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Re: [News] Big Media Fights Exchange of Information Blindly, Moving on to Torrents

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> File-sharing 'graveyard' still filling up
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Now a new battle is heating up. The search engine TorrentSpy is accused 
>| in a lawsuit filed last year by the Motion Picture Association of 
>| America (MPAA) of allegedly helping users locate pirated movies online. 
> `----
> 
> http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6194001.html
> 
> What about this new Linux distribution?
> 
> http://evinux.org/
> 
> Evinux 200701 (2007-06-27)
> 
> Just released. It needs a torrent, no?
> 
> They shut down everything that /might/ be 'polluted', without even checking for
> facts. How long before they censor the Web (maybe even Wikipedia) because it
> might contain so-called 'dangerous' and false information? They already wish
> to tax the Web heavily. How long before this conspiracy stifles distribution
> of Free software too? It has already achieved this because some ISPs block
> torrents.
> 
> 

The "battle" about file-sharing is not something which can be won or lost.
There is no way which anyone is going to stop people from transferring
files between computers.  The internet only has three things on it, files,
messages and streams.  The film industry might be trying to persuade
itself that it can put a stop to the movement of files on the internet,
but it cannot, because it hasn't really understood what it is trying to
achieve - it has no goal, no end-game.

Worse than that, though, the film and music industries do have a
genuine problem.  They run monopolies in their particular materials,
and have spent years working the copyright systems around the planet
in order to gain revenue from radio, theatre, books, audio recordings,
video recordings, films and more recently internet streams.  They've even
managed to expand into sales of toys, games, clothes and other goods as
"spin-off" materials.  And, to their dismay, people have found ways of
copying their material and moving it across international boundaries
in a fairly consumer-friendly way.  This is copyright violation, and it
is wrong.

However, the music and film industries have done themselves no favours
in their own behaviour, in particular, their willingness to take people
to court for silly amounts of money on the basis of the behaviour of
children is reprehensible; similarly, their abusive behaviour with
respect to pricing of their materials and their willingness to use legal
means to stop open-market trading in their goods from taking place is
not only reprehensible, but possibly illegal too, and most certainly
against the spirit of the law of the EU and other free-trade regions.

I would suggest that we should look to make a deal with the film and
music industries, and it should look something like this:  they cease
their prevention of legitimate global trading of goods and materials using
dubious legal tactics, and we will help them find a new trading model
which properly rewards artists and industry workforces for their efforts.


-- 
| Mark Kent   --   mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk          |
| Cola faq:  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/   |
| Cola trolls:  http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/                        |
| My (new) blog:  http://www.thereisnomagic.org                        |

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