Senator Diane Feinstein Wants to know about the Benefits of P2P
Eric Gauthier
eric at roxanne.org
Mon Aug 30 20:43:09 UTC 2004
Henry,
> So I would like some professional expert opinion to
> give her on this issue since it will effect the
> copyright inducement bill. Real benefits for
> production and professional usage of this technology.
I'm sure you'll hear this from many other people, but one thing that I always
try to discuss when talking about "P2P" is the difference between general
peer-to-peer applications and "illegal music downloads". For example, Voice
over IP systems and the regular PSTN telephone system (same application but a
different network) are peer-to-peer applications running over electronic
networks (sometimes even the same ones). The PSTN is routinely used
to commit all sorts of criminal activity, though I think it's easy to see
how using the peer-to-peer application (i.e. "calling someone on the telephone")
is distinct from committing a criminal act.
Regardless, my guess is that the real interest relates to music trading via
Internet-based "peer-to-peer" networks (Fastrack, gnutella, IRC, etc), so
I'll limit the rest of my thoughts to that. My band is a small, independant
band. We don't have a recording contract nor are we interested in one. We're
not interested in making money by selling CDs (do any artists really make money
selling CDs?) but rather by performing. We want people to listen to our
music, to have easy access to it, and we see this goal one of the best ways to
generate interest in our band and interest in attending our shows. To
accomplish this, we definitely intend to seed the various file-sharing networks
with our MP3s as soon as we're done mastering them. We own the copyright to
our music and view this as the best avenue to distribute our music and, in the
process, generate interest in our band. All other mechanisms for distributing
our music will cost us something, usually money, as well as cost our fans. The
truth is that if someone has to pay to download our music, then it's likely
that they won't since we aren't an established band. Even if some fans were
willing to pay to download our songs, we'd rather that they saved the money to
spend at our shows and we see giving away our digital recordings as a good
way to drive attendence. If this sort of distribution is made illegal,
then we'd be forced to go through a third party to distribute our music and
this would likely require either signing away certain rights to our music,
costing us money, or both. It would also drive up the cost of our music to
our fans and hinder our ability to perform.
Stretching things a little, I'm also worried that other means for
distributing our music would be impacted if music-sharing via peer-to-peer
networks is made illegal. For example, if a friend IM's me over AIM and
asks for a copy of our MP3s, would that also be illegal? If I run a web
server from my home computer, use dynamic DNS to keep my hostname and IP
mapping current, register the location of my MP3 with Google and Yahoo so that
people will download it from me, will that also be illegal? Would Google,
my cable-modem provider, and my dynamic DNS providers be somehow liable for
providing a potentially inducing technology and, as such, prevent us from
doing it? If neither of these distribution mechanisms would be illegal, what
is it about our approach to using Fastrack or gnutella that makes it illegal?
Some people are using these networks to distribute content illegally and I'm
against that. Just because my band wants to distribute its music this way,
doesn't mean that every band has to or should be forced to. However, we see
free and simple access to our music over the Internet as a way to generate
interest in our band and drive people to our local shows without having to go
through an intermediary and without costing us and our fans money.
Eric :)
Network Engineer, data plumber, and Drummer for
The Amazing Poundcakes (http://www.amazingpoundcakes.com)
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