Vice President Joe Biden recently had some strong words for file sharers:

We used to have a problem in this town saying this,"But piracy is theft. Clean and simple. It's smash and grab. It ain't no different than smashing a window at Tiffany's and grabbing [merchandise]."

The statement comes in the wake of the Obama administration's introduction of its plan to protect intellectual property.  The plan is outlined in a report by Victoria Espinel, the U.S. intellectual property enforcement coordinator.  The report contains more than 33 recommendations.

Biden continued:

;"This is not just about the new 'Robin Hood' movie, it's not just about creative talent...It's about whether a Kevlar [bulletproof] vest we are putting on some guy and whether it works or not."

Read more about it at C-Net.

Arts + Labs applauds The Obama administration's active position in the protection of intellectual property.

There hasn't been a great deal of coverage on this, but Charles Nesson filed a response Tuesday to last week's order by the judge in the Joel Tenenbaum case admonishing Nesson for his erratic behavior and tactics, which have skirted the line of the law.  In the order, Judge Nancy Gertner suggested that Nesson's bizarre personal and legal behavior has "overshadowed" the legal issues at hand.

(For a full recap of Nesson's bizarre defense strategy, read Copyrights and Campaigns by Ben Sheffner, who has been following the case closely.)

Nesson's response, which is charitably described by Sheffner as reading "like an impassioned blog rant," denies that he has overshadowed the issues at hand and that he will "continue to try to make as much of this case open to the internet as is possible under the law" since "the capacity to inform and educate the digital public is at the heart of this case."  Essentially, Nesson does not want the case to be about whether or not Joel Tenenbaum broke the law, but whether copyright law is fair.

Actually, Nesson takes this a step further:

The issue presented here is not only whether Joel Tenenbaum unfairly infringed copyright by sharing in music free on the open net. It is whether an entire digital generation did so and whether Joel will be individually punished for it. That generation needs to hear and see a case made on its behalf. The world needs to see and hear it.

This argument seems pretty disingenuous.  There are a lot of people around Joel Tenenbaum's age who never "unfairly infringed copyright by sharing music free on the open net" and probably even more who were swept up in the Napster craze but stopped sharing music when they understood that it was illegal.  These people probably would not appreciate being accused by Nesson of having "unfairly" shared files, nor would they likely appreciate Nesson appointing himself as their spokesperson.  Joel Tenenbaum isn't being held individually responsible for a collective action, he's being held responsible for his individual action of downloading copyrighted material.  To act as though this case is about an entire generation is kind of like saying that individual speeders on the highway who get caught are being punished not only for all other speeders, but for all other drivers.  It doesn't make sense.

It's the classic "but everybody else does it" defense.  We don't accept that from our children.  Especially when it's not remotely true.

Whether or not you buy Nesson's argument that he's protecting Joel Tenenbaum from martyrdom on behalf of everyone under thirty, one thing is clear: the Tenenbaum trial is now officially The Charles Nesson Show, and it promises to get more interesting as the drama--and legal hijinks--unfold.

How interesting will the trial get?  During written discovery (PDF) in the Tenenbaum fair use defense, Sony presented the image of Nesson below, by asking Tenenbaum to "admit that the image attached hereto as Exhibit 1, with the caption, 'Destroy Capitalism, Support Piracy,' is a true and correct copy of an image that was posted to the Internet by your counsel."

Charming...

The New York Times had a piece yesterday about Disney's new movie Earth, which opened last Wednesday to coincide with Earth Day. To generate buzz for the movie, Disney pledged to plant a tree in a Brazilian rainforest for every ticket sold for the movie during it's first week.

The problem? The movie was already available over P2P networks, no ticket necessary.

Now maybe none of the people who are sharing that particular movie illegally online would have gone to see it in theaters, so maybe the rainforests didn't actually suffer much for this particular file being available online. But it certainly underscores the point that piracy of copyrighted content doesn't just harm our digital society; it can even have a negative impact on the rest of our world too. And that's a shame.

CNET's Greg Sandoval had a great article over the weekend about whether the Pirate Bay verdict last Friday is a harbinger of things to come for the free culture movement. Sandoval suggests that maybe it is, asking if online piracy has reached a "tipping point."

Underscoring that point, Sandoval cites Arts+Labs' own Mike McCurry about the very real cost of piracy:

"There might be just a point here where the culture is changing on what's legitimate behavior online," said Mike McCurry, the former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton and co-chairman of Arts+Labs, a collaborative group of technology and media companies. "I think perhaps something of a tipping point has been reached where people are finally saying that activity we thought was just okay or skirting around the edge has tipped over into something both dangerous, criminal, and unfair."

Of course it isn't the big stars or the label and studio executives who are hurt most by piracy, especially during a recession, as CNET acknowledges:

The tab for all that so-called free content is being picked up by stunt men, makeup artists, secretaries, sound engineers, editors, truck drivers, and lots of other people who work for media and entertainment companies, according to the executives. They maintain that at a time of massive corporate cutbacks and layoffs, media and entertainment firms have to cut a little deeper because of piracy. So, the stakes are higher now for content creators.

So what's the way forward? If this is the tipping point, how do we knock the piracy racket all the way over? NBC Universal's Rick Cotton says collaboration and experimentation by both ISPs and content creators are the key:

"What's important is all the creators of the broadband Internet be working together to reduce pirating activity," Cotton said.

We couldn't agree more. Those who want to address piracy effectively support both consumer education and business experimentation to find new business models.

