National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution

Why is the law behind technology? Musicmaking and music piracy is a debate playing out in the developing world in a way that assumes that laws passed hundreds of years ago for a part of the world are just and support the interests of the public. Is this true? What about the all the people in the developing world who do not have access to justice systems and laws regarding the intellectual property they will make some day? And, is the use of collaborative technology which connects the world a way to shape this debate? We think so. Enter Debategraph.

Debategraph is a collaborative online dialog visualization tool with a strong public policy focus, currently being used by Amanpour on CNN, the European Commission, and The Independent newspaper in the UK. All participants in Cyberweek are invited to join us to explore, extend, and evaluate an interactive map of the legal issues around music downloading, which has been seeded by a team of law students at UMass and Liverpool Law School. The aim across Cyberweek is develop the seed map into a definitive representation of the subject, in which all the salient ideas, arguments and perspectives are represented fairly and in full in a single, coherent, transparent and interactive structure that can be embedded and shared around the web. In parallel with this, participants are invited to explore the applicability of this approach to their own areas of interest; with co-founder David Price available to guide you through the process and answer any questions throughout the week.

Led by Danielle Dean, students at the University of Massachusetts have made a new debategraph for the beginning of the discussion, the link is here: http://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nID=34220

Professor Joseeph Savirimuthu of the Liverpool Law School has developed a blog which provides great depth to the legal debate around the impact of peer to peer technology on music downloading.

http://coda-memorypalace.blogspot.com/2009/10/peer-to-peer-networks-or-music.html

Danielle, I agree with you that the topic of intellectual property, even as it extends out of realm of music pirating, is a fascinating and complex issue. Not having authority over your own creative work has been a long standing issue, and the problems lie mostly in how figuring out how a society can govern something that is not even tangible. The internet has made this task even more difficult as it has taken non physical things and placed “them” in an international non tangible and almost impossible to restrict forum.

Changing the “culture of entitlement” is not going to be an easily accomplished task, this is assuming this can even be accomplished. In theory, the right course of action to take care of problems regarding theft of intellectual property, is to shut down the sources that are illegally supplying creative works of others. However this has proven ineffective. In the case of music downloading many pirate music sites were shut down, universities put up blocks on computers who were illegally downloading music, extreme monetary penalties as well as legal ones were strictly enforced, yet music pirating has not stopped.

We must start by first accepting the blame. The internet was a phenomena that hit the world by force. We were less concerned with the dangers of intercontinental sharing and so were less prepared for the consequences. The laws were implemented too late in the game for them to have any effect on existing problems of intellectual property theft. What we can do, is think of new ways to enforce new laws to insure other mediums do not fall victim to the same flaws as music downloading. As far as fixing past problems, I think that Danielle makes a great point in suggesting the attempt to change social norms. If people begin to recognize the wrongs of intellectual property theft then it can be assumed that there will be a drop in the act. However as long as people can get something for free, no matter how inexpensive it may be, they will.

Looks great David!!

I agree that illegal downloading is not the right approach to the fact that some record companies may be “ripping people off”. Since the law is so behind technology it is a hard problem to solve how people in third world countries without access to court systems can have a fair way of profiting from their music if it is being pirated. One solution to this problem may be by using ODR in order to help third world countries have some sort of action against illegal downloading. Thus, ODR can replace the non-existent court systems and help resolve the problem of pirating of third world countries.
Furthermore, even if we utilize ODR in order to maintain illegal downloading it is still required that the law catch up with technology in order to permit proper understanding of what is considered illegal on the internet. Also, we would have to create better systems to catch the illegal down-loaders, in order to properly prosecute them.

-Christine Rodgers

The argument between those who support free distribution on the internet and those who are against it has been to black and white. Those who have things stolen from them on the web assume that each of these losses is the equivalent to a lost sale, and I think this is far from the case.

The first argument against piracy is that sales are decreased. Two of the biggest pushers of this argument are the RIAA and the MPAA. The RIAA has repeatedly stated that music piracy is destroying the industry. According to the year end shipment statistics posted on the RIAA website (http://76.74.24.142/D5664E44-B9F7-69E0-5ABD-B605F2EB6EF2.pdf), this would seem to be the case. The RIAA claims to have an 18.2% lower total value of sold goods in 2007 than in 2008. Yet a further look shows that they actually sold 4% more music in 2008 than 2007. They simply sold this music at a lower price. During an extremely tough economic period and during a time when piracy continues to be high, they are still selling music in larger volumes. The MPAA has also claimed that it is suffering from piracy, yet the past two years they have posted record profits.

