Founder of the world's largest bittorrent music site calls it a day

In a post entitled "Three years, four months, and twenty days", at 2:30am (BST), WhatMan, the founder of What.CD stepped down.  What.CD was one of the sites which grew from the ashes of the OiNK closure, and even went on to surpass its predecessor.

I've included the full post from the man who designed the Ocelot code which helps power many Tracker sites today:

Three years, four months, and twenty days

...Is a long time on the Internet. In that time, I've watched this site grow from a tiny tbsource site, buckling under the load of a few dozen users. to its current form - a record-breaking Internet juggernaut with over a million torrents. I've been with this site as it's moved country due to copyright threats, thwarted database crashes and hacking attempts, developed two cutting-edge codebases from scratch, hosted thousands of independent releases from artists worldwide, and passsed milestone after milestone, carving its way into BitTorrent fame. It's been one of the greatest experiences of my life, to not just watch this development as a passive observer, but to play a central role in it. 

Unfortunately, times change. I've always been willing to give all of my free time to this site, but as of several months ago, free time has become a luxury of the past. The less time I spend here, the less qualified I am to decide the future of the site and lead it in that direction. In these past few months, these duties have been impeccably overtaken by the current management, and I feel entirely comfortable leaving the site in their more than capable hands. It is thus, with great regret, that I have chosen to resign from my long-standing post as sysop of this site. 

To all the current and ex-staff: Even though we've occasionally differed in opinion, you guys are some of the nicest and most intelligent people I've ever had the good fortune to meet and work with. I'll miss all of you. 

To the users: From the casual downloaders to the hardcore rippers and uploaders, this place is an ecosystem that needs all of you to survive. We couldn't have gotten anywhere without you. 

To anyone I've ever insulted, hurt, or ignored (I hope there aren't too many of you): I extend my deepest apologies. I've always tried to maintain a level head, but I'd be lying if I said that the stress, responsibility, conflicting requests from different camps, and huge volume of PMs didn't get to me at times. 

I'd love to write more, but this has been hard enough already. If nothing else, I guess, I'd like to be remembered as the badass who coded ocelot. 

It's been a hell of a ride, What. I know you'll do fine without me. 

--WhatMan

We wish him well for the future.

Digital Music Dilemmas

I give up.  I have tried to love the digital music file as the format of the future but I cannot.  Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike the format in and of itself.  I do love having a large collection of digital music files that I can play around with in Ableton Live or Virtual DJ, but in terms of actually embracing the digital music file as a replacement for physical music, I'm afraid I can't go for that (no can do).

(Image: Dr Stephen Dann, 2005, some rights reserved)

Over the last 18 months I've been accutely aware of the amount of money I've spent on music and its related activities.  During the period in which I tracked all my expenditure, I found myself buying a number of different music formats (vinyl, CD, mp3, aac, etc) only to keep returning to the Compact Disc, due to its versatility.  I love physical formats.  I am a dinosaur.  I must be.

I came to this realisation this week after thinking through a few digital music dilemmas.  I recently presented a paper at University of Sunderland's Centre for Research in Media & Cultural Studies in which I attempted to balance the demands of copyright, the behaviour of music fans and the role of government policy as it pertains to file-sharing.  In that paper I was keen to qualify the claim that music industry is dying under the weight of illegal peer-to-peer traffic, whilst looking at some of the industry figures regarding sales in the UK (see the slides below).  

Piracy, Policy, Participation

View more presentations from Rob Jewitt.

Frequently, claims are made about the size and scale of illegal filesharing and its impact on the music industry whilst ignoring the recent growth in sales overall.  Indeed, a few days after the presentation the Guardian carried a few interesting reports in which the size and scale of the 'problem' was staggering - but not just for the industry.

BPI

The first article drew on a press release from the BPI who were pushing their annual Digital Music Nation 2010 report (.pdf here). The article was full of the usual headline figures and the size and scale of the UK music industry's problem, which BPI chief Geoff Taylor employed to urge Ofcom to enforce the Digital Economy Act quickly.  Here are the big figures:

67 - the number of legal music services in the UK

3/4s - the share of all music downloaded in the UK that is done so illegally

149.7 million - the number of digital singles sold in 2009

160 million - the projected sales of digital singles for 2010

16.1 million - the number of digital albums sold in 2009

21 million - the projected sales of digital albums for 2010

370 million - the equivalent total separate tracks for 2010

500 million - all time sales of digital singles

50 million - all time sales of digital albums

82 pence - the average cost of a digital single

29 - the percentage of 16-54 year old using illegal methods to obtain music

23 - the percentage of 16-54 year old using P2P software to access music in 2010

23 - the percentage of 16-54 year old using P2P software to access music in 2009

24.5 - the percentage of the recording industry revenues generated via digital services

7.7 million - the estimated number of people downloading music illegally in the UK (source: Harris Interactive)

£984 million - retail value of single tracks downloaded in 2010 (source: BPI)

1.2 billion - the number of tracks illegally downloaded in 2010

However, there is a caveat tucked away in the 'notes for editors':

£219 million - the recording industries losses from 1.2 billion illegal downloads

Those losses don't seem quite so bad set against the headline grabbing fears that the 7 million plus figure evokes.  There is a decline in the sale of physical formats like CDs which fits with the usual life cycle of formats.  Indeed physical sales of singles (on CD) account for a tiny amount - around 1% of all single sales.  Anyone who has attempted to buy a CD single recently will testify to the difficulty of finding the format in local music stores, so this is unsurprising.

What seems apparent is that there is growth in digital music, but that piracy is still fairly constant.  The figures above seem to rely on some very strange substitution logic in which each file downloaded illegally equates to a lost sale for the industry.  I'm not convinced that this is a tenable claim.  There are many reasons why people access files from illegal sources. Personally, I own several Macbooks, desktops, iPods and iPhones - way more than the 5 that Apple let you use your legally purchased DRM-infused tracks on.  Had I bought a CD I'd be able to rip that to each of the machines (illicitly!).  Digital music isn't always as flexible as physical.

Changes in the law are unlikely to impact on the behaviour of consumers, many of who are accessing content both legally and illegally.  The way the industry tends to frame this discourse is that there are reasons to be optimistic (ie growth) but there is still a hardcore minority that are not paying for content.  It's never acknowledged that this minority are also the same people paying for music (and indeed, might even be the best customers!).

