admin
19-06-2004, 23:03
Popolodellarete.it is glad to publish a short interview made to EFF - Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/).
Wendy Seltzer, EFF Staff Attorney, was very kind to answer to the following questions.
1) What's your opinion about file sharing?
Filesharing technology has wonderful possibilities.
Fans do a better job of distributing music and other content than the entertainment companies do.
They post better collections, with more storage and bandwidth.
The only problem is that filesharing is not yet paying the artists.
2) Which are the possible solutions to file sharing? Is it possible to compensate artists and leave users free to adopt file sharing technology?
It is possible to pay the artists, if copyright holders adjust to having less control.
In truth, they've already lost the control, because even "protected" content reaches the peer-to-peer Internet almost instantly.
The key to moving forward is allowing fans to pay for content in the formats they want, and making it as easy to pay as it currently is to participate for free.
Let them pay a blanket fee for all their filesharing to a collecting society for artists and copyright holders; leave the fans free to share music as they like,
and get the money to artists as their music is played.
3) Which is the future of music/movie distribution?
How will it change in the next 5 years?
In the long term, I think the future of music will be unencrypted, peer-to-peer distribution, not DRM-encumbered physical items.
Movies will still have theatrical distribution, but subsequent distribution will follow that of music.
Whether we'll get there in five years depends how quickly the entertainment companies realize that suing fans isn't a viable long-term business.
=====================
For more information see
http://www.eff.org/share/
=====================
Italian translation published at http://www.popolodellarete.it/showthread.php?t=129
Wendy Seltzer, EFF Staff Attorney, was very kind to answer to the following questions.
1) What's your opinion about file sharing?
Filesharing technology has wonderful possibilities.
Fans do a better job of distributing music and other content than the entertainment companies do.
They post better collections, with more storage and bandwidth.
The only problem is that filesharing is not yet paying the artists.
2) Which are the possible solutions to file sharing? Is it possible to compensate artists and leave users free to adopt file sharing technology?
It is possible to pay the artists, if copyright holders adjust to having less control.
In truth, they've already lost the control, because even "protected" content reaches the peer-to-peer Internet almost instantly.
The key to moving forward is allowing fans to pay for content in the formats they want, and making it as easy to pay as it currently is to participate for free.
Let them pay a blanket fee for all their filesharing to a collecting society for artists and copyright holders; leave the fans free to share music as they like,
and get the money to artists as their music is played.
3) Which is the future of music/movie distribution?
How will it change in the next 5 years?
In the long term, I think the future of music will be unencrypted, peer-to-peer distribution, not DRM-encumbered physical items.
Movies will still have theatrical distribution, but subsequent distribution will follow that of music.
Whether we'll get there in five years depends how quickly the entertainment companies realize that suing fans isn't a viable long-term business.
=====================
For more information see
http://www.eff.org/share/
=====================
Italian translation published at http://www.popolodellarete.it/showthread.php?t=129