Imagine this. You teach 'Intellectual Property' at your institution. You are invited to make a presentation on the 'Legal Use and Benefits of Peer-to-Peer Networks' to a conference hosted by your institution. Everything's fine until that phone call. Apparently, vested commercial interests don't like the theme and have threatened to make life 'difficult' for your institution unless your presentation is stopped. Couldn't possibly happen here … of course not … objectivity … academic freedom and all that. Hmmm … read on. Read about Jorge Cortell and weep.
But we're OK … I mean P2P and other open source work is actually written into the HEFCE E-Learning Strategy and the work of JISC … And no 'vested interest' is going to attempt to influence/inhibit work when it's being signalled at this level … are they?
If you don't understand what all the fuss is about then you can crystalize your understanding around the P2P technology of the moment, BitTorrent, the purpose of which is described so cogently by Wired News who in describing the new BitTorrent search functionality explain that:
“BitTorrent speeds internet file transfers by shifting the bandwidth burden off the publisher, and distributing it among users downloading the file: Everyone downloading a file over BitTorrent is unobtrusively uploading it to other users at the same time so that large, popular files actually move at a faster rate than obscure ones.”
What's got the 'vested interests' so rattled and hyper-reactive is that the files being so efficiently transferred can easily be their movies, putative hit singles, computer games etc etc.
For example, here's an extract from the Motion Picture Association of America's press release BitTorrent Facilitating Illegal File Swapping of Star Wars On Day of Opening (19 May 2005) their response to the use of BitTorrent (which is only a protocol for file transfer remember) in disseminating pirate copies of the new Star Wars Movie. The MPAA's CEO said:
“There is no better example of how theft dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding BitTorrent providing users with illegal copies of Revenge of the Sith. The unfortunate fact is this type of theft happens on a regular basis on peer to peer networks all over the world,”.
You can read the above as “peer-to-peer is bad”.
The 'vested interests' such as MPAA want peer-to-peer to go away because they can't control it easily because there's no single strangle point, or 'controlling mind', or even a central server. So let's see if we can find a Senator looking to make a name for him or herself and get this P2P stuff banned.
We've had centuries of centralized control over information/data flow and suddenly it's all breaking down. What do you mean you don't want me to scribe for you any more and that you've learned to read and write for yourself? What do you mean you're using Google to find what you want? … you need a qualified librarian to help you identify quality-assured resources don't you? 🙂
So quick, quick … “Let's ban the technologies which are losing us this control and lean on those who can disseminate this heresy … We don't care about your academic freedom, there's billions at stake here.”
Now I don't have any problems with clamp-downs on organized crime (in whatever form that takes) but let's not confuse perpetrators of crime with the tools they use (or abuse) or suck ever more people into the quagmire of redefined criminality because they, say, view something beyond a permitted seven day period (a la the BBC iMP).
The reality is that P2P is not going to go away. It's just so efficient. As broadband grows the potential of P2P will grow with it. For example, consider the LionShare project started, initially, by Penn State University, but is now a partnership of some of the leading HE institutions and collaborations around including MIT, Simon Fraser University, OKI, and Internet2, and is backed by a significant Mellon Foundation grant.
