[DMCA-Activists] P2P Legal Advisors

[Seth Johnson]

(Got this link from the Pho list.  Catchy snippet: "Call it file-sharing
or shoplifting, here in Holland we call it good business." -- Seth)

> http://news.com.com/2100-1023-985484.html


'Honest Thief' confronts music industry 

By Sandeep Junnarkar 
February 21, 2003, 8:50 AM PT


A Dutch company calling itself an "honest thief" has become the latest
threat to an entertainment and recording industry beset by swelling
numbers of file-swapping services. 

Operating in the Netherlands, Internet services company PGR--doing
business as The Honest Thief--plans in the spring to license its
software and provide legal advice to others who hope to set up the
newest incarnation of peer-to-peer services. 

The recording industry has succeeded in dismantling services like
Napster and Aimster by taking legal action in the United States. But The
Honest Thief, whose Web site went live on Friday, plans to take
advantage of a Dutch appeals court ruling last March that essentially
paved the way for the Netherlands to become a legal haven for
file-sharing activities. 

The appeals court said that file-swapping service Kazaa was not
responsible for the illegal actions of people using its software. That
decision is being appealed to higher court.

"Call it file-sharing or shoplifting, here in Holland we call it good
business," Pieter Plass, founder of The Honest Thief, said in a
statement. "With our file-sharing service and our new software, we hope
The Honest Thief will become to file sharing what the Swiss are to
banking." 

The music industry sees things differently.

IFPI, the trade group representing the international recording industry
and an affiliate of the Recording Industry Association of America. "It's
hard to see how someone can claim they are making some 'honest money' by
stealing other people's works." 

Although only a few nations have shown permissiveness toward
file-swapping service, the ruling underscored the mounting pressure on
the copyright industry's struggle to retain control internationally of
protected intellectual property such as music, movies and software.

"After two-plus years of legal wrangling with peer-to-peer sites, the
file-sharing services' technology and business models continue to evolve
in such a way as to circumvent U.S. legal rulings," said Lee Black, an
analyst at Jupiter Research. "The fact that it continues to move into
international areas will always pose a problem for the industry--these
things keep sprouting up, and consumers keep finding the content they
want."

The industry continues to target other players, including Grokster,
Morpheus and Sharman Networks, Kazaa's owner. But despite weakening
file-swapping services through the courts, the industry faces a
continuing threat. 

Figures released on Thursday by Ipsos, a market research firm, showed
that that despite efforts to curb illicit file sharing, half of all
teens and 19 percent of all Americans over the age of 12 reported having
downloaded music from file-swapping services in 2002. 

Ipsos added that almost 10 percent of Americans reported downloading
music in the past 30 days. Using the findings from its survey, Ipsos
extrapolated U.S. census data from 2000, which suggested that nearly 20
million people have downloaded music illegally in the past 30 days. 

For instance, Kazaa's software has been downloaded at least 192 million
times, according to Download.com, a software aggregation site owned by
CNET Networks, publisher of News.com. Many of those downloads have been
upgrades or duplicate copies, however.