WEBVTT - BitTorrent and The Pirate Bay 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.840 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.280 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.360 and the Love All Things Tech. And eighteen years ago 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:26.520 or so, a group of hackers and political activists calling 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:32.080 themselves the Bureau of Piracy in Sweden launched a website 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:35.920 that would become the target of numerous lawsuits and police raids. 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:41.040 And yet eighteen years later, the website, the Pirate Bay, 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.040 is still up and running. So today I thought I 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:46.880 would talk not just about the history of the site, 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:50.199 or the philosophy of the site's founders, or even the 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:53.880 battles fought between the established music industry and the pirate community, 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:56.840 but also the technology that underpins the whole thing in 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:00.000 the first place. But first, let's start with some under 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.320 lying facts of how we got here, which will involve 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:07.000 a quick discussion of the history of the music industry 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:11.000 and its issue with copying media, because that's really at 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:14.160 the heart of all this. Now, in the old old days, 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.640 before the the era of recorded media, so before you 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:22.920 could actually make a record of music other than like 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.120 sheet music or something. Making a living off music was 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:30.200 pretty darn tough. Um. You had your folk musicians who 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:32.160 would earn, you know, a bit of cash here, and 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:36.080 they're getting hired to play or maybe paid to go 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:39.160 away if they were really bad. You had your composers. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:42.000 Many of those would work either in the service of 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:46.960 a monarch or nobility, or maybe the church. Bach did 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:49.600 a lot of work for the church, only if you 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:52.520 had a more public facing way of paying the bills. 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:57.080 Beethoven was one of those um and actually made money 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:01.440 by selling sheet music of his compositions. But it was 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:05.520 really the invention of recorded media like wax cylinders and 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:09.400 such that really opened up doors not just for musicians 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.560 but also for the companies that made the recordings. In fact, 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:19.239 it really opened up doors for those companies now. All 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:23.400 the way back in eighteen eighty nine, a guy named 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:29.480 Edward D. Easton founded a phonograph company called Columbia. It had, 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:34.040 you know, various different names, but Columbia Music, Columbia Pictures 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:37.760 all comes from this original company. In eighteen eighty nine, 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.440 it worked in tandem with Thomas Edison's company for a 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:45.480 few years, producing regional recordings of its own wax cylinders 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.280 in or to selling these brand new inventions of the phonograph. 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:53.160 But other companies started to come into being as well, 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.280 and some of them started to introduce new technologies like 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.240 recorded discs as in you know, record albums. They were 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:03.400 made out of shellac instead of vinyl for the first 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.880 several decades. But you know that meant that there was 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:11.120 a technological evolution beyond the wax cylinder. Well, the companies, 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:13.240 you know now that there were a few of them, 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:15.920 were eager to kind of corner a market, to offer 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:18.919 something to customers that the other companies could not offer, 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:22.600 and they began to work with various artists and we're 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:25.600 signing them to exclusive deals like this is where you 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:29.760 would get signed to a record label. Essentially, the artists 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:32.320 would get a chance to record their music and make 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.160 some money off of it, and the companies would establish 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:38.160 a roster of artists that they could promote and sell 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:43.920 to customers, and the music industry was effectively born. It was, 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:48.120 and to some extent still is, cut throat, with companies 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:52.440 jealously scooping up talents that are perceived to be a commodity, 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:55.680 and a whole business model came to form over time, 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.560 with companies determining how much to pay out to artists. 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:02.080 Generally speak, those musicians don't see a whole lot of 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.680 money from record sales. You know, you might get a 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.800 big advance as a record contract, but you don't necessarily 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:10.680 make a lot of money off of the record sales themselves, 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.080 unless you have a good royalty deal and you sell 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:16.280 a let's see, I think the technical term is a 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:20.960 metric crap ton of records. And nowadays that's even harder 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:23.560 to do, right because you've got things like streaming services. 