Saturday, July 8, 2006

Study: legal music far outweighs P2P on portable music players: Only two years ago we were told that 'stolen' was the most common format on digital music players. A new study suggests that this is far from the truth. (Via Ars Technica.) Without knowing the methodology of the original study, this is difficult to evaluate, but it agrees qualitatively with what I see in my immediate circle. I wonder to what extent the decay of P2P downloads may be an indirect effect of fear of malware, especially since so many of the P2P programs have been notorious for adware and spyware with security and stability risks. Are malware writers RIAA's best friends? 12:00:27 PM

Students not interested in school-sanctioned music downloads: In 2003, colleges began signing exclusive deals with online music services to great fanfare. Nearly three years later, the schools are realizing what we've known all along. (Via Ars Technica.) Here's the money quote in the original WSJ article: There is also little consensus among administrators about how successful the services have been in eliminating piracy. Although some say complaints from the recording industry have dropped sharply, no one can tell if that's because fewer students are engaging in illegal file-sharing or if the industry simply doesn't want to go after schools that are spending money to combat the problem. "The RIAA's push to buy into these services strikes me as protection money. Buy in and we'll protect you from our lawsuits," says Kenneth C. Green, the Campus Computing Project's director. Of course, the RIAA denies strongly if unconvincingly: The RIAA denies the charge. "We do sue students and send takedown notices to universities that have legal services all the time," says Mr. Sherman. Universities have a particular responsibility to teach students the value of intellectual property, he adds, because they are "probably the No. 1 creator of intellectual property." And he disputes the idea that the subscription services have fallen out of favor. The number of campuses that subscribe will increase "pretty significantly" in the fall, he says. This "particular responsibility" of the universities is especially rich. Universities don't generate "intellectual property", they generate knowledge, most of which is effectively distributed freely as a side-effect of their teaching and research activities. Whenever universities have tried to monetize their knowledge production, they have created distortions and conflicts of interest that have damaged their core missions and their prestige as institutions supposedly run in the public interest. Even patent licensing, which involves a limited range of university production, has had a dubious overall payoff: while licensing has brought a lot of money to a few schools, it has created nasty conflicts of interest, effectively restricted commercialization of significant inventions, and impeded learning in many other schools. More generally, universities are in a difficult position relative to current trends in "intellectual property". Fair use, which is essential to scholarship, is under threat, and oligopolistic practices of publishers are creating huge stresses for university libraries. So, if universities are to do their teaching job properly in this area, their teachings may well not be at all to the liking of the RIAA, as it will necessarily probe critically the idea of "intellectual property." Using student money to pay for an RIAA-sanctioned download service does not serve critical thinking. 10:39:32 AM