Werdna
31 Oct 2004, 01:34 AM
I got hooked on file sharing somewhere in 2000, first napster then WinMX, DC and DC++. I downloaded music and Star Trek Voyager episodes over a 56k modem. Once my parents got ADSL it wasn't long before I had every single episode of Star Trek, Stargate, Simpsons, Farscape, various other shows and a few hundred gigabytes of movies.
For 6 months now I've had a 100mbit connection provided by the college I'm studying at. I've been very careful with how much I've downloaded knowing that they don't like it if you download hundreds of gigabytes every day, but otherwise they seem to be pretty much okay with it, as the network is run by a group of students.
But I still managed to get caught. BayTSP (pirate hunting organisation hired by the american tv, movie and music industry) sent a nasty letter to the college saying they didn't want me sharing certain things. They shut down my internet connection for a few hours until I sent them an e-mail saying I wouldn't share those files any more. And that was the end of it.
It's illegal, of course. Still, so many people are doing it, probably just because it's too easy. These methods they're using to stop it, threatening legal actions against individuals through their ISP's, may be effective against certain people, but I don't believe it will stop file sharing as a phenomenon. When the RIAA sued a few hundred teenagers in a class action suit file sharing went down for a few months (at least in the US) and then up again. Overall they aren't having much success, they only seem to be generating a lot of hostility against themselves from the public.
The only thing, as far as I can see, that would be effective would be to make p2p programs illegal. But they can't do that, it would be to much of an infringement as they can also be used for legal purposes and a lot of people do use them legally. Copy protections on cd's and dvd's are broken hours after their release, they are mostly useless. Legal alternatives like the Apple Itunes store will probably get more popular with time and once people can download music in some different formats. I think Apple has sold a few hundred million songs total, which is nothing compared to the 5 billion supposedly shared on Kazaa every month.
What are your thought on file sharing?
How much do you use p2p programs, if at all? Is it a serious problem to the music and movie industry, or do they deserve everything they get? Are file sharers just greedy little people with no respect for peoples property, or warriors of the Information Age? Does the internet need to be more regulated?
Now I am going to watch the latest episode of Star Trek Enterprise. I managed to get it before they shut me down :D
For 6 months now I've had a 100mbit connection provided by the college I'm studying at. I've been very careful with how much I've downloaded knowing that they don't like it if you download hundreds of gigabytes every day, but otherwise they seem to be pretty much okay with it, as the network is run by a group of students.
But I still managed to get caught. BayTSP (pirate hunting organisation hired by the american tv, movie and music industry) sent a nasty letter to the college saying they didn't want me sharing certain things. They shut down my internet connection for a few hours until I sent them an e-mail saying I wouldn't share those files any more. And that was the end of it.
It's illegal, of course. Still, so many people are doing it, probably just because it's too easy. These methods they're using to stop it, threatening legal actions against individuals through their ISP's, may be effective against certain people, but I don't believe it will stop file sharing as a phenomenon. When the RIAA sued a few hundred teenagers in a class action suit file sharing went down for a few months (at least in the US) and then up again. Overall they aren't having much success, they only seem to be generating a lot of hostility against themselves from the public.
The only thing, as far as I can see, that would be effective would be to make p2p programs illegal. But they can't do that, it would be to much of an infringement as they can also be used for legal purposes and a lot of people do use them legally. Copy protections on cd's and dvd's are broken hours after their release, they are mostly useless. Legal alternatives like the Apple Itunes store will probably get more popular with time and once people can download music in some different formats. I think Apple has sold a few hundred million songs total, which is nothing compared to the 5 billion supposedly shared on Kazaa every month.
What are your thought on file sharing?
How much do you use p2p programs, if at all? Is it a serious problem to the music and movie industry, or do they deserve everything they get? Are file sharers just greedy little people with no respect for peoples property, or warriors of the Information Age? Does the internet need to be more regulated?
Now I am going to watch the latest episode of Star Trek Enterprise. I managed to get it before they shut me down :D