The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) thought it had won a landmark case against Verizon, compelling the company to hand over the names of subscribers its owners, the major record labels, claimed were illegally using p2p programs to share music online.
Every time it netted a grandfather or schoolgirl by mistake, there was a brief flurry in the media. But it didn't last long and wasn't followed up.
Then, just before Christmas, the DC Circuit Court overturned the railroad and terrorize people who were refusing to bow down to the music industry.
And in the meanwhile, the underlying premise - that suing people for sharing music online is not only acceptable but is to be encouraged - passed into acceptance.
That was the year, that was, and now people now routinely accept the unacceptable, swallow entertainment industry lies and half-liesand ask for more.
Self-serving, and highly inaccurate, music industry statements are regurgitated whole in the media, force-feeding readers with the idea that p2p file sharing is immoral and illegal; and, that entertainment industry inspired online music services, which are springing up one after the other like mushrooms, are real.
Spurious RIAA 'attacks' on pornography, with American politicians backing them, and the launch of an emasculated Napster, are accepted as noteworthy events warranting publication on front pages and lead news broadcasts everywhere.
Events of genuine public concern, such as Hollywood's take-over of America's schools and colleges and its recruitment of international police forces as unpaid entertainment industry cops, slip away, unremarked.
POLICE USA "After a year and a half long investigation, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), working with the New York Police Department (NYPD), this week seized nearly 56,100 counterfeit compact discs (CD-Rs) at two locations in New York City." - [Our emphasis. We wonder if the RIAA paid the NYPD's costs. And aren't New York cops financed by taxpayers?]
Britain "Two premises in Bristol were searched this morning (21 November) in a joint operation by investigators from the MCPS Anti Piracy Unit - working on behalf of composers and songwriters - and FACT - working on behalf of the film industry. Officers from Avon and Somerset police were "drafted in to support the raids". Drafted in?
AUSTRALIA "In a move of mind-boggling arrogance, the Australian Recording Industry Association's chief enforcer, Michael Speck, tried to directly influence a court case involving the sentencing of three men who pleaded guilty to Australia's first criminal internet piracy charges." ... and ... "MIPI (Australian Record Industry Association 'enforcement' unit) wanted to apply for costs because, counsel John Hennessy told the court, it spent 'hundreds of thousands of dollars' and conducted '80 per cent' of the investigations before handing the case over to the Australian Federal Police."
And there are literally hundreds more examples such as this around the world.
Selling counterfeit CDs is a crime. But so is selling counterfeit watches. Or perfume. Or blue jeans. Or anything else. However, using its terrifying political power and financial clout, Hollywood is able to bend police forces to its will, monopolising their time and channeling their resources into protecting movie and recording industry interests.
"The University of Florida, one of the first American educational institutions to become an active RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) enforcement agency, has been praised by RIAA president Cary Sherman. Sherman says ICARUS - the U of F's in-house anti-p2p application - is an 'impressive' home-grown solution. Home-grown it is, but it's spreading its wings - like a plague. Earlier in the year the RIAA warned administrators they were in line for serious RIAA retribution if they didn't shape up. They responded with ICARUS which shuts down network access if it detects anything resembling p2p activity. Already 110 universities have asked about it, along with eight major Internet service providers and 23 private companies and corporations. But universities should realize their computer networks are to serve students and 'not to be an enforcement arm of the recording industry,' Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation, says."
Loyola, MIT, Boston College, Rensselaer, Penn State, Princeton and Michigan Tech are among the many other educational institutions that cave in to the RIAA, and when students turn up for their freshman orientation at Yale, "We have new language in our undergraduate regulations and are planning an added emphasis on this [file sharing] topic," Yale general counsel Dorothy K. Robinson is quoted as saying in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser.
Schools exist to instruct students - not sell product for the entertainment, or any other, industry. Yes, there are certain commercial services such as banks and restaurants on many, if not most, campuses. But they offer needed services. Nothing the entertainment industry offers is needed in a school.
However, the school authorities have been cowed by the music labels. Universities are actually new markets, and they're being played and developed as such. Everything else is marketing window dressing.
Nor are colleges and universities the only institutions being targetted.
Hollywood was pumping anti-piracy messages to 900,000 students through a program being "integrated" into more than 36,000 classrooms across America. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is employing Junior Achievement Inc to carry the message, which will in effect be delivered at no expense to Hollywood to children in grades five to nine via 'volunteer teachers'.
"This is really sounding like Soviet-style education," EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) lawyer Wendy Seltzer says. "First they're indoctrinating the students and then having students indoctrinate their peers."
The Green Machine The labels are merely segments of Hollywood Green Machine, along with hardware and software makers, movie studios and all the rest of the entertainment industry cartel. For many of them, file sharing represents an opportunity. Burners. Computers. Hardware. Software. You can't do much with music files without them.
But it's not illegal to expect value for your dollar, or pound, or yen, or whatever, which is really what it's all about.
People aren't crooks. They don't get up in the morning determined to cheat the labels. But they do react to grossly unfair practices, which is precisely what many, if not most, downloaders are doing. They're protesting.
