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The Ethical Point of the Debate: Anti-Piracy on the Media Grid
I’ve been in a bit of a moral dilemma lately. The media grid
offers an incredible opportunity for Hollywood to protect its
intellectual property – including films, television shows, and
just about any other bandwidth-intensive offering it may produce.
Advocates of digital freedom point out that in helping the media
industry to protect its content, we may artificially restrict freedom
of expression. The Viacom-YouTube lawsuit
is just one example of this natural tension. In short, property
protection of Hollywood’s content could come at an onerous cost
both to the consumer and the industry. Draconian anti-piracy policies
that the media industry has pushed in the past, like DRM, always seem to fail because of the hassle it gives consumers. Meanwhile, ICANN’s, the WTO’s,
and Motion picture industry’s inability to restrict who offers
what under the domain name system, creates incredible leverage for the
pirates. We need to find a balance from these two polar positions when
it comes to the (high-quality) multi-media Internet.
USF Symposium on Net Neutrality
I’ve been seeking answers to this particular question now for
many months. I’ve attended a number of conferences, working
groups, and spoken with numerous thought leaders on the subject. Last
weekend, I attended USF’s symposium on Net Neutrality.
I walked away feeling that we may have reached a breakthrough with both
sides of the debate. Unfortunately, the symposium veered wildly from
'net neutrality' and really never got around to what the term really
means. So, if we can't get broad agreement
on the term, then we can hopefully get some agreement on some other
things. Piracy was one of them. I met some reasonable 'net neutrality
advocates' who actually understood the problem. In other words, it got
its fair share of the mindshare,
and I walked away with some startling conclusions.
First, I should relate a little diagram that I scratched on a napkin while at the symposium:
Digital property is not easily protected on an open system like the
Internet. We see, however, that there are widely varying degrees of
respect various business entities have for the property owners. At one
extreme, we have parties who respect copyrights with a genuine focus on
providing a high quality consumer experience. At the other end, we have
blatant disregard for the owners of intellectual property and
unscrupulous business people who are simply making money from stolen
content. The question, therefore, becomes how did we get in this mess? Where and how should we draw the
line and who should lose their privileges on the media grid if they
violate InterStream's terms of service agreement (ITOSA)?
Digital property is just like physical property. Without a proper legal
framework, rule of law, and respect from the users of that property,
any form of protection is doomed to failure. There has been widespread
failure in taking down sites like listen4ever.com and allofmp3.com.
When they do get taken down, frequently dozens of new ones simply pop up
the next day or month. ICANN never could never really assert authority
with terms of use agreements for domain names. Instead, the industry
has relied on costly and lengthy action from bodies like the WTO to enforce media company digital property rights.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network represent a different problem in that they are like ad hoc grids. The media objects like those on BitTorrent,
or “torrents”, are completely distributed with no
centralized control. Because this model is specifically designed to
skirt anti-piracy efforts, and the individuals and companies behind it
want to keep the status quo, it is virtually impossible to control or regulate. Sites that help locate "torrents" are even more difficult because they don't actually host the content. The only solution I can see, here, is to give ISPs the right and the ability to put in "truck lanes" that can throttle back the speed of P2P delivery.
Redesigning the Internet
So why don’t we redesign the Internet? For low-bandwidth
intensive applications like we have with the current web, this of
course, would be impossible to change. There is simply too much
momentum behind the current model. Users and .COM businesses alike
never would accept any significant move from ICANN or others governing the network
today. For bandwidth intensive
applications like the “video web”, we have an opportunity
to create a new paradigm that can enforce digital property rights and
make it much easier for the media industry to monitor, audit,
and easily issue take down notices to those perniciously pervasive
pirates. Although, the window for implementing such a system is closing
rapidly, I have a great deal of hope that we can get it in place
quickly and offer consumers a superior user experience to anything they
have today or in the near future. The InterStream Terms of Service Agreement (ITOSA)
offers the media industry an opportunity to clearly establish their
property rights on the network. A terms of service agreement respecting
digital property rights was something ICANN and the Commerce Department
could not or would not do for domain names. What happened there is for another time and place in this discussion.
Portals on the Media Grid
The media grid uses a different approach to content distribution. ISTP
references distributed media objects on the grid while requiring a
portal name for anyone wishing to stream their content to a consumer.
As such, the portal name can be readily used to determine who does and does not have access to the use of the grid.
For example,
ISTP://YourPortal/
refers to a portal on the system which could lose distribution privileges on the network if does not conform to InterStream’s anti-piracy policy. If a piece of content is streamed frequently from the grid, it could also be subject to audit. Technologies such as watermarking and fingerprinting
offer great promise to thwart piracy if audit systems can be
sufficiently automated with takedown notices, including threats of
portal shutdown.
I truly believe that this approach is Hollywood’s last and best
hope. To thwart piracy, they must ultimately offer consumers a better
overall experience. The next generation of television is before us with
the InterStream approach. Hyperlinked video, and the promise of having
the ability to watch what we want, where and when we want it, is the
ultimate answer. We must make sure we don't place so much control over
this new “multi-media Web 3.0” that new forms of media,
such as user generated content, simply don’t get the high-bandwidth services they require.
Tell me what you think. Drop me an email if you have an opinion on the
subject and we can talk about how our oversight board can function to
create the best consumer experience while protecting the digital
property interests of the “old and new” media
industry as well.
Jeff Turner
jlt <at> InterStream <dot> com
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