QotW3: Sharing, Copyright and Creative Culture
According to a research article by Litman (Litman, 2003), a number of scholars have floated proposals that urged the adoption of systems that would permit peer-to-peer file sharing, charging money to the people who enjoy it and thus generating money in which businesses can profit from it and these money could also be used to compensate creators and copyright owners. I feel that this is the best solution currently as the public still get to share their files but at a minimal fee, and the record industry still gets their profits and commission from their middlemen (websites or peer-to-peer file sharing programs), who hosts these file-sharing activities. This solution puts the public, the middlemen, the record industries in a win-win situation and this could even create a new avenue for profits for the record industries-selling their music online.
You might feel that record-sales will drop due to file-sharing but, from an empirical analysis on “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales” (Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf, 2005), Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf had concluded from the use of detailed records of transfer of digital music files, file sharing sharing has no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album. File sharing is not responsible for the majority of lost sales. Other factors, such as poor macroeconomic conditions, the change in how music is distributed and the ending of a period of atypically high sales when consumers replace music old music formats with Compact Discs, the growing competition from other forms of entertainment, are plausible candidates for the loss of record sales.
Napster and online website, mp3search.com are excellent examples who had used to allow free downloading and uploading of music and video files. Then, both have been forced to cease operation but now, they are operating based on another aspect, by making their customers pay for subscriptions and the files that their customers download. I found an interesting segment off mp3search.com about information on using peer-to-peer software safely (mp3search.com, 2006), where they state that the purchase of a membership with mp3search.com, however is not a license to upload or download copyrighted material and that mp3search.com urge the users to respect copyright and share responsibly. Then, it links to show a small segment of disclaimer about copyright infringement which links to another article that teaches the users how to minimize copyright infringement using their peer-2-peer software. Evidently, mp3search.com wish not to get involved with any more of copyright issues that they used to have thus the disclaimers.
(Source: http://www.mp3search.com)
Napster do also have a similar problem about file-sharing before but now they had worked with Microsoft and have embedded a new function, a Napster Online Store, into the new Windows Media Player whereby users can download music at a fee through Windows Media Player, just like iTunes, a similar program by Apple, that manages one’s music library and also sells licensed music at a fee.
How can we not get sued for file sharing? Is it possible? From an article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) (EFF, 2006), EFF advises users to make sure that there are no potentially infringing files in the shared folder, remove all potentially misleading file names that might confuse with the name of an RIAA artist or song and disable the ‘Sharing’ or ‘Uploading’ function of the peer-2-peer application. EFF has also created a petition against RIAA from filing legal suits, to propose as a solution to get artists paid while protecting peer-2-peer file sharing and instead of RIAA filing endless lawsuits, create a rational, legal means by which its customers can take advantage of file sharing technology and pay a fair price for the music they love (EFF:RIAA Petition, 2006).
By making the public pay for their music and recording industries do their part by allowing file-sharing but with terms and conditions could salvage the situation of finding a win-win situation for everyone. Only through this, then the subject of illegal file-sharing could be put to an end.
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REFERENCES:
Litman, Jessica, (2003, November 23). Sharing and Stealing, Social Science Research Network, 4, 31. Retrieved January 18, 2007, from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=472141.
Associated Press. (2007, January 31). NY Boy Sued by Music Companies Responds. Yahoo! Asia News. Retrieved on February 3, 2007, from http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070131/ap/d8n01oj01.html.
Oberholzer-Gee, F., & Strumpf, K. (2005, June). The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales; An Empirical Analysis. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 35-36. Retrieved January 18, 2007 from http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_June2005_final.pdf.
Mp3search.com. (2006). Information on using p2p safely. Mp3search.com. Retrieved February 3, 2007 from http://mp3search.com/.
EFF. (2006). How to Not Get Sued for File Sharing. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved February 3, 2007 from http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/howto-notgetsued.php.
EFF. (2006). RIAA Petition. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved February 3, 2007 from http://www.eff.org/share/petition/.
Labels: COM125 Assignments
Comments:
You need to be clearer with your proposed solution to accomodate both content creators and the public good. Grade 2/3.
