Fans and artists on a2f2a seem to agree that to go forward, we need to come up with a statement which reflects the views of everyone on all sides.
David L took the first step with a poll he designed. Thanks for getting the ball rolling, David. 
Below is his summation >>>
As my first major post, I want to start off by saying thanks to everyone reading and participating in the discussion here on A2F2A.com. This is a topic that everyone obviously has a lot of passion about and I’ve learned a lot by being part of it. Just being here means being part of the solution, and while it may seem intractable at times, we’ve kept a civil discussion going for several months, which is an accomplishment in itself. It shows a commitment to the issue and that we all do want to find solutions.
One step in that is to form a consensus on a statement, so that we have a position going forward into more public venues and can join the larger debate as a group.
Since there was so much good discussion in this thread about possible statements but no way to find out if we had a consensus, I created a survey to get some hard numbers on the issue.
As of the writing of this post, there have been 26 responses to the survey. The full (updated) results are available here.
Before I present the results, I would like to mention a little about the survey design.
Looking through the thread mentioned above, I found about two dozen different possible statements, and added about a dozen more general statements. The statements are not exhaustive and do not fully cover all the issues A2F2A.com has discussed, but they are a starting point.
Respondents could click to agree with as many or as few statements as they preferred.
I attributed statements to an author when possible; this does not mean that the statement reflects the author’s view but simply that it was a possible option first presented by that author. Apologies if the first version of the survey implied that an author endorsed a particular view. I do not wish to put words in anyone’s mouth.
I tried to make the survey as open as possible. That means that there were no mutually exclusive statements. For example, not clicking on the statement “I like chocolate milk” does not mean that the respondent did not like chocolate milk, but that they did not agree with the statement exactly as phrased.
For this reason, it is difficult to perform a statistical analysis on the results. A respondent could click both “like chocolate milk” and “do not like chocolate milk.” We therefore cannot perform any hypothesis testing, but only look at the raw number of people that agreed with a particular statement.
Looking at the data, we can consider the response count/total respondents to be a “percent of respondents in agreement.” Follow the link above to see the full raw results. Below are the statements with percent in agreement, in order from most agreement to least. I have excluded the comments and options “None of these” and “Kind of, but not enough to commit to any of them” for simplicity’s sake.
|
Statement |
Percent in |
|
3b) I DENOUNCE the ACTA. |
88 |
|
2) INDIVIDUALS WHO FILE-SHARE FOR NO GAIN OR PROFIT SHOULD NOT BE PERSECUTED |
80.8 |
|
2b) I DENOUNCE a Three Strikes policy/law. |
80 |
|
3) NET NEUTRALITY MUST BE DEFENDED AND MAINTAINED FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL |
76.9 |
|
2) P2p in every form will exist forever. There is no available power to stop or control this phenomenon. I agree that any legislation that tries to forbid this inevitable cultural exchange is technically impossible and likewise ridiculous. |
73.1 |
|
3c) I agree to an assertive position from A2F2A against legislation that is currently being imposed which supports the squandering of tax-payers money in order to enforce an impossible control-driven agenda (e.g. 3-strikes, digital Britain?). |
73.1 |
|
1) Decentralised P2P (with or without specific software applications) by private individuals where no money is made, should be entirely exempt [from persecution], and not divided into downloader/uploader distinction. |
68 |
|
1) ARTISTS NEED TO BE PAID BY THE PEOPLE WHO ENJOY AND EXPLOIT THEIR WORK |
65.4 |
|
4) Corporate interference can only be addressed by activities like Net Neutrality legislation, enforcement of Fair Competition and Fair Consumer Practices, and massive public exposure to the corporate deception that brought it all on. |
64 |
|
1) Mission statement: Artists need to be paid, and fans want to pay them. |
64 |
|
d) I could support copyright, but the length needs to be shortened |
64 |
|
2)Decentralised P2P (with or without specific software applications) by ANYONE where no money is made, should be entirely exempt [from persecution], and not divided into downloader/uploader distinction. |
60 |
|
3) Granting a limited commercial monopoly, (Internet or not), may be a valid trade-off for us to make as a society, and can encourage the production of more creative work than would otherwise be the case, to be shared freely and developed further within a reasonable time (i.e. less than a generation, certainly not 100+ years as at present). |
48 |
|
4c) I could support copyright, but with changes for the current economic, cultural, and technological situation |
48 |
|
3) Monopolies such as copyright shouldn’t apply to the Internet, nor should a tax – a free market will be fine. Sharing and building upon published music is natural. |
44 |
|
1) If music has an opportunity to be free and liberated whereby fans could be able to use and consume music to their hearts extent yet provide a means of compensation to the artists/ songwriters and even ’shareholders’ with minimal or nearly no economic effect upon ‘fans’ I would support such a scenario. |
38.5 |
|
3b)I agree that perhaps the only way to influence those laws would be to form a solid consensus and work to create a persuasive counter-proposal to the likes of ACTA and 3-strikes. |
38.5 |
|
3a) A completely ‘free market’ scenario is more than likely unachievable in the face of the current legislation being proposed, not to mention super-powered economic forces within various media-oriented industries. Although sharing and building upon artistic works may be considered natural, I agree that we live on planet earth where laws and regulations set precedence. |
26.9 |
|
2) File-sharing should be permitted, so it would be best to compensate publishers from an Internet tax (aka compulsory license fee). |
20 |
|
4b) I DENOUNCE copyright in any incarnation. |
20 |
|
1) File-sharing should remain illegal, though copyright might need some reform and more appropriate enforcement to address it. |
12 |
|
5) If anyone’s going to get paid for singing my song then they should either be prosecuted or forced to pay me a royalty. |
12 |
|
2a) I support a Three Strikes policy/law. |
8 |
|
3a) I support the ACTA. |
4 |
|
4a) I support copyright in its current incarnation. |
4 |
There are a few points of interest I would like to draw attention to.