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:27.240 That's a whole separate issue that I should really go 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:29.960 into at some point to talk about the music industry 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.880 streaming and how that affects artists. But let's get back 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:36.760 to talking about the music industry in general. So in 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:41.080 nineteen fifty two, way before the streaming days, several music 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.440 labels work to form an organization in America called the 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:49.320 Recording Industry Association of America or r I double A. Now, 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.000 the r I double A is a trade organization that 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:55.200 sets technical standards for the recording industry. You know, which 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:57.320 is important. You want to make sure that you're not 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:02.040 fragmenting the market to the point where customers get frustrated, right, 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.239 Like if it turned out I could buy a record 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.840 from Columbia and a different record from Victor, but they 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.920 would only play on their respective players, and I can't 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:15.520 afford both players. That would be incredibly frustrating. You know, 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.120 as a customer, I just want the stuff I buy 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.600 to work on the stuff that I have. Right. We've 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:24.000 seen it over and over again that when the the 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.680 market gets fragmented with different standards, it hurts everybody in 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:29.559 the long run. So that was one of the reasons 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.640 that are I Double A formed. But it also tracks 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:37.280 recording sales, and it's the organization that awards stuff like 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:39.920 gold records and platinum records. So if you hear about 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.559 a record going platinum, it was the r I Double 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:46.599 A that tracked those sales. And uh and you know, 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:50.200 essentially authorize that to say like, yes, this this activates 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:54.120 Again a weird thing in the streaming age, but it's 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:57.320 probably most famous for folks who are at least Internet 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.520 savvy as the organization that fights tooth and nail against 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:07.240 piracy and copyright infringement, sometimes to the point of well 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:10.520 beyond belief. I would say, one thing we've seen over 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:13.960 and over in the music biz and the entertainment business overall, 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:15.839 not just music. I mean, we've seen this in the 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:19.120 movie industry and TV as well. Is a reluctance to 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.120 support anything that would allow someone to make a copy 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.520 of a recorded work. So for a long time that 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.400 really was not an issue. There just wasn't an easy 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:30.039 way to do it. The average person had no way 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.479 to copy a recording. Then in the nineteen sixties we 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.440 had the development of the cassette tape, though it would 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:39.000 take a few more years for cassette tapes to reach 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:42.800 a quality suitable for music, but once that happened, we 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.640 saw the r I double A really take notice. It 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:49.040 would become something of a pattern. As tech companies developed 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:52.960 ways for consumers to copy media onto a format, we 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:56.720 would see a resistance to that in the industry and 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:00.640 lobbying activities that were aimed at extending copy right law 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.599 to protect copyright holders and to like try and strike 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:07.240 down technology before it could hit the public. And let's 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:11.160 do a quick aside about copyright holders, because this is 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:15.120 important not just for this discussion about the music industry, 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:18.040 but also about the pirate bay in particular. So in 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:23.320 the United States, copyright law is arguably pretty darn bonkers, 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:27.520 thanks largely to major corporations like Disney pushing for expanded 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:31.920 copyright protection over the years. So current copyright law provides 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:34.760 exclusive rights to the copyright holder for a term of 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:39.640 seventy years after the author of that works death, so 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.880 the entire life of the author plus seventy years or 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:47.480 nine years after publication if the rights are held not 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:51.080 by you know, an author, but rather say, someone else, 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:55.120 So holding a copyright gives the holder the exclusive right 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.200 to reproduce and sell those reproductions or copies of that work. 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.760 If you are not the copyright holder, then you do 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.440 not have the right to make copies, and yet that 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.640 you know, can be considered infringement. I should also mention 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:13.200 that frequently the copyright holder in this case is not 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:15.920 necessarily the person who wrote a piece of music or 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:19.960 the artist or group that recorded the music. It's typically 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.600 the music company that's the copyright holder. So that's not 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:26.280 the case everywhere, mind you, but for pretty much the 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:30.600 entire history of the music industry, music companies have dominated 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:35.640 the copyright space, and so defending copyright wasn't really about 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:38.880 standing up for the artists and writers out there, although 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.600 that's how it's almost always framed it was actually to 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:45.640 protect the financial assets of a company. However, there's also 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:51.160 a concept called fair use. This complicates matters. Now. Generally speaking, 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:55.320 there's some pretty narrow cases in which someone can make 0:08:55.720 --> 0:08:59.800 an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work and it won't 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:04.600 be considered copyright infringement. Typically, these restrictions fall into stuff 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.839 like if you're doing it for academic research, or you're 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:11.360 providing criticism of a work, or you're making a parody 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:15.760 of a work. But even within these restrictions, there's a 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:18.280 fairly narrow path you have to follow. So for example, 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:22.160 let's say that you wanted to critique the latest Stephen 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:26.320 King novel, so you include several chapters of that novel 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:29.600 in full as part of your critique. Well, you would 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:31.840 really be pushing your luck because you're using so much 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:34.800 of the original work. Now, fair use isn't a force 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.880 field or anything like. Even if you're following all the 