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| The RIAA's Biggest Win...So Far... Jammie Thomas Speaks Out... |
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| Wednesday, 21 November 2007 | |||||||||||||
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Page 4 of 4 Closing Thoughts On The Issue  We won't insult your intelligence and assume we all see eye to eye on the nature of the content landscape online. It is quite clear to us here at Fastsilicon.com that the rise of p2p (and by it's nature, the textbook definition of "piracy") is created by consumer demand. Call it greed or naivety on the part of file sharers if you like, but demand is what drives the phenomenon. Figuring out how to bring consumers back to an industry in trouble is fundamentally the responsibility of said industry, and we assert that spending time in courtrooms fighting a statistically insignificant percentage of the problem is not the way to go about it. To our way of thinking, fighting the rise of p2p on moral, ethical, or legal grounds fundamentally misses the point. If it were merely a fundamental moral issue, given the fact that the overwhelming majority of humans consider themselves moral beings, the phenomenon wouldn't exist. Changing human behavior requires a basic understanding of human sociology and psychology. To affect desired changes in behavior requires alternatives that people are willing to accept. There are many legal and legitimate alternatives to p2p today, but it is equally clear that they are not being accepted to any significant degree worthy of combating the issue at hand. To say merely that alternatives exist, and thus the continued legal persecution of individuals is justified, is indicatively naive and self serving in our eyes. Even if you personally think it's wrong to use p2p networks, that does not change the fact that more and more consumers are using p2p systems. Although studies as recent as last June indicate HTTP has begun to overtake other protocols in overall network traffic for the first time in years, the overwhelming reason seems to be Youtube traffic, which is in itself of a questionable legal nature much of the time. At least Viacom thinks so . Ironically, Youtube's very existence hinges on it's ability to hide behind a loophole in the DMCA. That is nice for Youtube, but what about the lady down the street with a DMCA notice who does not have a few billion dollars in the bank to hire a phalanx of lawyers? It is becoming increasingly clear, as this issue has grown in importance, that consumers fundamentally do not care what the legal issues are. They merely want what they want, delivered in a way they want. Industry will have no choice but to adapt to this by winning their customers back with real alternatives they will openly accept, or through alternative methods of capitalization. Lawsuits have done nothing, and will obviously continue to do nothing to change the inevitability of this. When a legal framework decrees millions of people are fundamentally criminals in the eye of the law, and those millions not only do not care but continue to grow in numbers, there becomes merit in the argument that the legal framework itself is the problem. History shows us how obvious this conclusion is. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           
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