For a number of years, file sharing has been the bane of the lives of musicians, movie producers and media companies alike. From Napster and Limewire through to torrent sharing sites like The Pirate Bay, each appears to have had their time, and it appears The Pirate Bay’s has come.
With its dissolve, the UK government has issued a timely proposal that if enforced, will see ISP’s be made responsible for monitoring their own customers internet usage, and cutting them off if they spot any suspicious activity.
Unsurprisingly, spokespeople for the various major ISP’s have responded critically to the proposal. Stating that the costs involved in creating a system to monitor internet usage and the time involved with dealing with customers who may or may not be file sharing, would lead to unhappy customers, unhappy businesses and a great deal of wasted time and money.
European politicians recently ruled that cutting off someone’s internet connection could be a breach of their human rights. Interestingly, the challenge came in response to France’s tough policy on file-sharers where you are given three chances before being disconnected by your ISP.
Should this proposal become law in the likes of Britain. Could we see this spread internationally…? Whether in this format or another, file sharing as we know it will end soon.
Face Facts.
Personally, and I don’t mean to sound condescending, I think it’s about time we acknowledge reality. Nothing is free and the internet isn’t a geeks playground any more, it’s a place full of real people and real businesses that need to look after their own. It’s only a matter of time before we are prevented – by law, strict monitoring and/or through technology – from downloading content which we shouldn’t be sharing in the first place.
The internet in its nature is wonderful, free and liberal, a world that belongs to us right? Well not quite. Free speech? Sure. All for it. Free content, not so much. The world unfortunately doesn’t work like that and neither will the web once governments, record labels and such, have their way…and they will have their way.
Bloggers, technologists and web users in general enjoy patronising politicians by accusing them of not really understanding how the web works. Many probably don’t, but they do know nothing is free and if millions of internet users are downloading movies and music for free – there’s something not right, and something needs to be done about it.
A Happy Place
Web based media player Spotify seems to be the middle ground and might just be the closest thing to a solution yet. We’ve yet to establish whether or not it will work though, it’s just too soon to call. The company made a loss of $4.4 million last year, but with funding totalling €21.6M and one of world’s richest individuals, Asian billionaire Li Ka-shingin as an investor, they should be around for a few years to come and with any luck, a successful business model for other companies to run with.
“there’s something not right, and something needs to be done about it”
Agreed – but i would say file-sharing is a symptom, and not the problem at hand.
Music at retail prices is a rip-off for the consumer, and doesn’t even make the artist/band much money either a lot of the time. If it’s worth listening to, people will be happy to pay for it (eg: Radiohead’s “pay what you like” album release), so bands should be more open to giving their material away. Trent Reznor of NIN wrote an excellent short piece on this a while ago ( http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183 )
Is it really worth near £10 a pop for 90 minutes of predictable sequel when you visit the cinema today? And on the software front, why can Microsoft still charge hundreds of pounds for it’s Office package when OpenOffice.org is almost identical for the average user, and free? This is no even looking at the problem of people wanting software they can’t afford – how many of today’s top creatives started in their teens with pirated copies of photoshop and illustrator?
I think you mean “bane” – not “bain”
is it? *runs off to check…* Thanks
Your premise in your argumentation is that nothing can be free. Really think about it, why should things not be free? Where normally there is an equilibrium of x positive amount of dollars and companies capture consumer surplus by differentiating their offerings and charging higher prices with some extra value for some customers why can’t free be a part of the model? I’m not saying artists should provide their music/movies etc for free to everyone but just because we are used to paying for these things doesn’t mean it is the way it is ‘supposed’ to be and we just had a few years of fun playing a game. When you really think about it I think it becomes a less obvious issue then you state in your article. Anyway that’s just my illegally downloaded 2 cents.
“file sharing as we know it will end soon.”
We all share files, content, thoughts. Daily. It’s not going to end anytime soon.
Free content? I don’t remember paying to read this.
The solutions to this issue:
Urban Networks / WLAN Meshing / Freifunk / OLSR / Community powered networks / Closed District Networks and so on… start meshing NOW and build your own neighborhood networks! Then start connecting neighborhoods, then cities. And so own. Power to the people.
In Berlin for example is a very huuuuuuge city network, completely unregulated, and completely user-powered.
Sounds like prohibition to me…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States.
Truth is, file-sharing hardly hurts the artists, who actually enjoy worldwide diffusion through p2p.
P2P only hurts the Man, who loses not only money, but power over the artists.
Do bars pay, per customer, for the music they play to the dance floor to the music industry. Hardly.
When you say nothing is free. You mean you want your cut too. The sun is free, the air is free, my smile is free, sometimes even fish, bread and wine are free if you hang around with the right people (but wait, you can get cruxified for that….)
Maybe cake shoudn’t be free. After all, if I share my cake with you, I’m left with half a cake. :( But if I share a song with you, we both can enjoy it. If I share it with 10 friends, we have a party. Should I charge my friends 10cents a song?
Why is that ? Because sharing in the virtual world IS NOT LIKE THE REAL, PHYSICAL WORLD. Tolstoy put it best: one day a poor man decided to agrement his dry lump of bread by enjoying the good smells wafted by a nearby restaurant . The greedy owner saw this and tried to charge him for using that smell. The poor man, gracious, took out his only coin, rang in on the cobblestone three times and said: “It is only fair that I should pay you for the smell of food with the chime of a coin.” (approximately)
So I have to cancel my ISP 10Mb contract – and back to 128K – good for my money, bad for ISP
@Sassinak
What Tolstoy story is that quote from?
@Slated
Geez, I can’t remember which one, I was in, like, 10th grade. But it really impressed me, so I never forgot the plot of it. I “think” it’s Tolstoy, the storyteller. It certainly is his style.
Personally I started to P2P for movies after the last time I paid to go see one, and came out feeling cheated. I sure as hell can’t remember what the movie was.
I download classics and independent film everytime I find them. They just never seem to make it here in “the sticks”. I have noticed an important improvement of script and cinematography in the movie industry over the past months; think they’re catching on?
@Slated
Geez, I can’t remember which one, I was in, like, 10th grade. But it really impressed me, so I never forgot the plot of it. I “think” it’s Tolstoy, the storyteller. It certainly is his style.
Personally I started to P2P for movies after the last time I paid to go see one, and came out feeling cheated, again. I sure as hell can’t remember what the movie was.
I download classics and independent film everytime I find them. They just never seem to make it here in “the sticks”. I have noticed an important improvement of script and cinematography in the movie industry over the past months; think they’re catching on?