Slashdot Mirror
How Litigation Only Spurred On P2P File Sharing
littlekorea writes "The growth in peer-to-peer file sharing surged in response to efforts by the content industry to litigate over the past decade, according to a new study by a researcher at Melbourne's Monash University. Dr Rebecca Giblin explains why 'physical world' assumptions don't apply to the online world."
Correlation does not exclude causation either.
Since when does someone take it upon theirselves to demand royalties from people that trade movies by lending their discs over Sneakernet?
Shut these bums down. They don't make a living or contribute to the quality of life to others around them other than to exact fines and fees with the same precision as the Zetas and IRS.
I learned that this existed and that you could pirate stuff from all the controversy the RIAA and MPAA have done. If they never got sue happy and had absolute no morals, I probably wouldn't even know you could do this.
The threat of litigation is not stopping everyone from downloading movies and games, the torrent sites are still running. And there are FTP sites popping up that have movies on them as well, piracy is everywhere.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
In fact, the only thing observable in the world is correlation. Causation exists only in models and that model could be supported by observed correlation.
Most people would call you fools if you suggested that the mustard present in someone's refrigerator caused them to murder someone, though. Technically, that doesn't mean you're wrong, but it's something to think about.
The article reads like an undergraduate who wants to write a shit-kicking thesis and is really oooh excited about things but has entirely failed to do anything more than throw a few disjointed ideas in a bucket. It is peppered with lines that sound good but don't stand up to a couple of seconds examination: " So once the Napster litigation made P2P programmers aware of the rules about knowledge and control, they simply coded Napster's successors to eliminate them." I mean WHAT? Programmers coded out rules of "knowledge and control"???? No, the rules of law on knowledge and control exist independently in jurisprudence. How do you "code out" something that's entirely outwith software? Nonsense.
The author states "I would argue pre-P2P era law was based on a number of "physical world" assumptions." She goes to state that that makes sense because, well, it was pre-P2P. When you start any sentence with "I would argue that" (which is bad enough as it goes) and then point out in the next sentence that it's bleeding obvious, then it rather tends to underline you haven't made a point at all. Which is more than a small problem when you then go to make four non-points on the back of that about "the physical world" where, again, one sees no connection to the principal "argument" that litigation apparently "spurred on" file sharing. Ideas in a bucket.
And at the heart of it, the article offers no causative argument that litigation spurred on file sharing. At best it observes that file sharing increased in the era after litigation but it falls down entirely in showing any causation rather than correlation. There are other daft arguments about the Supreme Court making laws: it doesn't, de Tocqueville et al were rather insistent it couldn't; rather its interpretation of law clarifies the law already in place, which show the author is floundering on the subject matter.
So a number of ideas that sound like they were excitedly discussed in an undergraduate bar (and not at a terribly good college) and aren't worked through or even put into a single coherent narrative and which argues causation but offers no evidence of it.
Weak.
Just finishing reading this long page on how the file sharing litigation process is flawed, I feel little enlightened. Most of the observation presented have been discussed here over a decade ago. What's interesting though, is where these observations are coming from. Maybe someone on the legal size has finally opened his eyes.
If that's good or bad for file shares and file sharing app creators is another story though.
Yeah, real funny, smartass. Turns out I had already warned that fucker about PUTTING HIS CRAP ON MY SHELF! FUCK!
Doesn't anyone take economics anymore?
Every product has a price that is based on supply and demand.
Digital media once created has a verry high supply ability. Thus it's cost is lowered. Digital content providers are charging more then what supply and demand curve intercection states. And legal controls that are trying to maintain this off balance. So... Blackmarkets are naturally formed to provide goods at their actual costs.
This is the same thing with drugs, unpasturized milk, under the counter workers...
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Actually, the article does not limit its reasoning to showing correlation, it explains very well how the costly penalties and open source development changed the incentives in the P2P world and moved it from a centralized to decentralized one. Unlike your snarky comment, it was a rather insightful commentary on the economics of the phenomenon.
No It wasn't Colonel Mustard in the kitchen it was Professor Plum in the study. Tim Curry would be so ashamed.
It makes me think about recent events with the Arab Spring's use of technology, Anonymous, and Wikileaks. Are the little people (us) in essence weaponizing the internet against the powers-that-be? Ad-hoc mesh networks might be a fall-back when the powers-that-be realize that and try to switch it off.