Consumer rights?

The other article worth referring to here is concerned with the rights of consumers and was published by Consumer Focus.  Essentially, customers have more rights when they buy physical formats (CD, DVD, Bluray) as opposed to digital formats which are not protected under the Sale of Goods Act as 'tangible goods'.  If a consumer buys a digital file that is not fit for the purpose (as in that the file might not be compatible on the portable device it was purchased for) they have no recourse.  They can't return the file to the store or vendor.  Add to this the fact that most shoppers aren't provided with the kind of information about their digital purchase that they might need in order to get it to work and there are some hidden problems with the shift towards digital

Philip Cullum, deputy chief executive of Consumer Focus, said:

"It's crazy to have a situation where someone who buys music on a CD has the legal right to a refund if it doesn't work, but someone who downloads the same music does not. Consumer laws on buying digital goods, whether it is streaming films, or downloading music and software, need updating to reflect the reality of 21st-century life.

There is also another glaring problem dinosaurs like myself are confronting in the shift to digital - what will happen to their rare music collection when physical formats die out completely?  It's not like Robbie Williams or [insert generic pop star here]  can sign your MP3 download after all?

Music Futures #2

Last night was the second in a series of 4 seminars hosted by Generator exploring the future of the music industry.  The session featured a number of established and relative new (but influential) players in the digital music market place.

Image: Peter Kirn, 2007, Flickr, CC

The guest panelists include Dave Haynes (Soundcloud), Atan Burrows (mFlow), Ian Greaves (Napster) and Colin Rice (We7).  The general theme of the session was similar to the previous night: digital downloads versus streaming services, looking to address the opportunities presented by services driven by retail and those that work on an access-basis (and whether or not the two models are mutually exclusive).

In a slight departure from my last post in this series, I've attempted to precis the discussion that took place last night in a rather linear structure, adding a few observations and comments where appropriate.

Killer/filler tracks?

The first issue to be raised revolved around the decline of the album sale and the emergence of a la carte download services which permit music consumers to cherry pick individual tracks (eg iTunes).  The panel was asked to consider whether or not this has led to a position in which people now have more control over the quality of content they access rather than paying for an artist's entire catalogue (underpinning this assumption is the notion that albums contain 'filler' tracks that casual listeners may not want or need).

Atan (mFlow) responded by suggesting that shopping for music online today has become boring and sterile. The shopping experience lacks innovation - it's like shopping for groceries. Indeed, many supermarkets (like Tesco and Asda) have taken this logic and applied it to CD sales.  Shopping for music needs to be more integrated into the social life world of music fans - something mFlow aims to capitalise on.  Users can 'flow' (share) tracks they like on the service with their followers (it's also integrated into social networks like Twitter and Facebook) who can then listen to each track in full.  If they go on to buy the track the person who 'flowed' the track gets 20% of the cost of the tune - quite a unique proposition.

Colin (We7) suggested that many companies are looking at 360 degree deals as a way of taking a slice out of merchandise and live performance opportunities in the face of declining physical sales. There are now a variety of different sources from which artists can generate revenue - record labels still have a role to play (eg skilled at marketing large acts like Madonna etc) but that role has changed in lieu of the DIY ethic. They aren't dead just yet despite it being frequently predicted. Going down the major label route is useful for certain kinds of artists but there are more tools available to help empower musicians today, enabling them to have greater control over licensing their content.

Ian (Napster) also added that major record labels are good for developing artists through their career but the labels do need to see some return on their investment early on (usually by the second album).

Free or pay?

The question of whether or not people were still willing to pay for music reared it's head.

Dave (Soundcloud) made the point that the growth in digital is not replacing or making up for the decline in physical sales directly. The reason for this is largely due to the industry itself as having been the barrier to the growth of digital. Digital Rights Management (DRM) software in the case of Napster and iTunes are cases in point. Fearful of piracy the major labels insisted that digital files be encumbered with software which monitored users and limited how they used the music they had legitimately purchased often in multiple competing file formats that were not always cross-platform compatibile.  This was a headache for the typical casual music consumer.  The industry effectivly applied the brakes that prevented mass migration to digital.  In recent years a relaxation of the rules governing DRM and the growth in streaming services has acted to redress this - convenience of access should bring more people in and therefore bring in more money from smaller payments in greater volume (eg Spotify's ad-supported streams). We are seeing a shift from  a period of music ownership towards music access.

Atan emphasised that ownership is still important to many music fans, if not all of them, and catering to a diverse set of interests in a flexible manner is what is needed. People will buy content but they are becoming more discerning about what they are willing to pay for.

Radio

The chair raised the point that most music listening (80%) is done via the radio and most of that is done in cars. How do companies monetize this?

None of the panelists were able to tackle this mobile issue directly.  Colin was keen to highlight that We7 is adding more social functionality to their newly upgraded radio service which allows people to share their musical taste with friends via Last.FM recommendations, etc.  It also allows people the chance to discover and hear music related to their intersts.  One of the problems many music fans face when confronted with huge catalogues of millions of tunes is the scope of such access results in them freezing up due to the limitless possibilities - this is where profiling and recommendation radio services come in.

Ian claimed that when Napster started (as a legal service!) people didn't really 'get' what a monthly music subscription service meant. Clearly we've moved on since then. Historically people used to trust formats (radio, CD, etc) as you knew where you were - a CD played in a CD player - the proposition was simple. A subscription service didn't always make sense to people and took a while to become simple enough for casual users.  Formats have largely been static. Going forward you'll want to access your music that you've selected wherever you want, whenever you want - that will be where digital will innovate.

Dave returned to the point that early services crippled by DRM that involved platform specific third-party clients installed to Windows partition drives on Apple Macs, where users regularly had to make the effort to reset all the DRM licences on one machine in order to take the music on the go. As an early adopter, he was willing to make the effort for the benefits but he was not typical of the casual market. The dream is a cloud-based solution which includes a mixture of tracks owned alongside those leased via a service in much the same way that Spotify works now; combining a users personal iTunes library with that of the cloud-based service.

Recommendation and discovery

The chair posed the question asking how important recommendation engines will be in the future for music discovery?

Atan talked about some of the research mFlow have put into various algorithms.  This showed that people like to talk to each other about music and share their thoughts. This (sharing) aspect is one of the most important issues that couldn't be talked about a few years ago, when the industry associated sharing with giving away content for free, piracy and the fear of declining sales.

