Last weekend I read a book review in the New York Times by Michiko Kakutani, the Times’ perennial taste-maker, entitled “Taking Sides in the Digital Revolution, Where Copyright is the First Casualty.” The article outlines two recent books, one called “Ripped” by Greg Kot and the other “Digital Barbarism” by Mark Helprin. Essentially Kakutani says both books, one pro and one con, present their arguments well but both fall short because they fail to adequately analyze the counterarguments. I am not here to comment much on the review itself, nor do I care to read or address either book. These books both seem as though their purpose is to convince fencesitting audiences. I do not sit on the fence when it comes to digital media distribution, either the legal kind or the sort labeled by the uninitiated as “piracy.” As an unabashed technophile, I see the future of media distribution encapsulated in what media piracy offers: all media available in high-quality formats, downloadable at fast speeds any time of day, anything you could possibly want. Think of it as a library at your fingertips, currently only available to those in the know, those who have some tech savvy, and those who are willing to cross that line into what the law, albeit a dark shade of gray, labels illegal. But very soon, I predict, this will be the way most, if not all, media will be distributed.

About five years ago I received an invitation to the private BitTorrent music site called Oink. If you’re unfamiliar with BitTorrent, let me break it down for you. You download a client software to your computer, which is able to read and parse Torrents, and connect to BitTorrent trackers hosted on websites. No actual media is hosted on these websites, they only serve as a directory to Torrent files; Torrent files are small and serve only to connect users to each other and provide an organizational map for media data. When you upload a Torrent file to one of these sites, you are registering media hosted on your own computer with the website and opening that media up to other users to download. When a Torrent originates, hosted only by the original uploader, other users attach onto the file and are called Leeches. At first the downloading is slow, capable of only going as fast as the original uploaders upload speed. But when the Torrent is completed, once another user has fully downloaded the files, these completed downloads/users join the Swarm, the people sharing a Torrent and set of files. The more people in the Swarm, the faster a Leech’s potential download. Perhaps at first you may only download at 50KB per second but as more users complete the Torrent and share, joining the Swarm, you become only limited by your own download speed. You could be downloading at 1MB per second on a normal residential internet connection (thus getting a 60MB music album in one minute), or even faster if you’re on a university or business connection. It all depends on what people colloquially call your “pipe.”

Oink, in time, became the preeminent music download site among Torrenters; it ushered in this strange new era of sharing, with an effect greater than Napster because you could get absolutely anything, in complete albums, in any format you wanted. But, like Napster, it was shut down when it became too big. Without missing a beat, however, the Torrent community had new sites up within a week (which will remain unnamed in this article), staying true to what is known as the Hydra. A hydra has many heads, and when you chop one off more will grow in its place. The Torrent community cannot be stopped; you can’t shut down all the sites. Just as the recent judgment against the founders of the Pirate Bay reveals, you can persecute the people but you can’t stop the machine. These sites don’t just contain music. All digital media can be had if you get into the right site. Books are certainly included in this, both of the e-book and audiobook variety.

I thought this was an important topic to bring up because I myself hope to one day make a living from my art. But, despite what my friends may tell you, I am not a fool. With the way the current industries operate, music and book, and with the ease at which someone can “pirate” this media, the financial models these industries purport are simply not sustainable. Just as the iPod ushered piracy into the mainstream (can anyone claim they have paid for every single mp3 on their digital music player?), e-readers like the Kindle will do the very same thing to books. Why pay $25-30 for a book when you can have the text for free? In the New York Times’ Book Review podcast from 5/15/09, they discuss book piracy and how it effects authors and the industry and such. But these people talking about it, Motoko Rich and Sam Tanenhaus, come off as luddites (though they are just journalists, so we’ll cut them some slack). They speak of transcription as a form of book piracy, as in someone will sit and type a book out that they own so that they may distribute it on the internet. This idea is small potatoes; maybe a few will do this, but how many people do you think will actually spend their time transcribing a book?

More likely, e-reader proprietary formats will be cracked (do you think Amazon’s techs are smarter than millions of internet nerds?) and distributed through various Peer-to-Peer (P2P) sharing avenues on the internet, including BitTorrent. This is already the case. At my fingertips is almost any book I could want, in PDF for text or mp3 for audiobook. Now, if you’ve read some of my articles here before you’ll know that I don’t want to ever give up the paperback. I love the feel of a book in my hands. I love reading paper. And it is my opinion that, in this regard, music and book piracy differ. But I could, one day in the not too distant future, be in the minority. Many people love the Kindle. Just like the iPod, there’s a hefty upfront cost but if you know how to get your media for free, the $300 is worth it.

What does all this add up to? The industry can’t stop it. It is a fool’s errand to fight it. We are entering a new age and if the industry wants to stay lucrative, they need to adapt. Instead of suing people who share media, they need to hire a few and come up with a new distribution model. But I don’t see the big companies surviving, ultimately; their product will become too manufactured someday soon. They play it safe, create pop stars with little substance, and try to milk every dollar they can from a wilting turnip. Artists, both musicians and writers, need to realize this and figure out their own way. The days of the giant advance and massive royalties are over. What we’re learning is that it can’t just be about the money because the money no longer exists.

Once you release your art, your media, it is gone. Anyone can have it for free. I talked to my friend Scott Masson of the band Office about the subject. “I don’t want to spend my life and career fighting something that actually allows my own music to be heard,” he said. “Better that, than folks not hearing a piece of music at all.”

Masson has found success with Office, has bounced on and off of a major label, and has ultimately found it more fulfilling and lucrative to remain independent. His latest release, Mecca, is offered for free on Office’s website. “I worked my ass off on this album too, and spent a lot of money and time crafting it.  All I wanted was to share it because I believed in the contents.”

“The companies used to be in control of the artists, and now I sort of feel the public is in control,” said Masson. “The public will make the final decision on how an artist makes their living.”

I don’t think it’s become a question of morals, like some pundits argue. I don’t think labeling media sharing as “piracy” is very accurate. It is a new model. I’m not arguing that artists shouldn’t be compensated; they most certainly should be able to make a living from their work, so long as their work has greater cultural value. But, as Masson points out, the people will decide this. Morals are out of the picture. If you offer mp3s of your favorite new album to a friend, to a family member, to a stranger, will any of them decline this offering? “No,” your upstanding friend says. “I do not accept any music for which I did not pay.” Yeah, right. It will soon be the same way with books.

I don’t have the answers for the future of commercial media, I don’t pretend to know what the new model will be. But at least I’m thinking about the question. If major companies want to stay afloat they need to harness this new power of media distribution instead of trying to squash it with their heel. Artists will need to rely on the quality of their work, rather than a PR machine pushing it. This is bad news for the people who rely on the exploitation of artists to earn a living. But for artists, I think this is a wake-up call. With the fall of intellectual property rights, the ease at which anybody can download anything they want for free, the onus is on the artists to create something truly magical and culturally significant if they want to be relevant.