The Electronic Frontier Foundation just released a study opposing the music industry's law suits against illicit downloaders. "After two years of lawsuits, there's only one conclusion to draw said [EFF's Fred] von Lohmann. "Suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma."

Adam Thierer's reaction:

OK Fred, then what exactly IS the answer to the P2P dilemma? Because you don’t favor individual lawsuits, you don’t favor P2P liability, or much of anything else. This is what infuriates me most about the Lessig-ites; they give lip service to the P2P problem but then lambaste each and every legal solution proposed. In my opinion, if you can’t even support the lawsuits against individual users, then you essentially don’t believe in ANY sort of copyright enforcement.

On their site they outline various compulsory licensing models. And your [Adam's] last sentence makes their point, they don’t want ANY sort of copyright enforcement because they view copyright as an illegitimate government-imposed monopoly suppressing ideas.

This quote is based on a study showing the suits haven’t significantly dented P2P uses. Declan had a good line about this study, he wondered if P2P usage would have been even higher if not for the suits.

Patrick already discussed scheme of government-run compulsory licensing here.

But the conclusion of the EFF work seems to be that even a government-run compulsory system would be anathema. Its answer is a system of voluntary payments by music fans. Solveig Singleton ruminated skeptically on this idea earlier this week.

posted by James DeLong @ 10:53 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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