P2Presience

If ever there was motivation to keep this blog around it’s that a commenter dug up a article of mine on Kuro5hin from two-and-a-half years ago and wants my thoughts on what’s changed since. Albeit, this commenter attached his request to the post below on my gastronomical misadventures, but it’s the thought that counts. So, for Ian, my musings on that ancient bit of writing from my hot-blooded copyfighter youth follow. What’s changed between then and now?

Without summarizing more than is necessary when you can just read the damn article, my basic point was that coupling combative code with constructive political action would be the best two-pronged attack against forces seeking to undermine our intellectual property rights.

On the political end, we’ve seen a handful of organizations crop up to offer such defense, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation is still (questionably) at the forefront of the fight for IP freedom in the digital age. Digital Consumer is still around, but their activities beyond finding copyfight-related press clippings are unknown. The political landscape doesn’t look much different than it did two-and-a-half years ago; despite vastly out-earning Big Media, the tech industry still hasn’t put its money squarely behind a political mouthpiece. The most egregious of proposed DRM legislation is being curtailed, but the “content industry” is still winning consumer victories with every DRM-cursed unit shipped.

The code prong of the fight has seen far more activity, however. The rise of BitTorrent has defined how rapidly P2P is advancing. And while many BT trackers have recently been shut down, this has only inspired developers to further distribute and anonymize the protocol (two oft-made suggestions I echoed in my rant). The company that has taken up the helm developing the application that is to replace the popular SuprNova BT site is registered offshore, a minor legal protection I also suggested to some criticism. It seems that hackers are finally taking the steps they should have years ago to protect the distribution of content.

But distribution exists for the content itself. Apple’s iTunes Music Store has effectively sold DRM-laced content to the masses, but tools like PlayFair to strip that DRM away say the masses still care about their IP freedom. That it’s easy enough to catch a random conversation on the best way to rip and encode a DVD collection says the masses care, even if only for convenience’s sake. The multitude of applications to get music back off an iPod would be yet another example.

In the end, I feel today’s hackers are doing a version of what I suggested: making sure they’re not up a creek without a paddle while navigating the political and commercial battlefields of the IP fight. It’s still a radical and motivated few that lay down the actual code to build P2P networks and keep content free, but the works they create keep intellectual property issues in the popular consciousness. There may not be the kind of organized development community I advocated, but the desire for free content has resulted in an ad-hoc community of equal if not greater effectiveness.

All that said, since I wrote that article I’ve long since bowed out of the copyfight loop, and I don’t feel as though I speak from a position any more informed than the average geek. But: does that answer your question, Ian?