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:42.160 rules and you're maybe you're criticizing something and you're using 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:44.120 a little bit of the original work in order to 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:47.280 make a point, and you've really got all your bases covered, 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.480 it's not like fair use is a preemptive strike. It's 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:53.760 actually something that only comes into play once you get 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:56.920 taken to court and you would present your case to 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.360 a judge and try to argue fair you and the 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:02.840 court would decide whether or not it was actually fair 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.240 use or not. You can't, you know, predeclare this is 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.080 fair use. No matter how many times you might see 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.760 something like that on say a social networking platform or 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:17.280 YouTube or whatever. It don't work that way. Also, the 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:20.439 whole thing of I only used ten seconds of audio. 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.559 That you know, the amount you use does factor into 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:27.000 decisions about whether or not something is fair use, but 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:31.120 there is no minimum amount that is magical anyway, even 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:33.080 if you're in the right, if someone takes you to 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.400 court and you defend yourself with an argument about fair 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:38.880 use and you win, it's still expensive. So unless you're 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:42.800 awarded some money in the process, you're gonna be out 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:47.840 some cash. It's it's tough well. Home reproduction of copyrighted 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:51.600 works is one of those sticky areas that sometimes gets 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:56.400 lumped in with fair use because while there's been discussions 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:00.280 about working in an exemption for home copying for for 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.200 like archival purposes or whatever, it's never been codified in 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.760 US law. So if you were to purchase an album, 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:11.360 whether you know it was on CD, your vinyl, or whatever, 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:13.760 maybe it's even digital. You know, maybe you purchased a 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:17.360 digital album and then you decide to make a backup 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:19.600 recording of it. And let's say that you know you're 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:21.480 going to old school, you're putting it on a cassette. 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.600 You make a cassette recording of the album. There are 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.199 some people who would argue that what you've done could 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:31.400 be fair use because you're creating an archive or backup 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.480 copy of work. You're not used making any commercial use 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.000 of it. You're not selling it, you're not publishing it. 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.959 You still have the original copy, so it's not like 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.800 you've given your original copy away. And you're generally thought 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.120 of to be in the clear as long as the 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:50.680 copy you have made is for your own personal use 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:54.920 and not for commercial purposes, even though again this is 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.480 not codified in law. It's just the interpretation that people 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:01.400 have made. But he's saw the R I double A 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.040 react in similar ways every single time a new consumer 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:06.880 tech with copying abilities appeared, with the R I double 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.480 A essentially saying this was doomed for the industry. We 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.000 saw that TV and movie studios do the same thing. 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.800 With the rise of the VCR, we really saw the 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:19.400 r I double A push harder. With the emergence of 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:23.440 digital audio tapes or debt formats. The big worry there 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.200 was that unlike you know, okay, so analog cassettes, analog formats, 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:32.520 cassette tapes are analog, uh, generally meant that you would 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.240 have a decline in audio quality, like the copy would 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.880 not sound as good as the original. So there was 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:43.520 a little bit of a relief in the industry because 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.160 the thought was, well, yeah, people can copy stuff, uh, 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:49.120 and we don't like that, not even if they're just 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.000 copying it for themselves. But at least the copies don't 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:54.800 sound as good as the originals, so we have the 0:12:54.920 --> 0:13:00.440 edge there. Well, digital was different, right, Digital recordings can 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:02.880 go bit for bit and you can have a perfect 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:07.480 transfer of a file, meaning there's no decrease in audio quality. 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.840 The copy is just as good as the original. So 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:13.920 the quality you get would be dependent upon the playback 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:17.200 device you were using more than anything else. Well, the 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:19.640 R I double A did not like that, and they 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:23.199 lobbied very hard to head off issues with digital transfers, 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:25.760 the fear being that if it's easy to make perfect 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.280 copies of stuff, piracy will run rampant and the music 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:30.959 industry as a whole will collapse. Now I do not 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:34.760 totally by that argument, by the way, but the r 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.320 I double A was able to affect legislation enough for 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:39.840 the DAT format to be kind of dead on a rival. 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:42.240 I mean, it did exist, but there are a lot 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:44.440 of copy of protections that were built in place that 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:52.000 inhibited that particular technology from getting widespread adoption. Uh, the 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.040 compact disc would have much better success. And there are 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:57.000 other parts of that story as well, but that goes 0:13:57.040 --> 0:13:59.880 beyond this episode. Anyway, you can only imagine that once 0:13:59.880 --> 0:14:02.960 we reached the point where it became feasible to share 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:06.280 digital files over the Internet, how the r I double 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:10.200 A reacted. The trade organization is famous for its vigorous 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:16.040 defense of copyright, So we're gonna skip up to This 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.480 was a few years before the emergence of bit Torrent, 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:22.640 and a few years more before the Pirate Bay would launch. 