Woman Falls in Face Of Record Company Forces

The morals involved with file sharing on the Web can most certainly conflict with one another. On the one hand we see consumers fighting for some measure of what majority of the population considers justice. On the other, there exists (in some instances) the significant exploitation of the concept of “free", which certainly does need addressing.

Unfortunately, at a time when the waters are still very, very murky, there are a select few bearing the brunt of digital copyright owners’ wrath; some of which manage to elude conviction, some of which do not.

A resident of the state of Minnesota is one such terribly unlucky soul, who yesterday was told to pay $222,000 in damages to a coterie of record companies, pinned by a jury as guilty of illegally transferring copyrighted content to others on a peer-to-peer network.

The network in profile is Kazaa, now considered (and rightfully so) an antiquated system through which digital files of many types were once sent to and fro across the Internet in great quantities, during a time in which broadband in the US was a luxury mostly unavailable to the average citizen - apart from those at universities and big businesses and government institutions. Such file transfers were gauged by the kilobit, rather than the megabit, as is regularly done today. Ms Jammie Thomas, the defendant in the case decided Wednesday, was apparently still somewhat stuck in the past, as it were, and thus quite easily traced by anti-piracy forces.

Now, there’s a part of me that faults Ms Thomas for recklessly using the very transparent Kazaa to do her digital sharing (that is, if she really did distribute said files). A very ignorant use of technology, no doubt.

But the record industry should be brought to account for the wrongs it has committed as well. The industry as a whole has brought the proverbial hammer down on most anyone it can round up, be it the grandmother who’s nephew(s) or niece(s) may or may not have used her internet connection for allegedly illicit transfers or a teenager with no knowledge or understanding of copyright clauses. In fact, the general population hardly has a clue of copyright law whatsoever. Such variables do need to be taken into account.

First, however, copyright law needs a major overhaul.

Seriously. Is copyright law not due for an examination in the era of digital media downloads? It could certainly use a good few well-placed edits, no?

The fact that the record industry has the seemingly uninhibited power to arrange for online services to adhere to unique rules for the distribution and allowed use of downloads by consumers (i.e., iTunes users get to share with up to five unique computers/users, while Microsoft is told to limit the playback of music shared between its Zune music players), is alone a very troubling development for the public to witness. If copyright restrictions are to be placed on digital downloads (mind you, not in the form of DRM, which is a despicable invention, but through simple stipulations on paper), should they not in the very least have some measure of uniformity?

Truth be told, copyright law requires a major overhaul. And it’s not the consumer who is at fault for the decline of the music business. It’s the content owner that stands knee deep in error. The industry would find itself on a continued growth trend rather than one headed downhill this very moment if it had addressed consumer demands and welcomed change many years ago rather than press for increased restrictions and fight the tide every which way it knew how.

Some in the industry are finally coming around to accept to the correct way to migrate to digital-only (however cautiously) but it’s simply too late. The damage is done. The consumer understands better than ever the ways in which the record companies conduct themselves, and, well, they don’t like it one bit. So they’ve revolted. And we all know full well which side’s coming out the winner.

Ms Jammie Thomas is, for lack of a better word, a casualty in this ongoing battle, as are a good number of the 26,000 already slapped with legal papers, whether she realized it or not. There’ll likely be more to undergo the same experience as she. But after all is said and done, the defiant music industry will show to be a deeply ailing one. One that will need the consumer to see to it that it survives.

It’s just too bad that we’ve been forced to do this the hard way.