RADIOHEAD surprised many people when the band agreed to testify (through their manager speaking on their behalf) in the defense of alleged file sharer Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University student under legal attack for sharing seven tracks on Kazaa. Tenenbaum’s defense is intended to be that file sharing can help the music industry.

This is unusual; normally in legal matters we get to hear from the artist’s management/legal team, and often don’t get an accurate opinion from the artists themselves. Radiohead has again and again defied convention by making millions off of albums they “give away” through the method of download and file sharing. Kid A was leaked on the internet, and then sold more albums than the band could have hoped for in their wildest dreams, making the band worldwide superstars.

Similarly in Sweden mega-file sharing website The Pirate Bay is under legal attack for ‘promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws’. This is because The Pirate Bay site itself doesn’t host any of the files, but is a huge index of places that do. The main argument from The Pirate Bay camp is file sharing can, and is legal, and defense lawyer Per E. Samuelson compares the website to a car company that make cars that can go faster than the speed limit. A legal technology that can be used illegally.
This trial has sparked discussion all over the world on the nature of file sharing.

For example: President Obama gave the Queen an iPod with 40 American show tunes already loaded on to it. Did Obama break the law by doing this? This is the legal grey area file sharing plagued with at the moment. It’s nearly impossible to figure out a concrete law. If Obama bought “40 Greatest American Show tunes!” on a CD from his local music store, wrapped it up in paper and gave it to the Queen with a greeting card, there’s no legal worry there, but because Obama (or at least, somebody that works for him) bought it over iTunes, he has a copy of the album as well. Should he delete the album after it was downloaded and given away as a gift? Should he buy it again from the iTunes store, seeing as how the first purchase was for another person? The iTunes store terms and conditions say that the downloads are for personal, and non-commercial use, but if the President of the United States of America gives a gift to the Queen of England, that sounds like a diplomatic issue, not a personal one. Should Apple sue Obama?

You can see how quickly these issues can get out of control. We haven’t even thought about how the UK copyright laws interact with the American ones yet! It’s clear that we are still in a very early age of digital media, and haven’t quite worked out all the rules. I guess we can only hope that the digital media laws of the future focus on sharing entertainment, rather than saving it all for a select few.

- Michael Vilkins