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:27.240 So in nine, an American college student named Shawn Fanning 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:31.960 created a peer to peer network platform called Napster. Oh Napster, 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.840 what a Hornet's nest. You stir it up, all right. 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:37.440 Let's talk about peer to peer for a second. So 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:40.240 in the early days of the general public being aware 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.000 of the Internet, one of the really big limiting factors 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.320 was the download speeds. I mean a lot of people 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.920 were using dial up Internet. It was slow. Transferring large 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:52.440 files could take a really long time, and if there 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:55.640 were any network issues between the client, which is the 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:59.680 computer what's doing the downloading, and the server that would 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.920 be the peer that hosted the original file. If anything 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:05.640 happened between those two, it could take even longer to 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.480 download the file, right, like if a connection broke or something. 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:12.720 Peer to peer networks presented an alternative to your classic 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:17.240 client server system and appeer to peer network. Every computer 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:21.040 connected to that network acts both as a client and 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:24.160 a server. That's why they're called peers. They're all peers 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.760 of each other. Typically, you would designate a folder in 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:31.840 your computers directory for the purposes of downloading and sharing files. 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:35.280 Anything you put in that folder would become visible and 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.800 accessible to all the other computers on this peer to 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.640 peer network, and any downloads you initiated would go into 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:44.680 that folder. It didn't have to be that way, by 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.600 the way, you could actually direct stuff to a different folder, 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.520 and you could choose to share nothing. But it was 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.160 a pretty typical approach to do it this way. Now, 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:55.560 the big benefit of the peer to peer system is 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:59.600 that the files could propagate across networks fairly quickly. You'd 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.320 load up the P two P client, the program you 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:05.840 were using to access this network, and you would look 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.400 for servers that were hosting a file that you were 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.720 particularly interested in. And now, assuming that was a pretty 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:14.520 popular file, you would probably see a pretty good selection 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:18.960 of options and you could choose a server appear to 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:21.440 download from. You know, you could look to see about 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.600 signal strength or how far away it was. Like, if 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:26.680 you saw something that had a pretty good signal strength 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:28.800 and it was close to you, you could guess that 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.000 you were going to get that file fairly quickly, at 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:35.040 least as quickly as anything traveled on the Internet back 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.680 in the late nineties. Uh And if things were super slow, 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.200 you could always stop and switch to a different peer 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:43.680 on that network to see if maybe your connection to 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:48.640 that peer was faster. Napster became famous for being a 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:53.080 hub of pirated music exchanges. Some users were ripping music 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:55.600 from their CDs, just putting those in the shared P 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:58.760 two P folder on their machines and then searching for 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:01.480 files to fill out their collections while sharing their own. 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:05.960 And this totally bypassed the traditional model of purchasing music 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:09.320 from a retail establishment, and the music industry wasn't seeing 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:13.000 penny one from these exchanges, and it indeed seemed as 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:16.040 though the sky would fall. Keep in mind, this is 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:20.240 before iTunes. Uh, there weren't that many companies that were 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:24.400 directly selling digital files to customers. The ones that were 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.200 were kind of it was a pain in the butt 0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:30.480 to navigate through all of them, um like, because there 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:33.239 weren't There weren't sort of centralized stores that you can 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:37.280 go to like iTunes, so people were making do with 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.600 what they had and using ways to get around that. 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:42.520 Now I should also add, like, there's some people who 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.560 use peer to peer networks and torrent sites and stuff 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:47.320 like that, and all they want to do is just 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.920 get as much stuff for free as they possibly can, 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.000 and that's their big thing. They just don't want to 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.639 pay for anything. There are others who are like, I 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.000 would pay for this, but there's not really any way 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.280 I can do it, at least not easy way to 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:02.680 do it, and so I have to do it this way. 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:04.919 And then there are yet others who are using it 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:08.960 as a statement against like late stage capitalism. Anyway, member 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.959 organizations in the r I double A went after Napster 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.880 as well as individual users, and we'll talk a bit 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.080 about what happened with that after we come back from 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:29.760 this quick break. Okay, So the r I double A 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:36.000 decides that Napster is a huge boogeyman, and also individual 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:41.640 users who were downloading UH files. They couldn't go after everybody, obviously, 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:43.760 but they could go after a few people and make 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:47.879 some real big examples out of folks and scare the 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:50.440 heck out of other people who had been pirting music. 