Thank you Betamax
Hopefully, as this article indicates, the Supreme Court will not rule against the file-sharing companies for pulling in ad revenue while people use their software to download pirated music. To me that seems a lot like suing playing card makers for all the illegal gambling going on, or suing gun manufacturers for all the gun deaths, or suing Ford and GM for all the car accidents in the world.
Okay, I know that file-sharing has far greater uses than getting that one Kelly Clarkson song... like distributing digital content over a wide area for free with little resource drain… but, c’mon. The only other large application of P2P file-sharing that I’ve seen so far is distributing new Linux kernels. The only other P2P app that I know of that is seeing any use isn’t file-sharing, it’s discovery with web services… like maybe Jini. Hmm. And, y’know what, some other stuff… come to think of it:
Here’s a few things we’d be missing if the court rules against file-sharing and creates the legal precedence against digital encoding technology:
- iPods – these tiny little devices create a market for distributing MP3s, at least to your friends. They’d have to go
- CD rippers – CDex is my personal favorite. See iPods.
- VCRs – feel like taping that TV show? Did you get written permission first?
- CD burners – you’re just going to use it to copy your friends’ CDs so you don’t have to buy them, after all.
- TV program recorders – TiVO, MythTV and any others. See VCRs, above.
- Digital cameras – did you get permission to use that image from whatever it was you were taking a picture of?
- Photo sites – see Digital cameras. Good-bye Flickr!
- Digital camcorders – see Digital cameras, above.
- News aggregators – seeing as Google is getting sued for this right now this one’s already on shaky ground.
I would have thought a lot of this was fair use… but, under the legal precedence set by this law, maybe not. So let’s all hear it for the Supreme Court which is keeping everything I love about the Internet alive.