Colin claimed that personalisation is important part of the user experience. If a service feels personal and  less mechanistic or pushed at you by the industry, then music fans relationship worth music changes. We7 is increasingly looking at social media integration.

YouTube Fear?

The chair recounted an anecdote about how his 13 year old son consumes music, typically via YouTube, and questioned whether or not the audio quality of the service of the content itself was worthwhile. For him YouTube is primarily a video platform.  As one of the key spaces for new music discovery amongst the youngest demographics is YouTube a threat to digital music distributers?

Dave took umbrage at the chair's intonation that YouTube may be full of 'crap' or questionable content, or even that it is just a video platform rather than music. However Dave sees the platform as an essential creative outlet irrespective of how professional the content is. In this instances YouTube is a democratising tool that allows people outside of the mainstream system to gain some traction. Some smaller acts are seeing 4 figure sum monthly returns from their YouTube content alone. Companies are increasingly hiring youth teams for advice on how to generate more subscribers and connect with music fans. YouTube gives good control to labels or acts in that there are various controls offered to users (eg around video embedding, uploading and playlist controls).  Companies or acts can generate money around their video content by taking advantage of Google Adwords and links to buy.

Atan suggested the reason why YouTube is successful with kids is that it just works.

Ian highlighted a problem within the industry which seems to have a bizarre distinction in how they view video.  They view video as a marketing tool, partly due to legacy reasons associated with promotional campaigns, and often are not overly concerned if music videos leak to YouTube before they've secured an audio distribution deal or licensing with digital retailers.  But the digital start-ups trying to make headway in the audio distribution space -  companies like Napster -  they aren't allowed to carry these promotional releases in audio form until an official release date has been agreed. Even users uploading tracks and videos to YouTube are viewed by many in the industry as an adjunct to marketing.

Dave suggested that it would be in the best intersets of digital retailers to close the release window gap. The industry is configured to work over a staggered release window with their eye on promoing tracks in print or waiting for confirmation they've made it to Radio 1's playlist. A release date may be way off but the viral nature of the Internet means tracks can leak quickly, circumventing the often slow processes of the industry. Some music journalists (the NME was named) still insist on review copies on CD so that journalists can make some money from selling them! This has led to a recalcitrance regarding digital as they'd lose this perk.

Freemium

The question turned to whether or not the freemium business model was a feasible one?  Typically this is often described as giving away content for free (often ad-supported) to the vast majority of users whilst offering a paid-for premium service taken up by around 10% of users.  The paying customers typically offset the costs of the free users.  I've discussed this model a few times on this site so regular readers will be familiar with the idea.

Ian started by describing Napster's early attempts at dabbling with it a few years ago in the US but they struggled to make enough money required to pay the labels for the licenses from the ad-funded service.

Colin's company, We7, currently works with both freemium and subscription models. They have around 10000 UK paying subscribers with millions more accessing content for free. Back in April We7 announced that they had managed to make the ad-funded model work for them.  This is important as much of their funding is still reliant on venture capital.  Their recent switch to the  radio stream makes a lot of sense as it typically cost 30% less than the licences for subscription services.

Dave pointed out that being free allows you to get heard when radio playlisting isn't working for artists. Soundcloud is less of a consumer destination, rather its a space where musicians (both amateur and professional) can upload and share their content with certain controls, circumventing traditional radio.  Even if you give content away for free you have to be savvy about the social contract involved and get something back - eg data on users, geography etc. This can help musicians targe certain geographies for  live tours or related campaigns. Soundcloud is built of the premise of the social share: ensure you get something in exchange for the download.  You can give users of the service the ability to download tracks providing they tweeting or embed the content in Facebook for increased presence. Location-based data is increasingly important and there is promotional potential in this area.  Recently James Blunt gave away music to people that checked in to a certain place at a certain time using the GPS in their phones and a location-based application like FourSquare, Gowalla or Facebook Places.

From this point on the panel took questions from the audience.  It became clear that one of the biggest barriers preventing start-up companies from joining to what seems like an already overcrowded digital retailing space is the cost of licences from the major labels for delivering digital content to music fans.  The majors seem to think that cannibalisation of the existing business models will occur if the costs they charge come down. Digital Music News recently carried a feature listing 100 companies that have tried to make it and have failed.

Dave noted that some labels' business models revolves around ensuring they extract as much venture capital money as possible from new startups.  This focus on short term economic gains undermines the ability to develop, nurture and sustain new platforms and opportunities for growth. Initially the industry didn't think it needed these new digital startups but the decline in paying customers has forced a redress of the balance somewhat.

The panelists where in agreement that there will still be innovation in the technology going forwards despite the licensing barriers, notably around the ability to build API's around limited types of access to free services.  Features like this helped to sustain Twitter's growth and it isn't inconceivable that something similar could happen with music catalogues, creating interesting data mash-up services.

One current problem that many digital services face is a lack of standardisation around metadata, eg things like playlists, top-rated tracks, etc - a playlist created on We7 cannot currently be taken to Spotify if a user decides to switch music services.  This will become increasingly important as more services will be built upon the same 11 million or so tracks currently licensed.  The prediction here is that metadata will be more important that tracks owned.

You can catch up with the event via the video on the Generator site here.

Music Futures #1

I've just got out of the first Musical Futures seminar (the event can be watched again via that link). I'll try to blog my thoughts and responses after each one this week.  Thanks to Generator North East for putting these events on.  This session was themed around the question as to whether or not digital distribution can save the music industry. The session was chaired by Paul Brindley from Music Ally.  The panel was consisted of Scott Cohen (Music Orchard), James Healey (Universal), Tim Hadley (Omnifone) and Chris McLellin (The Music Void).

The session opened with a representative from Music Ally stating that, despite some recent success (digital accounts for around 25% of sales), most of the markets in the industrialized world are beginning to stagnate, notably in the US and France.

Much of the discussion orientated around questions of technology, access and licensing issues. The general feeling from the panel was that the current pricing model of subscription services did not seem to correlate with the willingness of customers to part with the cash for such services. Currently services offered by the likes of We7, Spotify, SkySongs, etc retail around the £5-10 per month for a mixture of packages. Some include the ability to transfer tracks from PC so they can be played over mobile devices, while other deals occasionally include the ability to download and permanently keep a handful of digital files. The panel suggested there are about 2-3 million of these subscribers globally - not a terribly large figure.

