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Music Media Editorial

Questions for a P2P Downloading Panel Discussion? 63

Posted by Cliff from the stuff-you-wanna-know dept.
George P. Burdell asks: "On April 5, Georgia Tech's Honor Advisory Council will host a panel discussion between opposing sides of the P2P downloading issue. Among other panel members, a representative from the RIAA has agreed to attend the event. The discussion is intended to raise the level of awareness of students who may think they know all they need to know about the issue. What are some of the pressing questions the tech community has for panel members on both sides of the issue?"
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Questions for a P2P Downloading Panel Discussion? More

Questions for a P2P Downloading Panel Discussion?

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  • To the RIAA: (Score:3, Funny)

    by LouCifer ( 771618 ) on Friday March 18, 2005 @10:33AM (#11975631)
    How's it feel to be a tool for 'the man'?

    How's it feel to work for a conglomerate that sues dead people and old ladies that don't own computers?

    How's it feel to work for a conglomerate that ignores fans of its artists when they beg [sfgate.com] a record company to release a shelved album so they can buy it instead of having to steal it via P2P?

    I could go on and on.
    • "shelved album so they can buy it instead of having to steal it via P2P?"

      Sounds like one tool talking to another, if you have bought into the ludicrous claim that it is possible to STEAL just by engaging in possible copyright infringement. They've won you over if you are already using RIAA-speak.

  • "Among other panel members, a representative from the RIAA has agreed to attend the event"

    ...and the other panel members will expect RIAA subpeonas within days after the conference.

  • "opposing sides of the P2P downloading issue"

    The MPAA/RIAA and everyone else.
  • "a representative from the RIAA has agreed to attend the event"
    So he can see what's "hip" in colleges and file a lawsuit to follow.

  • Question for RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by justanyone ( 308934 ) on Friday March 18, 2005 @10:58AM (#11975909) Homepage Journal
    For the RIAA:

    It would seem that all information-based, intellectual property (IP) business models depend on either:
    A. Being able to control the distribution medium;
    B. Introducing risks or rewards that make payment preferable to nonpayment.

    Option A seems to be doomed once the intellectual property is digitally transferrable in its entirity in a manageable size across the internet.

    If intellectual property owners can divide the IP into a transferrable part and a non-transferrable part (like any Application Service Provider does), they can still succeed.

    Option B includes the use of enforcement, which has a huge public relations downside. But, it can also dictate another pricing model. If there is a quality/reliability difference between acquiring a dataset (IP product) from a random location vs. getting it from a known good source, the consumer will prefer the better cost/benefit.

    Isn't it safer to just acknowledge option B is the more sustainable option and pursue lower prices in a higher quality format?

  • Go Tech! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bpb213 ( 561569 ) <bpbyrne@gmaGIRAFFEil.com minus herbivore> on Friday March 18, 2005 @11:25AM (#11976241)
    As a Tech Alum, I must say it is nice to see my school taking on these issues.

    However, I have a question for the panel, and the submission form seems to 404 on me.

    While I was attending Tech, (only last year), Tech took a stance that it was an ISP, and thus not responsible for filtering the internet. How will a policy on P2P usage effect this stance?

  • Ethics/Morality (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Friday March 18, 2005 @11:37AM (#11976414) Homepage
    What are the moral and ethical considerations for using and developing peer to peer software? Is it any different from any other software?
    • They're freaking tools, there are no morals involved.

      Morals are involved with the use and application of tools.

      It's quite obvious that our society is seriously messed up when this is a heavily debatable issue.
      • Yes there are. There are always such issues. Even for tools. What if you created a tool that's sole purpose was to assist with suicide? That's just a tool, after all. Are there no moral or ethical issues associated with it? If there are with that and not with p2p, then what's so different? Is it just because someone may die? What about tools designed to help a pickpocket do his job?

        You have to admit that the majority of users of p2p software are engaged in activities that are currently considered i
        • You are talking about the morality involved in creating a tool that could be used for immoral uses. I was talking about the tool itself. There is an important difference here. A stone can be a tool. It could be used to hammer a nail into a piece of wood, or to bludgeon someone with. The tool here has no morality associated with it.

          Now lets look at the gun briefly: It could easily be debated whether the creator of the first gun had just morals or not. Same with all users of guns since. However, since the gu
    • Furthermore, how can it be a crime to not deprive someone of something? If making copies is a crime, then we should do away with VCRs, cameras, photocopiers, scanners, and the like.

