Potent messages of impotent industries

I should probably know better than to open my mouth but the obvious has to be stated on this one. For anyone that is netSavvy enough to know what BitTorrent is, the news that TorrentSpy has just lost its court case against the MPAA isn't exactly surprising.

Hearking back all the way to Naptser we seem to have an annual tag teaming of court cases brought about by the RIAA and the MPAA in order to bring these "nasty pirate companies" such as TorrentSpy to heel.

Sites documenting the ins and outs of the case are plentiful so I won't go into detail. (For more info see the BBC report as it's quite neutral)

After every one of these cases new technologies spring up to either to protect people's privacy better or make the technology better (Naptser giving way to Kazaa and others which gave way to the BitTorrent protocol).

The recording and movie industries are worried because they are no longer the gate keepers to content and can charge what they like for it. As such the "dirty pirates" must be prosecuted even if they are, as in TorrentSpy's case, nothing more than a pointer to where the content is being held.

The great amusement in this particular case is that the only reason the MPAA "won" in this instance is because of TorrentSpy's refusal to provide the tracker and user data because this was a breach of Dutch Data Protection laws. As such the MPAA won by default.

Had this truly been a court case, it would have come to light that TorrentSpy provide a framework for people to post tracker data about any files they have on their machines and indeed they don't have copies of any of the physical files. The MPAA probably would have still had them closed down but their legal case was always going to be shaky.

So TorrentSpy will be closed, they will be bankrupted but there will be a dozen smaller companies waiting in the wings to see if they can bleed the MPAA that little bit drier.

You see the big problem here is that the MPAA can't let up now. It doesn't have the mechanics in place to distribute online properly (unlike same music where iTunes and others provide the service) not least because of the antiquated territorial boundaries films get sold by.

As such we'll be seeing another legal case next year - maybe ISOHunt will be next - and another company collapsed but then dozens more set up for a brief stab at providing content to the people.

The quote from the MPAA spokesman is great:

"The court's decision... sends a potent message to future defendants that this egregious behaviour will not be tolerated by the judicial system," John Malcolm, the MPAA's executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations, said in a statement.

"The sole purpose of TorrentSpy and sites like it is to facilitate and promote the unlawful dissemination of copyrighted content. TorrentSpy is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement."

What's most amusing is that according to many sources, music being downloaded from "official" sources is almost as much as that being downloaded illegally. Surprising how given the tools, a cessation of hostility towards the users and a price point that accurately reflects the product being sold and the consumer comes to the party once again.

The MPAA still has a lot to learn about the Internet - one wonders how much it will cost them in legal fees in the mean time.

DRMed for Life

In the news recently has been the whole thing about not only the copy protection on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks being cracked but people posting digg links with decryption keys in them. I can understand Digg's position in removing said posts until the community kicked off and they then decided they'll go down with the ship if they got prosecuted. Hurrah for someone over there seeing sense.

One part of my brain always goes "Hooray for the hackers" whenever we hear stories about DRM being hacked in whatever guise it has been created. Another part of my brain, probably the more rational side I guess, does kick in afterwards and say that putting these things out in the wild will enable more software / media piracy and will incur costs for the companies that produce it which will make them either raise costs or step up counter-piracy methods. I never get to the "woe is me" stage like most media company execs do as they are truly multi-billion dollar organisations so it's hardly going to come out of the mail boy's pay cheque and they are unlikely to go bust.

What I do question properly though is the rationale that got us here in the first place. Since the 60s with tape-to-tape reels starting to replace vinyl records, music, film and software piracy has got bigger and bigger. What has happened though is nothing short of an arms race. Consistent through this entire arms race have been three key points:

1. That me, or anyone else, once they have bought a product has the right to play or use it for their own personal enjoyment whenever they see fit. This is the argument that most consumers will play - I might by a CD album but I want to play it on my MP3 player. I might buy a DVD but I want to play it on my Linux laptop as well as on my TV.

2. Companies that produce consumable media assume that anyone that wants to copy a product is inherently up to no good and they are now labelled as pirates and are probably taking the music / film / software and selling it in backstreet market stalls.

3. The profligacy of piracy is directly related to the first two points and how policed piracy is within the community.

One can directly see that paid for knock off copies of movies and music is completely against the law as you are selling someone's work and is tantamount to counterfeiting. However the framework for dealing with these people exists within the law and we are starting to see this go down.

The media companies will tell you that it's because of their anti-copy protection, however in reality it is because of better policing and it being viewed as being a black market operation and it having been historically a move away from "hard crimes" that has occured over the last 20 years.

This argument doesn't wash at all with consumers. Once I purchase a peice of media it is mine to use how I want on whatever device I want.

The barriers that are being put up by the media companies in their zero tolerance to consumers is assuring their position as the "big bad ogre" in all of this. Were they to engage with the consumers who are most likely to want to move content from one form to another they would probably be able to reach a solution.

Indeed were they to strip all DRM from their content altogether and then spend the money on producing better content or else supporting better policing they would probably turn a larger profit.

In the words of Nixon, "I am not a crook" - but I do want to watch Spiderman 3 when it comes out possibly on my TV from my XBOX, on my Linux Laptop, Windows Media centre and my PDA. At the moment I'll be lucky if one of those four work so I probably won't buy it at all.