One of the issues which didn't seem to get raised or addressed fully was why these services were not always popular. There was some general acquiescence that music listeners are getting content for free from P2P services or from sites like YouTube. It was also acknowledged that free services from the likes of We7 and Spotify might be enough for younger consumers who have grown up with digital services.  One of the reasons I've never been satisfied with these services is that more often than not there are way too many artists I like missing from the vast majority currently on offer.

Several times the conversation circled around the questions of access over storage. Several panel members (whose business model revolves around providing technology delivery solutions and infrastructure support) were insistent that streaming was the future of music consumption. However, they were less sure as to how these services should be priced or how long it would take for these services to become ubiquitous? It was noted that much music is consumed in the car yet the technology in these are frequently outmoded when compared to current modes of music consumption . Wifi enabled cars are not yet a common occurrence - hell, DAB isn't even commonplace yet. The design lead-in time of in car audio tends to be quite long so changes need to implemented sooner if it's to gain traction.  However, wifi enabled cars with some decent sized storage drive would enable 'over the air synching' of future music services.

One of the panelists was very keen on the idea of streaming and the willingness of music lovers to convert to paid-for services given the right incentives. The underlying assumption was that music fans will not be concerned about owning content in the future, especially as the young grow up. He compared subscription packages to the average spend of a BSkyB customer (which is something like £500+ per year). For him this was symptomatic of people not being bothered about owning content, but this is a strawman argument. BSkyB took a long time, almost a decade, to capitalise on it's market position and become profitable (there are many competing music services). It is also in a monopoly position earning large revenues on the back of its live sports offers. BSkyB is a very different proposition to a music distribution or subscription service as it is almost the only place go to watch Premier League football. It's not clear how this kind of model can be used to work in favour of the music industry. Bundling of services does already exist (eg Virgin Media's triple and quadruple play of TV, mobile, broadband, landline) but as many users of subscription services will testify, there are frequently glaring gaps in the music catalogues of subscription deals. Maybe this is how it relates to BSkyB - after all not every football game is ever shown?

Much was made of the next generation of 4G mobile broadband. It will be able to deliver much greater bandwidth and thus provide a revolution in terms of music consumption across a much bigger range of internet capable devices than currently exists. As for who will pay for these networks to be rolled out and how musicians, labels and music fans will benefit - these were largely ignored.

Overall, the panel was quite skeptical about the long term future of physical formats like CD and vinyl. However it was noted that physical formats will always have niche appeal in terms of collectors items or gifts for family and friends.  Very little consideration was given over to the various uses people put their music to that streaming fails to support (notably DJs and music creative who remix, edit, mash-up content).

More to follow tomorrow hopefully where the session will be broadcasting or distribute...

The Twitter hashtag for the event is #musfutures in case you want to follow proceedings although it must be noted there seemed to be some issue with the wifi signal in the basement of the Northern Stage. I ended up tweeting via text message in the end. It might have just been me?

"When is ‘disconnection’ not disconnection? When it is ‘account suspension’, of course."

A day or two ago, the news that campaigners against the Digital Economy Bill (or at the very least, Clause 17) wanted to hear was announced. Or so it would seem. The Guardian technology pages led with somewhat optimistic headline: "Plans to cut off internet connections of illegal filesharers dumped"

Background

First, a little context may be useful. This is drawn on what has commonly been referred to as the "3 strikes" rule, whereby people accused of copyright infringement via the internet will be given three warnings before disconnection (like the unpopular HADOPI law in France, which seems like the inspiration for Clause 17 of the Digital Economy Bill). The role of peer-to-peer technology is central to this argument.

The Guardian story came off the back of a relatively small petition on the Number 1 website which highlighted the problems of the phrasing in the Bill, a point that will be picked up on again later in this post. The petition states:

The use of P2P is neither illegal nor exclusive to copyright theft. Many free software providers use this form of distribution, as does the BBC’s iPlayer. If citizens are innocent until proven guilty, ISP’s would be forced to monitor internet usage to ensure that no copyrighted material is being transferred. This flagrant disregard for privacy is comparable to forcing the Post Office to search through parcels for photocopied documents or mixtape cassettes. Such requirements would place enormous strain on ISP’s whilst failing to prevent the distribution of copyrighted material through hidden IP’s, http or ftp.”

Previous concerns have stated that the Internet is increasingly central to everyday life and that the act of identifying who was actually guilty of using peer-to-peer software to infringe copyright was difficult and ill-conceived, especially in shared households or on public 'cloud' based services. This is a point that is also addressed later in the same petition.

All of this is with the aim of cutting illegal peer-to-peer filesharing by 70% - something the Government, led by Lord Mandleson, is determined to do in order to appease the copyright industries. The Digital Economy Bill proposed a series of 'technical measures' including traffic shaping and disconnection for those the offending IP addresses the copyright industry identifies as being guilty of a crime. The major concern here is, of course, the lack of judicial process or the ability for the accused to defend themselves. The onus will be on the accused to prove they are innocent - people who may not have the technical knowledge or skills required to sift through router logs to be able to prove they were not responsible for the 'crime' they may be accused of.

What's changed (if anything)?

With the context established, let's consider the Number 10 response to the petition which got The Guardian and critics of the Bill excited (if somewhat momentarily):

[T]he Bill provides a reserve power obliging an ISP to apply ‘technical measures’ to a customer’s internet account to restrict or prevent illegal sharing. Technical measures might be a band width restriction, a daily downloading limit or, as a last resort, temporary account suspension. A proper independent appeal would be available against application of technical measures.

The key phrase here is 'temporary account suspension' as opposed to disconnection. It sounds much less punitive and more temporary than permanent. Jim Killock, the Executive Director of non-profit human rights group ORG, was quick to point out to several people via Twitter (myself included) that the phrasing was misleading 'government-speak'. To the Guardian's credit, they updated their news story with reference to Killock and the ORG's blog.

It's worth citing some of the blog post at length:

When is ‘disconnection’ not disconnection? When it is ‘account suspension’, of course.

The government therefore felt justified in a response to a petition on Friday in claiming that they were not intending to ‘disconnect’ families from the net after accusations of copyright infringement. If you think they mean that their internet cabling will still be plugged in at the wall, then that’s true.

If you think they mean that these families will be able to connect to the internet, well, no they won’t. Their connection will be switched off.

