Brilliant, logical, clear presentation in favor of enabling P2P as the savior rather than the destroyer of the entertainment industry by attorney Philip S. Corwin, as presented yesterday before the California Senate Select Committee on the Entertainment Industry - well worth the time to read if you want to understand what the debate is all about:

Testimony of Philip S. Corwin
Partner, Butera and Andrews, Washington, D.C.
Regarding P2P: The Path to Prosperity for the Entertainment Industry Before
California Senate Select Committee on the Entertainment Industry
Sacramento, California
March 27, 2003

Senator Murray and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to share my views with you today regarding the impact of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology on the entertainment industry. We all now know that the acronym P2P stands for peer-to-peer. It is my belief that P2P also stands for path to prosperity. This powerful technology will transform the entertainment industry and deliver it, and the Nation's artist and consumers, into a new age of cultural and economic abundance. I commend you for holding this hearing so that your Committee can better inform itself about the realities of this powerful new technology, since effective and relevant public policy must always be informed by the truth.

Like you and the members of the Committee, I have devoted my career to the shaping of public policy. It has been my privilege to participate in the public policy debate surrounding digital media since 1999, when I represented MP3.com on Capitol Hill. I currently serves as a legislative consultant to CenterSpan Communications, a Portland, Oregon-based provider of intermediated and digital rights management (DRM) protected P2P backbone technology for licensed content.

I also lobby on behalf of Sharman Networks, the Sydney, Australia-based distributor of the Kazaa Media desktop (KMD) software. Worldwide downloads of KMD just surpassed 200 million, and it appears that later this month it will surpass ICQ to become the most downloaded software in history. During the course of this afternoon, between lunch and dinner, about 100,000 more copies will be downloaded worldwide.

In addition to representing my clientele on copyright and technology issues, I also serve as the Washington liaison for the American Bar Association's Section of Science and Technology, and as legislative reporter for the ABA's Cyberspace Law Committee. Next Friday, at the ABA Business Law Section's Spring Meeting in Los Angeles, I will participate in a panel discussion of "Internet Issues for the Entertainment Industry" sponsored by the Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the Cyberspace Law Committee.

The views I present to you today are solely my own and not those of any client I represent or organization I belong to.

Executive Summary
* Like all technologies, digital technology has inherent positive and negative aspects. Its ability to make an infinite number of perfect reproductions of copyrighted media holds promise for society but peril for traditional copyright
doctrine.
* We are just nearing the halfway mark in the public Internet adoption cycle. The impact of exponential, transformational change upon the entertainment industry has a long way to go.
* P2P is but one of many digital technologies that can and are being used for copyright infringement, but that can also provide the infrastructure for new business models.
* The weight of objective studies is that P2P file sharing is not a significant cause of declines in CD sales and may, on a net basis, promote CD sales.
* P2P file sharing provides an important new means of gaining an audience for many musical artists who are not well served by the current major label and commercial radio systems.
* On the federal legislative front, the momentum has swung away from Hollywood interests and in favor of a broad coalition of technology firms, consumer electronics manufacturers, and public interest groups favoring explicit
demarcation and protection of consumer rights in the digital media they purchase.
* Several important cases making their way through the courts have important implications in such areas as Internet jurisdiction, application of the Betamax standard to digital technology, P2P user privacy and due process rights, and the application of copyright law prohibitions on circumvention of software access controls to non-entertainment manufactured goods. This litigation assault is suppressing investment and innovation in Silicon Valley and other U.S. technology centers.

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