Google Wins the Filesharing Wars?

The Importance of writes "Compulsory licensing schemes such as those proposed by the EFF have been critiqued, but now LawMeme has an interesting article that claims Google will win the filesharing wars if a compulsory license is adopted."

Off-topic, but indicative

Yesterday in the subway, there was a man reading a newspaper written with about nothing but chinese characters.

There was a word written in roman script, though, which I understood.

The word was GOOGLE...

What's that you say?

Compulsory licensing, eh? What's that when it's at home?

Perhaps I haven't been following closely enough, but exactly who is to be compelled to license what, from whom? Is this a big license signed between big companies, or a little license signed by people who listen to music, or those who make it, or just those who download it, or is it a shrink-wrap license like you get with software? Is it free, or does someone pay for it? Who? How much? What does it all mean? Am I the only person who doesn't know? PLEASE MOM, I WANT TO KNOW? WHY? WHY?

Ahem.

Re:What's that you say?

From EFF Makeing P2P Legal [eff.org]

The first American compulsory was adopted when the music industry fought the Napster of 1909: the player piano. Sheet music publishers claimed that the creation of piano-readable sheets was against the law and that they should have the right to monopolize the booming piano roll industry. Congress disagreed and instead crafted a compulsory license that paid recording artists while protecting the new technology. Today, this license allows bands to record (or "cover") another band's song (so long as they've paid the $.08 per copy of the recorded track).

Re:What's that you say?

I think it is something like the TV license. Not sure if the rest of the world has it so I will explain.

In England and Holland you have to pay a license fee to the goverment (well a subset of it) for each receiver. It was originally a sum made up out of the number of radios, bw tv's and color tv's you had. Later this was simplified at least in holland.

From this license fee the programs were funded. In england this is the BBC who own a couple of stations and are required by the law to supply programming to the intrest of the nation. In the netherlands we have license holders who according to the number of members they have, membership fee is about 5 dollars last time I checked, get a number of hours to fill on the various radio channels and a amount of slots on the tv channels. In holland they also get income out of advertising. England doesn't have ads. Hmmmm adfree simpsons.

Because you need to pay the license fee on the basis of owning a receiver, not based on actual consumption you can say it is compusery. When the original home computers came out they used ordinary tv's, with receivers for their displays. This of course meant a hike in your license fees despite the fact that you did not watch any tv with them.

On the other hand the fee was hardly gigantic and it ensured that tv was of a reasonable quality. BBC programs are known around the world for their execellence (no I don't mean their news service). Dutch programs slightly less because of the language barrier nonetheless they used to win international prices routinely.

Plus it assured a restrained amount of ads. They are only allowed between programs. Plus programs are thightly regulated on things like sponsoring.

Okay now I explained tv licenses. You may have heard of the BBC director proposing to put all their content on the net. You see because it is a semi-goverment company paid by the citizens according to written law you could say that these citizens have paid for the creation of the content and therefore OWN the content. So copyright in this case becomes far less of an issue. Even more because the BBC can rely on its income from the licenses it doesn't rely have to worry about how the content it creates is watched. No ranting about people not watching the ads, like fox did, because there aren't any. No ranting about people recording eps, in fact they have several time olds series they lost but they found copies made by viewers, and then sharing them because as long as their is a tv involved they paid to view the content.

In holland we stopped the license fee since it was suggested that everyone owns a receiver anyway. So it is now collected through regular taxes. So it can be reasonably argued that any program is taxpayer owned.

So their are some clear benefits to doing it this way. Sure americans probably hate it but they are a silly bunch anway.

So why not use something similar for other content? Well the BBC is a monopoly, they get the all the money and they decide what to make with it. Of course there are all kinds of bounds and checks but a monopoly it is.

In holland we got competition between license holders. Currently one license holder BNN is having an ad campaign to get more people to become members of them. They need X amount of members to get Y amount of tv/radio hours. The bigger you are the more and better hours you get. Although there are some minority stations that get some according to intrest group.

But how would you do this with music? There is a lot of different companies. How would you decide how to distribute the money?

But I think that a compulsary license would work something like what I described above. In any case at least for TV it has been proven to work.

