43 Million Americans Use P2P Software

robl writes "If the NYTimes article is correct then somewhere around 1 in 6 Americans apparently are unindicted felons. In the eyes of the public file swapping is as morally wrong as speeding on the NJ Turnpike. The rest of the article talks about the RIAA's carrot/stick/education approach and how they may find themselves entering into negotiations for some forms of file sharing. Also the EFF will be running ads in Rolling Stone next month asking if enthusiasts are tired of being treated like criminals."

Comments

Re:1 in 6?

[cperciva]

1 in 4 Americans are under the age of 18; so yes, (more than) 1 in 6 Americans know how to use a computer.

FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Bittorrent

[LogicX]

As a perfect example of P2P: Lets show some legit usage.
You can get 5.1-RELEASE i386 ISOs right now -- before they're publicly available on the FreeBSD FTP mirror at
glow.rh.rit.edu

Non-reg articles

[pen]

Industry Offers a Carrot in Online Music Fight
In Battle Over Online Music, Industry Offers A Carrot

Re:Snake Plissken downloaded files

[pen]

Obvious troll, but I'll bite anyway.

When you steal CDs from a store, the store loses those CDs. When you copy music, the original remains.

It might be a copyright violation, but it's certainly not "theft".

Re:P2P2$

[IamTheRealMike]

I do wonder how much if the sharing leads to actual buying. I know there are a lot of people who would rather "Try it out" then actually buy the game to take full advantage of it, like online playing. Many don't have the know how on hacking the programs, they just want to get a taste.

Yeah, right. Whatever. The vast majority of people just want free stuff. Games, software, music... they want it all.

I help out giving tech support in #winehq on freenode sometimes. We routinely get people in there asking in broad daylight for people to send them copies of CrossOver or WineX, or asking where they can be downloaded. Half the time, it's because they:

a) couldn't find them on KaZaA on Windows, and
b) want to run those types of programs on Linux anyway.

They do this apparently not realising that employees of both those companies idle in that channel.

So, if people want to kid themselves that P2P users are simply "trying before they buy" that's fine by me - if you spend an evening telling 13 year olds addicted to warez to piss off, and that no you won't send them CrossOver for free, then maybe you get a slightly more realistic perspective.

I think the EFF campaign is funny. "Tired of being treated like criminals?". Well, most people are. Sucks, doesn't it.

Meanwhile people who sit on KaZaa all day hurt the rest of us, see the sibling post about how shops are changing their game return policies.

Re:Crippled CD's

[Technician]

I've learned how to vote on the subject. I look for the Compact Disk logo. No Logo, No Sale. So far I've managed to escape the cripled CD. Only the kids managed to pick up one. When it couldn't properly be ripped for the MP3 player, they learned to look for the label also. Remember you do have a vote that they will hear. It's called dollars. If no logo stuff doesn't sell at all, the artists will push for their stuff to be on a format the consumers will buy.

Have you run into any indie recording with DRM junk? I've not seen it yet. So far it's been mostly EMI and SONY that most often has the Compact Disk logo missing.