Jul 09
File sharing and the Conservatives
I wonder how many people will find another reason not to vote Conservative in David Cameron’s recent speech to the music industry. Within the IT industry, probably quite a few.
In summary, Cameron praised the music industry’s technological innovation and went on to suggest that ISPs should prevent illegal file sharing. Both notions are, to most people in the IT industry, nonsense.
I feel a few lines, in particular, are worthy of comment.
“And at a time of technological revolution, you have adapted to changes in consumer behaviour with great ingenuity, launching online and mobile services.
Matching business acumen with creative instinct, you have shown you have the dynamism necessary to succeed in the 21st century.”
Is that the same business acumen that led them to resist technological advances including radio, cassette tape, DAT and recently music downloads and ring tones, only to finally capitulate when they had virtually no other choice? From what I’ve seen, the music industry’s innovation is limited to finding new ways of maintaining the status quo.
“And each year, an estimated 20 billion - that’s right, 20 billion - music files are downloaded illegally.
This alone has cost the music industry as much as £1.1 billion in lost retail sales since 2004.”
The record company staff must have been delighted to hear their own line quoted verbatim back at them. Based on the behaviour of my own friends, I can’t understand why anyone would believe this particular piece of propaganda to be true. People don’t download only music they would have bought anyway; I imagine they’re much less discriminating in what they download for free than what they’d actually pay for.
But whatever, the figures don’t add up. 20 billion files a year, assuming 79p per file at retail adds up to £15.8 billion per year, not 1.1 billion over the past three years. But then I only got grade C at Maths GCSE, so maybe I’m missing something.
“…decriminalising the millions of people in this country for copying their CDs onto music players for personal use…”
Can’t argue with that.
“Some ISPs claim there is nothing they can do to stop illegal downloading of music.
But last month alone, there were eight sites that hosted more than 25,000 illegal downloads.”
And those ISPs are pretty much right. Block those eight sites and another eight sites will appear, or another technology will develop that doesn’t require tracker sites.
“They have already established the Internet Watch Foundation to monitor child abuse and incitement to racial hatred on the internet.
They should be doing the same when it comes to digital piracy.”
I screamed inside when I read this. The casual linking of these three disparate areas of internet activity looks so obvious when you don’t understand the practicalities or potential fall-out. It’s not as simple as blocking ISOHunt or MiniNova.
ISPs fight child porn and hate speech because they are evil. They make an exception for these two particularly nasty activities. File sharing is not evil; it may be illegal and it may harm some people’s business interests but it’s not evil. A party supposedly against state intervention in business and private life shouldn’t take the voluntary blocking of two extreme activities as a cue to hint at the need for the statutory blocking of far less harmful activity.
But it’s not just about the thin end of the wedge. Political Penguin has an easy to understand explanation of why it isn’t just a matter of blocking torrent tracker websites. Imposing, or even just strongly suggesting, that ISPs should filter certain content marks a fundamental change in the role of the British state and it would impose a huge financial burden on … you and me! We’d pay for the ridiculous arms race that would ensue and that the ISPs would lose.
I don’t have answers to file sharing or piracy. I do believe in copyright. I believe that artists deserve payment. I don’t believe in propping up a failing business model, if that’s what it is, by adding an enormous and worthless burden of red tape to another industry.
Update: Prague Tory has left a comment and my reply to that clarifies some of what I’ve written above.
July 10th, 2007 at 6:34 am
This piece is a bit disappointing in a few ways. Whilst I’ll acknowledge what you say about his praise for the music industry’s innovation (I’ve seen EMI’s internal risk register) Cameron’s audience was the music industry so why would he attack them unnecessarily? And is it surprising that record companies are trying to resist technological change? They are hardly set up to be at the bleeding edge of technological progress.
From a government standpoint illegal is illegal - morality/evil doesn’t come into it. If you’re arguing that you believe in copyright and that artists deserve payment, then presumably you are not happy with the status quo, in which case you need to do a lot better than simply attack a proposed solution (apparently on the grounds of cost) - I’m waiting to hear your better alternative solution.
Besides if well run, this initiative wouldn’t be a costly enforcement process. You might think that file sharing websites would pop up left, right and centre if the market leaders are blocked, but that hardly makes sense if they know they’ll likely be shut themselves.
Protection of property rights is a key part of conservatism and indeed a civilised society. I know that this is a touchstone issue for IT libertarians but I’m waiting to hear some better ideas.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Hi Prague.
“Cameron’s audience was the music industry so why would he attack them unnecessarily?”
I’m not suggesting he should attack them but praising their ingenuity sounds disingenuous to those who have watched the record industry block just about every new technology that they weren’t directly responsible for. That will damage the Conservatives’ credibility amongst IT professionals.
“And is it surprising that record companies are trying to resist technological change? They are hardly set up to be at the bleeding edge of technological progress.”
You could have said the same thing about British Leyland or any number of organisations that have failed due to their inability to keep up with market demands. I do understand, though, that this is about the state finding better ways to prevent something that’s already illegal.
“From a government standpoint illegal is illegal - morality/evil doesn’t come into it.”
I don’t dispute that. The Internet Watch Foundation is independent of government. My point is that the ISP sector has chosen to attempt to block two extreme types of activity because they can see that there is a special case. Even those attempts won’t prevent someone who actively seeks out that sort of material. File sharing is not on the same moral level as child pornography, so there is far less of a case to ask ISPs to become censor.
