If only Elvis had peer-to-peer file sharing....
"If Elvis were trying to break into the music business today, then her would not need to wait 2 1/2 years to get national distribution...like thousands of others, he could use MP3"(Digital Capital, Pg2)
Fortunately, though, unlike The King, artists of today can still take advantage of file sharing to get there music out to a much larger audience while cutting out the middle man. This is despite that same middle man's somewhat successful attempts to shut down Napster and other similar file-sharing networks. To find out why, and what it means for the future of DRM, it is important to understand the events that have moved us from the time of Napster, to the age of torrents.
The Bit Torrent P2P network protocol was created around the same time that Napster and it's Ilk were becoming endangered animals of the Internet. As this first generation of P2P networks were coming to an end (largely due to the efforts of the RIAA), the second generation started to pick up their slack.
The Bit Torrent protocol managed to build quite a substantial following in a short period of time. This success was not mere luck, but it was due to Bit Torrent's careful design. Seeing what had happened to the other file sharing networks, Bit Torrent made sure to avoid making the same mistakes the others had which had left them open to direct litigation. While the 1st generation of file sharing networks had built-in search functions that allowed users to find files, which allowed others to see which files individuals were hosting (and thus prosecute them), Bit Torrent engines did no such thing. It was this particular act, which made P2P networks liable for storing information that allowed for the distribution of copyrighted materials. Instead, the BitTorrent engines relied on people downloading that information from independent websites (often called "tracker search engines", a famous one being Pirate Bay). This makes it much harder to bring lawsuits against those that provide the bit torrent clients and the trackers for the individual files. Unfortunately, this led not a change in reaction by the RIAA, but merely a change in targets. Where-as they had mostly target client providers in the past, they now almost exclusively targeted the people downloading the content, further alienating music lovers.
While the RIAA had lost sight of the business adage to respect your clients, Bit Torrent programs took that idea and ran with it. In the past, Napster and others like it generated revenue through pop-up ads and often malicious spy-ware programs that were installed with their software. People hated it but saw it as a necessary evil. The second generation of P2P programs, by contrast, do none of this. Azureous Inc. (creators of the popular torrent client: Azureous) generate revenue by placing commercial downloads alongside free content, which users are free to download or not. Often these are those which are too long or high quality to be offered on YouTube.
This leads to some interesting ideas about what the future might hold. As it stands now, programs such as Azureous are able to provide better quality videos faster, and at lower bandwidth, than YouTube. As people begin to demand high quality video more and more, we might see Bit Torrent protocol being used to generate large amounts of legitimate income. This is all while it being exceptionally hard to prosecute them for violating any copyright laws. Ironically, by providing payed-for content to users, Bit Torrent clients are bringing the P2P clients closer to the copyright advocates such as the RIAA, than they have ever been before. If they can provide a large enough service to these entities, then those same entities may very well turn a blind eye to the copyright violations occurring over Bit Torrent. Then again, maybe not.
"Though the MP3 b-web is an informal, grassroots phenomenon, it has shaken the foundations of an entire industry."-(Digital Capital, pg 4)
And indeed companies have started to really take notice of this grassroots phenomenon. In June of last year, a Swedish advertising company announced it's intention to buy Pirate Bay (one of the world's largest Bit Torrent tracker hosts) for approximately $9 million. The PirateBay founders publicly stated that the money would be put into an offshore account and used to fund projects which dealt with "freedom of speech, freedom of information, and the openness of the Internet". The deal eventually fell through, but it stands as a testament to companies beginning to see the light. Rather than resist the technological innovation trough the development of DRM technology (which has a horrible track-record for effectiveness), they may start to embrace it.
After-all, this has been what the nerds have wanted all along. A corporate world which responded to the needs and desires of the people they served. Growing up, everyone knew that as much as the bullies might pick on the nerds of the school, that no number of wedgies or practical jokes would stop the horrible reality that awaited them at their 10 year high school reunion: that the nerds had become much more successful than them. Like these same bullies, the RIAA and organizations like it had tried to push the nerds of this world around and get them to conform to the services they provided rather than providing the services people wanted. No matter how many copyright violations they filed, digital rights management technologies they implemented, or punitive damages they pursued, it was always a matter of time before the nerds came out on top.
And I can't think of a better revenge than that.
