Person to Peer to Peer to Person

What does Sony Music Entertainment's decision to suspend the manufacture of copy-protected compact discs really mean?

This story has been reported in a number of major media outlets -- the Los Angeles Times, the BBC -- only in such a way as to lead one to believe that the repercussions of this shift in policy might be felt outside of the Japanese market. As the original AP story above and as this nice little write-up from The Register plainly disclose, the newly merged, international Sony BMG Music Entertainment will not be swayed.

What is truly noteworthy about this tsunami in a teapot is not so much the idea (expressed by corporate spokesperson Yasushi Ide) that Sony's message about the harm done to both artists and the economy by illegally reproducing and distributing branded content has somehow contributed to making human beings a little less predatory, but rather the very feudal fact that, finally, the only thing that can trump one property law is another older, bigger, uglier, and more entrenched one. To wit:

Indeed, Sony appeared concerned that a copy-protected CD isn't a Compact Disc in the true, standards-based definition of the term, which its own parent company was jointly responsible for setting. In short, there is consumer resistance -- and possible a legal challenge -- for something that looks like a CD but either plays nothing or lower quality audio when used in a CD drive.

At the same time, the strict enforcement of "bad patents" is being closely monitored by public interest groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF]. And yet I would wager that Sony and Phillips will never get into it. Corporations have become extremely wary when it comes to picking their battles. It is much easier -- i.e., less expensive -- to take down and co-opt the Mountain Dew-guzzling Shawn Fannings of the world. No CEO in his / her right mind wants "listeners" or "an audience". They even understand that "fans" will only ever represent a small is devoted percentage of the market they wish to dominate. They want to own those who, in turn, want to own. Not as Southern plantation owners held slaves, of course. But what is up for grabs are the reasons we have to want what we do, as well as the mechanisms by which we can exercise those wants. It may be that there can be no arguments about tastes, but perhaps the day is not far off when tastes can be truly expropriated, traded, and controlled by remote means. If they are not already. Desire upon desire upon desire… it's enough to make me want to be a Buddhist for real.

So, is this abandonment of ill-conceived technology on the part of one of the world great electronics firms truly a victory for consumers everywhere? If so, I'd like to know when did my quasi-legal status as "consumer", traducing borders in the new global economy, supplant by citizenship, my existential bond to the circumstances of my specific time and place? It prompts me to think about the chicken-and-egg question that I do not think I've ever seen phrased as such… which came first, the P2P networks, or the social and economic forces those networks circumvent? That is, is the "oppositional" character of something such as Kazaa accidental, or knowingly, diabolically in-built?

There's no doubt about it in my mind: the public domain has become increasingly becoming private, a sphere in which it pays to be surreptitious. As much as the power wielded by those conglomerated "persons" we call corporations does, the popularity of P2P networks communicates to me that the equality of individuals can no longer be protected, much less guaranteed. In place of equality, then, we have anonymity. But, qua Sony, what lessons does the "free trade" experience teach us about human nature?