On the other hand we also have a different compulsary license in holland. Each DVD recordable has a .50/1.00 euro tax (depends on if it is + or - format) attached. Yes you read that right. The money goes to the movie industrie to compensate them for illegal copies. Of cour

blablabla

Sorry, but the article writer is a dumbass

However, if filesharing becomes legal through a compulsory license, what is the purpose of the Gnutella-based software anymore?

Sharing bandwidth, perhaps?

Re:blablabla

RTFA, it is because Gnutella is designed to be de-centralized. This is needed to avoid being targetted by dimwitted judges. If you no longer need to fear them you can go back to the centralized method that napster used and for that matter bittorrent.

Gnutella and its ilk are a nightmare on searching. They consume an awfull lot of bandwidth on the protocol not on the actual exchange of files. For the moments that is how its got to be. But it is not efficient.

Oh and filesharing is legal people. It is copyright violation that you can at the moment be sueed for.

Uses for P2P

So what this article is suggesting is compulsary licensing of P2P networks. I assume in this case it also requires licensees to ensure that no material is being shared that is subject to copyright control.

Firstly, I cannot begin to comprehend the effort required to stay on top of the copyrighted material being shared around the network. File hashes can be used for sure, but imaging the resources required for checking and verifying this. Sure, a few automated systems currently exist for music, but when we're talking about w2k3 iso's, DiVX movies etc, these are going to require some serious resources, whether computing or man-power to acheive this. Certainly this will be required to satisfy the RIAA, MPAA et al.

Secondly, assuming they acheive this, then what, in all honesty is the network going to be used for. Sure, there's currently the odd RH iso that get's distributed by bittorrent. With most sharers scared to offer their mp3 collection (ie combination of ripped of their own cd's and downloaded), few will bother weeding out their copyright free music to share. With no sharers, there's no network. Besides, at the moment indepedent music seems served quite happily by services such as mp3.com and others.

Re:Uses for P2P

So what this article is suggesting is compulsary licensing of P2P networks. I assume in this case it also requires licensees to ensure that no material is being shared that is subject to copyright control.

No, compulsory licensing forces the content "owner" to license the content at a predetermined rate. An explanation of this is here [findlaw.com].

If Google ever decided to do this...

then they would certainly rise to the top. Their search engine is by far head and shoulders above the rest. It is fast and efficient. However, I am not sure of two things.

The EFF can push all they want but I seriously doubt filesharing will ever become legal, even under a compulsory licence. The RIAA is now equating P2P with kiddy porn and therefore the reactionary dumbasses in Congress will jump on this now.

Second, Google picks and chooses its battles carefully. The recent purchase of blogging company illustrates this. I think they would have to decide that it is worth the hassle assuming again, it became legal in the first place.

In the event all this ever pans out, I, for one, will welcome our new Google overlords. (thought I would just go ahead and get that out of the way.)

GOOGLE could do it right now. Here's how.

Perhaps Google could do at least a poor mans version of this right now?

Suppose one had a GoogleNut tool. You query Google for a song. Google then distributes this Query to all of its distributed servers and on each one launches a Gnutella/Kaaza search, then replys with the a link that when activated uses your Gnuttell app/plugin to download the file from the location it found.

the Added value here is that 1) google's network would act as a fast bridge across the mostly small-world Gnutella networks. 2) they could cache simmilar requests 3) they could also develop lists of nodes to block if they detected RIAA style hanky-panky (e.g. different file sizes or fingerprints).

Since this mightbe more expensive than a regular search for Google, they could pay for it with say ultra-mercials while you download or make it a fee for service.

Wrong and right

I don't believe the P2P companies are asking for compulsory licensing because they believe it is a good thing. I think they want it because then they can claim "we are seeking a legal alternative", knowing full well that although some kind of legalized P2P sharing is inevitable, it will take 5-10 years and the emergence of new media groups for it to happen, not some court ruling that "Hey, it's OK to download those trax now, d00ds!"

However, I agree with the other half of the article, which basically says "Google is God", something that has been obvious for several years. For many people, Google is the Internet, something AOL and MSN never managed to do with their fluff-filled "portals". Whatever new things come along, Google will be there, doing them better, leaner, faster,...

