May 04, 2003
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt about music file sharing
Everybody has seen or read this Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy article in the NY Times.
I'm not going into the legality or technicalities of every threatened move, because it isn't necessary. You want to know why? Because this article wasn't mean for the technorati, it was meant for the masses of people whose kid might've installed Kazaa on the family computer. That is who it was meant for. It's sole purpose was to worry Mom and Dad about that music junior has been downloading on the family PC.
Believe me, I see it all of the time.
The huge file sharers and the college kids and the unit secretary at $Big_Corp with a fast Net connection can be tracked down and thwarted one way or another. However, it's the casual and tolerated filesharing which is the bigger worry, because a wide swath of Americans now believe that since you can find the music easy on the Net, it must be ok.
Yup. This article on MSNBC reiterates my point.