You! Out of the Internet!
The French just passed the National Assembly that will basically allow huge media corporations to disconnect people from the Internet. No one doubts it will soon be signed into law. The reason for the law are all the normal reasons - it's stealing (tho' I'm still unsure how copying is stealing, because if you don't deprive someone of the use of something it isn't really stealing, is it?), it's hurting the industries, destroying jobs, blah, blah, blah.
To which I say: fuck the industries. What these "industries" have taught me is that people don't need to be paid to make art. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of all art is made completely outside of any industry and getting into those industries is next to impossible in the first place. If every music label in the world shut down tomorrow, we would still listen to new music. If every new publishing house in the world shut down, we would still read new stories. If every movie studio in the world shut down, there would still be new movies. Even if there weren't - so what? It isn't like we wouldn't find things to do, things as interesting and culturally significant. The idea that we are somehow dependent on studios, labels and publishers for entertainment is preposterous. What would be lost is the profit and the control - that's it.
(It is also not to say that some industries won't be hurt more than others. Movies are very expensive compared to music or writing. Their costs should be going down, but one of the ways they're trying to get us into the theaters is by ramping up the costs to make spectacles that look best on huge screens with awesome levels of definition. Which is legitimate, I suppose, but misses the point that many movies could be made with a tiny fraction of their current bloated budgets without missing anything.)
That said, the Internet is a huge and largely centralized distribution network, itself. Oh, sure, it has its origins elsewhere, but nowadays almost all of it is owned by big honking corporations. And as solutions go, this one is pretty solid from a practical point of view if you want to protect profitable centralized distribution systems. So why not?
It's not like they can do it any other way, either. It has been demonstrated that the urge to file share is so great that any internal technical barriers will be smashed. And it was be a law enforcement nightmare to actually try to try all these people - and I know the US isn't going to like a bunch of middle class white kids being dragged from their college dorms to be treated like hardened criminals. We're real comfortable with brown people being treated out of proportion to their legal "offenses" but it'd shock and outrage the nation if it happened to white kids with "good futures". On the other hand, banning their asses would be okay - particularly if it wasn't forever (as if it could be forever!). Oh, sure, they'd be ways around it, and the hardcore people would no doubt do 'em, but the facts about the Internet is . . . it's pretty easy to tell where things are going. If you're file sharing, it's detectable, and easily. Unless I misunderstand the technology, it's likely to remain that because what makes distributed file sharing work is that anyone can just jump aboard at any time and transfer files to other people. The openness of the system is what makes it useful. And while something like trackerless bittorrent will get rid of obvious targets like Piratebay.org, it will further limit the options that the companies have to address the issue. About the only thing left is to identify the people doing the actual file sharing and go after them somehow. Since it's a public relations disaster to sic the law on 'em, well, not much is left. I think that, over time, something like . . . banning people from the Internet altogether will be considered a good solution.
Because, as I said, the Internet is a huge and centralized distribution network. Sure, for a while, ISPs that didn't comply with corporate ban would have a competitive edge over those that did - but if it was made into a law, of course, that would be irrelevant. And it's likely that the big media companies could put some really fierce pressure on non-compliant ISPs. Anyway, file sharing really eats into their profits, too, because they've got to pay for all that bandwidth. Some ISPs have already begun to institute bandwidth caps to control their own costs. Additionally, of course, is the fact that corporations tend to hang together.
So, the wave of the future. If you file share, prepare to get your Net privileges yanked. It is really the only thing left for them.
And I hope y'all out there realize that while I admit this is just about the only feasible way to keep file sharing from happening, I don't support this kind of legislation. Like I said, fuck media industries. These people make pimps look like decent, upstanding people. It's just, in the end, looking to a giant privatized distribution system for intellectual freedom is daft.
To which I say: fuck the industries. What these "industries" have taught me is that people don't need to be paid to make art. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of all art is made completely outside of any industry and getting into those industries is next to impossible in the first place. If every music label in the world shut down tomorrow, we would still listen to new music. If every new publishing house in the world shut down, we would still read new stories. If every movie studio in the world shut down, there would still be new movies. Even if there weren't - so what? It isn't like we wouldn't find things to do, things as interesting and culturally significant. The idea that we are somehow dependent on studios, labels and publishers for entertainment is preposterous. What would be lost is the profit and the control - that's it.
(It is also not to say that some industries won't be hurt more than others. Movies are very expensive compared to music or writing. Their costs should be going down, but one of the ways they're trying to get us into the theaters is by ramping up the costs to make spectacles that look best on huge screens with awesome levels of definition. Which is legitimate, I suppose, but misses the point that many movies could be made with a tiny fraction of their current bloated budgets without missing anything.)
That said, the Internet is a huge and largely centralized distribution network, itself. Oh, sure, it has its origins elsewhere, but nowadays almost all of it is owned by big honking corporations. And as solutions go, this one is pretty solid from a practical point of view if you want to protect profitable centralized distribution systems. So why not?
It's not like they can do it any other way, either. It has been demonstrated that the urge to file share is so great that any internal technical barriers will be smashed. And it was be a law enforcement nightmare to actually try to try all these people - and I know the US isn't going to like a bunch of middle class white kids being dragged from their college dorms to be treated like hardened criminals. We're real comfortable with brown people being treated out of proportion to their legal "offenses" but it'd shock and outrage the nation if it happened to white kids with "good futures". On the other hand, banning their asses would be okay - particularly if it wasn't forever (as if it could be forever!). Oh, sure, they'd be ways around it, and the hardcore people would no doubt do 'em, but the facts about the Internet is . . . it's pretty easy to tell where things are going. If you're file sharing, it's detectable, and easily. Unless I misunderstand the technology, it's likely to remain that because what makes distributed file sharing work is that anyone can just jump aboard at any time and transfer files to other people. The openness of the system is what makes it useful. And while something like trackerless bittorrent will get rid of obvious targets like Piratebay.org, it will further limit the options that the companies have to address the issue. About the only thing left is to identify the people doing the actual file sharing and go after them somehow. Since it's a public relations disaster to sic the law on 'em, well, not much is left. I think that, over time, something like . . . banning people from the Internet altogether will be considered a good solution.
Because, as I said, the Internet is a huge and centralized distribution network. Sure, for a while, ISPs that didn't comply with corporate ban would have a competitive edge over those that did - but if it was made into a law, of course, that would be irrelevant. And it's likely that the big media companies could put some really fierce pressure on non-compliant ISPs. Anyway, file sharing really eats into their profits, too, because they've got to pay for all that bandwidth. Some ISPs have already begun to institute bandwidth caps to control their own costs. Additionally, of course, is the fact that corporations tend to hang together.
So, the wave of the future. If you file share, prepare to get your Net privileges yanked. It is really the only thing left for them.
And I hope y'all out there realize that while I admit this is just about the only feasible way to keep file sharing from happening, I don't support this kind of legislation. Like I said, fuck media industries. These people make pimps look like decent, upstanding people. It's just, in the end, looking to a giant privatized distribution system for intellectual freedom is daft.