Among the many ways that copyrighted texts are misappropriated, none is more prevalent than peer-to-peer file sharing.  Nor is any more pernicious, for it flagrantly flouts the law without appearing to break it.

Though P2P (as it is called) started in the music and video businesses it has spread to e-books.  While pundits scoff at the notion that the e-book industry could be plundered as thoroughly as the music industry, the extent of the outlawry is staggering and is the Number 1 threat to the growth of this nascent field. (See A Bootleg E-Book Bazaar Operates in Plain Sight)

The concept of peer-to-peer file sharing was developed around the turn of the 20th century by a number of brilliant programmers determined to get their hands on the treasure of music that had become abundantly available when the record industry went digital.  The Internet offered a powerful tool for sharing musical files if only a path around copyright laws could be found. Perhaps these enterprising people were inspired by head shop owners who sold the wherewithal for drug use but not the drugs themselves. There was nothing technically illegal about selling cigarette papers, roach clips, bongs and the like. By the same token, a computer through which friends exchanged files should not be considered unlawful, they contended.

By the end of the 1990s the music industry was being ravaged by file-sharing, fueled in some measure by popular anger against a recording industry that was thought to be gouging customers.

The principle is simple: a computer is used as a conduit for persons to share music, video, or texts with each other free of charge.  The downloaders cannot be said to be infringing because they are for all intents and purposes friends sharing content they like, and there is nothing illegal about that.  Nor can the computer owner be said to infringe because he does not possess the property; he is simply introducing friends or managing a channel between them and facilitating their sharing activities.

The forerunner of the file sharing movement was Napster, and for several years it seemed unstoppable. According to Wikipedia, “Napster users relayed search requests through a central server owned by Napster (the Napster central server also maintained an index of users and files available on the network at any given time).”

The centralized computer was Napster’s Achilles heel, because it meant that the company was in a position to block access or remove infringing material when a copyright owner complained. When it would not or could not do so under court pressure, the company went out of business.

The creators of Napster’s successor, Grokster, found a way around the problem of a centralized repository for files and user information. In a 2003 article by Chris Sprigman, the scheme was described thus:

When a user boots the software, his computer is directed to sign on to a “root supernode” …which then directs the user to a “local supernode.” The “local supernode” is some user’s computer, which has been temporarily designated to route file-sharing requests among a large number of other users. (A particular user’s computer may function as a local supernode one day but not the next; the process is largely invisible to the user).

Suppose a Grokster user requests a certain file – it could be a song, a movie clip, a video game, or an e-book. His search request is relayed among a large number of local supernodes and on to individual users. Once the requested file is found, it is transferred directly between the users.

Subsequent programmers engineered the user-to-user concept until it was almost impossible to find a computer, or operator, responsible for disseminating unauthorized files. Nevertheless, a lawsuit was brought against Grokster by MGM Studios. The battle that raged through the court system is well worth reading in Wikpedia’s account, especially because lower courts and appeals supported Grokster.  Finally the US Supreme Court ruled against Grokster and the company ceased operations.

Today if you visit the company’s website you will find the following message:

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files
using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.

Napster and Grokster were driven out of business because angry rights holders took legal action and had the time, money and determination to press their case to the limit.  Those cases dealt with music and videos.  No parallel case has yet been brought against book infringers. Should one be?

Richard Curtis

For a full archive of E-Reads postings about piracy, visit Pirate Central.

Though piracy is the biggest threat to the success of the e-book industry, nowhere were e-books mentioned in measures recently adopted by a consortium of media companies and Internet carriers to combat copyright parasites. Music? Yes. Movies? Yes. Video? Yes.

Books? No.

The campaign to push back peer to peer file-sharing and other freeloading was adopted by a powerful contingent of media carriers including AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable who recognize that mass infringements will doom them if they don’t organize to fight.

“After years of negotiations with Hollywood and the music industry,” reports the New York Times‘ Ben Sisario, “the nation’s top Internet providers have agreed to a systematic approach to identifying customers suspected of digital copyright infringement and then alerting them via e-mail or other means.” (See To Slow Piracy, Internet Providers Ready Penalties by Ben Sisario.)

Unlike the legal carpet-bombing conducted against end users by the Recording Industry Association of America, which lost in public relations more than it gained in halting unauthorized downloading (See This Academy Award Invitation Had a Subpoena in It) , the new approach escalates from polite warnings to perpetrators to interference with their Internet access.

All well and good for music and movie rights-holders.  But who speaks for authors? Last time we heard from the Authors Guild, their president Scott Turow was appealing to Congress to DO something about piracy. So? What is the government doing about it? From the viewpoint of victimized authors, it looks like damned little.

Richard Curtis

“The envelope, please”, that trite phrase used to announce the winner of an Oscar, took on a new meaning when some five thousand individuals received notices that they were being sued for illegally downloading the Academy Award-winning film The Hurt Locker, Ethan Smith reports in the Wall Street Journal.  The recipients had copped the film using BitTorrent, the file-sharing protocol.

Unlike the lawsuit brought against music downloaders by the Recording Industry Association of America, this action was brought by one producer, Voltage Pictures LLC. In fact – and mystifyingly – the Motion Picture Association of America distanced itself from Voltage’s action. A spokesperson wrote that “The MPAA and our member companies have absolutely nothing to do with these lawsuits.”

Suing end users is fraught with dangers and imponderables.  For one thing, it’s bad public relations. Smith cites that RIAA subpoenas were served to “very young children, old people who said they didn’t own computers, even a dead person.”

Nevertheless, such actions are a sign of how outraged copyright owners are about having their work robbed. The RIAA was willing to incur a PR black eye in exchange for intimidating would-be thieves.  And perhaps they did, especially when those would-be’s learned that it had cost one defendant $675,000 (see File Share This for details).

Suing file-sharers is not like suing your neighbor for running his lawn mower into your car. “The process of suing people for downloading can be complicated and costly,” Smith reminds us. “After the relatively straightforward task of recording the Internet protocol, or IP, address of each person offering a piece of media, the plaintiff must learn who that numerical address belongs to, generally by sending a subpoena to the Internet service provider associated with it.”

We’ve had lawsuits against music downloaders and now we have one against film downloaders.  Are e-book downloaders next?

If victims of piracy have any say about it, the answer will be a resounding Yes. And there are a lot of victims. Are you one of them? Does your blood boil when you see yourself ripped off and your mugger laughing at you? Maybe you will take heart from the Wall Street Journal‘s account, which you can read in full here.

Richard Curtis