An interview with the Flashbulb about his recent calamity with iTunes, and putting his album up on BitTorrent. It turns out iTunes is selling his albums without permission, and not paying royalties.

The Flashbulb (Benn Jordan) has been releasing albums for 14 years, the last 5 have included various commercial endeavors. The label deal he has is a 50/50 split, but he hasn’t been seeing the money. Benn says he has no agreement with iTunes to sell his music, and many of his fans have told him they bought his music there. When he investigated the issue further, his label asked him to drop it, and his calls went unreturned.

Here’s a great quote from Benn: “Who’s the pirate I should go after? A kid who downloads my album because it isn’t available in non-DRM format and costs $30 on Amazon? Or a huge multi-billion dollar corporation that has been selling thousands of dollars worth of my music and not even acknowledging it?”

Benn is being labeled in the press as pro-piracy, but his true stand is that people buy what they like. “What I’m promoting is the artist’s freedom to choose what can and can’t be done with his/her music, and more importantly, the listener’s freedom to do what he/she wants with their own computer, MP3 player, or internet connection.”

Benn makes a poignant case that the RIAA has spent so long dictating people’s taste and choices that they are now threatened by the opportunity for people to choose the music they want. He suggests that “music will be judged by it’s content again and will be subjected to it’s own Darwinism.”

Bottom Line: Where are all those billions in album sales really going?

Bit Torrent throttling is becoming a real issue. Although it has not yet seen much mainstream attention, controlling users access to internet bandwidth is a disturbing precedent to flow of free information. Seemingly an effort to control the illegal sharing of files, the impact of throttling can be far reaching.

Somewhere around a third of all web traffic is Bit Torrent File Sharing. Keep in mind that a significant amount of Bit Torrent traffic is legitimate, such as file backups for large companies, or as a tool for academic research. A neurocognitive scientist posted on the DSLReports forum how bandwidth throttling is hindering scientific research in a field where leading researchers live great distances from each other. In other words, limiting people’s ability to use their internet waves affects more than porn and Britney Spears.

People transferring large files across the internet can affect other uses online experience negatvely. However, if the uses are legal (and more and more users of Bit Torrent are using it for legal purposes), what legal right do ISPs have to limit our uses of their service? As Slashdot elegantly posed the question in February, “Do they want to irritate their BitTorrent-using contingent, or let BitTorrent flow unhindered at the risk degrading the experience of those who don’t download torrents?’”

Comcast, the # 2 internet provider in the United States, is being served a class action suit for limiting the bandwidth of Bit Torrent users. The suit alleges that it is a breach of contract for a user’s bandwidth to be limited. “The filing asserts that Hart upgraded his internet service to Comcast’s high-speed internet… package in September 2007 to gain faster speeds specifically for the blocked applications in question. In the subscriber agreement… none of the terms stated that Comcast would impede or limit the blocked applications.” (quoted from the Half Life Source article).

According to the The Consumerist, A recent internal ComCast memo gave call senter emplyees a strict script to deliver if customers had questions. Any employee who says anything not in the script would be subject to immediate termination. Adding oddness to the issue is a recent MSNBC article that shows tests confirm the throttling is happening.

Recently, a major Canadian ISP admitted they have been throttling Bit Torrent traffic for months, even going as far as to refuse service to users that consume large amount of bandwidth. An analysis on Bell Sympatico’s tactics can be seen on p2pnet.net.

The CEO of Bit Torrent, Ashwin Navin, said in an interview that throttling is “a symptom of a larger problem”.

Net Neutrality – Not just a fancy term

Network neutrality “…refers to a principle that is applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all networks. Precise definitions vary, but a broadband network free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached and the modes of communication allowed…” (quoted from Wikipedia).

Simply put, once companies can set limits on our ability to use the internet, where will it stop? Once the door cracks open, how do we close it?

I can sympathize with broadband companies that are concerned with Bit Torrent users sucking up all their bandwidth. It can get quite expensive to have to conitnually upgrade internet servers to meet capacity. The same thing happens in grocery stores when they have to open another checkout line. In capitalism, we often refer to this as “the cost of doing business”.