But it will be several dotcom lifetimes before Google will be the place to go to download no-longer-pirate tracks and movies. I don't think the P2P companies really have such a long horizon.

Re:Wrong and right

Whatever new things come along, Google will be there, doing them better, leaner, faster,...

Google is not God, it is not manifest destiny, it is not a historically necessary, it is not destined for anything. Google kicks butt for now. But there are other companies and technologies just waiting to gangbang it. Remember how quickly google appeared? It can be superseded just as quickly. Don't get religious on google, its just a company with good policy, clever technology and clever guys. Policies stagnate, technology goes out of date and clever guys leave. Hey, maybe yahoo can reinvent itself. Or maybe hotbot? Or maybe Ebay will turn its massive market power and revenue into a filesharing network?

Slightly offtopic, but shows google's high spot.

I was bored, browsing AskJeeves (ask.com) to see what people were searching for (you can do that). One person (don't know if they were just stupid or what) was searching for "Where can I find the search engine Google?". I wouldn't trust one search engine to find another, now if they were looking for elgoog, ok, but they weren't. I suppose they could have been in china, but whatever.

Google? A dictator?

Come on. If google was the only search engine in town then I might agree with the idea but they aren't.

If Google started being assholes to their users most of them will simply go and use another search engine to find things. But they don't. So people keep using Google and the wonderful features it provides.

Re:Google? A dictator?

Google was the first search engine I found where you didn't get a porn site on the first page (well, unless you were specifically looking for one...) unlike most of the other search engines I used. Up till now, they've kept being nice, not doing popups or any other crap that other search engines do, but I'm a little worried that they might IPO and then become slaves to money, at which point the ideals may take a back seat to profits. If they do IPO, I hope that they realise that being a good search engine and playing nice is a large part of the reason they are so successful.

monopolist

Well nice article and he clearly made some good points. But I'm not sure wether we want to have one (primary) source of information (searching) such as google. Monopolies tend to become to addictive to their own power which will make it even harder for them to give up. They'll try anything to fuck up the competition (look at some RedMond based compagny).

And some more alarming privacy issues are listed on http://www.google-watch.org/.

I'm still in favor of having the choice between several sources for searching/news/p2p/blogs. This will enhance the competition between the competitors and will make their services better.

Look at all the OSS. Most pieces of software have several forks or similar/related projects which ultimately results in a better piece(s) of software for a specific task

Re:monopolist

Google Watch always verged on the "tin foil" brigade to me.

They still trumpet on about the Google Toolbar being spyware despite the fac that when you install the toolbar it spells everything out in plain english under a big red heading labelled "READ THIS CAREFULLY! IT'S NOT THE USUAL YADA YADA YADA!".

They still trumpet on about Google's immortal cookie yet fail to realise *gasp* Google does have user preferences and uses the cookie to track those preferences. Some small part of me believes that the Google reps never responded because they died laughing about... THE COOKIE.

They trumpet on about geotargeting but in reality its almost required by governments with lax freedom of speech policies who try to prevent their citizens from accesssing certain material. You can always turn it off in the prefs by telling google to go back to google.com for searching but now the legal onus is on you.

While the site does have some valid points, most of them are either overexagerations or crying sour grapes. Personally, I think the only thing that really needs to be addressed is Google's transparency. Sure it's a fairly big concern to address but Google hasn't steppped far out of line yet. If they were to say, for example, sell every user's personal search data to the highest bidder I would be incredibly pissed and be calling for their blood.

But they haven't.

So I won't. And I'll continue to use Google while they remain like they are.

Flaws

1/ but there is little that keeps people from posting listings on multiple auction sites either.

Well, except for the fact that you are contractually bound to sell the item only once!

2/ Of course all these companies will swiftly shift to a Napster-like network when the law is passed.

Not so. These networks exist because there was something that Napster was inherently lacking - privacy. And these networks will continue to provide that, because the RIAA/MPAA won't be able to sue to receive personal information if no law is being infringed. So anyone who wants to trade files anonymously will still use these networks.

