History abounds in episodes in which C profits from the fight between A and B. As the case law grappling with p2p file sharing is growing worldwide and the Hollywood & Co. indefatigably keep suing linking websites and John Does for stealing their films, and as the Big Four & Co. are getting tired of chasing after students and housewives for stealing their songs, a new species of troll has emerged with a double-mouthed face: one mouth fed by cats and the other fed by mice. These legally educated trolls are multiplying and thriving, stilling their hunger and thirst by grabbing the pockets of copyright-flagged ships and their small pirates. Street pirates who play their games to nobody’s harm get caught in troll traps and throw over their ransom money in horror and disgust. Trolls do not mind the contempt-and-hatred molecules stuck on it: “pecunia non olet.”
The legal lawsuits of copyright holders against file swappers, file-sharing sites and cyber lockers are to nobody’s benefit and absolutely valueless for the society. Winners of these battles, especially in money ways, are lawyers. No wonder that a growing number of lawyers are specializing in the bully-the-pirate business. Of course, there are serious IP attorneys whose professionalism and integrity I dare not doubt. The main difference between trolls and serious lawyers is the absence or presence of real intention of bringing the pirates to the court, although this demarcation line is no clear-cut one since there is a practically inevitable grey zone between the two camps. The worst of trolls set the trap with one hand and offer a salvage service with the other. I refrain from revealing my personal discoveries of such trolls (who wants to get sued?), but googling with the key words such as anti-piracy, copyright, cease and desist letter, settlement letter, file sharing would suffice to harvest hundreds of troll websites. Actually my shocking discoveries came from typing German equivalents of those keywords, which prompted me to write this article.
The only way to bring the troll race to extinction is to equitably reward and promote content owners with the money centrally collected from the users on high volume low profit basis. France, for example, has managed to satisfy both artists and fans with ‘copie privée’, a tax levied on blank devices or equipment (such as cassettes, blank CDs or DVDs, portable digital players, USB drives, smartphones etc.) to remunerate the authors, publishers, performers and producers of the works these devices serve to copy. I would like to highlight my point of view that file swappers are eventually invaluable social assets, considering their contribution to the global culture by making already available works more widely available and no longer available works (e.g. out-of-print books or music scores) still available to the world. It is not the Internet alone that in this information era the otherwise out-of-reach treasures of knowledge and culture are brought within the reach of the earth population. The real enrichment through multiplying effect is the combined result of the roll-outs of numberless small and large file swappers, alias pirates, except for, of course, real bad guys. Furthermore, file sharing promotes new artists who otherwise would remain in anonymity. It’s high time that the authorities introduced win-win solutions balancing the content owners’ interest and users’ interest, e.g. Voluntary Collective Licensing suggested by EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). I myself is following with keen interest the current UK project of Digital Copyright Exchange.
The legal lawsuits of copyright holders against file swappers, file-sharing sites and cyber lockers are to nobody’s benefit and absolutely valueless for the society. Winners of these battles, especially in money ways, are lawyers. No wonder that a growing number of lawyers are specializing in the bully-the-pirate business. Of course, there are serious IP attorneys whose professionalism and integrity I dare not doubt. The main difference between trolls and serious lawyers is the absence or presence of real intention of bringing the pirates to the court, although this demarcation line is no clear-cut one since there is a practically inevitable grey zone between the two camps. The worst of trolls set the trap with one hand and offer a salvage service with the other. I refrain from revealing my personal discoveries of such trolls (who wants to get sued?), but googling with the key words such as anti-piracy, copyright, cease and desist letter, settlement letter, file sharing would suffice to harvest hundreds of troll websites. Actually my shocking discoveries came from typing German equivalents of those keywords, which prompted me to write this article.
The only way to bring the troll race to extinction is to equitably reward and promote content owners with the money centrally collected from the users on high volume low profit basis. France, for example, has managed to satisfy both artists and fans with ‘copie privée’, a tax levied on blank devices or equipment (such as cassettes, blank CDs or DVDs, portable digital players, USB drives, smartphones etc.) to remunerate the authors, publishers, performers and producers of the works these devices serve to copy. I would like to highlight my point of view that file swappers are eventually invaluable social assets, considering their contribution to the global culture by making already available works more widely available and no longer available works (e.g. out-of-print books or music scores) still available to the world. It is not the Internet alone that in this information era the otherwise out-of-reach treasures of knowledge and culture are brought within the reach of the earth population. The real enrichment through multiplying effect is the combined result of the roll-outs of numberless small and large file swappers, alias pirates, except for, of course, real bad guys. Furthermore, file sharing promotes new artists who otherwise would remain in anonymity. It’s high time that the authorities introduced win-win solutions balancing the content owners’ interest and users’ interest, e.g. Voluntary Collective Licensing suggested by EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). I myself is following with keen interest the current UK project of Digital Copyright Exchange.
