File-Swapping Internationally

Mr.Happy3050 writes "Here's an interest over-view of other court systems handling the file-swapping saga. This area will be so balkanized that it will take nothing less than international treaties to resolve this issue."

The US to the rescue.

[MindStalker]

Any guesses on what country will demand to set the terms of this treaty. And then turn around and say that we have to comply to be in line with Europian policy on this issue?

Re:The US to the rescue.

[Mr.Happy3050]

My guess is that other nations with strong music lobbies (European Union, Japan, Taiwan) will want to settle this. The interesting countries to watch out for will be the "developing" ones. The People's Republic of China probably won't sign on because they make money off of boot-legging. With China having many computer's, it will only be a matter of time before a Chinese Napster steps up and gives the people what they want. Also, China probably won't extradite to the US, EU, or Japan over something like this. Especially since the US, EU, Japan keeps playing hardball on other topics ("human rights")

Copyright will loose in the long run

[software_non_olet]

..but dying animals are the most dangerous, so it may well take some 10 to 20 years until the industry will give up and adjust to modern reality.

The music industry is charging too much for the copyrighted material. After all the main thing they are doing is copying and distributing themselves. If the industry would simply run the distribution sites and charge a modest royalty (say 10 or 20 cents per track), Napster, Kaaza and Co would have had no chance at all. Hence in a way it's not a fight about copyright or not - it's old distribution technology against the new one. In such a case the new techniques are bound to win after all.

Like hand-copied books against printed ones. And look - are copy-machines or e-books a real threat to book-publishers? No, simply another channel of distribution (and perhaps some competition).

I also doubt that much of the high prices they charge for a CD really goes to the artists. I guess, it's less than 5%. Using the new, additional technique of distribution with lower prices and a larger customer-base is not neccessarily decreasing the artists' income. A higher percentage (say 50%) can go directly to the creators, because fixed costs are less when using the internet and P2P networks to copy and distribute the music. And the hundredfold number of customers will more than make up for the lower prices.

Music industry became fat and lazy and has simply forgotten to invest it's income into new technologies.

Let them cry while we copy. Copyright (like censorship) is a routing problem in the internet - let's route around it.

file swapping \ wtf??

[Graspee_Leemoor]

You see, if it ain't on the front page you get fuck all posts on a story. How fucking sad.

Anyway, I'd just like to say that whoever wrote that piece for yahoo should get off their strange stuff and call it "file sharing".

"File swapping" makes it sound like some pre-teen football sticker swapping thing.

Oh great! Photoshop 7! I need that to fill! I'll give you a foily of Unreal Tournament beta for it!

graspee

Re:file swapping \ wtf??

[PhilHibbs]

No, it's because Americans don't care about anything outside of America, of course! (And I'm safe from flamebate mods, 'cos nobody moderates around here either! Ha ha ha ha haaaaa!)

Ho hum, preaching to the crowd again...

[PhilHibbs]

"We are pleased that the Japanese courts, like their U.S. counterparts, have found that it is illegal to create and operate networks that facilitate copyright infringement regardless of whether the copyrighted material is stored on that network,"

So that makes creating the Internet illegal in japan, I suppose, or running an email server.