3/ What does Google do, exactly? They index what is already present, leveraging existing protocols and content. They will leverage what Gnutella/Kazaa/&c. currently present unless there is more money to be made otherwise. While it is possible that they will create their own filesharing system, I consider it doubtful they will.

But of course, only time will tell. And if compulsory licensing (which makes so much sense!) does come through, it will be a huge win for consumers, no matter who provides the medium for distibuting it.

Mattcelt

Compulsory licensing will never work

Right now all compulsory licensing deals actually involve money. Radio stations pay money to play songs. Sure the compulsory license means they don't have to make a deal with each artist and record company, but there is still a non-zero fee involved. Any P2P compulsory licensing will involve some sort of fee (per download, per month, per something) and a system to collect that fee along with reporting what that fee was for so the money could make it back to the record company. In a P2P world like that no one is going to want to share files and bandwidth. It's one thing to give away files and bandwidth for free as part of a community, but if all your bandwidth and files are making a bunch of other people money I doubt your going to be so happy about it. The only thing compulsory licensing could do is create better versions of PressPlay type services. It is not likely to even apply to P2P as we know it. It would effect things like Apple's iTunes though, in ways they might not be so keen on. Unless that compulsory license involved a $1/track fee. In any case I don't see Google getting into this. It's not a search business, it's a content provider business. Which of course is why all the current P2P software companies are running on borrowed time, they have no content and no money to host it even if it was licensable. While they might think they can work out a model where uploaders are paid from the fees the downloaders pay(thereby giving people a reason to offer files) I doubt there is a company on earth that could handle all the tax issues making every uploader a small business would entail. Not to mention all the other issues involved in quality control and correct reporting of what the file was. The future of compulsory licensing is a bunch of businesses not in the P2P field but more like PressPlay and Apple. They host content, they charge for that content. If Google wanted to get into that I'm sure they could but I don't see it happening.

Decentralization is just a part of the problem

Lets say that companies can go and centralize their networks - great, it will be much faster and efficient no doubt. But today the companies are not at risk any more, its the users! Users demand anonymity and centralized servers are far from it, the companies that will Prevail will be those who will give their users the best privacy they market can offer. So centralized networks will fail.

Google's Predestiny?

I disagreed with pretty much the entire article, but one point in particular stood out: the assertion that Google is destined to dominate a world where copyrighted content can be legally distributed. This shows deep ignorance on the part of the author as to the reasons for Google's current success.

Specifically, the problem of indexing the web is an extremely thorny one. There is a massive amount of content, almost none of which has any structure whatsoever, and much of which is of dubious interest (i.e. it's total crap). The page rank system used by Google is simply brilliant and deserves all the accolades heaped on it.

Indexing a bunch of MP3s is a much, much simpler problem. As the author of the article points out, Napster had this pretty much nailed years ago. So Google's technical advantage is definitely questionable. What about its deep pockets, market presence, etc.? Sure, this indicates that Google might be a contender in this theoretical new market, but there are a couple of other companies out there with brands, deep pockets, etc. Say IBM, or eBay, or Amazon, or Microsoft, or Yahoo, or... okay, you get the point.

To me this article is a perfect example of attracting attention by taking a superficially intriguing stance, basing it on today's much-hyped company to gain topical interest. Upon examination, the conclusions of the article don't hold water.

Re:Google's Predestiny?

I wonder if indexing MP3s is actually easier than indexing HTML. Web pages link to one another, so there's a lot of human indexing that happens there. MP3s don't, so there might be other problems. I certainly don't think the file-sharing search problem is anywhere near solved. For example, there are a lot of mislabeled MP3s -- either the tags are "Unknown Artist / Track 8" or they're completely misspelled. Or you sometimes get the annoying thing where they're ripped from a compilation and the tags reflect that: the author is "Greatest Dance Hits" or even "Pottery Barn" ...

Another need is that you might know a few lyrics of a song but not know who it's by or what it's called. My friend a while ago couldn't find that Bob Dylan song that goes "Everybody must get stoned" -- I had to tell him that it's called "Rainy Day Women #12 & #35."

Google has a bunch of smart people working for it, but I don't know if they'd necessarily have a head start on this problem. It's not the same as indexing the web.

