Rich Fiscus
3 Feb 2009 0:37
In October of 2008 the European Commission's Committee on Legal Affairs completed a study on copyright enforcement. So far nothing has been done about implementing the measures suggested in the so-called Medina Report (named for its author Manuel Medina Ortega) because it hasn't been officially presented to the European Parliament. But its stance on legal penalties for file sharing are already generating buzz across the internet.
The reason why can be summed up in one bolded statement found on the report's eighth page. Separate from the rest of the text, bolded and underlined it says "The nature of copyright must not be allowed to change as a result of technological progress."
Here's a news flash for lawmakers. The nature of copyright has already changed and there's nothing any law can do to prevent it.
Computers and the internet have driven the cost of reproducing and distributing audio and video works down to practically nothing. iTunes is now the number one music retailer in the United States. The BBC has been delivering programming via the internet since 2007. And most importantly people can and do use P2P file sharing networks to download music and movies.
To read the Medina Report you might think legal sanctions are capable of stopping copyright infringement via P2P. In fact it expressly mentions one website when it praises "the action of various national judicial systems against internet sites that illegally disseminate works on line (e.g. ‘The Pirate Bay’)."
What it doesn't bother to mention is how these legal measures have curbed illegal file sharing. Hardly surprising considering they actually haven't had any effect besides forcing people to find alternative websites to locate downloads.
The report's suggestions, such as getting sites like The Pirate Bay "suspended by the judicial authorities" would no more stop file sharing than shutting down Google would prevent web surfing. Just like the demise of Napster resulted in decentralizing the file sharing infrastructure, going after sites that index torrents will just force users to change how they search.
If anything the solutions outlined in the report would result in the opposite of its stated goal to "guarantee of the development of a legitimate digital market." If you leave decisions on copyright legislation in the hands of those who profit most from the current business model you'll get laws that favor the status quo and punish those who dare to compete using technology.
The market has spoken and the message is clear. The question is whether legislators will pay attention to consumers. If not they'll have no one but themselves to blame when savvy businessmen in countries like China or Russia end up meeting consumer demand after it becomes impossible for local companies to do so.