DIGITAL RIGHTS AND THE CHINESE GOOGLE

Do we have to look to China to see the future of digital rights – regarding, say, music and movies?  A lot of Internet users hope so, but the businessmen who provide these products that users want for free sure hope not.

In the US, some music distribution services seemingly have come to the (apparently correct) conclusion that no matter how many software routines they put in MP3 files to prevent them from being copied, and no matter how many people they try to sue for sharing illegally downloaded music files, they are basically trying to hold back a tidal wave by sticking their fingers into a very holey dike.

So at least one company – EMI, which, among other properties, has in its copyrighted music the Beatles catalog – has signed licensing deals with several P2P (peer-to-peer) music downloading services, including Mashboxx  and Qtrax.

Qtrax will be supported by ads and allow at least some free, unrestricted downloads. Both these services are pending, while EMI prepares its electronic catalog for distribution.

Meanwhile, in China, you don't have to wait for either of these services to begin operating. A Chinese site called Baidu has all the commercially released music you could possibly want, from all the major labels, freely available for download – and it's all legal.

1400 recording companies (including all the largest like Sony Warner, and EMI) in 73 countries lost their suit against Baidu last November, when a Chinese court ruled against them.

You've probably never heard of Baidu, but the site, called the "Chinese Google," is the fourth most popular website in the world.  And if you want to download any free songs from it, you'll have to read Chinese.

The Chinese court said the Baidu site could not be held responsible for its use by individuals to download copyrighted content, a decision that basically means that, if the major music labels want to halt piracy in China (a country notorious for piracy), they are going to have to sue a few hundred million Chinese.

Trying to figure out other ways to make money off your assets seems like a lot better way to spend your time and talent than siccing lawyers on all and sundry who violate your copyrights.

Is this a lesson TV networks in the US will learn?

The "copyright line" for television programs has always been less clear than for music, which you had to go to a store to purchase if you wanted a hi-fidelity copy.

Since the invention of the video recorder, however, the same (or close enough) quality video presentation has been available for free to viewers who watch when their favorite show is on air, as it is to those who recorded their program to watch later or to archive.

The free-to-air networks (CBS, NBC etc.) already essentially "give away" their creations for free use by the consumer, and support the practice with advertising. Looking at it from this perspective, sharing TV programs in digital file form – which one could have watched or recorded for free anyway – is not as major an issue as downloading copyrighted music.

The question of "free" sharing is a little less relevant to cable TV, which you have to pay money to view – but cable is so ubiquitous, and most people who are downloading digital files of cable programs are already subscribers anyway, so the point is almost moot.

At first glance, it seems that the major American networks learned their lesson, because you can watch many of their programs on their Web sites (and, as I wrote a couple of months ago, we in Israel can enjoy these shows too by using a Web proxy.

But, surprisingly, at least one network would rather keep doing things the old, hard way. Late last month (1/07), the Fox network threatened to sue YouTube because episodes of The Simpsons and 24 were posted by users of the site.

And, oddly at about the same time, Peekvid  stopped working, as well. Peekvid, admittedly, was clearly violating all sorts of copyrights; but closing them down is just another finger in the dike, and Fox, as well as any other media company, is just not going to be able to stem the tide much longer.

Peekvid, for those who came to know it during its relatively short life, was a site where viewers could watch copyrighted movies and TV shows to their heart's content. You watched the programs or movies on-line as they streamed to your computer; the quality wasn't particularly high and you had to wait for the stream in order to watch the show, but there it was.

No more, though, as rumors abound that the same Fox network threatened the proprietors of Peekvid with all sorts of legal hell if they didn't shut down their operation.

The Peekvid site now asks for an e-mail address (I wouldn't, if I were you), claiming they will notify you when they're back in operation. But there are plenty of other substitutes to take Peekvid's place – including the aforementioned YouTube, which still has tons of copyrighted files, as well as Flickpeek, Daily Motion Movie Vids, and a Danish site, Alluc, to name just a few.

For a vast array of streaming video choices, both legal and otherwise, check out On Line Video Guide.

In fact, you don't even have to watch these things online; you can let them run, record them, and re-encode them to any format you want, without even installing any software whatsoever via HeyWatch.

Again, I emphasize that I don't approve of downloading copyrighted digital files like music and movies; but I bring these Web site addresses to prove a point, that stamping one out only breeds more.

Before writing this article, I didn't know any of these sites existed (save for Peekvid), but with just a little effort I was able to find them. And for each of these sites there are probably a dozen others around – this, in addition to the other methods of sharing P2P files, most notably using the Bittorrent protocol..

Online video is most certainly going to be one of the biggest things in the near future, despite dire warnings that "the Internet can't take it".

How long do you think it will take before there are Chinese sites offering Hollywood movies and TV cable shows for free?  Yep, movie and TV execs shudder when they look East.

Dennis Turner