Bit Torrent Legalities

The technology that allows P2P file sharing while saving bandwidth  is the bit torrent protocol and it is legal. However downloading and sharing or otherwise disseminating copyrighted material is illegal and several legal actions may be taken against anyone who does this.

Residents of Canada and, as of February 2006, France are an exception. They are currently protected from certain P2P copyright legal actions. What has happened recently is that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) together with governments of England and Australia have filed class action lawsuits in the civil courts. The lawsuits are based upon copyright infringement and ask for thousands of dollars in penalties.

Your internet service provider may release their internet logs, which show your downloading activity. Using that information the MPAA or RIAA may investigate you or file an action against you. Or include you in a class action lawsuit.

Just in case you have not seen it the digital millennium copyright act click here. The digital millennium copyright act was developed to address quickly issues of copyright infringement in the early 1990s that were occurring because of digitized music, movies and television programs. And more importantly for large companies  that were seeing their profits become effected by new technology, an example that is now a land mark was Napster. A good overview and summary of the digital millennium copyright act can be found here.

What many people believe is that, like television in the 1940s and 1950s, a new business model is now here  because of the development and wide use of the internet. As in the 1940s when few people had televisions the media, largely a live medium by necessity, had to grow and make possible the dissemination of it's product to a wider audience. In other words more people had to have the equipment, televisions, in order to consume the product that was being offered.

The same evolution has happened with the internet. Slowly more and more people now have access to it making it possible for them to get whatever they want whenever they want due to digitization. Music, movies, television programs all can be shared and copied across the world using a broadband connection.

Although not featured very often in high profile articles, except online of course, Some business people, such as Marc Cuban (entrepreneur, billionaire and owner of Dallas Mavericks) and some scholars like Mark Pesce, the founder of USC's School of Cinema and television, and founder of several businesses related directly to the internet, are trying to point out that the old revenue model for movies, television and music is now obsolete. The wide use of the internet has changed they way all media and indeed almost every product is offered to the public. As they say the " the Jennie is out of the bottle" and there is no turning back. Rather copyright laws and the model for revenue has to adapt. It is nothing new. Bill Boards were once a cutting edge form of mass media adverting to sell a product or attract an audience now it is Google ads.

None the less the current laws are on the books and more important the current laws are being enforced as best they can be considering the difficulty in dealing with internet privacy. So educate yourself about them.

Some interesting reading Marc Cuban's article titled "what business are theatres in ?" can be found at blogmarverick.com and Mark Pesce's article "Piracy is Good? how Battle star Galatica killed broadcast TV" at mindjack.com. Also Bram Cohen's latest post at bittorrent.com.