How exciting! I got a padded white envelope today with the RIAA logo on it, and it was not some kind of lawsuit notice. In it was the Protect Yourself. Do It Legally video and with two copies of their propaganda poster:

I have it hanging in my office and am still deciding what to draw on it :-)

I've been a little discouraged by some of the evaluations of MGM vs Grokster from the copyfighter side of the fence. For instance, problematic worst case scenarios:

• Vaidhyanathan claims that Google is now at risk for caching web pages and offering search services due to this ruling. I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps I'm wrong in my reading of the rulings, but it's not clear to me how Google is inducing copyright infringement with its basic search services. Granted, as Vaidhyanathan has pointed out, Google Print is at risk in a post-Grokster world. However, I would argue that Google Print was at equally at risk in a post-MP3.com world without a Grokster ruling.
• Porter and Rife fear that universities may be at risk, even though the main opinion delivered by Souter clearly supports P2P use in universities by describing P2P's beneficial use in that specific context: "Given these benefits in security, cost, and efficiency, peer-to-peer networks are employed to store and distribute electronic files by universities, government agencies, corporations, and libraries, among others" (2). Even without that statement, it seems a far reach to imagine that any lawsuit against a university based on inducement theory would be seen as anything other than frivolous.

On Sunday, Cary Sherman, President of the RIAA, in announcing new RIAA suits against students using Internet2 P2P (chuckle), tried an idealistic appeal on educators:

As we educate the future leaders on campuses in Pittsburgh and throughout the nation, we have the opportunity to foster a climate where creativity is valued and respected. In this way, we can pave the way to a new century of innovation.

As an academic, I'm not real fond of having Cary Sherman including himself in the "we" who educate. I'd prefer that the RIAA and other content industries abandon their current efforts to educate K-12 students (and everyone else) in their version of intellectual property. But even better, CMU professor Roger Dannenberg makes it clear that those that steal shouldn't take the moral high ground when it comes to piracy:

Mr. Sherman, you say that stealing "is not OK," and yet I have musician friends who cannot get RIAA members to pay them the royalties they are due. While you are asking universities to address your problems, please don't forget that you too can be a "powerful leader in curbing theft of copyright materials on campus." If you'll stop your members from stealing from my friends, and then study some history, maybe I can help you.

Touché! Read the rest. It made my day.

Something to keep the RIAA execs up all night. This is all over the Internet right now, so I'll quote The Globe and Mail:

A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says on-line music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.

For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.

So file sharing may not be hurting music sales, but I bet prosecuting file traders does ;)

Update: Here's the link to the research article, Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf's The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis.

Looks like Richard Stallman might be right. If these bills and others in the future that are equally punitive are passed, we may become a society with such heavy protectionist measures that any sharing of texts will be viewed as wrong, or, at least, so dangerous that everyone will be scared to share the wrong file. From Wired:

A draft bill recently circulated among members of the House judiciary committee would make it much easier for the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers by lowering the burden of proof. The bill, obtained Thursday by Wired News, also would seek penalties of fines and prison time of up to ten years for file sharing.

In addition, on Thursday, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) introduced a bill that would allow the Justice Department to pursue civil cases against file sharers, again making it easier for law enforcement to punish people trading copyright music over peer-to-peer networks. They dubbed the bill "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004," or the Pirate Act.