IP Democracy: Global File-Sharing Whack-A-Mole

The problem with technology is that once it’s out, it’s impossible to repress. The past week has borne out this basic truth in the file-sharing arena, with police attempts to shut down a P2P site in Sweden sparking an public outcry in that country and a popular Russian music sharing site embroiling the U.S. in international legal fights — and threats.

The Swedish situation: last Wednesday Swedish police raided 10 locations of what is billed as the world’s largest BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay. By Saturday, the site was up again and even worse, public opinion in Sweden turned nasty toward the U.S. after TV and press reports said that Swedish authorities shut down the sites at the behest of the U.S. government.

Unbelievably, there’s even something of a political party, The Pirate Party, devoted to copyright reform.

“The common man now realizes that we really are needed,” said Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party, a small political organization that says it aims to “fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system and ensure citizens’ rights to privacy.”

The party is taking part in this year’s parliamentary elections, and Falkvinge said the raid was proving to have a certain political upside.

In Russia, the rise of a popular music site has even ratcheted up geo-political tensions. As The New York Times’ Thomas Crampton reports today, AllofMP3.com offers a vast catalog of online music at a fraction of the price charged on legitimate music sites and company executives say that their service is legal under Russian law.

Despite pressure by U.S. record companies, courts in Russia have indeed ruled that what AllofMP3.com is doing is legal — the company points to a license issued by a royalty collecting society, the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society or ROMS (reflecting its Russian initials). Under a 1993 Russian law, collecting societies are permitted to act on behalf of rights holders who have not authorized them to do so.

Needless to say, the U.S. government and U.S. record companies are apoplectic about AllofMP3.com, with the government even taking the step of warning Russia that this web site could jeopardize the country’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

I’m all for protecting copyrights, but it strikes me that the MPAA and the RIAA and the U.S. government are playing a losing game with these strong-arm tactics (assuming, of course, that the U.S. did put pressure on Swedish authorities to shut down The Pirate Bay.) For one thing, the U.S. already has an international reputation as a bully; but more importantly, shutting down sites in Sweden or Russia only promises that they will crop up in some other country.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on June 5, 2006 7:10 AM to IP Democracy