A Brief History of P2P: From Peer 2 Peer To Pay 2 Play
In 1987, a German company called Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits discovered a way to store music on computers using less than a tenth of the space normally required. This discovery, MPEG Layer 3 or “MP3” for short, was meant to allow efficient digital audio broadcasts. Little did they know that a revolution was brewing…
The early to mid 90s saw the MP3 idea go through some standardization, which eventually made software available to regular people like you and me to “rip” a CD down to a few small files yet still be able to play them back at near-original perfection. As the late 90s saw the Internet become more popular than Jesus.com, everyday people shared their files, sometimes asking nothing in return, sometimes requiring one to visit a sponsor’s website. Yet, in the pre-Google years, finding the music you wanted was hit or miss. There had to be a better way…
This hit-or-miss hunt-and-click way of tracking down MP3s frustrated a Northeastern U. freshman named Shawn Fanning, so he developed a program to make the search easy. Thus, Napster was born and the number of users rocketed from 20 million in 2000 to 58 million in 2001. The file sharing or peer-to-peer (P2P) revolution had begun, and millions of people were sharing songs with wild abandon. This was the golden age, where every song swapper could find a justification for joining the download orgy, from “I later buy what I download today” to “they owe me for all the overpriced CDs I bought”.
As Napster gained critical mass, growing from a stupendous ‘Net trick to a cultural phenomenon, they attracted the attention of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who represent the “big five” record companies (Universal, Sony, EMI, Warner Brothers, and BMG) who produce most of the music and other media you have access to today. The RIAA noticed that products that previously could only be obtained through the channels they controlled, were now being freely shared without adding a cent to their pockets. This was too heavy for Metallica and too “gangsta” for Dr. Dre, and they and their lawyers lead the legal takedown of Napster using provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The death spiral begins in April 2000 and ends in July 2001, when Napster goes offline. Though rumors persist about a comeback, it’s not needed; others had already stepped in to carry the P2P revolution forward.
A series of Napster-like services with names like Gnutella and Kazaa rise up and attract users now hooked to the instant gratification of getting almost any song at almost any time. Each tries to succeed where Napster failed, by making it harder to disable the service from a single point, or by basing operations in foreign lands with different laws. Each P2P network becomes a victim of its own success, attracting the RIAA’s well-funded legal attack. To the RIAA, this is not an opportunity to incorporate a new, proven and popular technology into their business model, but a threat to the status quo.
David Post, a Professor of Law at Temple University, views the P2P problem as an issue of borders, and not even an entirely new one. During a visit to America in 1842, Charles Dickens publicly expressed anger when his works, protected by copyrights in the U.K., were taken to America and freely copied and distributed without receiving any compensation. (Blame local boy Ben Franklin – he may have started the tradition of “pirating” literary works from Britain without compensating the copyright holders. I wonder if he ever considered a subscription-based model?) Though, once taken across the border, the copyright holder benefits from seeing their work reach new people, the price to cross that border has not been paid. A similar border can be seen between the physical world and cyberspace, and Post points out that preventing the smuggling of works across that border is the real problem. This brilliant concept has already been partially realized in online music stores like Apple’s iTunes, where users pay to download songs that carry various levels of locks and protections, commonly called Digital Rights Management (DRM). Based on its early success – 5 million downloads in the first eight weeks alone – this is the right balance of easy access to the “celestial jukebox” while still putting some coin into the musician’s open guitar case.
Once the RIAA can figure out how to tap into this powerful new distribution system (some goes as far as to consider digital music and P2P a lifestyle) while keeping their borders safe from smugglers – people who make music available online or take music from cyberspace to physical space without paying the required tolls due the copyright holders – they can embrace their customers and recover the revenues they claim to have lost due to P2P file sharing.
Unfortunately, the RIAA has a different plan: sue everybody. When possible, the P2P operators are being taken down Napster-style. Now, in a move that many feel runs the risk of alienating their customers, they are targeting individual file sharers. Using a variety of snooping tools and services, they are issuing subpoenas to service providers to reveal the names and addresses of individual users of popular P2P networks like Kazaa. These individuals will be the targets of individual lawsuits where it is expected that they will be asked to pay $750 to $150,000 PER SONG that they shared.
What does this mean for you, the individual file sharer? Well, if the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) estimate of 60 million file sharers is accurate, and the RIAA can only issue say 100 subpoenas per day, you could play the odds and hope that you won’t be caught in the first 50 of the thousand-plus years it would take them to nab everybody. But odds mean nothing if you DO get caught, so what to do next? Well, contacting a lawyer is definitely the first step. If you are strapped for cash, you may want to contact the EFF to see if they would consider providing recommendations. Up for a fight? Consider civil disobedience or fighting it in court – maybe your peers download more than you do.
Not ready to fight for the cause? Don’t have the time or money to fight the deep-pocketed RIAA? Then settle. That’s what Princeton student David Peng did when the RIAA sued him in April of this year for running a search engine turned P2P file sharing network that included copyrighted songs. When faced with the RIAA lawsuit, David chose to settle for $15,000 plus legal fees. Daniel denies any wrongdoing, but feared the financial and emotional burden that a protracted lawsuit would carry, and settled to be able to return his focus to his studies.
So, from the free-for-all of Napster’s heyday to a subpoena-littered filesharing landscape, P2P remains one of the popular online activities among youths and adults. The outcome of the lawsuits against individual file traders as well as the success of online music stores with the right borders, will shape the future of P2P and digital music. Though not one for predictions, David Post thinks that the record companies that figure out how to harness the power of the network as a new distribution method will prosper and those who don’t will be left behind. So, ten years from now the music industry may still be monopolized by a “big 5”, but perhaps that will include Apple iTunes, BuyMusic.com, and (dare to dream) the RIAA Online Music Store.
Learn More:
For more information on copyright law in Cyberspace, visit David Post’s site ; highly recommended: His Napster’s Voice.
In the interest of balance, visit the RIAA website for their position . Note: Site is frequently down or slow… almost as if some disgruntled Internet users were constantly hacking it.
To learn about David Peng’s settlement and his efforts to recoup his fines and legal fees, visit wake.princeton.edu.
To join forces with those “defending freedom in the digital world”, go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation at www.eff.org. Of particular interest: their Let The Music Play campaign and tips for “How Not To Get Sued By The RIAA”.