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P2P File Swapping on the Rise Again?
asdf 101 writes "News.com reports today that 'After six months of declines, peer-to-peer usage recently climbed 14 percent.' Their bottomline: 'The decline came as the RIAA launched more than 300 lawsuits against file swappers. The reversal cast doubts on the music industry's claims that its lawsuits are working to deter people from illegally downloading music files.' I guess wake_up_and_smell_the_coffee time just gets that much more imminent for all the hacks at RIAA." There's also an AP story, and you might want to review this story from just a few weeks ago that has different conclusions.
What the RIAA doesn't seem to realize is that, people are able to block certain IP addresses in many of the client programs. Thus, when the RIAA goes online looking for traffic, they see fewer clients.
The other thing they don't seem to realize is that, there's more to "illegal file sharing" than Kazaa. It could be that people have cut down on their Kazaa use and have gone to other P2P programs.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
The reversal cast doubts on the music industry's claims that its lawsuits are working to deter people from illegally downloading music files.
I think the legal reversal pertaining to Verizon having to hand over its members' information to the RIAA could explain such a rise. People are more likely to fileshare if they think the RIAA is less likely to be knocking on their door tomorrow. If anything, the lawsuits seemed to be "working" before that Verizon ruling.
Statistics are dangerous in the hands of people who may have a certain agenda to push. For example, saying that filesharing goes up 14% could simply imply that more new computer and/or Internet users have signed online to find previews of their favorite music artists' songs. Also, it's very possible that the way these companies conduct these studies of the popularity of file sharing could simply have changed a bit. If one month they're monitoring seven different filesharing networks for their statistics, and they suddenly add an eighth to the mix, the numbers are obviously going to increase.
We need to stop worrying about these silly RIAA lawsuits and about the ethics of filesharing and simply realize that the current music distribution model is horrible. The CD/album is not popular anymore; artists are fueled by hit singles much more so than hit albums. Things like Apple's iPod/iTunes service, while expensive, are a good first step to delivering media content the way people wish to receive it.
Stop letting the media tell you what to do. If you want to use peer to peer software, use it. There's nothing wrong with sharing songs with friends/associates in my opinion, and it only helps to spread the word about music artists and make them and their merchandise more popular. Sharing file is as natural an act as sexual intercourse between a man and woman/man and a man/woman and a woman, so the days of prosecuting it are definitely numbered, and it'll be as laughable in 20 years time as the article 2 nodes down on the Slashdot front page about VCR taping regulations.
Have fun with life and be responsible, but at the same time don't worry about the evil bit devil at the other end of your cable connection reading your data that flows to and fro your machine. There will soon be better options, and hopefully moves like HP licensing Apple iTunes technology, as well as other things, will make the online movies/music environment better than ever.
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
....except that stuff like this can't really be measured too accurately?
How about making copyright reform a central issue in the upcoming election?
Very likely most politicians don't know if the DMCA is fit to eat, feel Disney and the RIAA are important campaign contributors whose requests should be given priority, and music downloaders are simple thieves who deserve every bit of punishment they get.
You can change that. But it's going to take some work. There are enough people sharing music in America - more people than voted for George Bush - that if you get off your collective asses and get politically active, you can get laws passed to get the RIAA off your back.
In Change the Law, I explain that copyright is not a Constitutional right, like free speech. Instead copyright is allowed (but not required) to serve a useful purpose, a purpose which I feel has long since outlived its usefulness.
I suggest steps you can take to bring about copyright reform, ranging from speaking out to practicing civil disobedience.
One thing I'd like you all to do today is to write your elected representatives to ask their opinion of the current state of copyright law given its widespread abuse by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, and to urge them to work towards copyright reform. Let them know your vote will depend on a positive response.
When you're done writing that letter, write to the other candidates for each office in the upcoming elections, to ask them the same question.
Sixty million American peer-to-peer file traders have the potential to raise a lot of Hell with the politicians. I want every candidate to be peppered with questions about copyright reform at every campaign stop and in every press interview. I want the repeal of the DMCA to be discussed in the Presidential debates.
People marched in protest when Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested. Dmitry is free now - but the law under which he was jailed is still on the books.
If you agree with me that something needs to be done about copyright, I need your help.
