Since When Is The Music Industry Anti-Porn?

from the since-it-was-a-backdoor-way-for-them-to-shut-down-file-sharing dept

A bunch of folks submitted this NY Times article that looks at how the music industry has been desperately trying to convince Congress that file sharing networks are a hotbed of pornography and therefore should be regulated. This is nothing new. We covered this story a few months ago when legislation on the topic was first introduced. It's part of the music industry's multi-pronged approach to banning file sharing - which they see as evil because they simply refuse to understand what's really happening. The NY Times piece is fairly balanced, though it includes a few whopper quotes from folks in the music industry: "KaZaA is just like Joe Camel" and "P2P stands for piracy to pornography" being personal favorites. The simple fact is that there is pornography online. People find it all over the place - and a very small percentage do find it through file sharing services. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of legitimate reasons to use file sharing and it doesn't mean that file sharing systems need special legislation. It's no different than people using Google to find porn online - but we don't see the music industry trying to shut down Google (yet). The only thing that's annoying about all of this is that the folks in Congress are eating this all up and assuming it's true, without bothering to hear from those who understand what the situation really is. This isn't surprising, since it's being supported by folks the music industry put in office, but it is annoying.

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