hey Mat and all the nice folks here, my sentiments with you about this discussion being interesting and all.
I read like a few comments on the French Law thingie in engadget and end up skipping or leaving with a bad after-taste. Most of the post there end up as "They do!" "Do Not" kind of posts. You get the drift.
The snides aside, there were some interesting points made there as well, which I'll include below for thoughts.
>>Yep, I’m with you. But they are radically different from pirates who share on P2P and pirates who burn a copy CD for their Grandmother.
>>Its not just broadband it’s the whole take up of internet at home. I assume people P2P pirate generally from home rather than work, mobile or internet cafe.
Ah, I seem to see where we concur and differ here. While your approach seem to me as delineating these them into two groups based on their motivation, I group them base on the consequences of their action.
The p2p may just do it for his grandma (poor granny, now she is getting all the rap for listening to Bon Jovi!
Should have stuck with Elvis on the vinyl record!), but such actions still lead, as like that of the hawker pirate, to inevitable financial losses on the part of content maker/distro.
From the French Law provision, they seem to be going for two main areas: 1. Inter-operability of audio files among DAPs and 2. Fining of end users who pirate.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060321/...unes_challenge
Quote:
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The new legislation would also introduce penalties ranging from euro38 to euro150 ($50 to $180) for those caught pirating music or movies at home and euro3,750 ($4,600) for hackers who disable copy-protection systems. Those caught distributing software for online piracy face fines of up to euro300,000 ($365,000) and jail terms.
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The latter did not seem to turn up much for discussion mostly. But its interesting that the French are also considering that the onus is not just on content distro and DAP makers, but also on home users to work together. Their approach is a prorata (or pro-rated) system where you are fined according to the level of damage you cause from your piracy. So under such a scheme / law, a p2p who sends his granny an mp3, can be fined $50 to $180, and $4,600 for those who disable a copy-protection system, since the latter's action will enable many others to do the former. I'm guessing that they are equating the last group to my definition of a hawker pirate, whose actions will cause the largest damage to the system, and are liable for fines up to $365,000 including jail terms.
I feel its rather exciting right now as we are on like page 2 or 3 of DRM history and we are seeing how the delicate balance between technology, social norms and legislation play out the DRM story. And I see it as part of DRM growing pains. When the dust has settled, hopefully, we the consumers will not have to worry about being left out in the cold with some content that is "protected" from usage because the DAP OEM refuses to support an old DRM format, and we would also not have to pay through our noses for DRMed contents, but have similar pricing like that of the $0.99 tunes!