File-sharing and AOL

Andrew Leonard writes "Farhad Manjoo's cover story in Salon today, on AOL's refusal to take a stand on the RIAA's (so far) successful attempt to get subscriber information from Verizon, is a detailed look at the most important battle in the file-sharing world right now."

Comments

Internal company conflict

[James_Duncan8181]

AOL's media division need the DRM leash. AOL's ISP side need to sell bandwidth. THese obviously conflict. This is just like the Sony Music (pro-DRM) / Technical department (pro cool gadgets and anti DRM functionality killing) problems - two departments company that HAVE to work out the conflicts inherent in the situation and can do quickly beaacue it is internal to their company.

If you want to see where we will be in 5 years as a general, having a look at the solutions adopted in these situations would seem to be a damn good guide.

Re:Was that my IP?

[Peterus7]

Hmm. If AOL had the bandwidth to support p2p they'd be for it, but since they just plain DON'T....

What's the article about?

[MacAndrew]

I couldn't figure whether it was about:

1. AOL's conscience (?)
   
2. AOL's search for its soul (?)
   
3. Proof required for a subpoena (details?)
   
4. Corporate tension between making profits one way (ISP) versus another (DMCA) (who's Mr. Hyde?)
   
5. How big companies try to spin things to avoid blame ("we had to squeal")
   

Personally, I think the burden of proof for the subpoena is the whole bananna. Note that once the RIAA has your name, is still must make its case you broke the rules. They'll maybe get part of that by suckering you into downloading directly from decoy computers. The hard part will be getting you for nickle-and-dime offenses. More likely, they'll look for the folks who host thousands of titles on P2P. And perhaps they should.

I don't really have a problem with copyright in the abstract, unlike many here, but do with the basic privacy issue in careless attempts at enforcement. Can weirdoes (e.g., Capitol Records :) get my name and address from an ISP on a whim? Just on grounds of personal safety, let alone privacy, this is not a good trend. (We're not in the phone book, never have been, for example, but the internet has the number anyway ... enough exposure already.) I'm among those who doesn't want strangers flipping through any data about me without a convincing reason. This whoke binge of law enforcement, civil and criminal, could make for some really lousy precedent, such as we're seeing already in the jurisdiction battles over libel.

Perhaps the simplest fix is a method of IP obfuscation. But anonymizing makes legitimate enforcement of far more compelling laws (kiddie porn, stalking, etc.) will become more difficult -- yet another side-effect of this whole enterprise.

Nice to see some positive mention of Salon, though. They did some interesting journalism a while ago, and I wonder if those days are long gone.

Re:What's the article about?

[MillionthMonkey]

I agree with you on this point, but then I sit back and think about it: Am I really that interesting?

I've decided that although personal privacy and freedom are very important, if some weirdo (capitol or otherwise) really wants to see what kinda of pr0n I look at or wants to listen in on my phone conversations (which almost always consist of "So, Starbucks or cyber cafe first?"), let them. Maybe they will get some sort of insight that in general, people aren't worth listening to.

People who smoke marijuana tend not to be very interesting either. They make silly observations that they mistake for profound insights. They're preoccupied with chips and chocolate. They keep forgetting what they were talking about.

And yet the nation's prisons are packed with them, so clearly someone is interested.

Re:Who writes the law?

[hastings14]

Why would you need ten respresentatives of the public to work out a compromise in a legal dispute between ISPs and Copyright holders?

Back in the 90s, since technically everything sent over the internet is a copy, and thus technically the ISPs were in pretty much infininte copyright violation, copyright holders could have legally bankrupted every ISP in America. Since Congress didn't want this to happen, they put the two groups in a room and told them to work out a compromise. I think it makes perfect sense to get two sides in a dispute to come together and compromise, rather than impose a solution from outside or through huge nasty lawsuits. When the two sides compromised, congress then wrote up the compromise into law.

Unfortunately, that law was attached to other laws that were poorly written and includes a bunch of other stuff that were extremely harmful to consumers. However, the part dealing with the ISPs not wanting to get sued by copyright holders didn't really involve the public and didn't really hurt them.

Don't be so quick to label something as "evil" - a lot of times you wind up throwing out the baby with the bathwater...