you couple of examples. The other day I was at work and overheard the following conversation:

This was conversation between grown, educated women in their late 20’s and 30’s with white collar jobs and plenty of disposable income they could spend on music. They barely know how to turn on a computer in the morning, but they are into file sharing anyway. They are aware that the practice was illegal, but they are willing to take that risk – just like they take the risk speeding on a highway, or running the stop sign on their way to work.

I once asked my students to raise their hand if they ever illegally downloaded a movie, song or a piece of software from the internet. Almost everyone raised their hands. One girl sitting in the middle looked around, and exclaimed “Where do you people download this stuff?”. Needless to say, that day she went home with bunch of “useful” links carefully written in her notebook. Most people don’t really care, unless they get caught.

And even if they get slapped on the wrist, they don’t really stop pirating. I once had the following conversation with a coworker:

Yep, don’t use torrent – use Usenet instead. File sharing is perfectly ok, as long as you don’t get caught! Can you see pattern emerging here? Anyone trying to combat piracy by appealing to morality, ethics and etc is facing an uphill battle. While it might be wrong, it is socially acceptable… No, socially permissible to break copyright law. There is no social stigma around it. In our society smoking and drinking is less accepted than blatant copyright infringement – and these two things are perfectly legal.

Here is another conversation I have overheard – this time at the video game isle at Wallmart:

You could argue this is bad parenting, and/or irresponsible behavior. Perhaps it is. But I have yet to see a parent who gets upset that their kid is “saving them money” by downloading movies and video games from the internet. Most parents are actually pleased – they think it’s somewhat frugal. Some worry about the potential legal issues in an event their children will get caught. But then again, how many people who got sued by RIAA or MPAA you know personally? You know, like a friend of your second cousins former roommate fathers sister in law kind of thing.

No? Me neither. Very few people actually ever saw a victim of the *AA legal machine. Statistically, chances of you getting caught are somewhat akin to chances of you winning a lottery. Most people are ok taking this risk – especially if they mostly leach, and do it very casually. Downloading 5-6 mp3’s and perhaps one movie every month makes you a relatively small target – especially if you close the torrent connection or remove the files from your shared folder as soon as they are downloaded as many people do.

To tell you the truth, I have yet to hear someone IRL preaching about the evils of piracy, and condemning file sharing. I swear, I have never in my life met a person who did not indulge in a little bit of piracy now an then or at least benefit from it. Even the conservative, religious and law abiding little old ladies I met while I was working at a doctors office back in the day openly admitted they watched a movie or listened to a CD burned for them by their grandchildren and thought nothing of it.

I’m not saying there are no people like that out there – idealists, who refuse to download movies and music from the internet. I’m just saying they are a dime a dozen and I have yet to meet one in person. And even then, I wonder if they sometimes borrow movies or music from friends. Cause if they do, they are no different from the rest of us. In my mind there is no difference between downloading a DVD rip, watching it once and deleting it, and borrowing a DVD from a friend or a relative. Or rather the only difference is the legal scope. Former is legally shady, while the later I believe is perfectly ok. But logically, morally and ethically – I can’t tell a fucking difference between the two.

And that is the problem. We can either completely lock down our media and make it virtually impossible to socially share, re-sell, and exchange them or just accept piracy as a social phenomenon of digital age and concentrate on adding value to your products to make them better than free. The entertainment industry decided to take the first route trying to lock down our media. But as we have seen it over and over again, this just doesn’t work. Almost every form of DRM can and will be broken. And if it is too difficult to break, it can be defeated using the analog hole. And of course the scene folks have inside suppliers who can leak out pre-release material before it even gets wrapped in DRM to begin with. In other words, investing in DRM is like tilting at windmills. Wasteful, futile, silly and deeply tragic.

[tags]piracy, drm, file sharing, sharing, copyright[/tags]

In the very same way for a flat monthly fee you get unlimited access to the Internet which contains most of the information you will ever need. Every song, every movie, every book or piece of software ever made is out there for the taking. All you need is a torrent client and a little patience. Sure it’s not entirely legal but the odds of getting caught are incredibly small – not much bigger than the odds of winning the lottery. And there is just nothing that can be done about it right now. Neither the lawsuits and aggressive take downs of p2p networks nor the copy protection and ever more restrictive DRM have put any dent in the overall p2p traffic. Anything that is in digital format can be copied – no exceptions. Anything that can be copied will end up on the internet. Anything that is not in digital format, but can be digitized, will also end up on the internet. For free. And unless we completely change the fundamental rules of electronic communication this trend will only escalate.

Naturally the cost to produce these digital goods (movies, songs and software) is nonzero. It is actually quite expensive make them – both in terms of investment capital, and labor. But thanks to internet, their effective market price approaches zero. You either sell yourself cheep, and loose money or sell high, and put up really tough competition from p2p. This competitor is different though – he cannot be thwarted, legislated away, sued into oblivion or absorbed via hostile takeover. You are competing with the basic human nature. There is nothing – and I repeat, NOTHING that can be done against this. Unless of course you can figure out a way to turn back the clocks, and cripple the internet to where it reverts to it’s slow and non-threatening form you remember from the 80’s. For better of for worse, you are stuck with broadband internet as the most efficient distribution system, and the fiercest competitor you will ever encounter.

