Downloading and filesharing through Peer-to-peer networks: the copyright versus the free access to the cultural products

The “peer to peer” (P2P) is a technology of downloading and filesharing between online - Internet - users by the mean of specified software. Since June 1999, the Napster software has made the happiness of millions of individuals who used it to obtain and share free audio files Mp3. Rapidly, the major recording companies have prosecuted the Napster Company and managed to force it to close down. They were arguing against it for it is supporting the development on a large scale traffic of files protected by copyright and thus was threatening the whole music and movies economic world. Since fast Internet connections multiplied, "peer to peer" software and networks improved, so that this mode of exchange became an unprecedented success. Today all cultural products, in particular films and music, are concerned with this free –of– charge distribution without any financial counterpart for the copyright holders. Two tools hold today the top ranks and concentrate large traffic: eDonkey and eMule. These two softwares contain a search engine which makes it possible to find in less than ten seconds almost any film, musical album, video game or even electronic book (e-book). It is enough to click on the file which one is interested in and some time later (between few seconds to few days) it is recorded on the hard disk of the computer. The new technologies and combined practices, Internet and the P2P networks, offer to the consumers new possibilities a.They create a real new market, the so-called DFM - downloading and filesharing market. This new technological situation has generated new problems for the cultural products and artefacts rightholders because it enables consumers or users of these technologies and practices to get easily round the current property rights. One question is relevant to this new situation: How could be reached a pertinent solution enabling to reconcile satisfactorily the copyright and other rightsholders’ interests with the consumers’ desires and practices ? The aim in this matter is to find an adequate equilibrium of rights between the copyright holders and the Internet users and technological innovators, so that each one could get a fair share of the system and receive their right earnings. Does the solution searched for, or any solution, depend from the legal copyright status or any other legal mean? Or does it have to be searched for through other business means, as marketing strategy for instance? The authorities, under the impulse of the music producers, the producers of video games and the studios of cinema, run after the users of this type of system with an aim of prosecuting them for piracy. Already programmers announce the imminent launch of new "peer to peer" softwares which will guarantee the total anonymity of its users. “Hunting for the thieves has started and appears complicated for the gendarmes”