Code Wars: 10 Years of P2P Software Litigation

by Rebecca Giblin

Code Wars recounts the legal and technological history of the first decade of the P2P file sharing era, focusing on the innovative and anarchic ways in which P2P technologies evolved in response to decisions reached by courts with regard to their predecessors. With reference to US, UK, Canadian and Australian secondary liability regimes, this insightful book develops a compelling new theory to explain why a decade of ostensibly successful litigation failed to reduce the number, variety or availability of P2P file sharing applications - and highlights ways the law might need to change if it is to have any meaningful effect in the future. A genuine interdisciplinary study, spanning both the law and information technology fields, this book will appeal to intellectual property and technology academics and researchers internationally. Historians and sociologists studying this fascinating period, as well as undergraduate and graduate students who are working on research projects in related fields, will also find this book a stimulating read. Foreword by Jane C. Ginsburg 1. Introduction 2. Applying the Pre-P2P Law to Napster 3. Targeted Attacks on the US Secondary Liability Law 4. The Targeted Response 5. Post-Grokster Fallout 6. Goldilocks and the Three Why Rights Holders Would Never Have Sued a P2P Provider under UK or Canadian Law (and why the Australian law was just right) 7. The End of the Road for Kazaa 8. More P2P Software Providers than Ever Before 9. Can the Secondary Liability Law Respond to Code's Revolutionary Nature? Bibliography Index

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Rebecca Giblin is a professor at Melbourne Law School, where she researches at the intersection of law and culture. Her three books take new lenses to cultural challenges, using them to disentangle seemingly intractable problems.

'CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM' (with Cory Doctorow, 2022), deconstructs the playbook used by Big Business (like Amazon!) to capture creative labor markets - and then sets out an extensive series of detailed, shovel-ready solutions for taking them back, to get artists paid.

'What if we could reimagine copyright?' (ed, with Professor Kimberlee Weatherall, 2017) poses a radical thought experiment: what if we could start with a blank slate, and write ourselves a brand new copyright system? What if we could design a law, from scratch, unconstrained by existing treaty obligations, business models and questions of political feasibility? Would we opt for radical overhaul, or would we keep our current fundamentals? Which parts of the system would we jettison? Which would we keep? In short, what might a copyright system designed to further the public interest in the current legal and sociological environment actually look like? By asking these questions, a team of experts from around the world shine new light on problems with the existing system - and highlight new possibilities for achievable reform.

'Code Wars' (2011) develops a compelling new theory to explain why a decade of ostensibly successful litigation failed to reduce the number, variety or availability of P2P file sharing applications – and highlights ways the law might need to change if it is to have any meaningful effect in future. (Please don't pay the outrageous academic publishing rate for a physical copy - it's available on most ebook platforms for a fraction of the price, and many college libraries hold the hardback.)

Rebecca (she/her) lives mostly in Melbourne, Australia, on unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. She's passionate about promoting artists' rights and access to knowledge and culture. Outside of that you can usually find her talking, dancing, hiking, running, cooking, doing yoga, talking intensely to all kinds of people about all kinds of things, or reveling in all things ridiculous.