No money for EFF's bad idea

I mostly support the EFF. But when they started promoting compulsary licencing, I decided not to support them. Perhaps they should revamp their support structure, such that if you donate money, you can direct it to a specific cause. And in such as way as the causes you *don't* believe don't indirectly benefit (by sharing the same overhead expenses, etc.) I'm not going to waste a penny on an organization that promotes ideas completely contrary to what I believe in.

"you assume too much"

this author in this article has flawed reasoning. if compulsory licensing was ever introduced, a whole slew of companies would get into the game (search engines, p2p companies, M$, etc.) so the victor in the wars is hard to predict. i do agree p2p companies would have to modify their business plans, but i believe compulsory licensing would present as many opportunities as challenges....

Uh, markets don't work that way

The filesharing services would start differentiating themselves with new functionality etc.

Some would die as happens with all markets with too much overall supply. While I agree that the majority of people would flock to fewer services, niche markets would exist just as they do right now in the music industry.

The problem is that the cost of entering the music distribution market would drop considerably. Therefore you would see MORE services, not fewer, with each catering to market segments.

The reason why compulsory license is opposed by the RIAA and their members is because it just legalizes exactly what they are trying to prevent: loss of control of music distribution.

Links

Thanks for linking to Google. Probably nobody reading this would have been able to find it otherwise.

"yeah, right"

"Even if Google technologists aren't up to the task (yeah, right)" google's web search feature is truly the best one, but for example thire image search is not as good as good ol altavistas, sure on some searches googles image search will give you better results, but altavista image search is still in general better so yes, google tech might not be up to the task. also wouldn't such a search put a bit more strain on the poor p2p servers out there since, files go up and down on the networks more easily than web pages, so they will have to search even more to stay current, or only post results on files with many shareing...

As soon as they have compulsory licencing

I'm putting out stuff as public domain and not telling people about the fact that it is public domain.

Article contradicts itself

Network effects will bring one party to the top, as is already happening. Kazaa is not the best p2p app, but the most used and therefore most people use it. If legal changes make it possible again to have a central database, Kazaa is still in the best position to capitalize on that, because most people are still using Kazaa for downloading stuff.

Of course Google is bigger, but Google is bigger than eBay too and as the article states, eBay is the biggest auction site because of the same network effects. People go to eBay for auction searches and to Google for general searches, just as they go to Kazaa for music searches. If I type in the name of a song in Google, lots of results will appear, not just the mp3's.

It doesn't mean Google couldn't go after this market. If they would, they would stand a pretty good chance of winning, but so would Microsoft or Yahoo.

more from Douwe Osinga [douweosinga.com]

Google has nothing to do with it

Compulsory licensing is just one way for IP owners to perpetuate their hold on copyrights.How would one keep track of when a copyright expires? With compulsory licensing, the media companies would keep charging this tax forever.

On the other hand, Google is a practical expression of the maxim "information wants to be free". Being able to find out where to get information is exactly the opposite of all "intellectual property" laws, whose purpose is to limit the people's access to information. If compulsory licensing comes into effect, how long until one is automatically charged a fee each time one looks into a website?

Slashdot

Slashdot is a P2P network. Every message put here is just as much copyrighted as the latest hit by Stupid Band of The Week, or that eBook you want to get your hands on.

Compulsory licencing will end up being a tax on speech.

Microsoft and/or Apple will be the winners!

The guy who wrote the article does understand end-users.

Who is going to win is not the one with better technology. Technology is not important to the end-users. The user interface and convenience is what matter.

Why do you think that Kazaa is more popular that Gnutella. That's because the search engine is more convenient... You can search meta data in addition to filenames. The underlying protocol or matching engine has nothing to do with it.

Anyway, if I search for "Evanescence" music files, even the most crappy search engine will yield good results (especially if sorted by the number of hosts who have it - automatic google ranking!)

The one who are going to win are the ones who are going to make filesharing part of their OS or services. The winner will be Microsoft, Apple, and maybe AOL could be a distant second (in the MS space).

