Thread: Earth Station 5
View Single Post
Old 09-02-03, 10:31 AM   #3
JackSpratts
 
JackSpratts's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
Posts: 10,013
Default

Well it sounds great and all but unless it protects the uploaders the RIAA has a simple way of derailing it. They could enforce criminal sanctions (a la Verizon) against anyone using the network to share, which would scare off the uploaders. Without the inventory it's just another wannabe.

Unless you're downloading really bad stuff like bomb plans and kiddie porn nobody's interested. The copyright cops want the distributors. The uploaders. They know the rest are depending on them.

Regardless as to whether the client displays IP addresses, computers certainly do. A simple netstat query and they have you. Then you’re an email away from oblivion since the courts decided that subpoenas for copyright violation don’t require due process. If you remember in the Verizon complaint, no one stipulated that the guy actually even uploaded. He just had 600 files on his PC that he could've uploaded. They might've been fakes for all the court knew - it just didn’t care about that detail. That he “may have” had them ready to “distribute” was all the judge needed to know. In my opinion this has been the single worst thing to happen to file sharing.

If the Verizon decision stands it will lead to the end of all P2Ps as we know them. Once the first kids are fined 250 thousand dollars there won’t be a parent in the land that’ll allow a filesharing program on a home PC. Adults of course will stop using them immediately and while some will always remain, especially those outside the U.S., the problem again is inventory. With stored files all but gone from the networks and songs and movies harder and harder to find, file sharing for most becomes a memory. It will live on as a system for paid distribution and the free sharing of non-copyrighted fare - it’s just too good not to – but the bacchanalian days of anything goes downloading will quietly end, if this verdict remains and in America at least, when those huge court fines blow across the headlines and in bedrooms throughout the land, millions of folders are unshared with little clicks.

- js.
JackSpratts is offline   Reply With Quote