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P2P Filesharing vs. The Web
The Importance of writes "The recent RIAA lawsuits have raised many questions and issues, but the focus has been on P2P filesharing. Before there was P2P, though, there was filesharing via webservers. There doesn't seem to be much complaint about the RIAA shutting down people who upload MP3s to their homepage. Why do many people seem to treat http filesharing different than P2P filesharing? LawMeme has one answer."
Ernest Miller on Friday, September 19 @ 13:10:10 EDT
... and one suspect that is no longer a major concern: HTTP.
Boston.com has published an AP wirestory on the Berkman Center Summit Digital Media in Cyberspace: The Legislation and Business Effects (Harvard symposium debates future of online file-sharing). A very interesting gathering (why doesn't anyone ever invite me to these things?) of lawyers, lobbyists, artists, economists, academics and etc., discussing the future of digital media (see, Wither Digital Media?).
I found the following quote by Charles Nesson rather interesting, "There was a time that to make a copy, you needed a monk, and a desk, and months, and then Sean Fanning hit the scene." Now, clearly, Nesson was exaggerating his statement for effect. However, his statement does point to a common misconception about filesharing - many people believe that it started with Napster. It didn't. The MP3 format itself was causing concern to the record industry at least since 1997 and Napster was not founded until 1999. So how was music filesharing taking place before Napster? Many of the usual suspects that are routinely ignored in the press even today: Usenet, FTP, IRC
The Era of OF - Original Filesharing
Remember the MP3 search engines? Before Napster, college students and dotcommers were filesharing by putting MP3s on their webpages for download through good ol' http. However, webpages are relatively easy to find and, more importantly, easier to shut down for a number of reasons: primarily, because of contributory and even direct liability for the organization hosting the site. Consequently, such organizations (like ISPs) had (and have) an interest in shutting down copyright infringing websites relatively quickly (even absent the poorly designed notice and takedown "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA).
Yet there hasn't been much outcry over the fact that the RIAA has and continues to shut down hundreds of noncommercial websites offering copyrighted MP3s for download without authorization. The RIAA has even threatened lawsuits and gotten college students expelled over their refusal to remove MP3s from college websites. There has been concern (often expressed on LawMeme) about abuse of the DMCA's notice and takedown procedures, but not much outcry when direct copyright infringement has been shown. Why is there no outraged defense of http filesharing?
Legally Equivalent, but HTTP has Advantages
P2P and http uploading and downloading of copyrighted MP3s are, essentially, functionally equivalent from a copyright point of view. From a technical point of view, however, there are significant differences. If anything, http has some serious advantages over P2P filesharing in many cases. Although P2P would still be useful in a world where http filesharing were allowed, http could easily and more effectively handle the vast majority of filesharing. For example, http:
* Is better at providing access to the obscure stuff. Everytime you log onto a P2P network to download, you are relying on someone else being online at the same time with the materials you desire. For popular stuff, it is a virtual certainty you will find it. However, for more obscure works, or particular versions of works, you may or may not be successful at finding it right away. Having a work available on a website 24/7 generally solves this problem. If it exists, it can be found.
* Is better at sharing 24/7. If you really believe Michael is gay, wouldn't you want to share 24/7? Why deny people the bounty of your largess when you aren't online? Or, if you are online, but don't want to slow your own surfing experience, wouldn't it be better to move your filesharing to another server rather than turn it off altogether?
* Means security issues may be ameliorated. Many people don't really take security seriously enough. They don't keep their virus files updated, they don't patch vulnerabilities, they'd rather not be bothered. For these people, uploading files to