Thank you for your attention.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
"The NPD Group, an independent market research firm, reported on Friday that peer-to-peer usage was up 14 percent in November 2003 from September. This upturn comes after six straight months of declines in digital file sharing. Usage dropped dramatically starting in April 2003..."
The first thing from the article that caught my eye was the timing. So the usage declined right around the time all the college students started exams and then went home. Then it picked up again in September...just in time for school to start again.
Next...just what is "usage"? It doesn't specify mp3s, video, documents...nothing. It just says usage. Yet the RIAA will assume it's all mp3s and go nuts again.
There will never be a way to truly determine why usage drops and rises. The RIAA likes to say "it's because we're educating the public", news sources like to say "it's because everyone is afraid of the RIAA's lawsuits", music download companies (ie, iTunes, Napster, etc) like to say "it's because of our services and people would rather get legitimate copies". Nobody knows. This battle will rage for years, we'll see different theories on why it rises and drops, and people will continue to download their files whenever and however they want.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I do too. I buy all CD's USED. cince buying used CD's gives ZERO profit to the RIAA and pisses them off to no end.
the only new Cd's I buy have been from IUMA artist and other indie bands I have found online and at their concerts.
do I download music on a p2p netowrk? hell yeah. but then I buy that used CD to get a better copy of the recording.
I suggest that EVERYONE buy used cd's only whenever possible. it will help a small business in your area, plus it will smack the RIAA in a way that royally pains them but they can do nothing about.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You should never rely on statistics if you cant see the evidence. For all we know they could count this on how many people download off a server they set up. They could even run kazaa and look at the blurb in the status bar at how many users are online and how much theyre sharing and monitor it over time. With no way to know dont take this too seriously, and its rediculous that big companies will use trashy figures to promote their products. it just doesnt seem to matter these days companies dont care as long as they can dupe their customers into buying their product. Bottom line, dont even trust a %.
70 % of people i spoke to agree to this post with 100% of them being imagined.
How many computers are too many?
They have also critically damaged people's sympathy to them. If 100 year copyrights were not bad enough, threatening 12 year olds and grandparents was. Few people have any sympathy for publishers who are making money off dead artists, artists they hardly pay and stuff they could have recorded off the radio 40 years ago. Everyone knows that music recorded in 1902 paid for itself by 1903 and the big publishers are nothing but greedy control freaks.
The continued rise of file sharing spells the end of the 5 big dumb music publishers. Music is being libreated from it's comercial clutches and all sorts of wonderful acts will flourish and profit without those goons in the way. People basking in a variety of music and cultural service the comercial world never delivered will not put RIAA chains back on. They will understand they were right and when the money goes from the RIAA, so too goes their propaganda and fewer and fewer people will be mislead. Good riddance.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why dont you tell us what company you work for..
oh because nobody would ever buy your games again because of that inane attitude?
and you know buying a used car is only one small step above car theft, it steals money from the car makers.
Oh and don't buy anything off e-bay, as you are stealing from all those manufacturers...
I have heard this argument from software people before.. It's the same as how people that continue to use an old version of the software they bought 5 years ago are stealing from the programmers and software developers.
If you truthfully feel that way, then I pity you as you have a dismal outlook on life.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I suspect one of the reasons for any possible reversal is that as the press about the lawsuits dies down so does peoples conciousness about it.
Scare tactics only work when you are scaring people. That's why the law suits won't work in the long term. You'd not only need new lawsuits all the time but you'd need the press to continue to be bothered to write about them. Otherwise for 99% of people they effectively aren't happening and there's nothing to worry about.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I use P2P services even now. I downloaded Fedora 1.0 at a rate of about 2-4x that I was getting from an FTP server. When you're sucking down a trio of 600+ MB isos, that's a big savings!
Why do we assume that P2P networks are only being used by college students who want porn and music... could there perhaps be professionals in the industry out there too?
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
Da Blog
As Obi-Wan might say, you can't win, but there are alternatives to downloading.
Your local public library has CDs that you can borrow, usually for a week or so, absolutely free.
Some of the more sophisticated libraries allow you to search and request titles online, so that a CD that's at a library twenty miles away, or currently checked out by someone else, will be sent to your nearest library as soon as it is available. Some libraries will send an email to let you know that your titles have arrived.
Library CDs are often pretty beat up, and many are missing the original booklets or jewel cases, but they will still play in a good player. You can even do your library a favor and use some of that CD repair glop on them so future borrowers can enjoy them as well (assuming that stuff actually works).
