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Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal
Andorin writes "It's common knowledge that the majority of files distributed over BitTorrent violate copyright, though the exact percentage is unclear. The Internet Commerce Security Laboratory of the University of Ballarat in Australia has conducted a study and found that 89% of files examined were in fact infringing, while most of the remaining 11% were ambiguous but likely to be infringing. Ars Technica summarizes the study: 'The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed. Only three cases—0.3 percent of the files—were determined to be definitely not infringing, while 890 files were confirmed to be illegal. ' The study brings with it some other interesting statistics; out of the 1,000 files, 91 were pornographic, and approximately 4% of torrents were responsible for 80% of seeders. Music, movies and TV shows constituted the three largest categories of shared materials, and among those, zero legal files were found."
Internet = porn. Folks, just keep it legal and no one at MaBell will care. Don't look at kiddies and don't steal anything. Is it hard for you slashdotters to follow each of these rules??? Come on...
I am definitively not impressed.
Wow. The number made me laugh. I expect it to be low, but not THAT low.
Choosing the most popular seeds gives very skewed results. I bet the overall percentage of pornographic torrents is much higher than 9%. Similarly, we may see a large change in the number of legal files.
I think the zero legal music / tv / movie files can be attributed to those types of files that are legal to distribute are usually just done so by http or ftp servers. They don't get put into a torrent type download system.
I'm not surprised that 4% of the files were being downloaded by 80% of the community. I bet the #1 file was being downloaded by more than 50% of the community. Individuals can, and often do, download more than one file at a time.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
1986: Hey man, want a copy of this movie I got? Sure, I'll just pop it in my VCR and make a duplicate.
2010: Hey man, want a copy of this movie I got? knock, knock Aw crap, it's the police! *thud* *smack* ow! ow! ow!
RIAA -- Advocating social and technological progress since... ha ha, never you dopes!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
They ultimatly found approx. 1% to be legal.
The Princeton piece makes for an interesting read because they do a good job of breaking down their catagories and providing some detailed context. For instance, 53% of the porn was in English and 5% of the software was Spanish language. Just really rich data for anyone into this kind of analysis. The final paragraph on how they decided if content was illegal reads:
That seems like exactly the wrong way to do a survey. Way to go.
I find 100% of money spent on this study definitely wasted.
You're kidding me, it's that high...wow!!
How many images on web pages are truly "legal"? How many files?
"The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files--a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used."
Most Active. Charming. It's almost like saying, "of the 1,000 most illegal torrents, almost 1,000 of them are illegal." I want to know about the millions of other files on BT, not the ones most likely to be illegal. Also: 1,000 randomly selected out of how many of the most active torrents?
Bad study is bad, or at least bad press release is bad, and I can smell the spin from 5,000 miles away.
infringing torrents :: ambiguous :: legal
porn :: probably porn :: normal content
spam :: probably spam :: real emails
blog posts :: lazily disguised reposts :: real news
fake google results :: crappy sites :: what you were actually searching for
And so forth...within a small margin, this appears to be the standard ratio of the internet.
Just so you know, University of Ballarat of a corporate whore. I went there for a while before I realised what a fucking joke it was. Not saying that this means the results are bullshit but it's certainly food for thought.
How Ironic that the day this post shows up on /. VODO had an release up which is a movie and is 100% legal and very highly transferred over torrents.
The.Yes.Men.Fix.The.World.P2P.Edition.2010.XviD-VODO & The.Yes.Men.Fix.The.World.P2P.Edition.2010.HQ.x264-VODO
This study is flawed and what trackers did they use or how did they truly pick the randomization?
I mean if they pick the 1000 random torrents from a piracy site, then my guess is their results would this way, but if they select other trackers/locations/etc they would likely find that 100% of the traffic is legal and proper.
Also remember that statistics just show how biased the statistician is when they interpret the results and decide how to present them.
I think it's about time they legalize piracy.
The summary states:
The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used.
Clearly then the sample isn't a random subset of 'all torrents' but instead of 'popular torrents on certain trackers.' This does not justify the proposition in the title "Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal."