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.240 There was a hail storm of lawsuits, with music companies 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:59.400 seeking huge amounts and damages, sometimes targeting extremely sympathetic individuals. 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:02.520 There were cases where it was a young kid who 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:05.480 was found at fault or grandparents or whatever. Not the 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:07.960 best way to win a pr battle, right, So the 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.040 whole affair really gave the r I double a black eye, 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.679 painted the organization as a greedy company or greedy organization 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:19.640 willing to financially ruin normal people for downloading a few songs. 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:22.120 Maybe if you added them all up, it would cost 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:24.679 a few hundred dollars to purchase, and yet they were 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:28.160 being hit by massive, massive fines. To call it overkill 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.600 would be an understatement. By the way, the arguments weren't 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:34.879 helped when the US Government Accountability Office or g a O, 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:39.560 would later investigate claims that piracy had a quantifiable impact 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:43.119 on the entertainment industry as a whole. So the g 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.320 a o s findings essentially said, there's no way you 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.840 can assess how much money was lost due to piracy, 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:53.720 because you can't just assume that for every illegal download 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.240 that existed you had a lost sale. Like that's the 0:19:57.280 --> 0:19:59.879 only way in the classic sense, like if it's a 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.200 physical piece of media, if someone walks into a store 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.639 and like steal some CDs and walks out, Yeah, you 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.040 had a physical thing there a right, Like the store 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:11.800 could say, hey, we are inventory shows that we should have, 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:15.080 you know, twenty copies of this Billy Joel album, but 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.439 we only have fifteen and we can't account for the 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.159 other five. I mean that's those are lost sales, Like 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:24.640 someone somewhere is eating that loss. But with digital files, 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:29.000 it's obviously different, right, So in other words, I could 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:32.760 download an entire album or a movie or TV series 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:35.920 and maybe I'm not like super interested in it. I'm curious, 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:38.639 but not curious enough to actually go out and buy it, 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.359 So I just download it. I pired it. And in 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.720 other words, like if I had not illegally downloaded the material, 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:48.720 if I just ignored it, well, I still wouldn't have 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.720 bought the thing. So there was no loss sale because 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:53.960 it wasn't gonna buy it anyway. That was the g 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.000 a o S. Point. They said, you cannot say that 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:00.000 for every pirated copy you lost out on a sale, 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.959 because that's just not how the world works. Also, there 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:07.280 are plenty of instances where people have downloaded something illegally 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:10.159 to sample it, and then they've gone out and purchased 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:15.440 the actual thing. So you can't look at as apples 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:19.399 to apples, right because again, priortic copies and last sales 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:24.200 are not equivalent anyway. The trials of Napster, both literal, 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:27.080 literal and figurative, as well as similar P to P 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:30.080 services like lime Wire and kazab would set the stage 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.320 for what was to come next. And what was to 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:37.840 come next was BitTorrent. Now Napster had a relatively brief existence, 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:39.879 at least as far as peer to peer file sharing 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.920 services were concerned. Lawsuits pretty much forced Napster to shut 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:46.920 down by two thousand one two thousand two. The name 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.000 would persist and it became a brand, but it was 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:53.560 no longer associated with peer to peer file sharing. Several 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:56.719 critics viewed the whole thing as an injustice because Napster 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:59.880 had developed technologies to cut back on a legal distribution 0:21:59.880 --> 0:22:03.679 of copyrighted files. In other words, Napster was taking steps 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:07.399 to try and prevent piracy across its platform, but the 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:10.400 courts were saying, well, unless it's a hundred percent effective, 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.560 then it's not enough. That led Lawrence Lessig to say 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:17.280 that the courts were condemning file sharing as a whole, 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:21.640 not copyright infringement in particular. Essentially, that the courts were 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:26.000 trying to shut down an entire technology without any regard 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:28.960 for what that technology can do. And that was a 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:32.400 legit criticism. You know, while Napster was best known as 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:35.080 a hub for prior to music, the fact was that 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:39.199 peer to peer architecture is content agnostic. It's just a 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:42.399 way to distribute files throughout the network without you know, 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:46.920 too much hassle. Many folks essentially equated file sharing with piracy, 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:50.040 and that's just not accurate. There are plenty of programmers 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:53.240 who have created files intended for free distribution and appear 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:55.719 to peer network is a really effective way to do 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.480 that at high speed these days, assuming you have access 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:02.400 to broad and it's not as big a deal as 0:23:02.400 --> 0:23:05.360 it used to be. But back then, when download speeds 0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:08.080 were a fraction of what you find in most places today, 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:12.919