Fred Von Lohmann of EFF gave a talk at Berkeley this afternoon on file sharing, both the practical realities and the ways EFF and the RIAA view the issues. He said EFF is a membership organization and he "...works for tips and gives all his intellectual property away for free...". Major points of interest:
• People on networks don't understand that those targeted are "file sharers" and this means that they have "file sharing" turned on (turn it off in the preferences, or take the files out of your shared files folder!).
• "Avril Levine" appears the be the worst file the have, at least in looking at the lawsuits files and what file sharers have on their harddrives, for provoking a suit.
• There isn't right now a good way to find downloaders, who don't fileshare, because they way people are typically found is through a search of a name, word, topic, and their shared files come up.
• The RIAA is typically copying the file list of a sharer, but also testing the download of 10 - 20 files, to make sure they are the work as titled (people could change the title to promote their own work to get more airplay - in other words, your local garage band could try to get play by renaming their songs, Avril Levine).
• Lawsuit settlements so far are typically $2-5 k, depending on their sympathy with the media and how many files they share.
• Many people seem to be moving into the Darknet, private file sharing networks, password protected and much harder for the RIAA to find you, unless they get a person to narc you out.
• UCBerkeley seems to be controlling sharing by having a bandwidth limit, as are many other schools.
• The Answer is not to sue, but to find a solution, like the webcasting solution, which pays artists and uses this great new technology. "File sharing kicks ass over FM radio. KALX excepted."
• Every download is not a lost sale. The CD and music industry are doing badly because of the recession, the end of the CD replacement of vinyl boom, less releases of new titles than in past years, many more entertainment options with limited dollars to chase, but filesharing is involved in the downturn in profits. Unclear how much. Also, don't really know how many file sharers buy more, or less, CDs.
• Answer is to end lawsuits, end ban on new technologies, get artists compensated, and let people listed to music in this new great way.

His second talk is today at 4:45pm at Boalt 115. A bit more lawyerly, but if you want to listen to what he has to say, you should go!

UPDATE: The one disappointing thing Fred said today, which I didn't have time to address earlier, was that any, ANY, file sharing of unauthorized work is illegal. I disagree. If I make a friend a mixed cd of my tracks from lawfully purchased CDs, I consider that fair use and legal. Fred, as I recall, (but I may be mistaken), used to have that broader opinion. But even if he didn't have that opinion in the past, he didn't so forcefully state the no-unauthorized-filesharing position then. So I was a little taken aback by the forcefulness of it today. But I suppose in order to have one consistent view point coming from EFF, and get people to take them seriously on their proposed solutions, they probably have to go that route now.

Bummer, because they concede a kind of fair use that I think is our right and is a really nice social aspect of sharing culture in our society. It's too bad things have gotten to this very rigid position.

Update 9/29/03: Brian Carver attended boty events, and posts on Fred's second talk which I missed.