Please do not be confused by the government’s semantics. BIS and DCMS decided in the summer that they would not refer to ‘disconnecting’ users, because that sounds harsh and over the top. ‘Temporary account suspension’ sounds much more reasonable.

Language matters. What journalist is going to run a story on ‘temporary account suspension’ (yawn)? This is why the government has chosen these disingenuous terms: it‘s just more spin.

What we still don’t know is how long a family’s internet might be disconnected for.

A month? Three? A year? There is nothing in the Bill or any of the notes that we are aware of that might give us a clue.

‘Temporary account suspensions’ sound like the government would to suspend accounts for a few hours, or at most a day, to fit most people’s idea of ‘temporary’ and ‘suspension’. We doubt ‘suspensions’ would be so brief. We can assume what the government means to you and me is ‘disconnection’.

The issue here is what Killock referred to as 'government speak'. The phrasing of the response by the Number 10 website seems to hint at a compromise when the Open Rights Group suggest this semantic distinction is a deliberate attempt to mislead the public. A classic case of New Labour spin.

What is more alarming is that the power to determine the length of the suspension will be granted to the Secretary of State, based on recommendations from Ofcom (something I blogged about late last year). This is highlighted in a subsequent story in the Guardian yesterday when a Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS) spokesperson was quoted as saying:

"If government decides to use technical measures the Secretary of State would be required to consider an independent report from Ofcom on whether they should be imposed, and on the most effective and proportionate measures."

Mandelson would then decide the upper limit for a "temporary" suspension – which the DBIS indicated would be at least a few days. Parliament needs to be consulted in order to establish the duration of any suspensions towards the upper limit of the punishment scale. The worrying issue here is laid bare in the article:

"an Order cannot be amended by parliament; it can only be accepted or rejected. Any government with a working majority will be able to get an order passed – and so would be able to implement a "temporary" suspension of indeterminate length without any legislative review."

The Government has all the balls in its court with this one, and on the current form, seem determined to push through their plans despite opposition. Only time will tell if they are able to do so before the General Election is called in May.

Take Action

The ORG are encouraging people concerned by this Bill to take action. If you are encouraged to resist this problematic Bill then write to your MP and write to your local newspaper demanding that they get your local MPs to reveal their support for these proposals. You can find convenient templates over on their wiki page here. Get involved

Tracking musical expenditure: November

This month has been a curious month in terms of purchases as a number of factors have come together to produce a few interesting things - call it serendipity. Firstly, I had planned on doing all my Christmas shopping online in November given the recent postal strikes delaying things. Having said this, I only ended up buying one CD as a gift so the impact this will have in the big scheme of things is minimal at best. Secondly, Juno Records gave me £5 worth of credit to spend on digital downloads for being a member of an online fan community. This might have been money I wouldn't have typically spent but never look a gift horse. Thirdly, a filesharing site I have access to was 'promoting' the iTunes LP format, which have all sorts of extra features, which led me to buy one from the limited range on offer. Fourthly, I purchased a Sunday paper solely in order to get a 'free' live album (via iTunes) which needs to be taken into account - it's unlikely that I'd have bought the paper otherwise.

All said and done, this month's expenditure on music comes in at £27.63, bringing the grand total to date of £770.49.

If we go only on single and album sales to date the figure arrives at £51.85

After a quarter of the year has passed, it seems that the amount spent on music has began to increase

It seems I'm getting closer to the £77 figure mentioned in the Demos report from October 2009 (Powerpoint file here: 3.7 mb). I wonder how, if at all, the Virgin Media/Universal deal will impact on those sales hen it eventually gets rolled out? If Virgin Media customers have full access to Universal's back catalogue, will they spend less on music? I'm still waiting for pricing plans for this service to be announced

Pirate Finder General

Yesterday it emerged via Cory Doctorow's boing boing blog that the UK government is planning to introduce some radical changes to the Digital Economy bill that will seek to combat copyright infringement in a most aggressive manner. One of the consequences of these changes is a serious threat to democracy in that the Secretary of State (currently Lord Mandelson) will have the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

Effectively, this would give an unelected official the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright - something which benefits big business in cases where only around 2% of copyrighted products are worth supporting in law (98% of copyrighted material is no longer supported by the market but is still covered by the blanket law). This is clearly a case of industry being more important the people. Doctorow attribute the following reasons for his new proposal:

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a "three-strikes" plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to "confer rights" for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to "impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement" (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright "militias" can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

What does this mean for you?

There are far ranging implications at stake in the changes being proposed here. Imagine the implications for uploading a recording of, say, a birthday party featuring background music to YouTube... That music would be subject to copyright law making the uploader a copyright infringer and a potential victim of this new bill - liable for any breaches made. Place this scenario in the context of point 2) and you can imagine being the target of record company surveillance watching your every move, even going as far to restrict your access to specific content. At what point did the British public decide to let the entertainment industry police its behaviour as if it was a state authority?

Get involved

Naturally, organisations like the Open Rights Group are campaigning against such changes and encouraging members of the public to phone their MPs with their concerns. I urge you to do the same as time is very short. You can email your MP here but due to the time limits a phone call is more likely to be effective.

Further reading:

Charles Arthur, Guardian, 20/11/09 'Treasury secretary defends government's online piracy plans'
Charles Arthur, Guardian, 20/11/09, 'Why are cyberlockers suddenly such a problem, Lord Mandelson?'
Dept for Culture, Media & Sport, 2009, Digital Britain report

Tracking musical expenditure: October

The second month of the experiment to track my music related expenditure has ended and, as I expected, fell far short of the previous month which was packed with festivals and live concerts. I almost spent a fortune buying Fleetwood Mac tickets (for my wife!) on eBay but I couldn't afford them in the end.

So this month was a relatively tight month with a grand total of £69.72 being spent on music. £50 of that was the deposit for Glastonbury next year, with the rest being spent on 2 CDs and 1 digital download album. I think that is the first time I have ever paid for a digital album. I always opt for the CD version if it's available, but this was a digital-only release.

This brings the total spend on music up to £742.86 (the data for the 2 months to date can be found here) in a month where a few different sources have suggested that filesharers spend more money on music in a year than non-filesharers.

