Get sent down for sharing files

March 29, 2004 Off By leigh

In a bid to imprison the entire U.S. population, congressional committees are currently considering a bill which would lead to imprisonment for people caught sharing 2,500 files via peer-to-peer networks.


In a bid to imprison the entire U.S. population, congressional committees are currently considering a bill which would lead to imprisonment for people caught sharing 2,500 files via peer-to-peer networks.

My feelings are somewhat mixed on the issue. I certainly oppose jail time for something so trivial as file swapping, considering the history of the issue. There are historical precedents for alternative approaches, such as blank tape taxes when home taping was an issue. For example an indemnity fee on broadband access could easily be adopted, such that users accepting the surcharge would directly pay artists, similar to ASCAP, and avoid prosecution. The money goes direct to the artists and would bypass the record companies unless the artists appointed them as business managers.

On the other hand, like the dinosaurs they are, I encourage big money media corporations to continue to restrict access to their product. Historically global culture is moving to more community based art, as the means of production (music production technologies, public access TV, for example) becomes more democratised due to reduction in cost.

It is simply becoming easier to be a cultural producer in addition to being a consumer. We can see the cults of personality continuing to fracture, as the owners of these manufactured identities mount rear-guard actions to protect their investments. While the big five continue to try to peddle under-talented pop stars to their vision of the talentless teeny-bopper heartland, “the kids are all right”. They’re already defining their own futures and defining a cultural landscape that reuses cultural artifacts in a tradition stretching over a hundred years of cultural appropriation.

There are many examples of valid reward for cultural endeavour through means other than marketing corporations, for example the donation system on sourceforge.net, government sponsorship of art funding through funding bodies (not every first world government is as narrow minded as successive U.S. governments in their approach to the NEA). P2P and other technologies will become a domain for a new breed of community artists who do not need to sign themselves into onerous debts and agreements with large corporations.