Grokster Loses Copyright Case: Opinion

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Of all the decisions that came down from the Supreme Court today, the one that jumped out at me was decision that media companies could sue “Peer 2 Peer” software developers.

Forbes.com reports that, “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that Internet file-sharing services may be sued for encouraging copyright infringement by their users, who share digital music files.

The unanimous decision sends the case between Grokster, a music file-sharing service, and MGM Mirage (nyse: MGM - news - people ) back to a lower court. The court's justices said sufficient evidence existed to demonstrate unlawful intent on the part of file-sharing services to hold them liable for the copyright-infringing activities of their customers.” (More)

Now I stopped stealing music a long time ago after the third time my computer crashed while I was using Limewire (I own a Mac). However, I know people who steal music, movies and programs all day long and have no desire to stop anytime soon. Some others who were my go-to people for music and movies have also stopped because their conscience got the best of them.

I don’t miss having the P2P software nor do I miss the ability to steal content. I’m fine with buying albums on occasion from Best Buy or Amazon.com. However, I was very much interested in how this decision from the highest court in the land affected those who still use and depend on those services. I wondered what this meant in the grand scheme of things and what the repercussions would be down the line. I also know that I’m a virtual Luddite who’s lucky he has the computer wherewithal to post this column. Having said that, I sent out an e-mail to a few of those people and one, my personal Macintosh and other technologies consultant, Mark Demofsky, answered with the following response:

I think if you're promoting the use of your product for illegal activity, you deserve to be shut down, because you are an idiot.

But the vast majority of these networks - in fact the most popular ones - do not promote illegal activity in any way, so as long as the constitution remains somewhat intact, there's nothing anyone can do to stop people from using these services.

What the record companies don't seem to understand is that information wants to - and ultimately will be - free. The record companies (we'll stick to them for the examples, although the same rules apply to the other media companies) got spoiled from the beginning. You couldn't copy records, and if you could, there weren’t enough of you to matter. Tapes came out, and while you could easily copy them, the quality decreased. Unless you made 1,000 copies of an album and air dropped them you weren't much of a threat either.

Time went by, and record companies saw that with digital media, they could deliver much higher quality audio to customers, who were tired of listening to hiss. What they didn't count on was the Internet.

So now we're in the Digital Age. We are at a point where our entire planet is connected to a digital network, where files and data can be transferred anywhere in seconds. Network protocols were created so countless people - worldwide - could share files, pictures, whatever they wanted, taking advantage of this new medium. At the same time, people realized that since this new format for music stored the audio in data form, instead of waveforms on a tape, it could be transferred to your computer. At this point in the home PC's evolution, the storage one had was not big enough to hold much music, so the technology was invented to compress the audio - so you could fit your whole collection onto your computer.

Another prevalent issue is that CD prices went up. That's right, before the whole controversy with Napster began, prices were going up, and the quality of new music was going down. The recording industry created one-hit-wonders and sold them like used cars to a music hungry public. Many people did not want to pay $15 and higher for an album with maybe 2 to 3 good songs on it. Many people also did not want to be bothered with just buying singles.

Now, put all this in a blender and hit Puree.... Napster was born. Millions were trading compressed music each day over the Internet. Millions more were being turned onto new music by being able to dabble in new songs without leaving your home, spending any money or putting on pants. Years went by before anyone new what was happening and there was much rejoicing. Then Metallica, Dr. Dre and others finally figured out that they were being hosed and came forward to claim what was rightfully there’s. They also cut their fan base in half in the process seeing as suing your fans makes for lousy business.

So the “evil monopolistic greedy record companies” decided to make life harder for everybody, fans and artists alike. They first decided to make CD’s that wouldn't play in every player or ones that couldn't be ripped (unless you tried really hard). Some CD’s were created that would literally fry your computer's disk drive if you tried to rip from them. These efforts made prices higher for CD’s while doing nothing for the actual content of said CD’s and that only prompted even more people to continue stealing music online.

Finally, the digital music store was born. These stores took advantage of the Internet in a new way - embracing the digital music so it would work for the record companies AND the people. However, even that wasn’t good enough, because the profit margin was too low for the record companies. They want stricter DRM, which forced yet more people to steal music online.

So we're back to the fact that they just don't get it. With the Internet the way it is, digital information - whether it's music, movies, pictures, whatever - WILL be free. There is nothing anyone can do to stop people from finding a way to trade these files and not get caught doing it. If something fails to work anymore due to a new law, another way will surface the next day. This is akin to all black markets under prohibition. Welcome to the new bootleg gin industry.

What the record companies CAN do, is accept that fact that they can no longer rob the public (and the artists) blind, and embrace this new technology. What they don't realize, is that sure, they'll be taking less money, but in the long run, they're making a ton more if all those people who were alienated come back to purchasing music legally. Odds are that they won’t but hey, I’m an optimist.

Now Playing: Right Now – Van Halen