Yale Students Replace Kazaa With Humans Swapping CDs

Culture

from the not-quite-as-efficient,-but-tougher-for-RIAA-to-track-down dept

Sometimes, there are tradeoffs between efficiency and privacy. Lots of people have different ideas for ways to avoid getting sent an RIAA lawsuit if they’re sharing music, but a student at Yale has worked out a system that isn’t particularly efficient – but is much more difficult for the RIAA to track down. It’s a “file sharing” website where people set up a time and place to meet to physically exchange CDs – which each person can then go off and copy (or not). The article describing the system appears in rival Harvard’s newspaper, and thus they’re pretty eager to point out why this system might be illegal. Of course, it isn’t actually illegal. It’s not even facilitating illegal activity as the point is just to let people swap legitimate CDs, which is completely legal. If they then go off and make copies, that’s a legal issue that each individual needs to deal with, but the site is not involved with that aspect of the transaction.