Now, I don't advocate that anyone go to their library's website, request a lot of titles that they want online, go pick them up, take them to their office with several networked PCs on a Saturday afternoon, rip the CDs to AAC, burn them onto a couple of blank CD-RWs, take them home, pop them into iTunes, and then transfer them all to an iPod. I couldn't support that. Especially since it's free.
Now that I've let that cat out of the bag, we can expect to see the RIAA confiscating CDs from public libraries across the country, as well as obtaining Patriot Act subpoenas demanding to know the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of every library patron who has ever borrowed a CD. Since librarians have about as much political clout as homeless people (actually a little less), Congress and the media will look the other way.
Or am I being exceptionally paranoid?
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Its like the old "Its September again" on usenet. I'm guessing that as soon as classes start up again and many more students get back with their new MP3 players, the games will start again.
I love the way that they assume that 14% increase in P2P usage == 14% increase in music sharing.
P2P != music sharing.
Its used for many other things as well, like, eh, movie sharing and ISOs etc..
Nobody mentioned whether or not there was a correlation between increased numbers of broadband users and increased illegal mp3 downloads. Downloading songs in general is more appealing with more bandwidth.
Vote for Pedro
"Free market" in this country sure looks an awful lot like old soviet socialism. It's no wonder they can't put a dent in "piracy" when the companies claiming to be "victims" look just as evil as Ivan and Boris that run the Ukrainian pressing plants...
This is self-reported usage So all the figures represent is the percentage of people who download music and are dumb enough to admit it to anyone who calls claiming to be a pollster. Of course this percentage would go down in light of the RIAA witch hunt regardless of whether there is any change, up or down, in actual file sharing.
All statistics based on self-reported data should be taken with a large spoonful of salt!
Repeal the DMCA!
First, the RIAA has done a very good job at injecting false music files, especially with hot artists. If you search "Eminem", most likely the top ten downloadable files that return are bogus. They play for five seconds, then BUZZZZ. Irritating. But I gues it's fire with fire. Second reason is that the initial flurry of downloading resulted in people downloading most of what they wanted. I used to be on P2P daily, but now it's only every couple of weeks, because my library is big enough that I could listen to it for days on end. So I believe the survey, but I think it's disingenuous to place cause/effect squarely on the lawsuits. I like to think of it as an "all-you-can-eat" buffet where the crowd has already gorged themselves. The new guys coming in the front door of the buffet will be eating, and the rest of us will be going back for seconds, but not with immediate gusto.
I hate posts like this, because all you doomsdayers seem to think that music never existed before copyrights and the RIAA.
If what you're saying comes true, then YES many people are going to lose money, but I don't think it'll be the (genuinely good) artists. Instead, I'm willing to bet that they'll be paid like they were for thousands of years in the past--as performers. Besides, in all honesty, doesn't that make more sense than them attempting to be the sole "owners" of an intangible object that can be copied and distributed for little to no cost?
I for one, won't miss the RIAA one bit, either way. They ARE the bad guy. They cheat nearly every artist that you've ever heard of. They piss money away on circumventing the laws via payolla. And then as if to add insult to injury, the money they do give the artists usually comes in the form of loans. Take TLC, for instance, here was a band making millions of dollars in profit (not gross) and the artists, after all of their record company's swindling, were making about 20,000 per year individually.
As for your last statement, I love PC games. I, in fact, almost exclusively play PC games, but you're right, I haven't bought a PC game in awhile. Reason being: MOST of the games out right now suck. Apart from Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne, I haven't played a PC game that isn't generic or bug-ridden for awhile. Just give it some time, though. I GAURANTEE you 2004 will be the year PC games make a huge return. Again, it's not because of a lack of piracy, but there's a bunch of GREAT games coming out. To name a few: World of Warcraft, Doom III, Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-life 2, Counterstrike: Condition Zero. These are games that are going to pwn, and I plan on owning every one. (And this is after not buying a PC game for about 6 months.)
These issues have less to do with piracy like the RIAA and failing gaming companies would have you believe. In a world where nobody takes responsibility, this can be expected. I mean, it's easier to believe that your product isn't selling because of theft than it is to say it sucked. And the former certainly sounds better to stockholders and the media.
Piracy is an excuse. Unfortunately, some people (like the parent poster) have fallen for it.
-Grym