Aftermath of Shutting Down Limewire

"They shut Limewire down!!"

Some people expected pandemonium to ensue or for public outcry to undo the court decision. Not surprisingly, a mere two months after the fact and the news has already become blasé.

Why? Because we can move on. Where the law beats down one network facilitating intellectual property violations, ten other facilitators rise in its place. People's knee-jerk reactions of "Is it true? Why? Since when?" were quickly replaced with "What do I do now? What can I use now? And where else can I get free music and videos?" To the relief of many there were ready answers.

I first thought about this phenomenon when I was still irritated with Wikipedia's cry for help. I figured if Wiki couldn't get the funds it needed then it could go ahead and shut down because the truth is, others will take its place. It's quite the same with all this hullabaloo about youtube videos being taken down and file sharing networks being closed. Someone will take their place. The venues will be as hush hush as the beginnings of limewire and youtube conversion but then they'll gain popularity, annoy the rights-holders, be declared illegal too, and be replaced with cannier ways to get free downloads. It's a vicious cycle.

Where does fault lie? I thought that fault lies in the ineffectiveness of our law-enforcers to implement the law and the inability of citizens to abide by the law. The law is clear and so I bought into the mindset that everyone else was wrong. We are a global society of freeloaders and I trusted that to be wrong.

But I'm waking up to the reality that our culture is one of rapid sharing and quick access. Free products are good but it's not the driving force of this file sharing revolution. Creators have the capacity to enter into the picture and cater to the desires of the public while still obtaining incentives. And so I lay blame on a new culprit: the law itself. Our law itself is ignorant that the ultimate goal of intellectual property law is achieved through online file sharing. Because of this ignorance, the law has not created incentives to creators in this new medium.

The cycle of file sharing facilitation continues with Frostwire, torrent downloads, and numerous other sites and programs available online. The death of one brings life to ten. To end this cycle therefore, there is a need not for prosecution but for collaboration. When the law learns to collaborate with these facilitators then we can start to build a new regime of intellectual property rights protection.

Maricris L. Real

Entry #8