Steal This File Sharing Book: What They Wont Tell You About File Sharing

Fear is one tactic that the music industry hopes will sway people to their point of view. To continue their program of fear, the RIAA placed advertisements in the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly that contained foreboding headlines warning people, “Next time you or your kids ‘share’ music on the Internet, you may also want to download a list of attorneys.”

Not all of the RIAA’s campaigns focus on fear and intimidation. For young people, the RIAA hopes that a message of guilt and “education” (known as “propaganda” among dictatorships) can sway young people to its side.

By bombarding young children with “educational campaigns” to teach people why file sharing is wrong, the music industry hopes people will voluntarily shy away from any type of illegal file sharing activities. Of course, getting people to be honest is especially difficult when the rewards are high (free music) and the risks are low (the RIAA can’t sue everybody).

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) even launched a program aimed at educating students about the dangers of file sharing through the Junior Achievement program. A lesson plan entitled “What’s the Diff? A Guide to Digital Citizenship” contains guidelines for teaching kids why they should not participate in illegal file sharing. The booklet includes quotes from famous people (Britney Spears and the Dixie Chicks) and not-so-famous people (Hollywood set painters and camera operators), explaining how illegal file sharing hurts them.

For further incentive to accept the industry’s viewpoint about file sharing, the MPAA offers prizes such as DVD players, movies, theater tickets, and all-expense-paid trips to Hollywood for students who write the best essays about the illegal nature of file sharing. Presumably none of the students who won prizes turned in any thought-provoking essays that probed the reasons behind file sharing or why corporations were allowed to promote their point of view with the blessing of school teachers, who were also eligible for prizes based on the number and perceived quality of the essays their students submitted.

To approach more people than just students, various organizations have set up websites where visitors can browse through a list of questions and answers, news releases, and quotes from songwriters and artists urging people not to share copyrighted files illegally over the Internet. To see three websites that seek to educate readers about the illegality of file sharing, visit Music United (http://www.musicunited.net), the MPAA’s Respect Copyrights website (http://www.respectcopyrights.org), and the Canadian Value of Music Coalition’s website, Keep Music Coming (http://www.keepmusiccoming.com).

To read information supporting file sharing technology, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s website (http://www.eff.org) and P2P United (http://www.p2punited.org), a group of various file sharing companies that includes LimeWire, BearShare, and Blubster.