The idea that filesharers spend more on music than non-filesharers is nothing new to those people who actively participate in music file-sharing communities where you can find many posts on the subject of how much they spend on music. The Mail cite a Demos paper which claims filesharers spend £77 a year on singles and albums as opposed to £33 for non-filesharers. This data is very similar to an Ipsos-Mori poll in the Independent which says the same thing... Hmmm. If I add up my expenditure to date on albums and singles only (excluding music bought for games like Guitar Hero) my total comes to £28.71. If I add on the Guitar Hero DLC that comes to £34.39 - more than non-filesharer spends in a year!

Despite this, Lord Mandelson is still intent of curbing the behaviour of those accused of filesharing even though they seem to contribute more to the music industry. Admittedly, the data seems to be gathered from those people willing to admit to filesharing which many of the 1000 respondents may not have wanted to do, especially as it is being increasingly linked to criminality. I suppose Mandy will see this as evidence that more money can be squeezed out of people that are willing to spend money on music.

A year long project tracking music related purchases

There are lots of claims made about how damaging piracy is. The music industry and the groups which represent it, like the BPI, tend to claim that filesharing damages the industry and prevents artists from getting paid or making a living. The recent rant by Lily Allen is an example of how artists are rallying under the BPI's lobbying. Many of these claims are based on dodgy 'facts' and figures - something I touched in a recent post.

There are other studies which point in the opposite direction - that filesharers tend to spend more money on average than non-filesharers. A report by PRS recently showed that spending on music in the UK had actually increased. Inspired by this claim I thought I'd do a little experiment and track my annual spend on music and music related activities.

I'm going to have set a few ground rules. It's relatively easy to keep track of traditional sales like CD purchases but I think tend to spend a lot more money on live music and that brings with it a whole series of indirect costs which contribute to the music experience. Of course, I'm talking about booze (!), without which the experience is less, ahem, enhanced. So, I'm going to include alcohol expenditure as part of the experiment where appropriate. I'm also going to include video games that are music-based, such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

I've been thinking about doing this for a while and I've started going through last month's spending. I'm going to share this data via Google Docs on a monthly basis. This is where you can find the most recent data.

Currently, September looks like a big month with a total spend of over £670 but that is mainly due to attending a music festival (Bestival) and buying a music-based video game (Guitar Hero). This type of cost is not a typical monthly spend!

An interesting week for misleading statistics

A few technology news headlines have attracted my attention this week that seem to be somewhat less than honest. Some of the ones that stood out included the 10% surge in BBC iPlayer traffic following its inclusion on the new PS3 Slim which in turn has been reported as bringing about a massive sales spike in Sony PS3 units following the slimmer redesign. The other noteworthy report involved the claim that 7 million of the 61 million UK residents is engaged in illegal file-sharing activity. Let's take a little look at those claims...

Sony's sales and why they might not be so impressive

There have been several reports that Sony is having a very successful PS3 Slim rollout. Popular games blog, Kotaku, noted that the redesigned PS3 sold more units in Japan in the first three days following the relaunch (150,252) than it did back in November 2006 when it was originally released. It sold 88,000 units in two days but there were issues with supply levels at launch, so not everyone who wanted one could get their hand on one.

The more interesting PS3 story came from VG247 courtesy of Chart-Track director, Dorian Bloch, who claimed that UK-based PS3 sales in financial week 36 were up over 999% on the week prior. This is a story which has snowballed and appeared in several other places. Great news for Sony. Or is it?

On the surface the 999% or 1000% sales boost seems impressive but this has to be seen in the harsh reality that very few people were likely to be buying the older PS3 model when the new slimmer model was about to be launched at a reduced price. It's not hard to see why a huge sales spike may occur when very few units were being sold in the week prior - but it makes for great headlines!

What is also unclear is exactly how many of these purchases were by new customers. Many existing PS3 owners have expressed an interest in trading their older machines in for the new model (the local GAME store where I live was accepting a trade-in deal of one 80gb PS3 plus two games and £60 cash for a new slimmer PS3).

This might not be so great for Sony after all. Sony are still producing the PS3 slim at a loss and require customers to purchase software in order to offset these losses. If they are selling lots of new units to existing customers who already own plenty software then they are unlikely to profit dramatically from these impressive sales figures. Also, Sony get no financial gain from the second hand hardware or software market. The more new customers the PS3 redesign attracts, the healthier Sony's bank balance.

It's understandable that Sony would want to view its new product launch as a success, given that the PS3 languishes in third place in the console hardware sales. It's also no surprise that Sony has announced a massive ad campaign to push its new hardware in the Christmas run in (with a campaign budget of £82 million!). Whether or not the PS3 proves to be the success that Sony needs it to be remains to be seen, especially since it experienced its first full year loss in fourteen years.

How many filesharers?

The other attention-grabbing (and more worrying) story that warrants a little exploration involves the claim that 7 million UK residents are file sharing criminals. This figure is one which has been around for some time now. The BBC ran a report back in May which cited the figure in a government-backed report. The report was issued by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) and can be found on their site (.pdf here). Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy said the report put into context the impact illegal downloads had on copyright industries and the UK economy as a whole.

This figure of 7 million criminals is quite catching, seems precise and scientific and has helped perpetuate the notion of digital criminality amongst UK web users. It was also calculated that these file-sharers had access to £12 billion worth of free content. It has also helped keep file-sharing and its supposed criminality in the media spotlight in recent weeks - something Lord Mandelson has been using to great effect in his attempt to lobby for hard-hitting punitive measures against file-sharers.

Credit needs to be given to the BBC who took a second look at that figure of 7 million and decided to see if they could locate its origin, following an enquiry from the audience of the BBC Radio 4 show, "More or Less".

The figure may have been reported in a government document, but it's not a government figure. It transpired that the government commissioned a report from the CIBER research group at University College London, which contained the number. The CIBER report mentioned the figure four times. However, the figure actually came from yet another report from consultancy firm, Forrester. It doesn't end there. The Forrester report doesn't actually contain the 7 million figure despite the CIBER citation. The figure actually comes from a different piece of research called the Jupiter Industry Losses Project, which was an industry funded (BPI) attempt to gauge P2P use and the related losses produced by such internet use.

That's right. The official sounding figure cited by the government-backed report actually came from the British recording industry which has a vested interest in putting a figure on its losses at the hands of P2P users so that it can then lobby government to change policies and laws favourable to the industries interests. That explains why Lord Mandleson has been so anti-P2P in recent weeks...

