Is this the beginning of the end?

Within the first week of this subject the question was posed ‘how long can we keep on torrenting music and movies before people are prosecuted and charged?” I think that the question sounded more like “ how long can this heaven last?” but you get the picture. Within that very week an answer to that question appeared in the news.

The Age reported on the 4th of august that the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), under pressure by the film industry, had proposed that Internet service providers send warning letters to people who download movies illegally. The warning letters would indicate to the downloader that the Internet providers know what they are doing and that their activities aren’t anonymous. This technique known as a ‘graduated response’ has been trialled within the United States and it was found that nine out of ten users stoped their illegal downloading of movies after only their first warning.[1]

The question that needs to be asked is, is this approach going to benefit the movie industry or are the film studios just being to precious about copyright? In contrast, within the music industry, there is a very successful argument for allowing the free downloading of music. By allowing free downloads, a large amount of interest and hype can generated around a certain band that will lead to high ticket and merchandise sales at live performances. One example is the Sheffield band, the Arctic Monkeys, who when first starting out, uploaded all of their music onto Myspace, allowing fans to download their album free of charge before its public release date. When the Arctic Monkeys played at the Glastonbury festival, they had a large audience that rivalled that of the headline acts.

This is all well and good for the music industry, but the relationship that people have with movies and with music is very different. The music industry has other ways of generating income other then CD sales where as the movie industry relies heavily upon box office and DVD sales. I believe that the movie industry does have reason to be scared about online downloads and any way that this can be combated is a plus from their point of view. Perhaps these proposed warning letters will change the way Torrents are viewed and used within the future.

For my seminar presentation I am discussing peer to peer (P2P) and including torrents and Skype etc. I was hoping that if you happen to come across any articles or relevant news items regarding this topic that you could please send me a link or the relevant information. Thank you.


[1]The Age, http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/online-movie-fans-face-scrutiny/2008/08/03/1217701901151.html accessed on 4th August 2008