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Questions for a P2P Downloading Panel Discussion?
George P. Burdell asks: "On April 5, Georgia Tech's Honor Advisory Council will host a panel discussion between opposing sides of the P2P downloading issue. Among other panel members, a representative from the RIAA has agreed to attend the event. The discussion is intended to raise the level of awareness of students who may think they know all they need to know about the issue. What are some of the pressing questions the tech community has for panel members on both sides of the issue?"
For the RIAA:
It would seem that all information-based, intellectual property (IP) business models depend on either:
A. Being able to control the distribution medium;
B. Introducing risks or rewards that make payment preferable to nonpayment.
Option A seems to be doomed once the intellectual property is digitally transferrable in its entirity in a manageable size across the internet.
If intellectual property owners can divide the IP into a transferrable part and a non-transferrable part (like any Application Service Provider does), they can still succeed.
Option B includes the use of enforcement, which has a huge public relations downside. But, it can also dictate another pricing model. If there is a quality/reliability difference between acquiring a dataset (IP product) from a random location vs. getting it from a known good source, the consumer will prefer the better cost/benefit.
Isn't it safer to just acknowledge option B is the more sustainable option and pursue lower prices in a higher quality format?
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As a Tech Alum, I must say it is nice to see my school taking on these issues.
However, I have a question for the panel, and the submission form seems to 404 on me.
While I was attending Tech, (only last year), Tech took a stance that it was an ISP, and thus not responsible for filtering the internet. How will a policy on P2P usage effect this stance?
This
What are the moral and ethical considerations for using and developing peer to peer software? Is it any different from any other software?
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Can I legally download music that I already own? For example I own the song in one of record,tape,CD, and if so, may I legally download a version of this song from a P2P network or some other source.
I have never been able to get a real good answer from anyone regarding this. I own hundreds of tapes and a decent number of vinyl recordings. Haven't I already obtained my fair use rights by purchasing the album in one of those formats? Why should I, as a consumer, be forced to pay again for something I already own, if all I want is to be able to listen to it on my computer. And if not, could the industry somehow be persuaded to allow me to "trade in" my older copy with credit towards a CD of the same album? I feel it's kind of rediculous to pay full price for the same album in vinyl,tape, and CD(and whatever the next medium is), especially when I have boxes of cassettes/records/CDs.