[assorted]

Suck is a neat idea to stop trading, but the problem is in it's practice. I think it will take too many connections to really knock out all the large traders. How many could they realistically knock out that way with their servers and bandwidth? 5% of all large traders? If that? It would also be easy to fight, as an IP ban would fix it right up. Files that would rewrite your favorite p2p to ban the baddie IP addresses would start popping up and Suck would have to start changing there IP addresses, only to get nailed when everyone updates there IP list. I like the idea, but it wouldn't really work.

Shame is much less effective and I'm really rooting for them to try this. If that's all the virus does I'd give it to myself AND buy the tshirt! Of course giving users any form of virus is illegal under any circumstance and should remain so for the obvious idea of future misapplication and sheer precedent.

The goal of both of these is to make p2p trading more of a pain in the ass so that what they are selling is more lucrative (aka: the bottled water metaphor). The side of me that wants this struggle to work out in a compromise is actually kind of for these ideas as opposed to making congress create laws that make p2p users felons. I like the idea of p2p being allowed to exist as a virus strewn, giant queued wasteland with cheap (.50-$1 a track), high speed, high quality mp3s available of complete label catalogues available for those willing to pay. In that world freedom of speech survives, p2p survives and choice survives. People that don't want to bother working looking for stuff on the networks will buy it and those that CAN be bothered (teenagers, broke motherfuckers, hobbyists) will. If there was a Dead Can Dance or Pixies album I really wanted immediately in a fit of impulse nostalgia and I could get it high speed at the touch of a button... I would be very tempted to pay for it at .50-$1 a track instead of tracking it down song by song.

Of course, if the RIAA blows it and starts treating people like me like felons they are going to blow it and I'm NEVER GOING TO BUY ANYTHING FROM THEIR MEMBER COMPANIES AGAIN. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.