Congress to Ashcroft : Sic 'em!

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by Scyth
Copyright law needs to be reformed but laws that don't affect many people are far less likely to be changed. Enforcement is needed to draw attention to the law.

I think that copyright laws are getting quite much attention today due to p2p even if the mainstream media still pretty much swallows the corporate propaganda and keeps talking about 'piratism' etc. Yes, reformation of laws is needed but on whose conditions? People or corporations? It seems that there are still a good number of Hollywood puppets among U.S. legislators so it is perhaps only good that legislation hasn't so far catched up with the technology. And it is good that p2p is an international phenomenon which cannot be controlled by the U.S. legislation alone.

Originally posted by hda12
But can P2P under this conditions exist as public network? I'm not sure whether anyone will share her or his files if this could mean jailtime for her / him. And so the content available on P2P networks will probaby decrease and an negative network effekt will takes place.

This is a perfectly possible scenario. The copyright nazis may still be able to make public sharing risky enough (at least for the Americans) to force it underground. But even if this happens, I am confident that it will not stop p2p but rather make it evolve into more protected and socially advanced forms. The present harassment campaign with faked files is already making p2p developers to consider content autenthication methods. If Jack and Hilary get more personal in their bullying, the developers will come up with personal autenthication methods to keep the bad guys out of p2p communities. It will take some time and some new methods to build large filesharing communities starting from small cells of trusted friends, establishing trust relations between such groups etc. but it can be done. The battle will not be over until all non-commercial p2p is considered fair use and perfectly legal.

- tg