P2P & the (skinny) Long Tail Theory

(Wikimedia)

There's an interesting looking new paper from the in-house economist at PRS and Eric Garland of Big Champagne on the P2P and the Long Tail theory.

Here's the abstract:

The theory of the Long Tail first came to light in
Wired Magazine in October 2004, as legal digital
music services like iTunes and eMusic were
taking off. However, illegal music services like
Napster, Grokster or Kazaa had been around,
providing digital music fans with a massive
choice of music catalogue long before such
choice was legally provided. As a result, the
well-known anomaly of the digital music world
was reinforced - legal services constantly play
catch-up with illegal services, and the
enforcement of copyright persistently lags
advances in technology. With these issues in
mind, and the infamous Pirate Bay still very
much in the news (and still on folks’ desktops),
what does the Long Tail distribution profile of
hits and niches look like in the world of massive
choice that is P2P? Will Page teamed up with
BigChampagne's Eric Garland to figure it all out.
The following Insight paper is a bit longer than
those previously released by PRS for Music.
As such, we thought it best to give the reader,
upfront, a sense of where we are headed. In the
first section of this Insight paper, we will be
releasing the results of a critical inquiry into the
music usage patterns within file-sharing
networks. Particularly, would a so-called long
tail or a pinhead pattern describe the relative
popularity of music files within these networks?
In the second section of this paper, we will dig
into the 'Wherefores' - particularly issues of
supply and demand - underlying the usage
pattern we found. In the final section, we will
consider long-term trends in P2P activity
alongside some new behaviours that seem to
be emerging. We will then wrap this discussion
up with a few final thoughts on the 'paradox of
choice'.

HT to the 1709 blog.

HK

UK - Turning Up the Heat on Collectives and the Copyright Tribunal

An interesting and important report just out on March 10, 2008 out from the UK House of Commons Committee on Innovation, Universities and Skill can be found here.

Its overall recommendations are these:

The Copyright Tribunal was established as an independent tribunal in 1988 to adjudicate in commercial disputes between copyright owners and users, to ensure that the monopoly of the owners and their agents, the collecting societies, is not abused.

From the outset there have been complaints about delay and the cost of going to the Copyright Tribunal. We find it unacceptable that the Intellectual Property Office, which has administrative responsibility for the Copyright Tribunal, has failed to address these problems in the past 20 years. At last it is waking up to need for improvement, which is now pressing.

Intellectual property is of increasing importance in the UK economy and the spread of digital technology is leading individuals and small businesses and institutions—in contrast to large companies—to become increasingly engaged in the distribution of creative works. In 2007 the Intellectual Property Office commissioned Review of the Copyright Tribunal produced 30 far-reaching recommendations, most of which have support from both copyright owners and users. The Government now needs to publish its response to the Review and to initiate action. It also needs to develop, as a matter of urgency, an affordable, alternative service that individuals and small businesses and institutions can use as well as a policy on works where the copyright owner cannot be established or traced.

(emphasis added)

Does any of this sound familiar to Canadians?

See my recent posting on this subject here and my recent paper on it here.

With all due respect, these are the sorts of questions we should be actually concerned with in Canada now - rather than, as some fear, the slavish enactment of a slightly modified DMCA when Canadian law is already stronger and better than US law in response to largely American based corporate and political interests.

HK