Filesharing is NOT illegal

The article seems to suggest file sharing is illegal. It isn't. Infact by creating this reply I've shared a file with slashdot. OH NO - LOCK ME UP! Sharing copyrighted files may well be illegal, depending where you are, but anonymous distributed filesharing (Freenet et al) make is near impossible to police. And of course, filesharing is a global activity; There are no border patrols and you don't need a passport. So the difference any new US laws or licensing will make is... zero Give up, go home and have a bud. But NEVER feed the lawyers

I guess this dude never heard of Software

because I know all my friends only download the latest software from these services, not crappy music that sucks so bad you would not even buy it.

Is it possible...

That all the file sharing companies are doing it because they believe it is the right thing. After all, isn't the whole idea of file sharing that software should be for everyone and not just for a select few that can afford it? And isn't it true that most of the file sharing software that were mention are themselves bases off of open source code, further perpetuating the concept of free-trade?

There is no lock-in effect

The author is wrong, because there is no lock-in effect. Ebay, which is cited as an example, has a lock-in effect because with buyers and sellers, each additional buyer or seller increases the total pool available to each other. Ebay creates the lock-in effect by acting as a middle-man.

There is no such lock-in effect for a filesharing service. A company like google can simple mass-burn CDs, or auto-download mp3s from elsewhere on the net and analyze them automatically for quality. If they can put catalogs online by the hundreds or thousands, they can certainly manage mp3s, given they are fully digital.

An example of a company that DOES have a lock-in effect is Lending Tree. Again, like Ebay, they act as a middle man, in this case between lenders and loan consumers. The more banks they have, the more choices consumers have and the more likely they are to want to see LT's deals. The more consumers they have, the more potential business that pool represents, and so they are more likely to attract banks. (And that's why they were bought out, since it was becoming clear they had passed the critical mass point for that lock-in effect)

There is no middle-man after compulsory licensing. There will be some services will all music on them. You'll D/L whatever you want. So it's traditional competition to attract customers.

eh?

When did Google become relevant on this topic? That's like seeing the headlines "And Brazil wins World War 2!"

Who needs RIAA anyway?

With the technological breakthrough, it is now possible for bands to deliver music to the fans without RIAA acting as a middleman. How much money a band gets from a sold CD? 5-7%, if they are very lucky? Or 10% if they are as greedy as Metallica. Which means that RIAA gets 95% for being a 'mediator' - hardly a fair share. I certainly would not mind paying $1 pur album and buy it directly from artists. So, that is what is wrong with the system - the ones who got too powerful simply do not want to go away.

Screw RIAA and the Artists!

The rest of us don't get government protected handouts when technological advance makes our skills obsolete.

We don't rue the loss of the welder's job, the steelworker's job, the woodworker's job, the craftsman's job, the accountants job, when a machine makes it unnecessary.

So, why all of a sudden does an INDUSTRY deserve protection. You don't need to have an industry to distribute music anymore, and you don't need to have a select few artists be turned into mega stars. Now, everyone's opinion, art, and songs can be pushed out there.

Napster, Kazaa, the web, just reflect a basic economic reality. The supply of content is infinite and so the value of the commodity is zero.

Being in favor of copyright laws in the digital age is like trying to bring back the horse and buggy. Being in favor of the "intellectual property era" is like trying to where the catholic church was right before they had this thing called the renaissance.

We are now going through a second renaissance. So far, American industry seems hell bent on trying to stop it. It ain't the Terrorists that will sink the United States. It will be the gradual realization that intellectual property is absurd and that trying to enforce this artificial monopoly on the world is morally wrong.

google already won...

The title killed me because it seems google already won the filesharing war. Think about it. Type in the name of your favorite program or song that you want a pirated copy of and I'll guarantee you'll find it available somewhere...and a crack to go with it. This isn't always true and google does a pretty good job of keeping the numbers down but it seems that it has been acting as a filesharing "program" all this time. Secondly, I know that some of us "old skewlers" are more than aware of at least 2 major filesharing programs that have been out since before there was a WWW-anything...I ain't evoking the names because I like the fact that not everyone is aware they even exist..much less that they could be used to download music. Not that I condone making the corporations lose their current marketing structure...nope...I *encourage* it.