2004 Total Movies Released: 567 Total Combined Gross: ,327,315,935
2005 Total Movies Released: 594 Total Combined Gross: ,825,324,278
2006 Total Movies Released: 808 Total Combined Gross: ,225,689,414
2007 Total Movies Released: 1022 Total Combined Gross: ,665,661,126
2008 Total Movies Released: 1037 Total Combined Gross: ,705,677,862
(statistics copied from torrentfreak.com, who in turn got them from a box office tracking website the-numbers.com)

These statistics show that the MPAA is increasing their profits despite piracy and, once again, despite a troubled economic period. These numbers do show that the average profit per movie has decreased. On the other hand, the number of movies in 2008 was almost double that in 2005. Such a large increase in quantity seems unlikely to be able to be matched by quality. A large number of these movies were probably low budget films. Doubling the number of produced films is also unlikely to cause people to see twice as many movies. Most people simply are unable to afford to do so. This means we can look at the profit total and ignore the profit per movie in this situation. In this light, the MPAA is not only unhurt by piracy, but people are viewing more movies in theater than ever before.

Now let us look at this argument in another perspective. Instead of looking at piracy as a whole hurting industry as a whole, let us look at a specific person. The argument would be that if this person commits piracy, they are less likely to spend money on what they pirate. Personal experience tells me this is far from the case. A friend of mine has used torrents to acquire several thousand songs, yet at the same time he spends more money on music than anyone I know. For him downloading is almost like wine tasting. When he has money to spend he downloads any music people recommend to him. Then he buys the music he likes best. Sometimes he even buys more music than he planned to. While those who are pushing for more stringent copyright infringement punishments have tried to say that people like my friend are rare, I think many, if not most, people have friends exactly like mine. Often several of them. The only time people like my friend cost the music industry money is when they discover music they had planned on buying really isn’t as good as they expected.

Another mistake in this viewpoint is the assumption that every illegal download stopped is a purchase gained. I have never been a musical person, although I do enjoy listening to music occasionally. In the days of Napster, before I even understood all the implications of downloading music, I had hundreds of songs. Once the lawsuits began, I stopped downloading and eventually lost my music when I switched computers. I have not purchased a single CD or paid to download a single song since. I lost the ability to enjoy music at my discretion, and they gained nothing. Perhaps they even lost something technically, as it costs them money to perform all these lawsuits. It cost them money to stop me from doing something they would never earn money from anyway. While this may be an exception, it isn’t unique. While most people who stopped downloading have likely purchased music, chances are they have no purchased the exact amount they would have downloaded.

Institutions such as the RIAA and MPAA are not helping themselves in the fight against piracy. The majority of the public views downloading music akin the speeding or jay walking. They acknowledge it is wrong, but it is not a big deal. The massive sums these corporations have been demanding do not help their cause. Can you imagine what you would do if you were slapped with a ,000 speeding ticket? Probably speed your car right through the courthouse doors screaming and hollering about injustice. This isn’t about getting what is theirs, this is about scare tactics. The recent case RIAA v Tenenbaum resulted in a ,500 fee per song. This is a fee of 22499% over the initial price. I can not imagine a single place in the United States where anyone would put up with such a mark up quietly. People are starting to notice this fact and they now consider downloading to be a civil disobedience. There is a sort of proud dignity about it. Not only are you getting things for free, you are “fighting the man”.

I stated previously that I did not believe this was a black and white argument, yet I have argued pretty much against the institutions who are arguing that they should receive money for their own property and rightfully so. The reason for this is that it is my belief that the solution to this problem lies somewhere in the middle ground. Instead of moving towards the middle ground, the copyright holders seem to be holding their ground or even trying to regress. Instead of working with the people, they attempt to bully them and argue against the people based on fallacies. If they want those who may become pirates to work with them instead of against them, they need to work with those individuals in turn. It is the duty of the more aggressive party to take a step back and offer an olive branch, as the reverse situation would be surrender. Both sides need to work towards something, rather than having one side give in.