According to Wired (and many others), the four men "connected to The Pirate Bay, the world's most notorious file sharing site, were convicted by a Swedish court Friday of contributory copyright infringement, and each sentenced to a year in prison."  They were also "ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million)" for the infringement of various movies and music.

What can be said?  We are certainly sorry that it came to this point.  It did not have to.  The desire to access and share content can be fulfilled without violating the rights of artists and creators.  The right of artists to earn a fair living from their work has been vindicated.  We are very glad to see that. 

At CNet, Arts+Labs' "Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters' Guild of America, said he and everybody else "put out of business by cyber-looting" was smiling after the verdict."

"I would like to tell the Pirate Bay the same thing everybody has told us for the past 10 years," Carnes said. "They should go out and find a new business model, one that doesn't involve profiting from stolen property...What everybody who steals music should realize is that e-looting is not a victimless crime. Everyone who does it is hurting themselves. They are killing the music.

"They are turning the Internet into a cyber Somalia," Carnes continued, "and that doesn't do any good for anybody."

Our digital society is stronger when the rights of our artists and creators are secure.  We applaud the Swedish court for confirming these rights.

We've been pleased to see the widespread negative reaction to the leak and pirating of an unfinished copy of Wolverine.  As COED Magazine wrote, "the online fan community itself condemned the leak. Universally."   We think that's a positive sign of the kind of mutual respect for rights and property that needs to exist in a digital society. 

So, we are delighted to see confirmation of our take in Newsweek's read of the conventional wisdom.

Read the full Newsweek CW report here.

As tax day draws closer, Arts+Labs has been working to spread the word about the dangers of inadvertent file-sharing on P2P networks, which we've written about before (here on the DailyBeast and also on the ArtLab blog).

On Friday, Arts+Labs executive director Coley Hudgins talked to CNET about some practical advice for keeping your documents safe from prying eyes on P2P networks:

Another potential risk comes from programs that may be on the computer that you don't know about, and not just malware. For instance, if teenagers using the same computer that the tax preparation is done on have downloaded peer-to-peer software make sure the settings on the application do not allow for access to areas on the computer where sensitive data, like tax information, is stored.

Given the propensity for inadvertent file sharing, it might be wise to not use peer-to-peer programs on the same computer where tax data is located, said Coley Hudgins, executive director of Arts+Labs, a venture formed by Microsoft, Cisco, AT&T, NBC, and the Songwriters Guild of America that opposes the use of peer-to-peer networks for sharing copyright-protected content.
Of course the best way to make sure you aren't sharing things inadvertently on file-sharing networks is not to use them, especially since so much of the traffic on P2P networks is illegal, copyrighted content. If you want to steer clear of cyber criminals, it's a good idea not to use web applications that overwhelmingly traffic in stolen content.

But, as Coley told the Wall Street Journal, users who insist on using P2P applications should "take the time to understand how the software you downloaded works."

As it is in many cases, a little education goes a long way.

Patrick Ross had a great post up at the Copyright Alliance blog last week about some of the inaccurate coverage of AT&T's new efforts to notify subscribers of copyright infringement.  A number of reflexive critics suggested--again, inaccurately--that this was the beginning of a three-strike rule or a "campaign to kick people off the internet."

But as Ross rightly notes, merely sending notices about infringement is a far cry from a three-strikes proposal, and AT&T has been emphatic about saying it has no intention of cutting off subscribers.  AT&T's CEO Jim Cicconi made this pretty clear, saying, "AT&T is not going to suspend or terminate anyone's policy without a court order."

The reality is that sending notices about copyright infringement is very effective consumer education.  As Cicconi explained, "In most cases the behavior changed immediately" after receiving a notice. "It validated what so many of us knew instinctively: that so much of this is kids doing it without their parents' knowledge."

That's good news. At Copyright Alliance, Ross points out that "most of us can be persuaded to play by the rules when it no longer seems to be in our interest to break them. The effect of these letters show that."

Response to the letters also underscores the intuitive idea that once people understand that they're breaking the law and learn that they have a reasonable alternative, most people don't want to infringe copyright.  That's a big part of the reason there's so much experimentation right now on the part of content creators and distributors to make their products available to as many people as possible.

The best way to address bad information is to provide good information.  It's hard to understand why the critics would object to AT&T and other ISP's providing good information to consumers.  If ISP's can help reduce illegal activity and piracy by educating consumers, that is a win/win situation for everybody. 

Following up on Jon's post a couple weeks back about the potential dangers of P2P file-sharing software, A+L's Mark McKinnon has a piece running today at the Daily Beast about the true cost of downloading "free" content from P2P networks:

Unbeknownst to users, many P2P applications can make all of the files on a user's machine or network available, not just the songs and movies that users intend to share. They're also sharing tax returns, online shopping receipts, bank statements, passwords, credit information, and more available to the identity thieves and cybercriminals, who eagerly prowl P2P looking for these lucrative nuggets. That's a lot to give away in exchange for music than can just as easily be acquired at a low cost on sites like iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, and other online music stores. The copyrighted material may seem to be "free," but the price of getting it illegally can be quite expensive.

Of course that's bad on an individual scale, but it's nothing compared to what could be in store for the owners of computers infected with the Conficker virus. McKinnon explains:

Once activated, the virus will link together a massive network of hijacked computers that could be used for any number of nefarious activities. One of the more startling possibilities is that it will enable the virus' creators to search and access the information in every file on every one of the infected computers. Think of it as an underground and malicious Google that would mine the world's computers for financial and personal data, and then sell it to the highest bidder.

That wake up call is certainly a grim silver lining.