Bottom Line: Bit Torrent is the biggest single use of internet traffic. ISPs can save lots of money by throttling our use of bandwidth, or charging us if we pass monthly limits. To do so based on what we are doing violates network neutrality, and sets a precedent for controlling the internet.

Before I break down the long and short of this issue, I want to bring your attention to something.

Companies like Media Defender are not protecting copyright and content interests. They are actually encouraging people not to buy content. The more intrusively and forcefully companies like Media Defender attempt to control our content consumption, the more the general public will revolt. If companies want to protect their revenue, the way is to embrace p2p culture, not to subvert it.

On to the details:

MediaDefender is in the business of protecting content from piiracy. Specifically, they seek
out and protect content on peer to peer networks. They use a variety or sneaky tactics, including decoy files, to catch people who are downloading music.

Here’s how they describe their services on their site: “MediaDefender uses a range of non-invasive technological countermeasures employed on P2P networks to frustrate users’ attempts to steal/trade copyrighted content…Decoying and Spoofing are the most commonly known techniques that we employ. We send blank files and data noise that look exactly like a real response to an initiated search requests for a particular title…”

Oddly enough, they also offer service to seed content onto peer to peer networks. From the Media Defender site: “Peer-to-Peer* Marketing is when we capture live search requests from your targeted demographic and respond with your clients’ files”

In other words, not only are they hunting down file sharers, they are using the data they obtain for marketing purposes. This would be like the TSA using travel information to provide us with travel discounts and promotions.
Recently, a huge amount of internal corporate documents were leaked to the public through (insert dramatic irony) Bit Torrent. The documents were obtained by a group called MediaDefender-Defenders

It appears that Media Defender has been running a secret site where uploaded files can be tracked – without any permission. I believe the legal term for this kinf od action is entrapment. I find it amusing that the same file sharing networks that are being manipulated by companies like Media Defender are being subverting for the uses of major media conglomerates by companies including Media Defender.

Even better, according to the documents, Major record companies and movie studios were paying Media Defender to protect their albums from file sharing (and for a hefty fee, too). As if it wasn;t sketchy enough, the documents show that Media Defender actively sought to divert p2p traffic to their own p2 website (the now defunct Miivi.com), so they could catch people in the act of downloading. This kind of action is similar to sending a drug dealer door to door, and then arresting people who buy something.

As if all of this isn’t embarassing enough for Media Defender, executives of the company insisted in July that “MediaDefender was working on an internal project that involved video and didn’t realize that people would be trying to go to it and so we didn’t password-protect the site” (source- ArsTechnica).
I can understand that compaines like Media Defender can make a great living out of protecting content. As a label owner, I can even understand the desire to want to sell units. However, Media Defender is denying they intentionally attempted to entrap users (can you say liar?) . And if that isn’t enough, they are using the same information to create marketing strategies.

In spite of the fact that people can get any media they want for free, records still sell. Album sales may be dropping like hailstones, but record sales continue to be a multi-billion dollar industry.

Consumers have the power now, and we get to say what has value, not corporations.

So to review for you, TorrentSpy points you toward people who are sharing files you may want, and that’s all they do.? They don’t suggest you steal stuff, and they don;t promote any method of copyright infringement. According to the Supreme Court, that means they’re not breaking the law.? The MPAA (and the RIAA, too) don’t really care if the Supreme Court allows TorrentSpy to point you toward copyrighted material that’s shared.? They are going to sue us all until we pay what they feel they deserve.? And if that isn’t enough, they twist the meaning of copyright to protect themselves, and not the artists.
Now I am all for the protection of copyrighted works, and I don’t see a problem with the moral issue that somone’s movies or music shouldn’t be free _if there is percieved value._? But if reality is that people are sharing media, and that most people _still_ buy media, then there is a softer hand to be used to convince us to buy stuff.

As an aside for Americans, these big companies are just going to keep sidestepping the law, and continue to force our government to protect their interests, at the expense of ours.