It gets worse. The actual report was never published publicly and the industry declined to pass it over to the BBC but they managed to get in touch with Mark Mulligan, one of the report's authors, who revealed some interesting methodological assumptions. The report estimates that there are 6.7 million illegal file-sharers in the UK. It arrived at this figure when multiplying the total number of Internet users in the UK (estimated at 40 million by the report despite the UK government putting the figure at 33.9 million) against the percentage of the population engaged in file-sharing.

As for the estimate of the piracy percentage, that comes from a 2008 survey of 1,176 UK households. The survey actually found that 11.6 % of respondents admitted to using file-sharing software, but this figure was inflated to 16.3 % to account for "under-reporting". It's not quite clear how this figure was arrived at but it was based on the assumption that some respondents would lie about their P2P use, and Mulligan claims to it be 'based on evidence'.

The differences between these figures are staggering and produce vastly different results. If the lower figures are used instead it transpires that only 3.93 million UK residents are criminals, not 7 million.

And finally...

What does this all mean? Can we actually trust the figures used by goverenemtn and industry alike? As Nate Anderson (over at Ars Technica) puts it:

"The problem isn't that such calculations are done; they can serve as useful tools for industries and even for policymakers. But problems develop when the numbers are ripped from their original, provisional context by repetition and citation, eventually taking on the force of Fact. When such "facts" end up being used to make policy, the problems are compounded."

Statistics and facts are not always what they seem. Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science and regular Guardian writer, puts it slightly differently:

"As far as I’m concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise”

I'm inclined to agree, but there is a worrying point to these examples of misreported statistics and over-inflated figures. If they go unchecked, they become powerful rhetorical strategies that can gain momentum and if repeated enough times in the right places can take on the appearance of 'truth' from which it is only 'common sense' to act accordingly. I wonder how successful the new PS3 actually is and are shareholders seeing the benefit of increased sales? Does this equate to more inward investment in the technology at both the software and hardware levels, and does this bring benefits to the end user? Can we really believe the figures bandied around by the recording industry and what are the consequences if they are not contested? Who benefits from being disconnected from the internet on the back of wild exaggerations?

Virgin says "no" to disconnection

This story is taken from TorrentFreak who are reporting that there is very little chance that they will follow through with the threats to disconnect their customers suspected by the BPI of participating in illegal filesharing. The original source of the admission appears over on the BBC Newsbeat site who claim there is "absolutely no possibility" that Virgin Media will take legal action against their customers.

This comes on the back of stinging criticism against the ISP who have issued 800 letters to customers over the last month warning them not to use "unauthorised peer-to-peer networks" like BitTorrent or Limewire to swap copyright protected files. The BBC have footage of a customer, Will McGree of Cardiff, who has been issued with one of these letters but denies its accuracy (a point I mentioned here yesterday). It seems difficult to reconcile both positions when Virgin Media are clearly bowing to pressure from the BPI, despite a lack of sufficient evidence.

Virgin have claimed they will not hand details of their customers details over to the BPI but it remains to be seen if they can be trusted to keep their word on this matter, especially since their associated business include music interests. Combine this with the fact that many ISPs (Virgin included) have been overselling their subscription capacities (and maximum download speeds) and are desperate to curb excessive bandwidth users and the picture looks less clear.

Disputing claims as to who downloaded what and when will soon become harder to contest if new Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) become the norm in places other than just Sweden. Until recently, the processing power required to inspect data packets has made this prohibitive, especially if they were encrypted (torrent files), as it required computers with massive computational power. Again, TorrentFreak carry the story:

"The other, arguably more sinister usage of DPI, is the growing interest by advertising companies to use deep packet inspection to observe what Internet users are doing. Watching your browsing activity, you can gain all kinds of insights into the user behind the keyboard. Similar to spyware, but on your line not your system, it’s not a good thing, and impossible to remove. Worse, it may be able to tell who is behind the keyboard at the time, by identifying trends in connection behavior."

Irrespective of filesharers, this kind of privacy invasion should have us all worried, especially if it is prone to abuse. It seems like hiding traffic in SSH VPN tunnels is now no longer a feasible alternative. Even our YouTube activity is under threat. The EFF have more info about the move which gives Viacom a lot of data to play around with. If ever the digital rights of the planet were under threat then it's now.

BT joins Virgin Media in music sharing clampdown

It seems like the stakes have been raised in the cat and mouse game that is the music industry versus the pirates (aka the customers). BT have announced that they are about to go down a similar route to Virgin Media and start to issue warning letters to web users suspected of downloading music files without the permission of the copyright holder.

In the interests of full disclosure, much of this post is comprised of material from 2 articles over at The Register which you can find here and here

An article over at The Register suggests there is an increasing consensus forming between ISPs and the music industry. Geoff Taylor, chief of UK record industry trade body the BPI claims,

"Everyone agrees on where we need to be, and we are working closely with our colleagues across the music community, the more progressive ISPs, and government to get us there."

So how is this processes panning out? In brief, an agent working on behalf of the BPI will search file-sharing networks for files labelled as music and harvest the ISP address of the computer hosting it. They will then time and date stamp the file and contact the ISP responsible for hosting the customer. The ISP will then issue a warning letter or two (one from the BPI and one from the ISP) warning the customer about the illicit nature of the behaviour. One of the letters may hint at a possible disconnection. It would seem that the ISP odes not relay customer details back to the BPI (for now).

TorrentFreak have a host of articles describing the rather dubious nature of the accusatory methodology employed to 'prove' that file-sharing activity is what it seems to be, with some IP addresses that were supposedly participating in piracy were actually attributed to network printers. Hardly fool-proof evidence.

The threat of disconnection is the preferred deterrent of record industry in its battle against the filesharing of music. It has pressed hard for "three strikes" process, and has the support of the UK government, who do not want to interfere directly, to come to a voluntary agreement with ISPs that satisfies both sides. There are similar plans afoot in other European countries (eg France, Netherlands, etc) to implement a "three-strikes" approach despite the MEP Guy Bono report on the Cultural Industries condemning this approach.

In order to make this activity attractive to ISPs, the BPI have been proposing that the music industry comes up with more innovative ways to make money from the sector, by offering better services, which may benefit the ISPs via increasing customer retention. The decision to threaten customers with disconnection seems counter to that ethos but there may be some new ventures ahead.

