On Wednesday evening the National Academy for Recording Arts and Sciences held it's 44th Grammy Awards.

During the broadcast of the Grammys Wednesday evening Michael Greene, the controversial CEO of N.A.R.A.S. Gave a speech (most often refered to as "the rant") on the evils of filesharing. How it was destroying the industry. I wasn't watching, and at some point through the evening I got a call from a friend, who knows I follow things where the industry attacks the fans and artists, "Are you watching this?" "NO" I replied. "Turn it on NOW!" was the response before they hung up.

I found the remote and switched to CBS, and on the screen was Michael Greene and he was giving his lecture on filesharing. In fact, they had hired 3, as he described them "college age students" to download MP3 files for the past two days. He went on to say that the three had downloaded 6000 files in the past two days. He went on to point out how this was destroying the music industry "one download at a time". Something just didn't seem right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I have several issues with Mr. Greene commentary and statements Wednesday evening. Everyone seemed (at least the press) to accept the numbers that Mr. Greene spouted about the number of downloads. Lets do some math......

6000 downloads divided by three students. That's 2000 each. Now if NARAS locked them up in a room under threat of death or great rewards for that matter)for the 2 days (48 hours) and wouldn't let them stop downloading, that comes out to 41 2/3 downloads per hour per student. That's if they didn't stop for the entire 48 hours, no bathroom breaks, no food breaks, no time allowed for searching for the tunes. Now, more likely, they had them work 8 or 10 hours per day. Lets take a look at those numbers. 2000 per student, over two working days of 8 hours, comes out to 125 songs per hour. OK, so lets say they worked them 10 hour days. That still comes out to 100 files per hour per student. Now does this seem high to anyone? It certainly does. I have a broadband connection, that amazes the local techs at the speed. My connection is tweaked to provide the maximum speed available, and I can't download anything at that speed.

Now I know a little background on one of the "students", so I'll assume the computers were tweaked to the max MTU for maximum speed. Unless the test was a setup (faked), dedicated server, with the music on it. T1 or higher dedicated access so the student could download the music unimpeded by the normal ebb and flow of bandwidth of the internet. But it does raise questions about the test and the validity of Mr. Greene's rant (err speech).

This leads to point number 2
THE NARAS hired three students, gave them computers and told them to download all the songs they could. Unless the students were downloading from a specific, dedicated server where they had permission to be downloading, then they hired someone to break the law. You've got it on video tape. You announced it to the world, Unless the test was a dedicated server with dedicated lines, the three students are guilty of violating the No Electronic Theft Act. N.A.R.A.S. can not grant immunity under federal law, nor can Michael Greene, nor the labels for that matter. Remember last summer, when Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested under the DMCA? Abobe withdrew it's complaint and Dmitry was still charged with a federal crime under the DMCA. The charges weren't dropped. He agreed in a plea bargain to testify in the case against his employer, if called.) You've jeopardized these students futures. (That is unless the test was farce or setup) Well, Mr. Greene? The world is waiting for an answer.