The statement with the highest agreement “I denounce the ACTA” drew 22/25 responses. The opposite statement “I support the ACTA” drew 1/25 responses. There were 2 people who did not answer on that particular issue. With most people denouncing the ACTA and only one in favor of it, in my opinion I think this is as close as we are going to come to a consensus.
5 out of the top 6 statements concerned legislation. To me this suggests that a possible direction for A2F2A.com is to become more politically active. It seems most people are against 3-strikes and ACTA-type legislation. However only 38.5% (10/26) respondents agreed that the “only way to influence those laws would be to form a solid consensus and work to create a persuasive counter-proposal.”
20% of respondents denounced any form of copyright. 4% (1 person) support copyright in its current incarnation.
20% of respondents are in favor of an “Internet tax” if file-sharing were permitted.
Only 64% of respondents (16/25) agreed with the site’s mission statement.
Thanks for reading all this. It’s a lot of food for thought. In addition to discussing the results in the comments, I hope for some constructive criticism for the next version of the poll. Any comments and critiques will be welcomed.
Cheers!
David
[Note: Building on David's excellent work, I've suggested we now run a broader poll on p2pnet, starting next Monday - Jon]
Stay tuned.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Not sure there are too many surprises here, but more power to you.
January 13th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
To be honest, when I see this, I’d say that if we passionate contributors are the ‘extremes’, we can only imagine what the middle-grounders would vote. If we represented even the most extreme (as 26 people), the views here aren’t really contentious. If this is what our little unit believes, it’s perhaps not a far cry from the general population? is it? (given they had the information and had followed that info?)
January 13th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Like, I’m just saying, we’re all very different. We all have pretty extreme points of view. Sort of like 26 alpha people putting acrossed their ideas. Personally, I’m very pleased with these results. I think they are honest and represent what the group has been discussing. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had similar results in a survey of 1000 or 1 million people. Oddly, 48% could support a reformed copyright. Clearly an abundant majority are not happy about ACTA and/or 3-strikes. It would be fair to say that everying above the 50% threshold could be deemed grounds for consensus for a2f2a. Maybe the other bits below 50% need to be more concise/focused in order to form a statement. Not bad considering we’re few (and extreme) and we’ve not been at this very long.. at least not under this umbrella
This is good news. We’re not worlds apart.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
In follow up to Indiana, I think the results show that the people following this site are a pretty good mix. It’s not just a load of “rabid file-sharers” on one side and Indiana and Billy on the other side, but a pretty even mix. I imagine many of the more moderate or pro-copyright are reluctant to post as vocally on the site.
To those who are reading this but haven’t spoken up yet: the views are pretty even on the site. Have your voice heard.
January 16th, 2010 at 11:42 am
I’d like to point out that this is the first time I’ve commented, though I’ve been a regular reader from the start and have enjoyed the (sometimes heated but always stimulating) discussion here.
I’d just like to comment, as one of the 26 respondents to the poll, on the ACTA issue: I can neither support nor denounce the ACTA due to its secrecy. Does anyone really know ANYTHING relevant about it?
January 17th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
” I’d just like to comment, as one of the 26 respondents to the poll, on the ACTA issue: I can neither support nor denounce the ACTA due to its secrecy. Does anyone really know ANYTHING relevant about it? ”
IMO, if governments and corporations are going to such great lengths to insure that the general public does not know what ACTA is about until it’s too late, then it can ONLY mean that ACTA will only benefit Governments and Corporations, and the public would be outraged enough to try to stop it’s passage if they were made aware of it’s content. Thus I must denounce it outright. The level of secrecy is informative enough.