That aside, fat chance I'm going to trust The Internet Commerce Security Laboratory to keep their science unbiased in this regard. Seriously, for whom would a sample size of 1,000 torrents seem even close to enough?
the most powerful intellect is that unbounded by indubitable preconception
For those that say most of the bit torrents are legal I have to ask what are all these legal files that people are trading? I'm honestly curious not being a torrent user. I personally know of a few companies that distribute licensed software that way and blogs. Also there's open source software. Considering the massive amount of traffic what are people sharing? I know what this study says but I have heard claims before the bulk of the traffic is legal. If so what is the legal traffic? Most people use things like Youtube and Flicker for photos and video so what are all the legal torrent files?
'The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used
this being the bit I picked out. this can vary greatly tracker to tracker.
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
Seriously. Anyone else try to download Alien Swarm on Monday?
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Let the "cloud" be an opt-in, "use THIS much of my up/down" defined thing so that anyone either downloading a game or willing to serve as a content node for a game is then using their bandwidth to - effectively - make the "It's FREE AND YOU CAN GET IT NOW!" statement from Valve actually MEAN "get it now" and not "you can watch Steam poop itself every time you try for it until you magically without any explanation get a slot!"
In certain circumstances, BT is potentially a Damned Handy thing for content distribution.
(In other circumstances, it's a damned aggravating thing that makes lawyers salivate, but that's not what I'm talking about here)
Okay, I used to use BitTorrent for downloading Linux and a bunch of other things, rather than downloading directly from mirrors. Do you know why I don't know? Because Bell Canada throttles BitTorrent traffic, but not plain HTTP and FTP traffic.
Those bastards broke legitimate uses of BitTorrent, and now they complain that only pirates use it.
I don't think this study is about legal files; I think it's about files that are legal to distrbute freely. There's a big difference; illegal files would be ones illegal to possess, period. Unless copyright law has changed, it covers distribution, not possession. Pedantic point, maybe, but illegal files really does refer to something, but not merely copyrighted works whose authors don't allow free distribution.
No text
Ok, sure, it's a lousy .3%, even so, it's proof that the legitimate uses for torrent type file sharing is NOT ZERO. If you want to prosecute someone for sharing illegal content, you MUST now prove the illegality of that content, and not just assume it to be so "because it's a torrent file". Three tenths of a percent ain't much, but it still constitutes REASONABLE DOUBT, albeit, barely.
0.3% chance this report isnt selection bias. Only 1000 torrents? Only 23 trackers? Why not 25? Was those extra 2 going to destroy your stats? How about 1 million torrents, taken from a specific date in time; over as many trackers you can find. http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Legal_torrent_sites Omg I did 250,000 torrents and only went to the above link for 29 trackers. New article: Study analyses 29 trackers, more then previously, finds 100% torrents legal.
If anybody fscks with my ability to download my linux distros at 1.5MB-2.0MB per second, i will seriously be pissed. BitTorrent is the only method by which i can reliably attain these speeds. I'm willing to forgo the BitTorrent protocol in principle, but only in favor of an even better technology
a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed.
Note "from the most active seeded files"
In other words, this doesn't really mean that only "0.3% of BitTorrent Files" are definitely legal.. far more might be legal but not among the top active torrents.
That could mean there are plenty of legal torrents, but they don't make the list of top active ones, because (perhaps) illegal ones are more popular for an audience that is larger.
Doesn't negate that there are plenty of legal torrents, Linux ISOs, etc, and BitTorrent is commonly used as a legal distribution mechanism. But they are looking at public free-for-all trackers which are already potentially biased towards containing spam and other crap that you would expect people on any pre-bittorrent P2P system to be offering.
In fact, their study only applies to the most active torrent files.
I am not surprised that if you consider only the most active seeded files, that a lot of them are illegal, especially in regards to music files.
But if you use a methodology that doesn't artifically limit your sample to the most active torrent files as indicated by TPB or isoHunt, something completely different may be found.