This just in, lawyer doesn't understand oss

So the article says that Gnutella et all are shooting themselves in the foot by trying to legalize music file sharing. I think he is operating under a bad assumption. He assumes that everyone that makes p2p software is doing it because they want to get rich.

He is missing an important point. A large number of people that make p2p software do it because they want to be able to share music on the internet. That's it. That's the motivation. That ability is riches enough. Screw the money.

Why NOT compulsary licensing?

I think the industry is being rather dumb to pass on this so quickly.

A quick attempt to dig up RIAA sales figures, of course, came up with a whole lot of contradictory information. So like any good researcher, I picked the one that best supported my argument. :D According to this article [azoz.com] the total dollar value of CDs sold (or maybe just CDs shipped, not sure) is somewhere in the area of $14 billion.

Now then there are, according to reports, 57 million people using file-sharing services. Let's create a compulsary licensing scheme, wherein everyone who uses file-sharing services ponies up $20 for unlimited downloads.

Yes, only $20. The approximate price of ONE CD. Seems unreasonably low, no? And let's just take the unreasonable assumption that every one of those 57 million agrees to pay the fee. (but then again, it's so low a large number of them will, AND it will likely attract users who avoided P2P because of the notoriety and\or piracy issues)

So then... $20x12 months is $240. And $240 x 57 million is... $13.6 Billion Dollars.

So by going to a licensing scheme that is ONLY $20 a month per user, the industry can make nearly as much money as it did before. And that's not to say that file sharing will 100% replace physical albums - I expect they will continue to do brisk sales in those as well, since people will still want a professionally pressed hard copy, liner notes, CD-ROM extras, whatever. And I personally find it unimaginable that, in the short term, the value of CDs sold would drop 93% to under $1 billion dollars. In other words, they would quite probably make MORE money doing this.

Just something to think about.

This article assumes...

This article assumes that these companies are all about profit. Hate to burst their bubble but that isn't always everyones motives in life.

Filesharing doesn't have to include RIAA music

Maybe filesharing can restrict RIAA to one channel, and non-RIAA to another channel? Maybe, just maybe, there will be a day, when independent artists are indexed on web sites, people begin to "discover" music that's as good or better than the RIAA stuff, and then, at some point, we'll see more people moving to fan clubs, and merchandise and supporting independent artists, and using p2p products that assure non-RIAA music. Don't write your Congressman, write your p2p company, and ask them for their non-RIAA music application.

Google for filesharing

Surely google can already be used for file sharing? It caches a copy of all the web-pages that it crawls.

If MP3 files were reduced to words so that google would crawl the page and index the terms, yadda yadda, you could simply use google's cached copy of that page to get a fast copy of a page regardless of the original user's speed?

Now! Who's going to implement it in 128 bytes of perl?

Compulsory licensing & QA

Heck, I don't mind paying a license if that means that the mp3/divx/whatever is in fact the thing I want, and not some virusinfested or fake 700MB download.
As long as they keep the price low - they'll compensate enough through numbers - I wouldn't mind. I think companies are starting to realise that they can make a shitload of money on this scheme. Imagine what, 3 million unique downloads a day? 5 million? Even if you got $ 0.01 for each download, how much would that amount to in a year?

Windoze network neighborhood

So, who's going to pay the license for windoze network neighborhood file sharing? Bill Gates? Not to mention VPNs. Get real.

The RIAA are idiots!

They should come up with a consumer license. This license would allow a home user to download the songs they wanted and they would not be breaking any copyrights. The RIAA could charge $5 USD per month for this license. With an estimated 60 million Americans downloading files, that would generate 3.6 Billion USD per year! This doesn't even count the rest of the world that would bring this number into the tens of billions USD per year. They would be making FAR more money then they do now. This would also allow users to choose the way that THEY want to download music without all this DRM crap, OS/software requirements or copy protection. The file sharing services that offer the best features would rise to the top. If the RIAA would let me run thier organization for one year, I would bring in SO much cash they wouldn't know what to do with it. People love music and are willing to pay a FAIR price for it, on their terms. However, people are not willing to live with price fixing and over priced music and worse of all to be painted as a criminal for listening to music.