How do you compete with free? Obviously you can’t cut the price, unless of course you are willing to pay your customers to use your product. The only thing you can really do is to add value to your product. Believe it or not, but people are always willing to pay for a superior quality. Think about this next time you are shopping for a new cell phone. You provider probably offers a fully functional free phone with the service, but a lot of people opt for the sleek looking $200-$300 alternative which has extra features, bells and whistles. You have to do the same – you have to add bells and whistles to your product – and once you do, people will eagerly hand over their money to you, even if a free version is available.

The only problem here is that you can’t add value to information by combining it with more information. Adding bonus tracks, or blooper reel to your album or dvd doesn’t do anything because these things will end up on the internet as well. You need to add something that cannot be easily digitized and sent over a wire.

Kevin Kelly in his excellent article Better than Free identifies 8 value adding features you can use to make your digital product more desirable to customers. I highly recommend reading his piece in it’s entirety but if you are to lazy here are the 8 things he proposes:

1. Immediacy – ie. the ability to ship the product to the customer before 0-day crack comes out
2. Personalization – tailoring your product to customers specific needs
3. Interpretation – lifetime support, warranty, 24 hour helpline, etc..
4. Authenticity – genuine article is bound to have highest bit rate, sharpest picture and no embedded trojans
5. Accessibility – pay once, download from anywhere and in any format
6. Embodiment – no mp3 can beat a live concert, and no ebook is as nice as a beautifully bound hard cover edition
7. Patronage – fans usually buy original cd because they want to support their favorite musician – not because they can’t find the mp3’s of the songs it contains
8. Findability – iTunes are more user friendly than bittorrent – even with the DRM – you can capitalize on that sort of thing

So there you have it. Kevin goes into much more detail there, but I don’t want to steal his thunder. Read the article and see if you agree. All you need to do to make money on the seemingly free data, is to implement one or two things from this list above. And most digital content producers are already halfway there. They are just to set in their old ways to develop their strengths and capitalize on them. They still think it terms of distribution and scarcity. But this is a dead end.

Internet is the most efficient distribution channel you can imagine. You can’t get your data faster to your customer than over a high bandwidth fios connection. And if you try to use a slower channel or introduce artificial scarcity, into the equation to drive the price up the consumers will simply pick the free (illegal) alternative. If you concentrate on adding value in one of the 8 ways listed above however you can easily rise prices without scaring away or alienating the customer.

The funny thing however is that information is not the only thing that is becoming a free ubiquitous commodity. Even the physical products that were once scarce are heading that was as the technology improves and the prices fall due to normal market mechanics. Just go and read Kevin’s Technology Wants to be Free essay. I don’t think I can explain this concept any better than he does. But he is right – and his vision of future is certainly bright for us as consumers.

[tags]copyright, copyfight, digital distribution, freedom, information wants to be free[/tags]

I wonder if this is for good or if they can actually regroup and get the site back up with another ISP.

[tags]isohunt, p2p, filesharing, mpaa, lawsuit, copyright, copyfight[/tags]

My reaction to this: holly fucking shit awesome!

Ever since the Sealand story surfaced on the internet we have been talking about this sort of thing. Every geek out there dreams of a nation with no copyright law, no patents and no rules that would constrain creativity and free exchange of ideas. A place in the world where you can put your torrent website, and host some trackers without fearing of being raided by the police. A place where the technologically minded elites would make the rules. If TPB manages to scrape enough cash, and buy this old platform this dream of our own little safe heaven nation may come true.

Of course some people claim that Sealand survives only because so far it has been flying under the radar, and Great Britain simply had no reasons to enforce their territorial rights. TPB creating a file sharing hub right of the coast is high profile though, and may turn out to be a thorn in the side of all the copyright natzis out there. The pressure from American entertainment industry and their lapdogs (the US government) may actually be a good enough excuse to send bunch of armed marines to the platform and retake it.

Would the world care about England wiping a file sharing enclave off the map? I don’t know. So far the status of Sealand is not certain as it has not been officially recognized by any nations. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

Whether they succeed in buying Sealand or not, this seems to be a great PR move for Piratebay and their budding political party, and a nice way to make some extra cash from advertising and donations.

[tags]copyright, copyfight, the pirate bay, pirate bay, sealand, buy sealand, pirate party[/tags]

Conclusions are simple: someone is monitoring Torrentspy network. I don’t know if they do this by setting up decoys, or if they actually connect to legitimate torrents and log the IP’s in the swarm. But either way, they are out there and if you are not careful you might get caught.

The ISP my coworker is using seems to be doing the right thing. They notified him about the complaint, and warned him that future complaints may lead to termination of his account. It doesn’t seem that they were willing to cough up his personal data so far, so he might get lucky and avoid being slapped with one of those frivolous lawsuits.

