the File Sharing Phoenix

There was a time in our house when Kazaa was the word of the day. My teenage daughters were delirious at the thought of being able to download whatever music they wanted for free and even though we parents took the moral high ground warning that it was illegal, somewhere we were thrilled to see the power of the mighty music
industry brought down a notch or two. After all we were a generation held ransom to the ever escalating costs of CD's despite a reduction in the cost of their production.

The music industry, dominated at the time by the "big four" (Sony Music Entertainment, Universal, EMI and Warner) watched music sales drop from approximately $38 billion in 1999 to $32 billion in 2003, during the years that peer to peer (P2P) software was launched. The artists were no-doubt affected but no-one cared all that much because ultimately we all knew it was the 'suits' that
were suffering, and we were able to access music freely, not just free of cost but free of form too.

"Music, like love" said my sixteen year old daughter, "should be free", and off she went to download the Dandy Warhols latest song. She was not alone. In a paper presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, September 2008,
Mark Cooper, Director of research presented the following idea. He suggested that the dramatic decline in record sales had perhaps less to do with piracy and more to do with the natural changes brought about by the technology , ie. Consumer demand for singles over albums - made available now by the new technology.

Prior to this revolution, consumers were dictated to by the industry who decided when and how single songs were made available. How many albums have been purchased for want of a single track. In the conclusion to his presentation, he proposes that "technological change shifts the balance of interest between private rights and social goals and frequently triggers"piracy panics," wherein the gatekeepers of content feel the financial security of their intellectual property is at risk. These panics play out in furious legal battles."

In a series of vicious legal battles between the music industry and peer to peer software companies, such as Napstar and Kazaa, the record companies supported largely by a surprisingly conservative media put themselves forward as victims of piracy. The poor record companies were losing their monopoly and they didn't know how to deal with the revolution made possible by a technology they knew
nothing about.

Now we faced a real conflict. The media, traditional supporters of the underdog had done an about face and were supporting the record industry we had pushed up against our whole life. Where was the progressive forward thinking social conscious of the day, surely not in the lapel of Sony and EMI record producing magnates?
And so we continued to download free music.

Today it seems a new story is emerging. The record companies have joined the century using the same technology that seemingly threatened its margins just a few years ago. Peer to peer software is now being developed to redirect traffic to legal music files for downloading. The legal file is available for purchase with charges billed into internet costs by way of Internet Service Providers, and everyone is happy again.

Will this stop my teens from downloading free music, probably not, but it will hopefully be used to also stop other more harmful and illicit file sharing, and for that the rejuvenation of peer to peer software, with a legal and moral backbone, and the support of the industries that tried to bring it down, must be praised. Technology moves on, reinventing itself to serve the needs of those who use it, if sharing music is one such outcome, let the world join in and sing.