Bang! And the file sharer's dead!
Our fearless crime fighters have been hard at work defending us! They have secured a major victory against file sharing and the Internet, quite possibly at a substantial cost in resources and man power... Well, I made it a whole sentence before I got sarcastic, that's got to be some sort of achievement. I'm referring to the news that rnbxclusive.com has been seized by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). A holding page has been deployed which promises that it will track your information and give you an unlimited fine with 10 years detention at her majesty's pleasure for having the audacity to browse the Internet. Take that illegal downloaders and hackers! It's all very exciting and, on the surface, a very American way to do law enforcement. I'm referring to the domain name seizures carried out by various three letter U.S. Authorities which have been doing this sort of thing for over a year now. America - land of the free, birthplace of SOPA, PIPA, Protect-IP and ACTA. The real question though is "will it work?". Will taking down this site put more money into artist's pockets (there's a stern warning about how if your a regular visitor you've been ruining "young and up and coming artists" lives) and will it create jobs and foster innovation? I should point out here I have a personal bearing on the result - several good friends are in an up and coming band and the idea of a superstar power metal band from Birmingham is a warming thought. Evidence suggests however that although the handling has no doubt been spectacular, no more so than when SOCA officers carried out the raids to make their arrest, that this is a step in the wrong direction. Why? Well first of all this was a UK based site which allowed SOCA to take action. The net is a fast learner though so if/when we get a MkII site it probably won't be set up here. Secondly, serious "ORGANISED" crime agency - so far we've had one arrest. I'm willing to take as a working hypothesis that it could, theoretically, have been one seriously organised individual but that's not really what SOCA is for. Thirdly we have to look at what has happened in previous cases, the most famous of which must undoubtedly be Napster. That proved to be a "mistake" according to record company execs because a pattern has emerged over what happens after you take down such a site: traffic goes elsewhere. Before Napster you could only get music from the shops, after you could get it everywhere. This has become a trend for websites since - they're like sheets of glass, shatter one and the shards fly off in all directions and become embedded in all manner of difficult places. Unfortunately law enforcement (blame could be attributed to across the channel if I was feeling mean spirited) seems to want to shatter as many panes as it can, just to be sure that "glass + hammer = mess" can't be changed. Ok by now I'm expecting the aforementioned band to be gearing up to kill me so I'll skip to the positive bits before I get done in. It's easier with the web to break the law than follow it. The site in question was hacking into artist's email accounts and computers to dig out new songs which it could then leak to the Internet at large. This led to an estimated advertising revenue of £15 million annually. So if we know how it was done we should be able to take meaningful steps to stop it happening again. IT security is not a thing one places at the top of their "fun times" list but it must be improved. For signed artists most of the leg work will lie with record companies/email providers and so on. For unsigned acts though the burden falls squarely onto the artist who has enough to worry about without conjuring 74 zillion letter passwords to their hotmail. So what do you do? - Control. Don't store your music where people can get at it. Rather than stick in your Google docs or Sky drive keep it on your laptop. - Be wary. If you do have to put your music "out there" then take a cautious view. If you have to email it in then do so and delete the email. If you're putting it up on a site to sell as a single then ask what security the website offers (tip: if they don't want to talk about it then walk away). - Be sensible. Don't have your band name/best track as the password to the band's email. Don't advertise if you're sending a ton of material between band members to the Internet, if someone approaches you about a copy of your work for promo purposes then check they're legit (again, if they get cagey then walk away) Publicing where you can download music illegally on the 6 o'clock news doesn't solve online piracy but if we look at the causes then we might just make some progress! (By the way: if anyone wants any help securing their shizzle then get in touch and I'll lend a hand)
