Ares P2P filesharing software

In a recently published paper, “Moving Digital Britain Forward Without Leaving Creative Britain Behind”, PRS for Music put forward the proposal that UK broadband providers should bear the cost of illegal filesharing in the UK though fines exacted against them, dependent on the amount of filesharing traffic they allow over their broadband networks.

Will Page, chief economist for PRS for Music, argues that the piracy levy simply follows on from changes instigated by the Digital Music Act, which stated that peer-to-peer usage is a measurable problem that could be measured and priced. Page says the PRS report offers a viable economic framework that can help with the resolution of the illegal filesharing problem.

Tools are already available that use fingerprint technology to measure filesharing traffic across the Internet. Page argues that these tools could easily be used to measure illegal filesharing on broadband networks in the UK. Any fines exacted would either go straight to the state, or to the rights holders.

Should the ISP’s and music rights holders ever come to an agreement, the piracy tax will be passed on to ISP’s customers and users of peer-to-peer networks will almost certainly be penalized.

Illegal file sharing has once again hit the headlines in another high profile case brought by the music industry. In what many see as a ludicrous decision, a jury fined Joel Tenenbaum an unbelievable $675,000 for downloading a grand total of 30 songs over an 8-year period.

After the jury had announced their judgment, the judge commented the fine was “unconstitutional” given the nature of the crime involved, and she took the decision to reduce the amount to a more sensible $67,500. Even so, Joel Tenenbaum says he will still struggle to pay the fine—and since the music industry is threatening to appeal the Judge’s decision, he is not out of the woods yet.

There have been many similar cases in recent times. But since Joel Tenenbaum and the other defendants like him are so small in the world of file sharing, why has the music industry bothered to target them?

It is obvious they are making an example of these people, but many believe that the music industry is barking up the wrong tree when much anecdotal evidence these days suggests that small-time file sharing is actually beneficial for many artists seeking to gain recognition on the Internet.

Yes, filesharing is appearing in the courts once again. This time the situation is almost comical, and we sincerely hope that the courts will treat it as such.

The stupidity that we’re talking about is that of the claimant, US Copyright Group. The Group wants to sue 15,000 people for downloading new(ish) movies through BitTorrent. Rather than going to all the work and effort of actually suing all these people, the Group wants to lump all of them together and do it in one swift case… well guys, it just doesn’t work like that.

Each of these individuals needs the opportunity to represent his or her case. For this, each person would need to be allowed to attend the trial. Then there’s the location: US Copyright Group want all this to happen in D.C. Because (and I’m not making this up) the nature of Bittorrent is such that the data for the films is most likely to have passed through D.C. at some point. Never mind that this is thousands of miles away from some of the defendants.

Hopefully this latest bout of filesharing craziness is going to be thrown in the trash just like the similar RIAA request of some years back. If it’s not, then we just despair.