“in which case you need to do a lot better than simply attack a proposed solution (apparently on the grounds of cost) - I’m waiting to hear your better alternative solution.”
There isn’t an easy solution. I don’t attack Cameron’s proposal solely on cost: I object to it primarily on principle but also because anyone who has worked in the ISP sector will know that it will be little more than useless and so, I believe, it shows the Conservatives to be poorly researched in one of the most important parts of modern life and commerce.
So, my objection on principle is that ISPs should not become censors. I can see a case for attempting to censor something so widely accepted as evil as child pornography. However, an ISP is no more responsible for its customers’ activities than is the Royal Mail or London Underground. Right now, most people accept that airport-style security on the Tube is undesirable even though it would greatly reduce the risk of 7/7 type attacks. Similarly, asking ISPs to attempt to inspect everything that their customers do changes the relationship individuals have with the state and puts a great deal of arbitrary power in the hands of ISPs. I object to ID cards for a similar reason.
Who decides what to censor? How do they make the distinction between the latest U2 album and my mate Jono who has chosen to make his music freely available? Which brings me onto practicalities and, yes, cost.
The infrastructure that ISPs would require in order to become the record company’s censors would be enormous; that is if this were to be anything more than a window-dressing exercise. The practicality of blocking the eight largest torrent tracker sites would be simple and take a few minutes of configuration changes for each ISP. It would have no effect whatsoever on the overall level of file sharing. Legitimate files are shared by p2p, so you can’t just block the ports. MIME types and file extensions can be changed.
If there were an easy distinction to make between legitimate traffic and illegal traffic, this wouldn’t be such a problem. But there isn’t so it would be very easy to get around any blocks. In my last job, working for a major web host, I regularly saw the police pop along to ask us to shut down one website or other. Those websites no doubt moved out of the UK, though.
So, I object not because I think everyone should be able to download the latest Robbie Williams CD. I object because it puts too much censorship power into the hands of the state and the ISPs. I also object because it just makes the party look silly. You can block eight websites but the more you block, the more you inspect, the more mistakes are made and the more the freedom of non-illegal-downloading people is infringed.
“Protection of property rights is a key part of conservatism and indeed a civilised society.”
Of course but the proposals Cameron made put far too much power in the state’s hands. So, it all depends on if you think that making the state and ISPs into censors is the right thing to do in order to curb illegal file sharing.
“I know that this is a touchstone issue for IT libertarians but I’m waiting to hear some better ideas.”
Me too but I’m happy to acknowledge that I don’t have all the answers. What I do know, though, is that many in the IT industry will understand the enormous changes that will be necessary for ISPs, if these proposals are ever realised, and it appears from David Cameron’s speech that the Conservative Party doesn’t. That’s my problem here: the speech makes it harder for us, as a party, to have credibility with one section of society.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Cheers for the clarification, Matt. Adds a lot to the post, I feel. Nevertheless, I would still like to hear some practical ideas from you IT chaps rather than espouse a utopian ideological purity that doesn’t really stack up in the world.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Perhaps we should have an informal group amongst people in the party to try to find a good solution to this.
I’m a pragmatist: I’m immediately turned off by “utopian ideological purity”. So, I’d like to find a solution that works and that doesn’t negative consequences that are worse than the effect of the file sharing itself. I am quite certain, at the moment, that we’ll only ever be able to make it difficult for illegal file sharing to happen and will never be able to eradicate it.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Mr. P. Tory: I think you need to look at the situation from another perspective. The following article may provide a possible solution?
http://linkpot.net/haste/
“From a government standpoint illegal is illegal - morality/evil doesn’t come into it.”
In a democracy if more than 50% of the population want something to be legal and vote in a referendum to make it legal, will that make it legal?
July 11th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Why not set up a facebook Group, Matt? I know a few other podcasters who might have some views.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:38 am
David: thanks for that link. I’d not seen it before. Don’t you think it’s a little naive? If I get time, I’ll post a proper reply to it.
Prague: Yeah, not a bad idea.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:02 am
The problem the music and movie people have is that they have such a convoluted argument. What do they own? The product, the creative rights?
If it’s the product - then I have just paid for it. I bought it off them. It’s mine. If I choose to run my car of a cliff, that’s my beef, not the manufacturers. So don’t mind me if I send a friend a copy of this spiffing new Killers record.
Oh, it’s the intellectual property rights? Ok, then. I’ll pay £15.99 for that Shrek DVD. But wait, my little boy has just scratched it - making it unplayable. How much for a replacement? £15.99???? But I have already paid once for the “intellectual property rights?” So, if you don’t mind, I’ll not be paying for the content again - I already have rights to that film - just charge me for the disc. Here’s 99p. Ta!
The truth is, PragueTory, the music industry has screwed people for years. They have always fleeced the most ill-informed section of the market - the kids, and have raked it in for decades. The music market was always poisoned. It was never worth protecting.
The future of music is in smaller CD sales and more live performances. Music stars will hopefully make less money, and they’ll get a genuine chance to, “keep it real.”
If conservatives want to protect property, they should ensure they have the moral and legal authority. If the music providers argument is *properly* tested, they’ll regret ever going to court.