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The War On File Sharing Nabs Its First Prisoners
from the and-the-impact? dept
Now that the government has declared the "war on file sharing" to be the equivalent to the wars on drugs, terrorism and corruption we're going to see if it's about as effective as those other "wars." To start it off, they're now parading two men who have agreed to plead guilty to "conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement" for running a file sharing hub. Of course, it seems unlikely that the others in the unauthorized content distribution network are quaking in their boots right now. These guys clearly did something illegal, and now will be punished for it. However, if the goal is really to stop unauthorized file sharing, it's tough to see how this is going to have much of an impact.
Reader Comments
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If not for movies, then what?
I don't know a single person who has used file-sharing services for anything other than downloading movies, music, and the odd funny video.
I am not saying it doesn't happen, but lets be realistic. If more people use a tool for copyright infringement, then watch for that tool to be restricted, or outlawed.
Try to go buy a bong, and explain that you really do have a legal use for it. Yeah sure...
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Re: If not for movies, then what?
I've long-since said that the way to thwart this kind of thing is to flood people's mind-space with legal alternatives. I can and *do* use bittorrent for pulling ISOs of linux distributions, for example. We do need more examples of legitimate use of protocols and file-formats to expose this ludicrosity.
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Re: If not for movies, then what?
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No Subject Given
I use Bittorrent to share copies of my music, live recordings of local bands (that I've made with the bands' permission), and ripped copies of albums that are no longer commercially available (with the bands' permission). Bittorrent means that people can download the large files without worrying if their transfer gets interrupted. Unfortunately, there aren't enough seeds (other than me) to realize Bittorrent's bandwidth advantages.
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Outlawing technology
It is foolish to try to outlaw a technology, because of a mis-use of it, or a mis-application of it.
Shoul we outlaw machine lathes, because they are used in the production of machine guns, which are a restricted weapon in Canada?
Why don't we go a step further and outlaw the practice of making a connection between two IP addresses.
It is stupid, and I just wish they would all shut up.
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No Subject Given
You forgot poverty! Everyone always forgets about our success with the War on Poverty: there's no more poor people, uh, hang on a sec...
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