IOW: researchers, take yer study and shove it until you can uh stop using a biased sampling method like "most active".
This is like taking a survey of FTP servers, and only looking at ones that report having the most users connecting, and allow anyone to upload any file, and others to immediately download it.
To claim 0.3% of files on FTP are definitely legal.
What do I buy when I buy a record?
Do I buy the right to listen to that song? Let's say I bought the Spice Girls record back in 1997, and I suddenly want to listen to it. Unfortunately it's old, and horribly scratched up. Do I need to go out to a store and buy a new copy? Is it really immoral to pretend i made a copy of it and download it from bittorrent? Thus, is that copy of Spice Girls really illegal in my case?
Unfortunately, I cannot find a link to the actual study, so it is impossible to tell if their methods really are accurate. However, I do believe that only 1000 of the most highly seeded files is not an accurate representation of all BitTorrent traffic. In fact that very requirement that they be the highest seeded sets up a bias within this study. A study of 100,000 randomly selected files from as many trackers as they can find would yeild far more acurate results.
Who knows? Maybe this is what they did originally and their results were not as cut and dried as their corporate backers wanted. I note that the Internet Commerce Security Lab at the University of Ballarat doesn't detail their "collaborative partnerships within industry" on the website.
i think bittorrent has been surpassed by direct streaming by now, and direct streaming is being surpassed by cacaoweb which is basically the next generation p2p software. bittorrent is a dinosaur and has been extinct a long time ago now
"Copyrighted" refers to the work. "Infringing" refers to the *use* of the work. The first does not imply the second.
The aricle says they checked "...whether the file was confirmed to be copyrighted..." And then apparently made the jump to assuming that anything copyrighted must be illegal, sliding immediately into called them "infringing files."
Of course by that metric all the Linux distros are illegal as well since they too are "copyrighted." As is any blog post, web page, or photo taken in the last, say, 70 years. As is anything that is shared properly according to the terms of any license. Now the study may have actually looked at the license terms in place for each work, but this definitely not what the article *said*.
Not to mention that regardless of any express license terms, sharing that qualifies as fair use is also NOT AN INFRINGMENT and is LEGAL and should not be described as illegal or as "infringing files."
Any indication whether these types of things (terms of the licenses according to each item, whether the sharing events qualified as fair use) were taken into account? If not, then I'd counter by noting that 100% of the material on Warner Bros' home page is copyrighted too. Should I say it's being shared "illegally"? Of course not, but my whole point is that if you play with semantics loosely enough, you'll find that probably the vast majority of the material on the Net as a whole is "illegal" and "copyrighted."
*grumble*
No, as they went out and found the torrent files themselves, which while blizzard uses the bittorrent protocol, it doesn't use the files. A torrent file is just a list of trackers anyways, so instead the probably put that into the code or a config file somewhere.
Nope. While Blizzard uses a custom BT client, you can find a standard BitTorrent file in the clients files. This file works just fine with other BT clients.
The trouble with the "peer to peer" systems today is that they're horrendously inefficient ways of transmitting the same data around. It's gotten better, but still, the same data passes back and forth across intercontinental undersea cables multiple times.
Many years ago, when I was going to school in Cleveland, I stood on an overpass and watched two coal trains passing each other, in opposite directions. And I thought that some day, computers would be smart enough to get the owners of that coal in touch with each other so they could cut a deal and avoid the wasted transportation. And indeed, that happened.
But now we have the same huge data files passing each other, in opposite directions. This is lame. Especially since USENET got it right. If the "peer to peer" systems weren't so focused on piracy, they could work much better.
I do not trust any conclusion drawn from single digit population sizes. Multiply the sample size by 10 and maybe I'll start to listen.
There's a huge difference in 3/1,000 vs. 30/10,000.
0.3 percent of traffic is not going above the speed limit.
Alright -- to respond to myself --it does look like the researchers did some sort of manual license checking for each commonly-shared work, but the article is pretty silent on what, exactly, that entailed. I'm virtually certain it didn't involve checking for fair use possibilities.
I'm curious as to how the same logic would have described the simple use of a VCR prior to the Sony case: "100% of material recorded on VCRs is copyrighted and definitely illegal." All copyrighted, yes, but much of the recording activity was later found to be "time-shifting": a fair use, and therefore legal and not an infringement.
What I'd really like to see therefore is a study where the researchers sample of the downloaders/sharers involved to see whether they make fair-use-sounding arguments or not. (Couldn't buy it another way, replacing my lost or worn-out copy, sampling music I wouldn't have bought otherwise, etc.) Sure some of this might not pass muster as fair use if eventually tested, but it makes a difference, particularly since, as the article notes, P2P users actually buy more media per capital than non-P2P users.
Such a study wouldn't break down content by "type of content" but by "type of use". Not doing so is a dead giveaway that the study isn't designed to seriously address the fair use issues at all.
I can download Total Commander from author's site.
I can download Total Commander (with added files, which do not modify original Total Commander files) from torrent sites as well.
If I download it from torrent site, will this study consider it as a piracy?
This study is flawed beyond comprehension.
Is it also true that only 0.3% of VHS tapes contain legal content when it was at its peak ?
And i heard a lot of those old audio tapes(cassete recorders) had content that was just copied from other tapes (tape-to-tape they called it), people used to take them to concerts and release "bootleg" recordings.
How the industry has continued to survive with such blazen disrespect for the laws surrounding th music(ians) they love is beyond me.
Perhaps it would appropriate to start an appeal so we can all donate money to these needy organisations (RIAA/MPAA) that look after the interests of musicians.
Oh yea, im being sarcastic
Used to be, artists wanted to be heard. Nowadays, all these newfangled "artists" just want their pocketbooks expanded real easy like. Not sure who to blame, really. You might call 'em greedy, but you might say good vibrations don't fill an empty stomach, nor put a roof over your head. Might be a time they did. Not this time.
If you distribute to just 10,000, then those people who do the same and those people do the same again, then you've already by three generations handed out copies to 1000 billion people. About 150x the number of people on the planet. And the leech level would be 10,000 to 1.
More normally, 1 person gives to 1 person or very slightly more (leeches don't share).
The astronomical cost of settling is usually said to be right by retards because it's the cost of a redistribution license. But if that's true, then the users who downloaded it were not infringing: there was a distribution license and therefore the content was legal.
I guess the latest Knoppix build won't outdo Windows 7, then.
"You buy the right to listen to that song, so long as you are the demonstrable owner of that right. It's always been this way."
Really? Do you mean that if I hear that song accidentally, and I cannot demonstrate a right to listen, I am somehow in the wrong?
Wait a minute: YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN TRADE IN A RIGHT TO LISTEN?
Next week, it'll be a discussion on "right to feel, right to see, right to smell, and right to taste", and how these rights can be traded.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I use bittorrent as a bit of a poor-man's cloud storage.
I've got a ton of CDs I've purchased, and after a flood and a series of moves the HDs where I stored the ripped (low quality) MP3s were destroyed.
So now whenever I want to listen to a CD that I've purchased, I just download the CD using bittorrent, usually as FLAC, and add the FLAC files to the library I'm rebuilding. I don't have to worry about setting up the ripping software, and I'm actually getting it a bit better organized this time.
So for me, that 'illegal' content is just me rebuilding my digital copies of CDs or DVDs I legally own.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
"it's clear that Linux distros weren't exactly dominating the charts here"
I haven't really paid that much attention in the past, but just checking Debian now they have their own tracker, and I suppose many of the other Linux distros could be using trackers not on that list of 23. If all the major distros use their own trackers, then obviously most Linux bittorrent traffic wouldn't be on public trackers, and that statement is ludicrous.
We are all God's parents.
...There is a problem with the law, not with everyone. Laws where supposed to keep some social contracts working - like not running around killing everyone, paying taxes to support commons etc. When everyone is breaking the law - that means that the law does not reflect current situation in a society. Either this - or you have a tyranny where the minority dictates everyone what to do.
