Category:P2P File Sharing Software and the New Age of Digital Piracy

In the past decade, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing has been thrust onto center stage. It has become the center of digital piracy and the target of a livid music industry.

To understand we must look at the history of p2p file sharing. The life of this technology can be broken into two generations. Each generation evolved to meet the resistance against them. The first generations possessed a centralized server. This centralized server held a list of downloadable material and connected the computers together. If one searched for a certain item, the server would find which peer had the item, direct the searching computer where to download the item and facilitated the download. One of the most famous examples of this server-client programming was Napster. Napster was created by Shawn Fanning and ran between 1999 and 2001 before being shut down by court order. Napster became the first widely used P2P file sharing software. It changed both the way people used the internet and how they acquired music. The program did not exist for very long before getting the attention of the music industry. The very same year Napster was released, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit against the service. It also caught the legal flak of big bands and musicians like Metallica, Dr. Dre, and Madonna before being shut down in July of 2001. Although Napster did not live for very long, it had raked in a peek of 26.4 million users; it was the first sign of things to come. The second generation solved some of the problems Napster and others facedin the past. The second generation of P2P file sharing services possessed a decentralized network rather than the centralized server of the past that were vulnerable to attacks and lawsuits. The first to be created was a network called Gnutella but it soon crashed from the overwhelming traffic caused by uprooted Napster users.

The RIAA began its champagne against illegal downloaders in September 2003. They targeted anyone who had downloaded over one hundred songs. As of April of 2007, the music industry has sued over 18,000 people for copyright infringement. Steve Knopper called these people “bad-luck lottery winners” and in a sense they really are. In the months before the RIAA crusade began, there were 5.5 million estimated users a month of peer-to-peer services. The odds to be one of the 12,000 who were sued are very low but at any odds it is a possibility of being hit with a devastating blow. People of all ages have become the target of the unsympathetic music industry. Brianna Lahara was one of the first to be sued by the RIAA in 2003. She was only twelve years old when she was forced to settle for a $2,000 fine. Michele Scimeca made an attempt to countersue the record labels for bullying her and others for money. To her dismay, the case was dismissed and she was faced with fees that exceeded their annual salary by three times the amount. While the RIAA is legally allowed to sue for upwards of $150,000 per song, the industry tries to settle each case for around $3,000 to $5,000 total instead of going through a long court trial. It may seem a reasonable trade in comparison but it looks more like a scare tactic to me; A tactic to get quick money and move on to their next victim. Those few that choose to fight back are used as examples to rest; being given utterly life destroying. While the president of RIAA, Gary Sherman calls this type of enforcement “tough-love form of education” others like attorney Jason Schultz criticizes the plan saying, “If your goal is to intimidate people and get them to freak out and write checks, then, yeah, it's a great strategy." After five years of random lawsuits, the RIAA has focused its crosshairs on one particular target, college students.  In RIAA new crusade, colleges are given the IP addresses of computers accused of illegally sharing music.  The college expected to find the student and give them a “pre-litigation letter” to the kid.  The RIAA are not even bothering to file lawsuits and instead scaring the students into settling for a $3,000 fine. It is unarguable a much smaller amount than  the music industry is able to get but on top of $100,000 of student loans even  $3,000 can be a heavy addition.  The RIAA has sent these letters to over 800 students across thirty-five colleges and plan to send hundreds more. While most colleges past the letters on two universities refused to do so; the Universities of Wisconsin-Madison and Maine. As the interim chief information officer of Wisconsin-Madison, Ken Fazier put it, “The letters are a menacing communication. . . They presume the guilt of the recipient.” Also, as Brian Rust, a spokesman for W-M’s IT department points out, “We are not under legal obligation to pass [the letters] along. In fact, if we do, there is concern that we become an enforcement arm of the RIAA.” With such overwhelming consequences against illegally downloading music, it seems obvious that quieting would be the normal response. Sherman has said that “[This enforcement] really works. It has made a profound difference in public awareness,” this is either not true or proof that the public does not care because a year and a half after the RIAA started its legal crusade the numbers of illegal downloaders almost doubled to over 9.3 million users a month as of April 2005. The actual reaction was just the opposite. This has leaded the music industry to accuse others of blame, like the Internet service providers (ISP). Major labels blame ISPs for allowing their users to download copyright-protected materials through their service. At least one major label believes that illegal downloading could be stopped by ISPs as easy as throwing a switch. The theory is that “Once the ISPs get involved in content, once they have a stake in it. They’ll put an end to downloading” as one executive described it. However, the ISPs are not concern with content; they are concern with getting the fastest Internet into homes. Until this shift happens the only thing the music industry can do is demand the compliance of these ISPs, or is it? In Britain the government has threatened to impose legislation against ISPs by April of 2009 if they did not work with the music industry to curtail illegal downloading through their services. Listening to the ranting of the RIAA and the popular media the spread of illegal file sharing seems to be of epidemic proportions but in fact has become a manageable outbreak. With the introduction of the widely accepted digital media pay site iTunes, illegal downloaders now have a viable option to acquire digital media legally. Today, a child’s first download is much more likely to be from pay sites like iTunes or Amazon then the illegal p2p software of past generations. The number of legal downloads tripled between 2004 and 2005 alone, from a mere 57 million to 180 million downloads due to both a 13% increase of broadband and the efforts to stem illegal downloading. It is clear that unless some kind of huge upheaval occurs, we will have to deal with illegal downloading in our society. As long as there is a demand for digital music, illegal file sharing will happen under our noses whether we agree with it or not; the allure of free music can entice even the strongest wills. Just keep the consequences in mind the next time you illegally download music because it could cost a lot more that just .99 cents for that one track.