The 2010 State of the Net conference was Wednesday in DC. One of the panels was on the "Three Strikes" laws that are being proposed and enacted in several countries around the world. The panelists mostly debated due process concerns (there really isn't any - bare accusations are probably enough to get your account shut off) against the benefits of a temporary Internet disruption over lawsuits.
What the record companies and other content types don't seem to get is that file sharing evolves with the landscape and overcomes any obstacles.
- First there was Napster. Napster was a centralized file sharing service and an easy target for a lawsuit. It became obvious that a centralized model was not feasible.
- In response to Napster (and the "paint by numbers" guide given by the Ninth Circuit) Grokster and several similar networks popped up with a much more decentralized purpose. While legal under the Napster case law, the Supreme Court created "inducement" to extend liability to these decentralized networks.
- In response to Grokster BitTorrent further decentralized file sharing. With the ability to set up many different trackers and quite a bit of potential for legitimate uses, while certain sites may fall under Grokster it is unlikely that the technology itself will be found illegal.
So, we are at a point where the technology has evolved as necessary to evade legal obstacles. The RIAA and IFPI suggest three-strikes as an effective way to avoid lawsuits and lower piracy. Why would this be anything other than another obstacle to be overcome?
This is the way I see it, one of two things will happen if three-strikes is widely implemented. If it is a failure - the system ends up too expensive or otherwise inadministrable - nothing changes. On the other hand, if it works, a new generation of file sharing software will be born that allows anonymous and secure piracy. It has happened before, it is naive to think it won't happen again.
Anonymous networks are out there - the technology exists. Up to this point, there hasn't been sufficient motivation to drive the adoption of anonymous file sharing networks. If three-strikes is as successful as the recording industry hopes, that will change.
So what does this all mean? Is piracy inevitable? What can be done to stop it? I don't think it will ever be "stopped." Counterfeit operations have been going on for centuries and aren't likely to magically stop now. A better approach might be to adopt business models that rely on scarce goods that are more difficult to counterfeit - live shows, access, fan-funded albums. Bands are starting to learn how to do this - many with quite a bit of success.
Piracy will never be eliminated but it can be leveraged as part of a larger business model. There is probably no single model that will work for everyone, but when has that ever been true? The traditional model certainly works better for some than others, and new ways of making a living off music should be no different.
