Earlier this week, an Australian court ruled that Kazaa users were using the service to violate copyrights. As a result, the court has ordered Kazaa to modify their software to prevent piracy. The ruling doesn't seem to have fazed the P2P community a bit. Users simply have moved over to the infamous eDonkey. According to a CNN article, eDonkey has now eclipsed Kazaa, BitTorrent, and other sites as the most popular filesharing service.

Out of curiosity, I spent a little time this morning browsing the eDonkey site.

First of all, I must note that I really dig the eDonkey 2000 logo. I was also pleasantly surprised to see a link to a page provided by P2P United, which described how the majority of popular movies and music are protected by copyright laws. It's nice to see eDonkey warning it's users that they could face prosecution for distributing copyrighted material.

I was feeling pretty good about eDonkey until I visited the forum. I ran across a posting where some poor soul was asking how he can stop eDonkey users from sharing his own copyrighted material. A well meaning forum administrator told him that he should follow the example of the recording and motion picture industries by identifying who is distributing his material and contacting the person directly. There were also many other users who posted their condolences. Again, at this point, I was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about eDonkey. Then, I ran across a response from a user who was saying that he can't always afford to buy CDs so, he downloads free music off of eDonkey. He told Mr. CVV (Copyright Violation Victim) that having his material stolen was a good thing. This misinformed individual explained that Mr. CVV was getting free publicity and distribution, exposing more people to his product.

Let me address the faulty logic here.

Downloading copyrighted material is STEALING. As the wife of a musician, I am well acquainted with the benefits that P2P filesharing can bring. My husband frequently posts mp3 files of his music to various sites in order to gain a wider audience for his product. The difference between this and someone else taking his music and sharing it is that it is my husband's choice. He has total control over which tracks he chooses to share for free. If someone else were to take his songs and widely distribute them via P2P filesharing without his knowledge, they have taken away his choice of how to distribute his copyrighted material. They have also taken away his ability to profit from his creativity and hard work.

As one who has personally plunked down thousands of dollars over the years for recording studio fees, mixing, CD production and a plethora of musical equipment, I would like to speak on behalf of musicians' spouses everywhere. Being married to an artist is difficult enough - please stop stealing from us.

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 11:43 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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