File sharing on the Internet

MGM and Grockster clash in the courts over the legality of file-sharing software. “It’s wrong to download copyrighted songs and movies from the Internet without paying nothing”, says the MGM representative.

Does p2p (peer-to-peer) technology encourage illegal activity? A bitter battle on this issue is now being fought in the US Supreme court. On one side is MGM, representing the movie business. Estimates claim the film industry is losing $4 billion in lost revenues to piracy annually. Hollywood and the recording industry have already sued thousands of individuals for alleged illegal downloads. The music business has seen global annual record sales go down from $40bn to 30bn over the last four years. The industry, which has suffered massive redundancies and restructuring, says the swapping of music files over the internet is one of the major parts of music piracy. 750 million unauthorised or free songs are swapped online every month.

On the other side are Grokster and StreamCast Networks. They allow users to trade music and movie files without going to a central site like Napster, which was shut down in 2001. Can these companies be accountable for bootlegged (нелегальный) material swapped using their software? Supporters say this is ridiculous – a ban on devices which could theoretically be used to infringe copyright would include technological innovations such as the DVD, iPods.

What will happen in the future? Sony Pictures digitised its top 500 films, such as Spiderman2, and made them available for mobile phones and digital stores. Within a year, people could download and own films in the same way as they use Apple’s itunes for music.

Exercise 5. Look through the following statements and discuss them.

1. The more integrated Facebook becomes, the less willing we'll be to recreate that same web of social connections we've reinvented time and again.

2. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

3. While many of us may complain about Facebook's on-site chat breaking down, being slow or crashing our browsers, the fact remains that Facebook is where we've based our online social life and chat is a basic extension of this.

4. Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now. Twitter asks “what’s happening” and makes the answer spread across the globe to millions, immediately.

5. The latest researches about dangers that occurred in the social networking showed that people were sharing not only detailed location information about themselves and their friends, they were also by default broadcasting when they were away from their own home.