The poor kid is not allowed to use BitTottent anymore. He got a stern talking to from his pop for using these new-fangled, easily trackable p2p technologies instead of leaching from Usenet the way internet Gods intended it. :P

Sigh… I really liked TorrentSpy – it had lots of content, and large community behind it. But I guess it’s time to move on…

RIAA just decided to sue LimeWire, heavily leaning on the super-idiotic Grokster ruling. If you don’t remember what the Grokster thing was all about, let me remind you.

Remember that one time we were all pissed off, because a bunch of senile, technology illiterate lusers (known as the US Supreme Court) said that if your software encourages infringment, then you are liable.

RIAA is using that stupid decision now to destroy a useful file transfer technology that has absolutely nothing to do with piracy. Sure, you can use it to distribute illegal stuff. You can also distribute illegal stuff via HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent and Bob’s new spiffy DVD Burner. LimeWire is definitely not advertising copyright infringement. I looked on their website, and there is no mention of free RIAA tunes, warez or any other stuff like that. In fact, their website clearly states the following:

LimeWire is legal software, but it is illegal for you to use LimeWire to share copyrighted files without permission. Purchasing LimeWire PRO does not constitute a license for obtaining or distributing unauthorized files. When you download LimeWire software from www.limewire.com, you agree to refrain from using LimeWire for the purpose of copyright infringement.

I think this notification is really clear. LimeWire does not condone piracy.

But RIAA collectively suffer from that rare condition called “lack of touch with reality” and so they are not bothered by things like facts, details and laws. They are claiming that LW is actively facilitating copyright infringement by not filtering and censoring the network traffic generated by their software. That is quite an interesting use of the term active.

Using that logic, since I’m not buying RIAA crap I’m actually actively taking the money out of their pockets. Sweet! Take that RIAA! I just made you loose another $40 buy not caring about your newest pop-music CD!

This lawsuit should be kicked out of court for the sake of technological progress. But it wont. And if RIAA wins this case, it will give them complete freedom to kill any technology they do not like. They will ruthlessly set ablaze any budding software project that could even remotely threaten their precious business model.

If your existence is dependent on business plan that resembles a house of cards, you are every right to be afraid of even the smallest draft, or wind gust that could upset it’s delicate balance. But this is no reason to ban doors and windows, and make sue the makers of oscillating fans. All you achieve this way is to delay the inevitable. Sooner or later, someone in the room is going to sneeze and the whole thing is going to crumble down leaving you with nothing.

Technological progress just stop for RIAA. Either get on with it, or get out. Just stop holding us back damn it!

[tags]riaa, limewire, lime wire, lawsuits, p2p, file sharing, copyright, piracy[/tags]

Are you surprised that BitTottent.com is launching a subscription service distributing MPAA movies? I’m not. It’s a freaking brilliant move! Let me break this down for you:

1. sign a deal with MPAA
2. use your technology to distribute their content
3. break even, or make marginal profit
4. next time MPAA wants to outlaw P2P, they end up looking like idiots because they use BT themselves

It’s a 4 step plan to make it much harder for MPAA to stamp out illegal Bittorrent use. Because most likely, the legal BT traffic will be indistinguishable from the illegal one. In fact, legal packets will happily swim in the sea of warez. And unless you do something really clever it would be difficult to throttle down illegal bittorrent activity without hurting legal downloads at the ISP level. MPAA doesn’t care about linux distros, indy movies and music and personal videos being distributed this way. But they are bound to care when their own legal content in torrented across the globe.

Would I subscribe to this service? Probably not. If they use DRM, forget it, most people will ignore it. No one likes crippled media. But then again, world is full of gullible idiots who like to throw away money by buying locked down files.

This is a smart PR move from BitTorrent. It shows that they are trying hard to be legit, and that their technology can be used in a good constructive way. This is what we call sticking it to the man, while letting the man think he is sticking it to you :P

[tags]bittorrent, mpaa, p2p, filesharing, legal filesharing[/tags]

Apparently Swedish authorities still are still diligently working to find something illegal that was stored on those servers. Torrets are perfectly legal over there, and it seems that ThePirateBay.org may get off with a warning provided that nothing is found or planted on their drives.

Of course you never know with the RIAA and MPAA types. Somehow they managed to bribe Swedish officials into opening an official investigation on the website so perhaps they are planning something even more sinister. Or perhaps Swedish government is tired of protecting a very vocal, and defiant file-sharing community. I would suspect that they get allot of heat from EU and US because of TPB.

That said, if nothing is illegal is found and if they can’t bring TPB up on charges this may turn into a big victory for the file sharers. For one, it would show the world that torrent sites in Sweden are untouchable under current law.

Also, TPB is affiliated with the Swedish Pirate party, whose servers apparently were also seized in the raid. IANASL but I think they could potentially make a big fuss of this. They could claim political discrimination, illegal seizure and etc…

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. One thing is sure – the Pirate Party will have tons of free publicity over this.

Update Sun, June 04 2006, 12:45 AM

They are back. :mrgreen: