Not to ignore copyright law itself, it has undergone many a facelift in the United States in recent history. The first copyright law enacted in the United States in 1790 had a term of 14 years with a renewal provision, meaning an artist could effectively retain control over their work for 28 years. Considering the average lifespan of that time period, the terms seem quite reasonable. And besides, if you can't profit from your work in 28 years, maybe it was because your work had no merit or value. With recent changes in copyright law however, the terms have become utterly absurd. How absurd you may ask?

Have you ever heard of the song "Happy Birthday"? Initially published in a book "Song Stories for the Kindergartener" in 1893 and originally titled "Good Morning To All" a second stanza was added in 1924 (note: the actual "Happy Birthday" part). It was eventually republished and copyrighted in 1935 as the song we know today. With current U.S. copyright law's, the copyright holder (currently a division of Warner Communications) has rights to it until the year 2030, and still averages making about $2 million a year off of commercial licensing fees of the song. Ever noticed in a restaurant (especially when it's a corporate restaurant chain) that the employees will sing a different birthday song? Ever wondered why? This is the absurd reason.

Don’t worry; singing Happy Birthday to your 8 year old won’t land you in jail. Sharing the song in Limewire though would be illegal, even if it's older than your great grandmother. The last of the two sisters, Mildred and Patty Hill, who were the artists responsible for creating the tune, died 59 years ago. Ironically, because the original song and lyrics were published in 1893, the actual tune underlying the lyrics is now in the public domain. If you cannot see the absurdity here (and I do admit it is an extreme example), I suggest a visit to the optometrist. Copyright law has thus evolved beyond merely being a mechanism to protect artists. In this author's view it has become a mechanism primarily to protect industry, simply because the terms of copyright have far extended beyond ones own reasonable expectations of living. Look at the fortunes of a mega-star like Elvis Presley whose estate has somehow made far more money after his own death than he ever made when alive. I’d call that pretty talented for a corpse. It's situations like these that bring to me the realization that copyright has become something intended to protect asset's more so than an artist’s work. In effect (at least in this scenario, and perhaps many others) copyright has become a tool to make the wealthy even wealthier by riding on the coattails of someone else’s accomplishments.

Today, it's certainly no secret that there are a myriad of ways to gain access to copyrighted material without paying for it. The most common ways today on the internet involve P2P services, which are person-to-person (hence the nameP2P) file sharing services and applications. I doubt I can recall all of the methods off the top of my head, but anyone with the capability to Google will find a lot of information pertaining to such choice search words as "Ares, Piolet, Limewire, Bearshare, Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, WinMX, IMesh, Emule, Edonkey, Shareaza, Bittorrent, Azureus, Bitcomet, Bittornado, Bitlord, ABC Torrent, DC++, IRCSpy, Usenet, ect..." Some of these services have had to bow to inevitable pressures from industry lawsuits, but most of these still exist. You can argue that these P2P services are either right or wrong, and easily tie yourself up in endless debate over the moral and legal issues involved. One thing is clear. This is very popular activity. Sure there are some pay-for services, but most of them are various combinations of clunky, cumbersome, limiting, and/or expensive. Why should one pay $.99 cents for a song from a "legitimate" service and be limited what you can do with it, and where you can listen to it? When you do the math, it's more expensive and less convenient than buying an album, and at least when buying the album you can easily rip the songs to MP3's to play on your computer or portable media device. Even this is becoming a more difficult activity as of late, with new CD protection schemes. And let's not forget the debacle not too long ago with Sony and their "rootkit" fiasco.

The thing to realize here is that media companies are at least at this point in the game focusing on offering different experiences, rather than content. Digital Rights Management technologies are the attempt to limit what one can do with the media they pay for, and thus turn content into yet another "experience" to make money off of, rather than it being an actual purchase of content you can use as far as your "Fair Use" rights supposedly allow. Consumers have been trained to accept this way of thinking of course; otherwise there wouldn't be such a hungry appetite for all the additional revenue streams that now exist for content producers. What's worse is there are a myriad of different DRM schemes. The reason for this is simple. Greed. Companies like Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and others are attempting to capture market share and keep that market share tied to their method of distribution. Interoperability and ease of consumer use are not issues that matter in this context. This is the sole reason why we now have two new competing formats for high definition video, known as Blue Ray and HD-DVD. Fracturing consumer markets with two formats is done on purpose, because it's all about licensing and market dominance, with the technical merits of either format a secondary issue.

Some changes are happening though. The growth this year of video services like Google and Youtube has spawned a small sea-change in video distribution. Some television studio's, seeing cable, home theatre, and the internet steal their customer base, have begun releasing some downloadable video content online, to raves and significant levels of success. But it's still a drop in the bucket, relative to what goes on in the P2P universe.

It is true that media companies are slowly embracing the internet, but only in the half hearted ways I've described. They're still realistically threatened with the impact embracing technology would have on their traditional business models. There are simply too many "middle men" that have a vested interest in the status quo. Even with the threat though, one fundamental tenet of dealing with customers is most definitely playing out. If you do not offer what a customer wants, they will most assuredly go elsewhere. It's this singular reality that fuels the growing popularity of P2P services, and until content providers, government, and law come to terms with this undeniable reality, P2P isn't going to go away anytime soon. (Addendum: last years Supreme Court decision in regards to Grokster vs. MGM, and recent shutdowns of other services really does nothing to change this, despite a lot of media "spin" to the contrary.