Compulsory-licensing and micropayments converge

Let's assume that the big public support for fileswapping pushes the US Congress to take a compulsory-licensing approach to legalization. There are two paths it can take:

1. Canada style: All citizens pay a tax which goes to buy content. This can be either per-capita, fraction of income tax, or a charge added to the sale/lease of fileswapping equipment/service. The government totals up all that money, and doles it out to performers in proportion to a statistically-estimated measure of their work's popularity.
   
   We can all imagine problems with this scheme- the overwhelming financial success of pornography is the only the most cringeworthy of the drawbacks. But I can imagine a nation experimenting with this scheme, if various controls are added to keep it "clean". Of course that leads to ways for the gov to softly censor creative thought, by withholding funds on obscenity grounds...
2. US style: Taking a cue from the existing compulsory licensing of sheet-music from one performer to another, this system would permit anyone to duplicate copyrighted content, as long as he paid the author. That fee would be determined by a 3rd party, and the author would have no chance to forbid duplication by declining the fee. (Well, it's likely that works won't be subject to compulsory licensing until being published in some way. Privacy of rough-drafts won't be destroyed. But no "artist" can make a living without publication at some point)
   
   This would be the system that P2P United lobbyists will prefer, as it gives their companies a reason to get paid in the future. Somebody has to monitor what files are duplicated, and transfer the set-fee to the deserving author, and some Napster-like system could handle the job. Oddly enough, this shift responsibility for punishing unauthorized filetrading to Kazaa.com and its ilk- users are only allowed to trade through official channels, so passing files by email or floppy-disk will have to be punished!
   
   The funny part about this style of licensing is that once the system gets established, it'll look just like a mature, micropayment economy. Listeners download from Kazaa, Kazaa records what they took and each month prints out some cumulative paperwork: a bill for each subscriber, and a check for each musician. They'll take on exactly the business niche that micropayment middlemen [peppercoin.com] want to occupy.
   

Yeah Microsoft....

will actually win the Linux war since "Why wouldn't they want to tap into this growing market"

hmmm....what a valid reason? NOT...how about I just want to jock google for reason....

From the article...

...Google, despite its power, has been a pretty benign dictator so far.

I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.

[/transmission]

Compulsory License as Defined By Law

Compulsory Licenses allow third parties to copy, perform, or distribute certain types of works without the copyright owners permission, in exchange for which the third parties must pay a predetermined royalty amount. In relation to filesharing, Title 17 of the US Code requires that a compulsory license be obtained only if the primary purpose in making the phonorecords is to distribute them to the public for private use. It is not available for phonorecords intended for use in background music systems, jukeboxes, broadcasting, or any other public use. What argument could Google make to get such a license under the current law which limits the granting of a compulsory license to such few circumstances? It seems that Google would have to obtain a negotiated license from ASCAP/BMI/SOCAN and similar agencies, in order to to be the first company to legally succeed in legitimate filesharing of copyrighted works. If other broadcast mediums had to obtain these license why can't filesharing companies negotiate them????

Use Google now?

Couldn't one of the distributed P2P services be designed to automatically post available files to a web page for Google to index? Maybe list each users' webpage in a central directory for Google to index through - no content references in the central index to cause copyright issues.

A little app would use the Google libraries/API to search the Google index for the file you want to download. Auto-open pages and check for the P2P index format (i.e. not a mistaken hit). Parse out the lines pertaining to the search and display them to the user to select from. When they pick one, use the P2P connection info from that webpage to send a file transfer request or requests.

Since Google doesn't instantly index newly posted content, you could also list "interests" on the webpages - so if you want a newly released file, you could fall back to searching for file-share pages of users who share your interests, and then send search requests directly to their fileshare software.

Author = Moron

Just because google is really good search engine websites doesn't mean that it will be #1 for searching for MP3s. Yes they have very smart people working there. But give me a break there are smart people everywhere. Google is just as likely to buy a p2p network as microsoft or intel or k-mart. This article is about nothing written by someone who knows nothing.

Re:Why Google?

Try googling "free music" now, and google isn't even thinking about it.