A most people are probably aware, I’m studying copyright at the moment. Next year I hope to do a research project on how practical is traditional copyright in the digital age.

So far I’ve just been coming up with some ideas of what to look up. I’ve read some interesting articles about YouTube and GoogleBooks and a lot on p2p networks, but I’m interested in the emergence of “large file storage” websites (think RapidShare, MegaUpload). I’m interested in how the law will deal with such sites, as they don’t seem to be advocating their service for illegal sharing of music and (from what I can tell so far in my research) remove the files promptly after being asked to do so.

As the RIAA and MPAA (or corporations that are members of those associations) were not satisfied with one p2p network using software that stop 99% of illegal transfers**, I cannot see such groups being happy about this arrangement in the future.
At the moment the main way such groups are dealing with the piracy through website (as opposed to torrent sharing) is for the “WEB SHERIFF” to ask people to take the link to the file hosted on “file storage” and then also request that the file is removed.

So, for the web savvy, it’s really a case of trying to out-run the sheriff. I’m interested in just how difficult is it for a web-sheriff to keep up. [LOL, with my background in IT and interest in IP law I might end up being one one day :P] Moreover, I’m interested in how law/technology could be adapted to have a better balance between the rights of those who produce and those who consume.

I began to think about all this upon reading various comments in blogs about the fact that the “web sheriff” seems to be working particularly hard at preventing songs from M.I.A’s new album be uploaded and posted on blogs. The attitude seems to be that it’s “annoying” that people keep on removing the links, and “could someone please upload it again!! :D thanks”.

Therefore, it seems that there are (at least) two different types of people on the net: those who put the music online (who usually are reasonably technically skilled) and those who want to download it (who seem to be less so). “I can’t find […] anywhere, could someone put it up?” is an opt-repeated expression. It sounds like if it can’t be found by typing “download artist song” into google then a large number of people won’t be able to find the song. Clearly, it’s easy for a web-sheriff to have google automatically email them when a new website shows up with a similar combination of words.

I’m going to have to think about this further. I’m not sure of a practical solution to deal with those who understand the workings of the net. It’d be interesting to see how affective the web-sheriffs are at just dealing with the files that can be found through the “download artist song” method.

**(I don’t have the journal article to refer to here [i know it’s bad journalism - just pretend we’re having a conversation…] *wink*)

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