The Twenty-Third "Napsterization" Item

Feb 17 06:39 UTC 2006

The usual canned introduction:

The original Napster corporation has been destroyed, its trademarks
now owned by an authorized music retailer which does not use peer-to-peer
technology.  But the Napster paradigm, in which computers and networks
give ordinary people unprecedented control over content, continues.

This is another quarterly installment in a series of weblog and
discussion about the deconstruction of the music industry and other
copyright industries, with side forays into "intellectual property,
freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and evolving
technology," as polygon once phrased it.

Several years of back items are easily found in the music2 and music3
conferences, covering discussions all the way back to the initial
popularity of the MP3 format.   These items are linked between
the current Agora conference and the Music conference.

response 2 of 12:

Feb 17 06:51 UTC 2006

I have a bunch of old news stacked up.  From the beginning of 2006
comes the annual ritual of the Soundscan sales reports on recorded
music.  Soundscan is a point-of-sale system, so what they are 
measuring is copies actually paid for and taken home by the public.
 
CD sales resumed their downward march in 2005, down about 7% for 
the year compared to 2004.  In 2004, you might remember, sales 
seemed to have stabilized, but 2005 resumed the downward march which 
began with the 2001 sales figures.   I vaguely recall from another
report that the industry is back to 1997 sales levels.
 
Broken down by genres, Latin music was the only bright spot, with
sales of Latin music CDs rising about 12%.  "Most" other genres saw
sales totals decline.  Classical music (from another story) declined
a whopping 15%.
 
Roughly half the decline in CD sales was offset by growth in the 
paid download business, which is dominated by Apple's iTunes.
 
The USA Today story from January:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2006-01-04-music-sales-main_x.htm?c
sp=N009
 

response 4 of 12:

Feb 17 19:38 UTC 2006

(( some text recycled from another forum, from about ten days ago ))

In the news -

A French court has ruled in favor of a man charged with sharing about
1,700 music files.  (It's unclear to me if this was a civil or
criminal case; the stories say that the files were found by the
prosecutor's office, but the action was brought by the music copyright
industry. ?? )

The court found that this activity fell into the category of "private
copying" which is permitted as long as it is not for commercial gain.
Appeals are expected.  The significance of this ruling is that it
wasn't based on any technicalities such as rules of evidence or
split-hair definitions; it was a clear finding that sharing files is
allowed as long as no money changes hands.

   http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060207-6135.html

In the opinion pages -

From "CIO Insight," a Ziff-Davis trade journal for Information
Technology managers:  "Why Johnny Can't Stop Sharing Files."   The
author compares the death of copyright to other legal revolutions in
American history:

>> "History amply supports this view. The U.S. has seen many
revolutions in basic legal doctrines, some accompanied by violence
(the Revolutionary and Civil Wars), and others largely nonviolent (the
New Deal and the Civil Rights movement). But each had the same
characteristics as the intellectual-property revolt going on right
now: an economically powerful social class with the law solidly on its
side; increased enforcement accompanied by increased resistance from
an identifiable group claiming the moral high ground; and, ultimately,
a complete and often dramatic reversal.

>> "In the late 19th century, for example, railroads, oil companies
and the banking industry controlled much of the economic life of the
country, with the courts and Congress firmly on their side. But a
loose confederation of farmers, progressive intellectuals and urban
residents pushed through the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act, in
1890; and this was followed by even more dramatic revisions of the
basic rules of economic behavior that were enforced by
conservative-turned-trustbuster President Theodore Roosevelt." <<

   http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1913768,00.asp

response 6 of 12:

Feb 23 08:24 UTC 2006

While law is uncertain in France, and the privacy authory doesn't give a
clear legal path for the local RIAA spinoff (SCPP) to sue people, in
Belgium and Switzerland something very very weird did happen two days
ago:

"Razorback Servers Seized"
http://slyck.com/news.php?story=1102

"It appears that one of the largest eDonkey2000 communities is no more.
Often occupied by over 1 million eDoney2000 users spread over several
servers, Razorback2 is often regarded as the very lifeblood of this
network. This morning, users of this server network found their
community offline.      
At this time, details are extremely scarce. However it is being reported
the Federal Belgian Police have raided and seized Razorback2's servers.
In addition, it is suspected the administrator of Razorback2 is
currently in custody.
Razorback2 was an eDonkey2000 indexing server - very different in nature
from an indexing site such as ShareReactor. Unlike indexing sites,
Razorback2's index was only available through an eDonkey2000 client such
as eMule. While it does not host any actual files or multimedia
material, it does index the location of such files on the eDonkey2000
network. The legality of such indexing remains questionable, however
this has not deterred copyright enforcement actions.
Giving credence to this report, the Razorback2 home page simply times
out upon request. In addition, pinging the IP address of Razorback's
home page and eDonkey2000 servers yields the same result. Only "fake"
Razorback2 servers are online, communities designed by copyright
enforcement entities to mimic yet deter unauthorized file-sharing.
The Belgian Federal Police homepage at this time have no information
regarding this raid, however considering the magnitude of the situation
this should change. One thing is certain; Razorback2 has been removed
from the eDoneky2000 network. Most noticeably, the eDonkey2000
population has shrunk from its usual 3.5 million users to approximately
3 million users - an unusual departure from its average."

In fact the effect on the edonkey/emule network was noticeable just for
a short period of time, and the average number of users was soon back
around 3.5 M. Servers are many and a new Razorback2 is on the way
somewhere.And in the worst case the Kademlia protocol can take over.
It seems the whole affair is much a mediatic wave of the RIAA/MPAA, at
which computer savvy users laugh.

What's nuts is that the local RIAA/MPAA branch got some judge to raid
the servers in Bruxelles and to arrest an admin in
Switzerland.Razorback2 wasn't hosting files, and Emule itself is plain
legal software, so there are no charges against the admins.

response 8 of 12:

Mar 7 01:53 UTC 2006

"Only Dorks Pay For Music"

I like that. :)

response 10 of 12:

Mar 15 16:44 UTC 2006

Suckola.

response 12 of 12:

May 17 00:46 UTC 2006

 Despite your "LOL"s, nobody's laughing..