[ARSCLIST] Embrace file-sharing, or die

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 06:09:17 -0500
From: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: ip <ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [IP] Embrace file-sharing, or die


Embrace file-sharing, or die
A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading
music. The gist: 50 million Americans can't be wrong.

Editor's note: John Snyder is president of Artist House Records, a board
member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS),
and a 32-time Grammy nominee. On Thursday night, he submitted the following
paper to NARAS.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Snyder and Ben Snyder



Feb. 1, 2003  |  The following was written in response to a discussion by
the board of governors of the New York chapter of National Association of
Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) regarding the position NARAS should take
with respect to a new public relations campaign proposed by the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) condemning those who download music
from the Internet. 

The subject of digital rights, and the position NARAS should take with
respect to it, is near and dear to me. I've read a great deal about it. If I
may, I would like to offer a few thoughts:

I. Intellectual Property

Irrespective of what we think should be done, it is still currently illegal
to download copyrighted music that you didn't buy. This is a problem that
needs to be addressed. The statistic discussed in the December meeting that
there were 3 billion downloads the previous month shows that the law is
going to have to be changed, unless you take the position that downloaded
music is stealing and thereby criminalize the society. But how can 50
million people (over 200 million worldwide) be wrong? How do we reconcile
the reality of downloaded music with the idea of intellectual property?

Intellectual property has not always been defined and protected as it is
today. Thomas Jefferson wrote about the philosophical considerations:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea,
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession
of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar
character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other
possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives
instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at
mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread
from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of
man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible
over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the
air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of
confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature,
be a subject of property."

The above quote appeared in John Perry Barlow's excellent essay, "The
Economy of Ideas," published first in the March 1994 issue of Wired
magazine. Barlow writes:

"If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously
distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without
its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to
get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what
will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?

"Since we don't have a solution to what is a profoundly new kind of
challenge, and are apparently unable to delay the galloping digitization of
everything not obstinately physical, we are sailing into the future on a
sinking ship. 

"This vessel, the accumulated canon of copyright and patent law, was
developed to convey forms and methods of expression entirely different from
the vaporous cargo it is now being asked to carry. It is leaking as much
from within as from without.

"Legal efforts to keep the old boat floating are taking three forms: a
frenzy of deck chair rearrangement, stern warnings to the passengers that if
she goes down, they will face harsh criminal penalties, and serene,
glassy-eyed denial.

"Intellectual property law cannot be patched, retrofitted, or expanded to
contain digitized expression any more than real estate law might be revised
to cover the allocation of broadcasting spectrum..."

<snip>

<http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/01/file_trading_manifesto/index.html>