Forget copyright infringements and 'music piracy'. Think antiqued marketing/business models, bad product and terrible policy decisions.
And although The Big Five (for the moment) call all the shots in Canada and the US, four of them - Sony (Japan), BMG (Germany), Vivendi (France) and EMI (UK) - aren't Canadian or US companies. Only Warner is based in the States. This means everything they do has to be seen in a global context. What's happening in the US is a warning to other parts of the world, as the Australians are finding out. "If we can do this in America, imagine what we can do to you."
The p2p apps You could be forgiven for thinking Kazaa on the FastTrack network is the only p2p game in town. That's not the case, although it's desperately trying to convince desperately trying to convince the labels that it is. Unfortunately for Nikki Hemming, et al, the labels hold Kazaa and Sharman Networks in contempt.
There's also BearShare, Limewire, Grokster, eDonkey2000, Blubster and Morpheus, which thanks to the media, are probably seen as representing the 'underground,' so to speak. In fact, they're commercial applications, and they're in competition with each other. However, they're in a genuine coalition of mainstream commercial p2p app owners with their own lobby group called P2P United comprising BearShare (FreePeers, Inc), Limewire (LimeWire, LLC), Grokster (Grokster Ktd), eDonkey2000 (MetaMachine Inc), Blubster (Manolito P2P) and Morpheus (Streamcast Networks Inc.
Kazaa, on the other hand, belongs to the Distributed Computing Industry Association, which presents itself as a 'group' and which is accepted as such by a disturbingly large number of reporters representing the mainstream on- and offline media.
Kazaa is, to all intents and purposes, the only 'member' and Sharman Networks (which provided the cash to set the DCIA up) and its alter-ego Altnet are the effective proprietors. So - far from being a true industry group, the DCIA is actually yet another component in Sharman's scheme to get alongside the RIAA and the record labels.
If it succeeds, it'll open the way for Sharman become one of, if not THE, Net's most powerful online marketing companies, with all that implies. It'll be able to service a staggering range of companies - virtually every movie studio, record label and consumer electronics firm that's a part of the Hollywood cartel.
But not to worry. There are plenty of other junk-free p2p apps such as Bittorrent, WinMX and Gnucleus online and being developed.
Priceless consumer data Pre-Napster (the real one, that is) consumers on the World Wide Web were mostly easily identifiable - ordinary people who bought software and registered it. Consequently, their names, phone and credit card numbers, locations, and so on, ended up on central databases. Lovely stuff for the marketers.
Although Hollywood complains bitterly about losing sales to file trading, it really means it's losing priceless consumer tracking and identification data. Hence its ongoing, carefully orchestrated plans to get bills passed and develop technology such as Broadcast Flag to allow Hollywood companies to plug directly into private homes to literally remotely control what's being played and/or viewed and gaining, in the process, hitherto private and confidential information from, and about, users and their habits.
The people who run the Hollywood Green Machine have paid friends in the White House, paid friends in the enforcement agencies, paid friends in the public and private business sectors, they own the media either literally (which is often the case) or through advertising dollars.
Hollywood (and its organs such as the MPAA and RIAA) offer no more than lip service to public opinion. In common with the tobacco companies, they lie. And everyone knows they lie. They grossly misrepresent the facts, and everyone knows it. Their statistics are often pure science fiction and the sheer volume of their press releases and statements swamps the media.
In the meanwhile, p2p goes from strength to strength because the simple reality is: anything is better than what the labels are offering. File sharing fills the vacuum created by greed, bad product, bad tunes, bad marketing, bad everything.
Once, there were things called singles. Then came the more expensive (and therefore more profitable) LPs. But consumer electronic companies were now churning out cheap tape recorders and p2p file sharing was invented ...
... except back then, it was called 'duping' and it meant John taped the one or two songs on the album which were worth listening to so Mary in the same town wouldn't have to buy the entire (often trashy) release.
We now have mp3s and the Net. But John and Mary haven't changed. Much of the music industry 'product' is still inferior and grossly over-priced. And you still have to buy a load of crap to get the one or two gems.
But what else is new? Today, millions of Johns rip (instead of tape) the one or two songs worth listening to so millions of Mary's around the world (instead of three or four Mary's in the same town) don't have to buy the entire (often trashy) album.
If the labels faced reality, made their catalogs widely available (by charging maybe 10 or 20 cents a download) to anyone wanting to agree to a simple license, they'd be raking it in.
Instead, we have iTunes and Napster II and all the rest of the corporate online music stores portrayed as online music services offering an acceptable range of affordable digital music files. Rather, they're loss-leaders meant to keep the corporate names in sight. And that's about all.
Moreover, although mp3s mean portability, they don't mean quality. What's good for a walk-about isn't good for home listening through your $10,000 surround-sound Hi-Fi. So there's also a place for DVDs. Millions and millions of them. At $3.99 a pop. And there's a place for professionally produced Oldie Mixes. And for classical music and now that we live in a global village, for compilations of music from different cultures.
In fact, there's a place for everything, and for everyone - not just Big Music. And that's the way it should be.