> "It's common knowledge that the majority of files distributed over BitTorrent violate copyright
No, sadly that's false.
Files do not "violate" (you mean infringe I'm guessing) Copyright laws.
The Copyright laws I'm familiar with apply to people. They do not apply to files
The people who use those same files may be doing so in any number of legal ways.
It's common knowledge when one doesn't do the research, it's easier to blame "common knowledge" than actually either understand the law, or research the issues.
E
Looking at the study it immediately appears to be fundamentally flawed by the simple fact that the trackers analysed were in fact pirate trackers? What on earth did they expect. I'm actually quite surprised that there was even 0.3% legit content shared. If this test was to have been conducted properly they should have;
Sampled traffic at ISP using DPI to look for torrent data
Sampled from several ISPs
Sampled in multiple geographic locations
Not go to a well known warez tracker and click sort by most seeded and then write them all down. I can only assume that this was funded by a large organisation to reinforce their already decided oppinion.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
How much of private gun ownership results in legal use? Protecting the person from criminals (not as in, if I have a gun I am safe but actually stopping a crime in progress because you a private citizen has a gun) vs it being used by criminals? Wouldn't be at all suprised if the figure is even lower. Yet the US allows gun ownership because of those few who are able to use it legally.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Those concerned about the vilification of BitTorrent should deliberately increase its legitimate uses.
What if the major Linux distributions started using BitTorrent as the default mechanism to retrieve packages?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
"Music, movies and TV shows constituted the three largest categories of shared materials, and among those, zero legal files were found." ... in the sample of 1000. I only look for the "legal" stuff (e.g., music and video put there by the author/copyright holder, linux distributions and other free software, etc.). And as other people have pointed out, choosing the most active seeds already skews the results in significant ways (it's more representative of traffic, but not necessarily what's available).
There's another aspect that isn't considered, but which would be very hard to evaluate. People could be downloading materials and using them in a way that qualifies as "fair use" (e.g., a short clip of material), and in countries where format shifting is specifically legal, people could be (for example) downloading a movie that they already purchased in order to get a copy that they can transfer to another device. It would still be "unauthorized" downloading/infringement, but not necessarily illegal. Unauthorized != illegal in all circumstances.
Still, some interesting statistics.
Find their article here:
http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/
if they selected 1000 torrents from the piratebay, then this result was inevitable...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Seriously, what does it matter? The media giants that are fighting our rights really don't care about reality. Even if it was 100%, p2p is the scapegoat and they will continue to spread lies and buy laws to drive it into the ground.
The real solution is to move towards 'protected' p2p where it wont matter what they want to do / say. Then flip them the bird when they cant get a hold of any names to sue, or providers to shut down.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
if you download something not legally available in your country, such as Manhunt 2 outside of the US....
The idea that anything on the internet can be declared "illegal" is absurd..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Ball A Rat? am i the only one that finds that funny? probably so.
I wonder how much of the "infringing" material would have been classified as non-infringing if copyright terms had remained at 14 years instead of "indefinitely." They said that most of the material was music, movies, and TV shows; and very few of those works have entered the public domain since the 1920's.
Story is a complete sham published by AFACT
http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724
Some files produce vastly more bittorrent traffic than others. Im sure WOW updates using bittorrent are substantially more
than 0.3% of bittorrent traffic by themselves. Many seeders do not seed pirated content.
How can you check copyrights on a torrent without infringing them yourself?
what a shame you lot didn't bother to learn what is true before posting this load of crap! if you were to do your job properly, you would see that the information used is more than 2 years old and has been doctored to suit the purposes of the copyright industries, as this type of survey always is, simply to justify them hanging on to an ages old buiness module, instead of giving the customer what is wanted, in the way it is wanted and at a sensible price! if the losses that are claimed were true, dont you think there would be little in the way of challenges over that information from independant sources? instead, the misinformation is constantly being disputed but the results never get to the public eye. cant imagine why, can you?
As the first AC replied to you, there is no such limit, and the court looks at a lot of factors in order to decide if a use is fair use. One of these factors is if the reuser has invested sufficient creativity of his own in relation to the amount used.
