I was talking to a friend earlier today and she told me that she caught her teenage son downloading MP3s from one of those popular file share sites. She was pretty upset, and asked me if I knew of any way that she could block her son’s computer from accessing those places. I don’t know if that kind of thing is possible without some kind of parental control software, so I couldn’t help her. But we got to talking more about file share sites and I told her that they don’t bother me all that much — depending on what’s being shared.
I know a lot of people are up in arms about file share sites such as MiniNova, FileSoup, and various Usenet groups, and want those places taken offline as soon as possible. But I think that those sites are actually okay — so long as people aren’t downloading movies. Here’s why.
Some of the most popular downloads on file share sites are TV shows, ebooks, and MP3s. All of those products are available free to the consumer in one form or another. Do you want to hear the latest Linkin Park song? Just turn on the radio and it’ll get played soon enough. Want to read the latest Stephen King novel? Go to your local library and check it out. Want to catch the latest episode of CSI? Turn on your television at 8pm on Thursday. Get what I’m saying? These things are available for free, so I don’t necessarily think it’s wrong for people to download them on file share sites.
Now movies are a bit different. While they do eventually make it to cable and free television, they take much longer to do it than TV shows, music, and books. So in this way, I can see how file share sites might take a bite out of a studio’s profits.
A lot of folks out there think that file share sites are just plain wrong because even TV shows, books, and music are subject to copyright laws, but I don’t buy into that point of view. I don’t think it’s stealing when people watch downloaded TV shows, read downloaded ebooks, or listen to downloaded music. As long as they’re not reselling the files for a profit, what’s the big deal? They’re just “timeshifting” their viewing, listening , or reading — just as they would with TiVo or whatever.
Any additional thoughts on this? I’d love to hear your opinion of file share sites!
June 7th, 2007 at 1:52 am
Thanks for the comment and agreement to my post on this subject. I think you are correct in that movies are the only thing I have an issue with downloading. Even then, the movies people get while in theaters aren’t anything you want to get excited about. They are all those old school record the screen with terrible video that you can download. Hardly the same as the theater experience, and I would wager a guess that movie revenues aren’t down at all. When you see new weekend records being set every couple months for the Blockbusters you really can’t say they are losing money. I certainly wouldn’t want to watch the downloadable versions of movies still in the theater either so I go to the cinema when I really want to see a movie, or just wait until they come out on DVD and get them from Netflix ;).
June 7th, 2007 at 6:14 am
You know what, I think you’re right about movies too. Who would really want to watch a crappy camcorder version with a shaky picture and out-of-sync audio? And good point about the record-setting box office numbers. Spider-Man 3, Pirates 3, and Shrek 3 all will make a couple hundred million worldwide, so yeah — what are the movie studios crying about.