A recent press release from the BPI suggests that new business models are proving successful:

"record company revenues outside direct sales of music increased by 13.8% to £121.6 million in 2007, from £106.9m in 2006. These additional revenues now account for 11.4% of record companies’ domestic income."

Retail sales are the traditional avenue for income generation but this is clearly changing. Digital sales and licensing are helping the industry, but newer services are also proving attractive. These include generating income from:

• Synchronisation licence income - associated use of music in games, adverts and films
• Broadcast and Public Performance Licensing (PPL) - getting income from venues which play music publicly
  
• Multiple-rights deals ("360 degree deals") - deals which generate income from merchandising, touring, image rights, sponsorship and digital products like wallpapers for mobile phones

Such practises are believed to have resulted in a 16.2% increase in revenue generation in 2007. These service may soon be complemented by legal file-sharing services in the near future, once complications have been ironed out. It would seem these services could be very different to the types of subscription services ran by Napster in which artists would awarded on the basis of popularity. Music sales have long since been on the decline whilst the popularity of music has remained (see the slide courtesy of The Register).

When the industry introduced the CD format it allowed for the renegotiating of royalties, but with the death of the CD in the face of unlicensed filesharing, the industry is having to look to alternate methods of revenue generation, which may lie in the restructuring of licence deals in as similar vein to the model employed by Last.FM. However, the decision by Warner Bros to pull their content from the service in a dispute over royalties may highlight just how far this matter has yet to go before being resolved.

File-sharers eat too much cake?

An article in today's Guardian by Jack Schofield highlights the problems posed by too many committed peer-to-peer networkers squeezing the precious bandwidth of ISPs. He appears to take umbrage at the fact that these peer-to-peer networkers "think it's perfectly OK to grab three quarters of the communal internet bandwidth" and are "defiant" in their rights to do so as they are frequently paying for services offering them exactly that - unlimited connections, free from usage caps. This also has to be set against the reality that many ISPs do not offer equivalent upload speeds when compared to download speeds. My Virgin Media 20Mbit connection certainly doesn't:

There is a valid point in this argument, namely that bandwidth is limited, despite the advertised claims of numerous ISPs, and that network load brought about by constant peer-to-peer filesharing impinges on those users who do not participate in this type of activity. What kinds of solutions are there to this problem?

• prevent people from being able to share files by disconnection them?
• introduce a bandwidth 'capping' scheme?
• improve the network capacity by laying more cables?
• replace the exisiting cable network with fiber optic?

In the interests of net neutrality I am oppossed to the first option on the grounds that it would involve a fitlering scheme that involves close monitering of what sites customers are visiting and what traffic passes through the network (already in place on some networks I suspect: Virgin Media, I'm looking at you). Whether or not this is done to provide targeted advertising (eg Phorm) or for monitoring the distribution of digital music (BPI & Virgin Media), the implications are far reaching, especially when MEPs voted against the disconnection of file-sharers recently. This raises the thorny question of 'should ISPs be responsible for policing the internet use of their customers?'

The second option has already been introduced by a number of ISPs (once again, Virgin Media, I'm looking at you). Traffic shaping seeks to cap the amount of data a user can upload and download within a given time of day. Once a threshold has been reached, the ISP essentially throttles the connection making larger downloads very slow. This is a distinctly unpleasant practice for families who own multiple computers in their homes and have large connections in order to cope with the demands of, say, a family in which one person may be downloading a game via the legitimate Steam service or others like Xbox Live and WiiWare. Combine this with the legitimate purchase of music, TV and film content from the iTunes store, as well as visiting video streaming sites like BBC iPlayer or the HD channels of YouTube and Vimeo, and you can easily push at the limits of the usage cap. I haven't even mentioned upgrades to operating systems like Vista and OS X (the latter is not known for small download sizes) yet. The idea of unlimited broadband is looking like a far off dream now...

It seems like networks are reluctant to spend more money on digging up roads and upgrading/replacing the existing infrastructure, especially when the business case for providing these expenses seem weak when compared to replacing dial-up with broadband. Will customers really want to pay high premiums for faster data transfer? It seems like the UK broadband infrastructure has been a victim of its own success in recent years. Penetration is high which is good for ISPs in a competitive market but broadband is less exclusive and taken from granted now. Customers expect a certain level of service, especially those customers who have paid for premium packages for many years.

Clearly, there are problems with all of these scenarios. In relation to the improving the network infrastructure Schofield make the analogy that "it's like building more roads to 'solve' the car problem". I'm not sure this is quite so simple especially given that the eco-impact of building more roads for CO2-producing cars doesn't play out so dramatically when alternate solutions for fiber laying exist (such as H2O's decision to use the sewer system to house 100Mbit/s cables). The problem seems to be that the growth of broadband penetration has not been matched by structural reform. 100Mbit/s connection are already de rigour in some nations (eg Sweden, France, South Korea, etc), and the UK may be lagging behind.

There is an argument which suggests that faster technology breeds innovation, which Schofield attributes to Google's Vint Cerf. When usage is restricted, businesses who offer excellent services like Vimeo's HD content or the BBC's iPlayer may find themselves unpopular, especially when customers may have to watch their data use.

It seems like the BitTorrent protocol is being targetted in particular. BitTorrent is a fantastic protocol which allows for the rapid dissemination of files across ring-fenced networks and the wider web more generally. It works so well because of its decentralized nature which males it more efficient than if every person wanting access to a file was to try and get it via FTP. Just look at the problems Mozilla had when attempting to break the official download record for Firefox 3 on June 17th. Demand was 'overwhelming', servers ground to a halt and crashed temporarily. BitTorrent distribution would have circumvented this problem.

There is an assumption that all peer-to-peer traffic is driven by illegal activity when this isn't always the case. Schofield goes so far as to label the protocol as 'poisonous'. There are grounds for criticism when "10% selfishly grab around 75% of the internet's bandwidth", but is it fair to blame the protocol for its ease of use and speed of distribution or those users who want to get the advertised connection speeds they are paying for?

I suspect that there is no easy answer to this question. I'm not even convinced that it (or Schofield) asks the right question. It may be that ISPs need to included a caveat or two in future proclamations, similar to stock market share prices - something along the lines of 'your broadband speed may go up or down in line with the user base of the network'. Can you imagine ISPs offering a sliding scale feature on their front pages showing the impact of having more customers on their network? Then they really would be victims of their own success...

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