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August 26, 2004

Criminal Enforcement of Peer-to-Peer Piracy

Patent Cafe reports:

Federal agents searched five residences and one Internet service provider to investigate illegally distributed movies, software, games, and music shared over peer-to-peer networks.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said "The Department of Justice is committed to enforcing intellectual property laws."

U.S. Attorney Kenneth Wainstein added "It is illegal to trade in copyright-protected materials on the Internet. This is theft, plain and simple. If you are engaged in this behavior, you are on notice that you are not as anonymous as you may think."

The maximum criminal penalty for a first-time offender is five years and $250,000, in addition to forfeiture and destruction of infringing copies and all equipment used to manufacture the pirated materials.

This is surely great news to the entertainment industry, but it's probably pretty scary for all those Millennials out there who have been freely copying music for years.  The development of the law in this field will be interesting, with several questions.  Is an MP3 a copy of the original?  Is an MP3 a derivative work?  What if someone is copying their CD from his home computer to his office computer?  Could that be fair use?

This topic will certainly be interesting over the next few years.  I'm thinking that I may invest in Internet streaming music, which may be a great alternative to the current choices of downloading music and buying a CD.  I bet it could be made copy-proof somehow, and still allow the proper royalties to be paid to the creators.  We're on the front line of a new development in music.  In the past, technology has taken us from phonographs, to LPs to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs.  Each new technology producing sound superior to its predecessors.

While the growing pains of the developments may temporarily hurt the entertainment industry, profitability will not be lost.  After all, the laws of copyright and patent are intended to encourage creativity and innovation for the good of the people.  If nobody makes money on creativity, creativity will cease.  Our founding fathers considered this and included a clause in the Constitution "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."  While the framers of the Constitution never considered digital file sharing, copyright law has consistently protected authors and will continue to do so.

Posted by at 08:47 AM.
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