Coble to crazy kids: P2P can get you in trouble
Rep. Howard Coble, Greensboro Republican, wrote a piece on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing in "The Hill," a newspaper that mainly services official Washington. From the lede of the Op/Ed:
If you are under the age of 20, half of you did not purchase a single compact disc last year. You still acquired music - both legally and illegally - but you did it exclusively online. According to today's teenagers, going to the mall to buy a CD is so last century!
The main point of the editorial - after the self-consciously unhip start - was to say that those who use P2P services are at risk of identity theft and to advocate for blocking such services.
Needless to say, it has drawn some negative criticism from various technology bloggers, here, here and from Public Knowledge. There Sherwin Siy writes
There's an interesting parallel between the conclusion that all p2p applications, since they can be used for infringement, must be blocked, and the conclusion that copyright infringers, since they have infringed via the Internet, must be kicked off the 'net.This parallel is a perilously narrow view of the purposes of communication technologies. Telling a lie in public may result in penalties, but those penalties should never silence the offender by preventing him from speaking publicly again. But that is exactly what such policies do.
Coble is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet. That means he has some influence over how these laws get written up, although not as much as he did when he chaired it.
Comments (1)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
I like Howard; but you have to remember he's not exactly technology-enabled. He was one of the last Congressmen to even use his free congressional website. I'm sure his staff wrote the piece.
The problem with P2P is more with the Record Industry than with illegal file sharing. The Artists get less from CD sales than they do from concerts and merchandise; therefore the Artists are moving towards a Free Download model. The Record Industry and their lobbyists are feeding Congress all sorts of information about illegal activities.
Sorry guys, the train left the station. Your audience is going to download music anyway they can. If they don't adapt, no amount of legislation is going to prop them up.
You want to sell CD's - they need more hits. Why buy a $18 CD with 2 hit songs you can buy the 2 hits from iTunes for $1.98.
The Record Industry is throwing in other Cyber-Crimes into the mix as an effort to save their skins and muddy the water. Unfortunate, Congress is listening.
Posted on March 8, 2008 12:18 AM