LAS VEGAS, NEVADA — The 111th Congress began yesterday, and at least among the circles I’m traveling in out here at the Consumer Electronics Show, there’s a buzz about how copyright will play out in the new Congress and the new administration.

The consensus at the P2P Media Summit here hosted by the Distributed Computing Industry Association? Very low key, if at all.

There were some very bright and informed people who said that here, and I’m not one to disagree with them. We’ve shared our desire for stronger domestic and international IP enforcement with the Obama transition team and with all of the incoming new members of Congress, and we obviously will continue that message. Frankly, the economy is Job One, and when an industry employs 11 million people, as the copyright industries do, keeping those jobs, and hopefully adding new ones, is a big deal. But my members are not like Wall Street or Detroit — we’re not asking for a bailout — so that won’t have our issues as central to the debate.

That’s fine.

But I did bring up one possible development that we could see on Capitol Hill. Last Congress Rep. Mary Bono Mack introduced a bill that essentially would have had the Federal Trade Commission ensure that distributors of peer-to-peer software receive consent from a computer owner before any installation occurs that could lead to files being shared. The intent of the legislation is to target behavior exhibited in the past by some P2P software distributors that essentially ensured many files would be shared and made it difficult for computer owners to know what was being shared or to disable the sharing of certain files.

I’m very confident that we’ll see this bill re-introduced in the coming weeks, and that it will have bipartisan cosponsors, most likely a great many House Commerce Committee members, a committee on which Ms. Bono Mack sits and to which the bill would be referred. The new chairman of that committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Cal.), about six years ago excoriated the p2p industry in hearings and in a commissioned report on this issue, uncovering some egregious practices by some p2p providers.

Is the problem as bad now as it was in 2003? I hope not. There are more good guys in the p2p space then there were a few years ago, and anyone operating legally has absolutely no incentive to betray users. But whenever I meet people and tell them what I do (I meet a lot of people over 25 years of age), they almost always say they used to file-share. I ask them why they stopped, hoping it’s because they finally felt too guilty about possessing a creative work produced by another while not doing anything to reward the creator for his time and expense and creativity. But no, I”m usually disappointed on that front.

What they say is they were afraid of adware and spyware. Some found their computers slowing down. Some heard horror stories from friends about computers being completely hijacked. They decided they’d rather pay for media and not have to constantly stress about protecting their computer.

So the fact is that this bill reflects the concern of millions of Americans, and according to a Harris Interactive study discussed at the conference here today, that fear is high among p2p users and non-users alike (in other words, users are doing it but are scared and non-users are reluctant to try p2p because of that fear).

I brought this up on a panel I was on, and was struck both during the panel discussion and in conversations after the panel with how indignant many were regarding this legislation. Listen, despite the fact that we now live in a world where the dangers of not regulating have become very clear, I’m still inclined toward deregulation whenever possible. And if I were a well-intentioned p2p software developer, I wouldn’t like to have to take on a bunch of extra steps to placate the FTC.

BUT. DCIA has promoted best practices on security, but it would seem that hasn’t calmed the fears of average Americans. What the good guys need to do is do some internal housecleaning and get the bad actors to knock it off, because those bad actors are making it difficult for the good actors.

I mean this not just in the context of the Hill. I mean it in the reluctance of copyright owners to license with p2p networks. I listed in my presentation three concerns by copyright owners: 1. The prevalence, particularly in the past, of p2p networks appropriating others’ property, distributing it for free, and then offering a “better than nothing” compensation plan, thus completely ignoring creators’ rights. 2. Building on that, a lack of clear monetization paths that don’t completely cannibalize existing revenue streams. 3. A recognition of hesitation on the part of many consumers; better to put your eggs in a basket where the most consumers are going to be willing to go.

DCIA gets a really interesting and intelligent turnout at its conferences, both in speakers and attendees. The speakers by and large are big p2p advocates, and that’s fine, but I am technology-agnostic. I don’t really care how copyrighted works are distributed, I just want them to be ubiquitous, easy for consumers to obtain, with the rights of creators respected. This is the third or fourth DCIA event at which I’ve spoken. I’m still not sure the message is getting out to everyone that many rightsholders don’t feel that they must at some point embrace p2p. There are many distribution options, more every day, and bandwidth costs and storage costs are declining rapidly.

P2P providers need to address the three concerns I listed if they are to get a proper hearing from rights owners.

Share this:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 8:37 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under FTC, capitol hill, creators, events, p2p. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.