Day 2

Abu Jalloh

            On day two of this meeting we were able to hear the the opinions and statements of one of the creators of the popular P2P file sharing company Orangewire , two users of this program one for its continued use for so called “Mal purposes” as well as one against its use and a lawyer who has vast experience in file sharing cases. Tom Bryant is one of the main creators of the popular program Orangewire.

            Orangewire is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) program in which it is possible to share music, video and documents, play games, and facilitate online telephone conversations. The technology enables computers using the same and or compatible P2P programs to form a network and share digital files directly with other computers on the network. Because virtually anyone can join a P2P network just by installing particular software, millions of computers could be connected at one time ( Peer-to-Peer File Sharing). This creates a controversy due to if one person buying digital products like music, movies , ebook, etc. having the ability to share it with a friend or a random computer across the internet for free. Which is believe to cost the music, movie industry along with radio and paid multimedia sites like i tunes a big sum. There saying if people can access there products for free with relatively ease why would they take money out their products to but something just because of it being morally right.

When Tom was asked about the abundant use of downloading licensed media for free from his software he said that though theses media devices are transferred through out network there is plenty of content you can share with our software that does not violate any copyrighted laws. This brings about a big dilemma which people are torn by should the everyday users of the P2P software such as Orangewire be held responsible for there own actions knowing they are doing something wrong or should the enabler of these be held accountable. Tom much like other creators of these file sharing programs believe they should not be held responsible which is why they are for the conditioned production of providing services of file sharing to all. We asked two users of the program one who admits using the program for Mal or illegal purposes like downloading music and movies Chris Paul a high school student and a user who only uses Orangewire for non illegal purposes Deron Williams a freelance artist.

            When Chris Paul a everyday high school student was asked how much did his extensive library of music and movies cost him he laughed a bit and said nothing. This is most likely a common theme around America the statement “everyone does it” and “out of millions what is the chance I get caught” brought up when asking everyday users of P2P software. Many people download music and movies using file sharing software. If you don't do it, you probably know someone who does. But the problem is that if you download copyrighted material without permission, you are breaking the  law (Downloading and Sharing Copyrighted Music, Movies, and Software ). Chris felt the same. On average he says he downloads about four to six new files of music a day and about a movie a week. With individual digital song titles going for around $.99 cents and digital movies about $8.99 thats is about $43.00 a week and about $15308.00 a year. If every user has similar activity on these P2P softwares that is billions of dollars that the music and movie industry are missing out on but those numbers do not seem to effect Chris's decision. He said that he is still for the use of these file sharing programs because some people mix and match there purchases and downloads and that having availability to more music allows people to discover new artist. Also he said that concert sales do benefit from the vast amount of people who listen to there music even if it was free. Statistics have also shown that the amount of people actually buying records has not declined but have stayed the same meaning that true fans even though they can access the content for free will still pay to hear music from there favorite artist or watch there favorite actor take on a new role in a film. Which is why Chris says he is for the use of file sharing unlike when we heard the thoughts of Deron Williams a freelance artist.

            Deron Williams a freelance artist is one who can see the positive and negative effects of a file sharing program which is why he is against the illegal use of it. As a freelance artist he makes money off digital artwork he does. When asked what if someone who did not pay for your artwork just simply clicked a button and downloaded all your hard work for fee his response was rather foul. It is not difficult to just type in my name and look for my work heck Blueprints for President Obama's private helicopters were recently compromised because they had been leaked to the wild, wild web(Siciliano). Whats the point he said nobody wants to or will work for free if you could just download food and clothes for free there would be uproar and file sharing would be banned quickly because it causes people to loose a lot of money. He said that if he ever uses a file sharing program he only shares his own content that he provides for free or download other content which can be used for teaching and learning content as well as non copyrighted infringed music and movies available. To help get a grasp on all these point of views we asked a lawyer Dwayne James who has a lot of experience dealing with cases of copyright infringement of digital media and other cases involved with P2P software.

            Dwayne has learned many things about the battle between the the ban on P2P software along with the blame on the user or the software itself. Dwayne says that this battle has been going on for over twenty years with the first trademark case being in January 1984 where fin Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.,[6] the Supreme Court of the United States that making individual copies of complete T.V shows for purposes of time-shifting is fair use This case would create some interpretative challenges to courts in applying the case to more recent file sharing technologies available for use on home computers and over the INTERNET(Anderson). Over the next two decades many P2P program companies were forced to shut down after being tried in court most recently one the the worlds most popular sites The Pirate bay was seized by the Swedish Government and forced to shut down along with Ta guilty verdict; each defendant is sentenced to one year in jail and a total of  3.6 million USD, 2.7 in fines and damages. Recently other Dwayne was involved in a case where P2P giant Limewire was asked to pay $75 Trillion. In all Dwayne can sum up knowledge from all his cases by saying “Peer-to-peer applications  are not illegal and you can use them to download material with the owner's consent or non illegal material (Downloading and Sharing Copyrighted Music, Movies, and Software) . So next time you want to download the next hit song or blockbuster movie ask yourself is it worth it because your actions one day may catch up with you.