ACTA: A Christmas Gift for Big Media

I've been following the developments of the ultra-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement since this document leaked several months ago. This treaty represents an assemblage of the world's wealthiest countries getting together to fight a rampant problem - not public health, not rogue states, not even terrorism, but copyright infringement.

It has become clear that the term counterfeiting will not be restricted to physical goods, where cheap, inferior reproductions could cause harm to the unwitting end user, but instead expanded to target "internet distribution." To quote Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) counsel David Fewer,

“If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas, what would they look like? This is pretty close.”

This agreement is slated to be fast-tracked with a goal of having it signed by the end of this year. Unfortunately, the entire process has remained shrouded in mystery with little public input on an issue that will assuredly affect them. It's time to end these kinds of one-sided debates.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a very informative page on the treaty as well as a means of contacting your senator - urge them to demand that this treaty be brought into the light so we can judge its contents.

Reznor does it Right

If you've been following this blog (or my personal one) for some time, you may have read a few of my past comments about the entertainment industry and things like filesharing.

In my mind, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has made a big stand in the music world this week and decided to do things right. The first of the four albums in the set has been released for free either from his site or through popular Bittorrent trackers. The others are available through the tiered system of fees depending on how much physical material you want. The $5 for the complete digital set is little more than a donation - one I think many music fans would be happy to pay even if they downloaded the other three albums from alternative sources. The best part? All of the tracks are full quality, can be downloaded in lossless format, and are licensed under Creative Commons. This means you can use the songs essentially however you want, so long as you aren't trying to profit from them.

I would recommend checking out this instrumental effort by Trent and the band if you haven't already - after all, it's free.

Vindication

A while back I went with representatives from UMBC and EDUCAUSE to discuss ongoing legislation concerning college campuses and filesharing (Student Government Meets Federal Government). This recent article from Ars Technica vindicates my contentions to fellow students, campus administrators, and on Capitol Hill that the music business is changing. The solution to the "problem" is not to ask colleges to "develop a plan" to fight filesharing, nor is it to force colleges to "encourage the use of legal alternatives" by sinking money into abominable startups like Ruckus. Rather, it is the music industry's responsibility to embrace the digital era and eliminate filesharing not through force, but by providing a quality product.

This article is an excellent read and contains the numbers to back it up - numbers I am inclined to believe as opposed to some of the outrageous claims being haphazardly slung around by some.


A brave new world: the music biz at the dawn of 2008

Why Ruckus is Not a Solution

There has been some talk recently about Ruckus, a subscription-based service that has struck a deal with the UMD system to provide its content to students "free" of charge (student tuition and fees notwithstanding). Services like this one continue to be lauded as the "legal alternative to downloading", and indeed this particular incarnation has been endorsed by SGA.
However, services like this one come up short in some key areas which is why to the music enthusiast or serious downloader, they will never compare to what is available on torrent trackers.

• Music can only be played via their software, not your music player of choice and not on your operating system of choice.

• While there is considerable selection, it is nowhere near complete and nowhere near what is available on elite music trackers.

• The DRM-laden songs prevent transfer to a portable music device, like my iPod. Even if you do use software to (illegally) remove the DRM, the files are not .mp3 but .wma, a format that is not compatible with iPods.

• Even after going through all the trouble of freeing the songs, they are still in poor quality. If you decide to transcode to .mp3 to put the songs on an iPod, your quality will go down even further.

The final blow to this model is that using programs like SoundTaxi or TuneBite (programs that actually charge you to use them!) to remove the DRM from these songs is illegal. If one is going to be operating in this gray area anyway, why not just go for the best and get high quality, usable music via bittorrent and torrent trackers?