P2P filesharing provides many independent artists an opportunity to promote their music. At the same time, these services have been used to infringe copyrights prompting record labels led by the RIAA to file lawsuits against infringers. While Public Knowledge does not encourage the use of P2P services for trading copyrighted works without authorization, we feel that destroying P2P technology through litigation is not how the RIAA and its member companies should deal with the problem. P2P services became popular because legal download services failed to satisfy consumer needs and desires. During Napster’s heyday, legal download services had small inventories, high prices and restrictive DRM, which prevented users from listening to music on the devices of their choice. P2P services continue to be attractive to consumers today and the recording industry would be well served if it considered means to monetize music distributed over P2P networks.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Berkman center at Harvard University have both proposed new business models that would allow the P2P services and major labels to co-exist. In both cases, this model takes the form of a voluntary licensing scheme. Under these proposals, P2P users could continue of engage in file sharing online for a reasonable fee. This fee could be paid through either an ISP or other intermediary and would be distributed among musicians based on the number of times their music was downloaded online. The EFF predicts that as the numbers of users grow, the revenue for artists and labels would increase. Also, under the EFF model, users who volunteer to pay the license fee would not be targeted by RIAA lawsuits.