But especially with regard to Wikileaks. They say they've been stymied by the financial blockade of the big banks. So I wonder if there is any work being done on how to route around the financial blockade, since it seems to be the only thing that has remotely stopped the efforts of the little people against the powers-that-be.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The real pirates and usurpers are the labels and -IAAs, just ask some of the real creators about their royalty checks from the labels. Copyright has become sheer extra-constitutional thuggery with ex post facto changes, favoritism, public subsidy, harassment, subversion and essentially unlimited terms. F-'em.
It hepls to think about who wants what:
- music makers ultimately want to do music; they derive pleasure from doing that; it's their very nature to do so and to want to do it;
- listeners just dig music; it is somewhat surprising people can appreciate music without being able to compose it, but somehow it happens; they'll get angry at what interposes itself between them and what they want -- just like any child...
- music distributors couldn't care less about music -- they want profits, by any means they can get it (alas, there's a problem with vicious capitalism, but let's save it for another occasion); for them, creating scarcity is a way to boost profits; they also have this naïve idea that masses can be contained; it's a clear joining of evil intent with ignorance about how society works plus overestimation of their own power to control things.
Misunderstanding one's own power, btw, is behind several disasters we met along the way in mankind's history, but let's save this, too.
In the end, composers will resort to free music and donations, precisely as a way to get rid of distributors -- because these latter have been so obnoxious. As everyone can see in commerce, getting rid of middlemen is a nobrainer, which means distributors might consider what to do after they lose their jobs -- or, alternatively, desperately try to survive... the first measure being, of course, changing their attitude 180 degrees by:
1. being really helpful to both composers and listeners;
2. it follows, but let's say it: don't steal from both parties!
3. stopping the bullying tactics -- that's suicide;
4. having a nice agenda, being clear about it and sticking to it;
5. disappear from the news: achieve the status of being accepted and keep a low profile.
Actually, now that I think about it, this could work also for proprietary software companies and for Linux distros.
The author is not saying anything about correlation. What the article says is that because the law shut down the conventional methods of file-sharing, it caused people to turn to producing many varieties of free file sharing software to get around the potential litigation. The ultimate result was a great increase in the ease and availability of file-sharing software. The exact opposite of what the people writing the law intended. This happened because of a variety of physical world assumptions legislators made that don't apply in the world of software.
Correlation is observing two things and noting the likelihood of them occurring together. Causation is experimental and is what is used for reasoning. F ex thing 1 happens, then thing 2 happens which wouldn't happen by itself. There is correlation between any 2 things in the universe except when it is actually the same event, as in perfect causation: If thing 1 happens, then thing 2 or vice versa. And it still would be proving causation since it doesn't tell which came first.
That the RIAA made a big stink about Napster in the early days is what caused it all.
Until that happened hardly anyone in the general public knew it existed. The concept of getting 'free music' wasn't even in their minds, until then.
Way to go RIAA for creating your own nightmare. Unless that was the goal, get it on the radar, then demonize it via the media and pay for legislation in a preemptive strike. ( that backfired... )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
not only that-- the most downloaded films, tv shows, etc have the highest media sales. And what about the study done by Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, and the guy who wrote the book The Alchemist, who released their stories online for free and have seen higher sales because of it (easier to track when it is a translated version from another language).
In fact, the only thing observable in the world is correlation. Causation exists only in models and that model could be supported by observed correlation.
Uh, no. If I punch you in the nose and you start to nosebleed, nobody's going to question the causality of that. Sometimes it's hard to say because X leads to Y and Y leads to X or because there's some underlying factor Z leading to both X and Y, but there's usually some way to separate the effects. That said network effects are often very vital in understanding why an inferior solution is picked, a small edge in starting conditions can send the marketing spinning in another direction.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
False. File-sharing started because there was no legal alternative. If something like iTunes had existed in the early days, people (including me), would have used it. When iTunes finally did come along, it had a nasty DRM. If it had been open, more people (including me), would have used it.
Recently, I have been seeing more and more artists offering their music on their website without DRM and without a label. This makes me so happy, I usually buy their entire discography (if I like the music of course). It is trivial to offer music on a website, and I imagine artists have realized that people are much more willing to pay for something when they know their money isn't going to a record company.
As for the litigation, that is just the noisy death throes of a once powerful industry, angry about becoming obsolete. It has had zero effect on my behavior (and I read Slashdot), and certainly hasn't affected most people's reasons for file-sharing.
The price of a product is defined mostly by its perceived value, not by its production costs.
That is why diamonds are so expensive.
That is why paintings cost so much.
That is why luxury cars can only be afforded by so few people.
That is why certain areas like Beverly Hills is so expensive.
And that is why digitial products have a price far above zero.
Therefore, piracy is theft.