About Omega · News · Merchandise · Contact
Tech News· Search · Xoxide Link
· Welcome to the Omega Computers web site, where we build and sell monitors and PC's that are perfect for you! With our expert team of technicians, we are dedicated to making you the computer of your dreams.Weary of being cast as the Internet's black marketeers, proprietors of free online music and file-sharing services are coming to Washington to launch a formal lobbying campaign to convince Congress of their legitimacy.
Grokster, a West Indies-based firm, and the New York-based Lime Wire will join with several other unnamed services in a trade association to defend the rights of free "peer-to-peer" -- or P2P -- file traders, Grokster's president, Wayne Rosso, said today.
The coalition, which plans to launch in the next 60 days, has not announced its name or hired a lobbyist. The group probably will work out of the office of whatever representative or lobby firm it hires, Rosso said.
It also is honing what its message and core values will be, but the primary aim is to dispel the belief that online file sharing is at best seedy and at worst illegal.
"The problem is that legislators have just been pumped full of so much misinformation," Rosso said. "They think that we're all back-alley smut peddlers and identity thieves, and that's just not the case."
The misinformation, he said, comes from the entertainment industry, including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The groups represent the biggest film studios and recording companies, which say they are losing money because of free, easily available copies of their music and movies on the Internet.
File-sharing services, such as Kazaa, BearShare and Morpheus, became popular after the pioneering Napster closed its doors in 2001. They accounted for 5 billion music downloads in 2002, and there are 57 million users in the United States alone, according to the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm. Kazaa says that its file sharing software has been downloaded more than 200 million times.
Music industry revenues, meanwhile, have seen an 11 percent drop in sales in 2002, according to analyst firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. More than half of lost music sales are due to file sharing, the Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD Group says.
Rosso said file sharers are not trying to deprive the recording industry of its deserved cash.
"Copyright owners need to be paid and we certainly believe in copyright law," he said. "We just don't want it to be abused and don't want the rights of users to be trampled."
File sharing also has many legitimate uses, such as sharing information quickly and efficiently over long distances, said Greg Bildson, Lime Wire's chief operating officer.
"The media companies that are pushing their end of the issue have been tying file sharing [to] anything bad they can think of -- first it was child pornography then it was homeland security [threats]," Bildson said.
RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy scorned the new lobby's goals.
"It takes a lot of chutzpah for companies that purposefully facilitate illegal copyright theft to turn around and lobby the nation's lawmakers," he said. "This is apparently a reaction to the interest of Congress in the rampant piracy, security and privacy concerns that these networks are responsible for."
"We welcome any debate that's based on facts," said MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor.
Gigi Sohn, president of D.C.-based Public Knowledge, a group that supports fair-use rights, said the voice of P2P proprietors has been absent from the copyright debate for too long. Nevertheless, she fears they will have a "tough row to hoe."
"If they just go in there and say peer-to-peer is good, without recognizing [the piracy problem], I think they'll just get blown out of the water," Sohn said.
Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.), who co-chairs a recently formed intellectual property and online piracy caucus, said she is eager to debate online copyright issues with the file sharing industry, but warned that it might get a chilly reception.
"If they start legitimizing piracy, they're in for a fight," said Bono.
Computers:
$499.99 $799.99 $999.99
Monitors:
$734.99 $219.99
Keyboards:
$19.99 $69.99 $24.99
Mice:
$48.99 $39.99
| First Name | |
| Last Name | |
| Company | |
| Phone | |
| FAX | |
| Address | |
| Address2 | |
| City | |
| State/ Province | |
| ZIP/Postal code | |
| Website URL | |
| Reason for contacting us | |
| FEEDBACK/COMMENTS |
|
|
|
|