It could be perfectly legal for tens of thousands of individuals to each choose a short time period out of a movie, and then invest the time and effort to analyze it and write commentary, thus making it possible to distribute 100% of the movie legally. Of course, it's never going to actually happen, because as time goes on it will be easier and easier to illegally distribute the movie without all of this rigamarole.
http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/
This study is bogus. Their numbers are way off in more than one instance.
91 out of 1000 is porn, thats like 0.9% of torrent content by authors who probably don't mind ? Where did they select these torrents? From a 'warez' site or from somewhere else ? It's unclear. I'm not going hippiecrite here but i would also like to question the legality of some copyright claims and repeat the fact that whoever gets downloaded the most probably also sells the most copies of his or her POPular product. I feel really sorry for Lars if he has to wait another month for his new swimming pool, but hypothetically speaking, if i would know where to find these criminals, i'd be happy to use their services because i'm a huge fan of that band Try before you Buy. 90% of games is crap, 90% of movies is crap. Are there any statistics on how many lady Gaga songs were downloaded over the last year? Does she look hungry to you? No, she's not even skinny. Do Hollywood movie companies make losses because of piracy or because of their own constructs to evade taxes ? Did Turbine go bankrupt since their flagship went free to play? Will Lotro stick to the old business model and sue its customer base instead of adapting? On moral grounds i say the big companies are the wrong doers here, on legal grounds ofcourse, he who writes the law is always right, right? I hope the day comes sooner when these hogs see that all the money spent on lawsuits is in fact money wasted, money that could have been used to develop new ways of making money or adapting their old companies to compete with the new ones who are customer-friendly (giving out a product and then letting people decide if they WANT to pay for it, i say that's pretty customer friendly) Then again, like someone above here said, who cares? Look what happened when they criminalized the sales of alcohol :p
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-disney-20100708,0,4051564.story
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
..may be the ones transferring digital backup copies. Those LPs I bought in the 60s, 70s, and 80s make me a rights holder, and by the laws of my country I am free to obtain digital copies of these works I already own in a different format. But no, I'm just a "pirate" depriving Mick Jager's grandchildren another mansion.
B.S. survey is B.S.
http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/ The research is complete bogus. Also, it's not because something is copyrighted, that the torrent sharing it is illegal. People can copyright something and then give it out. Bittorrent being a medium enabling that.
How can one tell if peers/files are real or not unless the torrent is actually downloaded? Did they really download everything to verify it? There ARE a majority of torrents with fake peers. The traffic isn't real but one can only tell after getting burned trying to download it.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Other commenters have already addressed the notion of whether a file can be legal or illegal in and of itself.
However, it seems that the article in question, and the ensuing discussion here, is confusing illegal files with illegal file transfer.
For example, while a copyright-protected music file is illegal to download in the U.S., it is perfectly legal to download in Canada.
Thus, the discussion becomes unclear as to whether we are discussing illegal files or illegal file transfers.
A/C is probably not going to read this. Still...
The "property" you are discussing doesn't really exist. It's called "intellectual property", and only has value when it is heard. Or seen. Or felt.
If it is heard or seen without "suitable permission", is the person hearing or seeing breaking the law? Note that the fee for the lecture is a fee to be inside a lecture hall. It is not actually a fee to hear the lecture. Sneaking in is not a "crime of hearing" -- that is absurd. It is trespass.
This "hearing" and "seeing" thing cannot be controlled. Even if you really, really want to. The attempt to control these things would be considered unethical by sane people.
Which really makes "intellectual property" a silly notion. I much prefer the proper use of the three types of "intellectual property": Copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets.
And none of the three states, implies, or mentions any right of sensory control. The closest notion would be Trade Secret, wherein if the Trade Secret is accidentally divulged, it ceases to be a Trade Secret.
To predict the next argument -- why are people being asked to pay money to play radios in public places? Copyright controls reproduction, and a reproduction right can give rise to a performance right.
Its still not a "listening right".
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061