      I'm not hurting anyone else when I copy something to enrich my life. I'm only benefitting the universe--more abundance with less expense. Taking a picture so memories last longer, recording a concert, sharing MP3s and movies with friends, making CDs for the car, copying books, music, movies, and cars (in less than 20 years)-

  • My only statement would be.... "The cat is out of the bag, the industry has changed whether the industry in control wants to admit it or if they rather scream, whine, and sue grandmothers over it, well thats their decision. The very definition of progress is change itself. This is a change the consumers are quite happy with and the industry because they find they can't be as profitible as before. Which they could be, if they pulled their heads from their money leaking asses. Hell, I myself could think of a
  • Have you considered alternate methods of sale? For example, selling time to advertisers so that their ads can play while the album is downloaded for free? You could target demographics by the style of music/artist. I imagine that ads that could be viewed when the new 50Cent became available would have been a hot property.

    You do realize that whatever price point you settle on, people are going to continue to pirate unless it's free?

  • P2P as a tool (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What's your position on P2P as a content-neutral technology? Traditional protocols such as HTTP and FTP can also be used to commit copyright infringement.

    Do you think that there is a qualitative difference between the two types of technology, and if so, what is that difference?

    Do you think that the difference is in marketing, and if so, why do you brand all P2P as bad?

    Do you think that the difference is in how easy things like Kazaa make it to commit copyright infringement, and would you declare

  • Why must you constantly attack the messenger when it's the messages that are the problem?

    In this case, P2P channels are the messenger, and whatever content is being sent over those channels are the messages.

    Let me give a brief analogy to the current situation: I propose that Bell and all the worlds Telcos MUST be shut down IMMEDIATELY because they allow conspiracy's to commit crime. If criminals couldn't talk over a phone, there would be no crime.

    Now, as a further thought process, lets pretend all P2P ch


  • "Barely Legal" or "MET-Art"?

  • Until the RIAA (and their industry counterparts) fully recognized the axiom:


    Be liberal in what you receive and conservative in what you send


    And then devise a business model around this axion, the panel is a wasting our time.
  • It seems to me the issue isn't downloading. It's uploading! The people getting sued are the ones sharing the art, not the ones leeching it.

    Ask the panel to clarify their personal feelings on where the misdeed, if there is one, is committed. Is it the giver or the taker? If it's the giver, what about accidentally open shared folders? Can you have a crime without intent?

    Ask the members of the panel (the ones who download music, anyway) whether they prefer to get a whole album, or just the one or two "hit si

  • Question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by abrotman ( 323016 ) on Friday March 18, 2005 @01:56PM (#11977994)
    Can I legally download music that I already own? For example I own the song in one of record,tape,CD, and if so, may I legally download a version of this song from a P2P network or some other source.
    I have never been able to get a real good answer from anyone regarding this. I own hundreds of tapes and a decent number of vinyl recordings. Haven't I already obtained my fair use rights by purchasing the album in one of those formats? Why should I, as a consumer, be forced to pay again for something I already own, if all I want is to be able to listen to it on my computer. And if not, could the industry somehow be persuaded to allow me to "trade in" my older copy with credit towards a CD of the same album? I feel it's kind of rediculous to pay full price for the same album in vinyl,tape, and CD(and whatever the next medium is), especially when I have boxes of cassettes/records/CDs.
    • I can answer this for you.

      No.

      In the eyes of the **AA there is no 'fair use'

      Yes, you're gonna have to buy it again.

      And again.

      And again.

      In every medium they come up with.

      • Cassette tapes had a fee put on them specifically because people made copies of their music on them and shared them. If I'm not mistaken, this was the compromise between banning cassettes and simply allowing copyright infringement. You can put your music from whatever format onto cassette all you want because you've paid the fee. This is part of why there has been a push to put a similar fee on blank cd's The problem is that while cassettes were rarely used for data, blank cd's are often used for data and m
        • Correct, however, this does not give us the right to download music that we already own in a new medium.

          IOW, just because I own several albums on vinyl and tape doesn't mean I can go and get them in MP3 format legally anywhere. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to.

          Hell, I've got 100+ cassettes that I'd love to have in digital format so I can make my own mix CDs without having to dump them to my HDD as poor quality WAVs first and feebly attempt to clean them up.

          The alternatives are to re-purchase them either a
  • To me, the idea of copywritten works becoming public property after a limited period of time means that the authors and pushishers of useful work could benefit enough to compensate them for the time they spent creating the works.

    The public would also benefit, as useful works would become public property, allowing others to build on them. This is the basis of scientific advancement, as a discovery often leads to more discoveries, but only if the initial work can be used as a foundation for later efforts. In
  • Seriously, i would be afraid if the RIAA was to show up.

    THey are liable to take license plate numbers and track you down.

    They arent known for playing fair, so why would they start today?

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