The hot copyright news today is that the MPAA has finally deigned to get into the trenches with the RIAA and sue individual infringers, according to an AP wirestory published in Silicon Valley (Movie industry to sue file sharers).
If I were the RIAA I would be asking, "what took you so long?"
But, I'm not the RIAA, so I ask, "where's the carrot?" I'm a big proponent of the carrot and stick approach to combatting filesharing. I recognize that no matter what the filesharing plan, there is going to have to be a stick if there is going to be copyright. However, sticks alone are seldom effective, and certainly not in this case.
For the longest time, Hollywood has believed that they can get away with a stick alone, if they were permitted to use it to beat up on third parties, such as the developers of filesharing technology. With the Grokster decision and failure (for now) of the INDUCE Act, that strategy clearly isn't going to work.
The other stick alternative, obviously, is to sue the infringers themselves. However, there are too many of them and the PR backlash is terrible. Which brings us to the carrot. Make legal filesharing more attractive and illicit filesharing becomes much less attractive. Indeed, I can imagine a tipping point in which so many people abandon the illicit networks for the licit that the stick becomes much more effective. But hey, that's just me.
Of course, the much smarter members of the MPAA don't believe in carrots. And, to the extent that they support carrots, they are the weak, anemic, pseudo-carrots of things like iTunes, according to the LA Times (annoying reg. req.) (MPAA Plans Suits to Stop Film Piracy):
Suing individuals may prevent some from downloading, but "Fight Club" producer Ross Grayson Bell said the bigger effort should be in providing legal ways to buy movies on the Internet. The right model, he said, is Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, which enables users to download songs quickly and at a reasonable price.
The iTunes model would have been a good start several years ago, but it too little, too late in 2004.
How late? Pretty darn late, but the executives at the companies behind the MPAA don't care, apparently:
Gordon Paddison, an executive vice president at Time Warner Inc.'s New Line Cinema, counters that suing users of file-sharing networks is one way to build awareness among the company's main base of customers, 18-to-26-year-olds, who have grown up thinking that free downloading is acceptable.
"How do you get the genie back in the bottle?" he asked. "Unfortunately, it will take a considerable amount of pain." [emphasis added]
Paddison, the pain you feel may be your own.
For other commentary:
- Defamer: MPAA Ready To Sue Pirates
Glickman took a reflective pause before explaining, "See, the way it works is we dangle the carrot, then when a file-sharer reaches for the it, we wiggle the stick so they know what we're packing, We ask them, 'Are you sure you want to do that? Didn't you see the stick?' And if they insist on going for the carrot, we beat them to death with the stick, you know, just until we can see a little brain through the skull. That's why you need the stick and the carrot both. It's really hard to kill someone with a carrot."
Slashdot: Movie Industry to sue File SharersCopyfutures: The MPAA Will Follow SuitThough the comment we can probably all agree on, is that of GuyMannDude who noted that most people don't have much to worry about until the Porn Industry Movie Producers (PIMP) starts coming after people.
Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @
