[Fmpro] P2P Piracy

[Christopher Alpiar]

This started off as just me rambling and the more I wrote the more I  
edited it to be like an editorial article. Please comment if I am off  
in anyplace :) I also posted this on my blog at the Composer's Forum  
if you want to comment there to be indelibly printed for infinity.

http://composersforum.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=773368%3ABlogPost%3A34507

It would be really awesome if you know stuff that i didnt say right,  
or about laws that i should talk about specifically and if I get a  
really tight article here maybe it would be worth sending to senators  
and congressmen or to try and publish it someplace... I don't know,  
but I had a cancellation on a recording session today and this subject  
has been on my mind a lot lately so ... here goes:



It is obvious to all composers, songwriters and media property  
creators that the amazing revolution of technology in the last 13  
years has left the music and film industries in dire straits. It is a  
very complex issue on many levels, most of which is beyond this  
article. But the heart of the matter is the massive loss of money by  
the entertainment industry created by the phenomenon of widespread and  
unchecked illegal copying and downloading that was bound to happen in  
the digital information age.

The development of peer to peer sharing originally by Napster and soon  
after with other similar programs (Limewire, Kazaa, etc) and now bit  
torrent programs in conjunction with websites is something that is  
grossly out of control and efforts to put P2P sharing in check have  
been scattered and non-unified. Since most of the efforts are  
corporate driven and not governmental, they are often a means of  
private profit maximizing rather than a way of protecting the  
copyright owners.

There is a very large group of tech-centric consumers that fight for  
P2P "rights" as they feel that a digital representation is not a  
property for anyone to own. They claim that the people who don't pay  
for the property are people that couldn't afford it anyway. They say  
not being allowed to copy the legal copy they purchased unlimitedly is  
confining. Cheap and easy to use programs that allow uneducated people  
(sometimes talented, sometimes not) create music or film where these  
products traditionally take years of study and lifetimes of  
application now overload the industry with home-grown media  
properties. So advocates of P2P piracy also say that in some cases  
sharing illegally helps consumers find good music and films in a flood  
of home produced mediocrity that the industry is faced with today. Of  
course downloading free music and movies is easy and while there might  
be some small benefits found they are undoubtedly excuses to avoid  
responsibility to the property owners.

Some efforts have been made to curb illegal downloading but to this  
date have been unsuccessful. Record labels, film companies and other  
tech and entertainment companies have each made stabs at various forms  
of digital rights management (DRM) as a means of trying to fill the  
gaping fissure created from p2p piracy. Unfortunately they have been  
completely independent and oblivious of each other, and often  
difficult to use or simply inconvenient or uncomfortable to the  
consumers.

The decentralized efforts seem to have no desire to become communal in  
any shape, partly because of ego and greed of the players not wanting  
to share ideas and partly from ego and greed of the players desperate  
to play their DRM against other DRM companies to help short term  
profits without any consideration for the whole problem or the long  
term effect or solution.

The closest thing we have found to a working model of protection that  
pleased consumers as well as industry and creators was Apple's iTunes  
who's DRM let the user download a song for $.99 and to copy it 5 times  
before they were forced to re-license it. However without the entire  
industry embracing this, without Apple sharing its technology, without  
a campaign to stop P2P illegal sharing, it is not lasting. In 2007  
Apple decided to change its structure and began offering its $.99  
downloads at a slightly higher price with no DRM. Again short term  
gains were the motive to increase their sales against other DRM media  
sellers.

The original Apple model was a very excellent one. If that iTunes  
format allowing X number of copies before relicensing was adopted  
ubiquitously by all the music and film sellers and at the same time a  
lead foot lowered onto the illegal file sharing community this could  
have truly been a winning scenario for the industry, for the copyright  
owners and for the consumers. But the rest of the industry floundered  
and at the same time P2P piracy has not been blocked. And every year  
young consumers feel more and more that downloading music is their  
right and while some say it is illegal it shouldn't be, at least in  
their minds.

A 2008 survey conducted in the UK by Entertainment Media Research  
found 45% of males and females age ranging from ages 15 to 54 conduct  
piracy by using P2P file-sharing of music. 45%!!!  And 39% are doing  
the same with movies. The gap from music to movies most likely simply  
that the file size of movies are much larger and hence more annoying  
to wait for the download to finish. But that's not saying 39% of movie  
aficionados or 39% of tech geeks, but 39% of ALL PEOPLE. What percent  
of people don't own a computer and cant even if they wanted to? What  
percent of people have no interest in movies? Consider that and it is  
really a huge percentage. Now the same survey also found that if their  
ISP sent them an email or called them 70% would stop, but 68% of the  
downloaders feel that there is very little chance they will be caught.

I urge you all to investigate and read the full contents of this  
survey found here:

http://www.entertainmentmediaresearch.com/reports/DigitalEntertainmentSurvey2008_FullReport.pdf

I wish I could see Forrester or one of the big marketing research  
reports for the US. Even though they are usually leaning their  
research towards the benefits of corporations they still come up with  
great data. And I would guess with my gut that the US percentages  
would surpass the UK, but I have not been able to find data on that.

Anyhow, it seems that three major steps need to be taken in order to  
pick up the rubble off the floor and start to glue the pieces back  
together, for the sake of the industry and the creators of product/ 
intellectual property.

1st - ISP/digital tech:

US Government intervention to force all ISPs that operate in the US or  
wish to have lines into and out of the US to create a consortium and a  
technology to fairly block all traffic of copy protected digital  
media. That consortium needs to come up with a way to decide what the  
filetypes are that need to be blocked and to warn its users that any  
materials they have downloaded which are not strictly their purchased  
property are in fact illegal and can have consequences.

2nd - Industry/DRM:

International Government intervention needs to happen to force *all*  
entities of the entertainment industry to create a consortium as well  
to create a new file format for audio and video with traceable key  
codes to track all digital media, which will entail new encryption for  
DVD and CD players as well as download file players that have to be  
phased in to the market as quickly as possible. Percentage of the  
sales of all media should go to a collective fund to support the  
consortium to produce these files and encryptions and some portion to  
the ISPs to offset their development costs

3rd - Sympathetic Legislation:

US and foreign governments need to revisit the laws that are currently  
in place and adjust them to protect the creators in this changed age.  
There are changes that have been made which were not clearly thought  
out and were obviously driven by industry lobbyists and not artist  
lobbyists. Things like declaring a legal download is not a performance  
and hence it cannot be expected to collect a performance royalty on.  
There are many laws and I will not go deeply into specifics as I am  
not an expert on entertainment technology law but I will say that the  
events that change in steps 1 and 2 will need to go hand in hand with  
an overhaul of entertainment and intellectual property law of today.

Government intervention is essential as we have witnessed for 13 years  
now the divided interests of the entertainment industry who continue  
to falter today to create a DRM concept that works well and still  
makes a good experience for the consumers and makes even the slightest  
dents in P2P sharing/piracy. I am not going to get into suggestions of  
what I think would make good DRM as that is out of the scope of this  
topic. But it should consider means to protect copyright holders and  
to make the consumer experience a positive one.

Without doubt we will continue to see hackers hack encryption and we  
will always be able to make analog recordings of any rendering, but if  
we can find a way to make it hard to make illegal copies, or in the  
very least to make the quality of those recordings very poor, we will  
find a means to creating balance once again by making the average,  
mostly honest, consumer start buying instead of downloading illegally  
once again.



Christopher Kennedy Alpiar
Cinematic Composer
937.294.0900 (Dayton Studio)
310.339.9603 (Los Angeles)
877.294.0912 (Toll Free)
www.alpiar.com