At a glance the Pirate Bay (TPB) case unfolding now in the Stockholm district court seems to be simple enough. Will the administration of an Internet service through which users can meet and share files be deemed to be an accessory to the principal act of copyright infringement committed by the users themselves? For starters, the fit is not particularly good, since the accessory situation traditionally only included those who had an awareness of the particular crime in question and who somehow aided or abetted the perpetrators. Extending the accessory concept to also include multi-use technology platforms is of course not a desirable situation, so the argument has largely been about if it is possible to interpret it wide enough to include those who call themselves pirates and display a bad attitude toward copyright while at the same time excluding more legitimate actors such as Google. As said, the fit is hardly perfect and the court will eventually have to be brave and take a stand on how to make a new interpretation of the accessory concept in the digital arena.
But, will this really matter? Pirate Bay is already past its technical prime and there are plenty of alternatives waiting to scoop up the TPB users. In any event, the generic search engines that are for most users a much more effective tool to track the downpour of available material on the net. If you are not a dedicated filesharer who is in on what sites are the flavor of the month, then a simple Google-search or a net-search through your filesharing software client will be much more useful than visiting dedicated sites. The days of centralized nodes for filesharers are numbered.
But the outcome of the TPB case could still be important. Not principally for the filesharers, but for the record industry's internal incentives and for its self-image.
The record industry has a problem with facing the fact that the heydays of physical distribution are gone. Sure, there will always be a substantial market for those that seek to possess well-crafted physical editions. But this will be a niche-market compared to the wider audience that just wants access to the audio and video, and for whom the physical edition is just a cumbersome detour to their personal media-player. Seen from a pure distribution perspective, the CD record has no long-term future. The same argument can be made for the movie theater, or the dvd.
Now, it is a common mistake to see the industry as monolithic. It is not. There are plenty of efforts made and good ideas hatched on how to create palatable value offerings that can attract the modern audience, both within music and movies. Good initiatives abound both inside the labels and studios as well as among their partners in technology firms. But inertia holds every organization to larger or lesser extent, and without outside pressure the progressive projects will be less likely to succeed.
The kind of uncontrolled filesharing that services like TPB lends itself to actually has an important role to play in pushing forward new modes of distribution. The iTunes store wasn't very exciting or new as a concept, but its revolutionary contribution was that it managed to combine the catalogues of several big labels under one umbrella. The CEO of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs, has described how he only managed to seal the deal by threatening the rights owners with the future of uncontrolled filesharing. The same thing goes for more modern initiatives such as Spotify, Just as iTunes was driven forward by the storms of Napster, so was Spotify born with the flag of the Pirate Bay looming on the horizon. While iTunes was basically an online adoption of the record store, Spotify is a service that is much better at leveraging the interactive potential of the net and the contributions of their own users.
As a force for bringing about new and exciting services in distribution, services that speak to the needs of the consumer, TPB should not be underestimated. This force is a healthy influence into any old industry that should welcome this prodding. Maybe not in the short-, but in the long run.
Currently, the inability to properly clear the copyrights is still holding back the movie section of European iTunes, an important feature that has existed since January 2008 in the US. And just two weeks ago, the content of Spotify was reduced when parts of the catalogue was removed, leaving users with several unwelcome ?-marks in their playlists. This has prompted many users to leave the service. Spotify, which was hailed only a month ago as the great white hope of the industry, has gone from hot to not. A winning verdict against TPB would likely make the conservative elements within the industry feel that they have scored one against the progressive forces and settle back with a feeling of contentment. This is a feeling they can ill afford. Constant innovation in availability, speed and depth of catalogue is the name of the game today. Resting on your laurels will mean death.
A loss in the Pirate Bay case may be exactly the push that is needed to deliver those services that will once more captivate the mainstream public and, perhaps in time, reduce such things as the Pirate Bay to mere fringe phenomena: not threatening, but irritating and inspiring.
Labels: Copyright, Kristoffer Schollin
