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eDonkey Tells Congress It's Throwing in the Towel
An anonymous reader writes "Sam Yagen, President of eDonkey, testified at the Judiciary committee's hearing 'Protecting Copyright and Innovation in a Post-Grokster World'. It was there he told the committee that he is throwing in the towel. 'The Grokster standard requires divining a company's intent, the decision was essentially a call to litigate. This is critical because most startup companies just don't have very much money. Whereas I could have managed to pay for a summary judgment hearing under Betamax, I simply couldn't afford the protracted litigation needed to prove my case in court under Grokster. Without that financial ability, exiting the business was our only option despite my confidence that we never induced infringement and that we would have prevailed under the Grokster standard.'"
I thought the open source and decentralized eMule was the tool of choice for the eDonkey network, with Shareaza and other tools following closely behind.
. . .that the U.S. government will bend over for the highest bidder.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Welcome to the capitalist world, where justice is something that you purchase by the hour, not something that you have an inalienable right to.
It's what everyone else is doing to get away from the expense and inconvenience of doing business in the US.
Deleted
It's rather strange to load up an article which is talking about shutting down p2p with iPod nano ads all over the place. Now I don't know how to feel.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Wait. One one hand, we're mad because the MPAA/RIAA won. On the other hand, we don't care, because eDonkey sucked... Uh...*explodes*
Feh. We don't really care if we put you out of business. You don't pay us!
Do you feel owned yet? You will.
now that's news!
i'm shocked!
(yes, this is sarcasm)
While many people don't use eDonkey (and the like) to pirate, the simple fact of the matter is that most do. Everyone suffers.
It would take a company with an enormous amount of funding, and legal stamina to keep up with all of the litigation involved with something that can be abused so easily. The RIAA and MPAA (the most litigious groups) do have that stamina, funding, and will to carry out all of their pursuits.
Hopefully artists will continue to open their music up to the masses. I think they stand to make more money (you know, they clearly do not make enough already) by publishing directly to these online music libraries (ala Yahoo, Rhapsody, iTunes, etc.).
There are still the issues with software "sharing." There is blatant piracy there. I've seen my neighbors kids come over with CD's of burned software that they got "for free" from Kazaa. They put me at risk that way. I don't want that crap installed on my computer so I can be their next target and example.
Will anyone miss P2P if it goes away? I won't even notice.
My ZooLoo
Last I checked, eDonkey had adware. eMule is completely free. Because of that, who was using eDonkey anyway?
p2p programs should be created by groups that love to code them, not by companies. nothing good will come of it (adware, pay per download, etc..) if a company runs the service.
make it completely peer to peer, free download, and it will be good. any hint of money, no one will use it.
if there is money involved, it better be a slick service with fast reliable downloads, it better suggest what I might like (and be right about it)...
pure decentralized free-for-all p2p, like I said, IMHO be free, created by hobbiests not companies....
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
That's funny, the spyware biz must be getting less profitable than Sam led us to believe.
I suppose companies are no longer willing to pay to be the 500th popup ad server on a spyjacked box.
IIRC, there are a lot of ed2k servers out there operated by third parties. Those will still be around.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
eDonkey is only a client application, there are plenty of independent eD2k servers out there that will continue to operate without it.
eMule also has it own kademlia network for distributed content indexing but it requires a server to fetch some clients to bootstrap off of - very much like Gnutella. If you do not mind hunting down a bootstrap IP:Port yourself and entering it manually, then you can use Kad without eD2k servers.
"No reasonable person can claim anything except that his plan to achieve popularity with eDonkey was through facilitating illegal file-sharing. "
/.ers) may not seem obvious to other reasonable people.
First, I disagree. Plenty of reasonable people could claim otherwise. What may seem obvious to you (and a lot of us other
Second, it doesn't matter if he facilitates illegal file-sharing. What matters is if he expressly promotes illegal filesharing, or takes other affirmative steps to foster infringement.
Justice Souter, from the Grokster decision:"We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.""
Whether or not his business plans hinged on ease of infringement to gain popularity -- if he didn't promote it, and if he didn't distribute eDonkey with the expressed intent of promoting illegal filesharing, then he would not lose the case.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Why shouldn't he be sued?
Perhaps because the cost of litigation in this country is so high and so prevelant that it actually is part of the barrier to entry into a market? I'm sorry, that isn't Capitalism.
No reasonable person can claim anything except that his plan to achieve popularity with eDonkey was through facilitating illegal file-sharing.
Way to completely ignor the entire legal concept of burden of proof which this entire country and all of our freedoms are based on.
FanFictionRecs.net
"Ah, but can you prove that in court? OJ got off with more evidence against him than you have on eDonkey. "
If the file don't transmit,
You must acquit.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They just need to move to Canada, where the Supreme Court decided that file sharing is legal. Voilà! Problem solved!
While the Bittorrent protocol is clearly more modern, more fair (more upload usually does equal more download, unlike eMule), eDonkey and eMule clearly have their uses; whenever I was searching for Really Old Stuff like "classic" movies (>20 years), music, or games (both >5 years), OR something off-mainstream which might not be easily available otherwise, eMule has almost never disappointed me. It's like a huge P2P culture archive. I have not yet found a better source for satisfying such desires than eMule, but maybe I didn't look hard enough and someone might point me towards another P2P service that satisfies these needs?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Gnutella sucks balls. I could never find rare content on Gnutella the way I could with eDonkey/Overnet.
:)
And with eDonkey out of the way, where do you think that content will move, hmmmmmmmmmm?
The way to make money off P2P is not to offer P2P services (a direct invitation for lawyers and other scum to line their pockets), but to *use* P2P to distribute your own data for next to nothing.
It's a terrific delivery mechanism with an enormous benefit/cost ratio, so why not make that the basis of your business by delivering your own material over it, or delivering content belonging to other less technical providers under contract? You would be legally in the clear, while benefitting from absolutely minimal networking costs.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
By your example, Xerox would have never made it out of the garage.
A pen can be used for copyright vioations, as can a camera. How much ink is invested in illegal copying every year is anyone's guess. Cameras, the same thing.
Yes, I know that those are ridiculous examples. However, under the Grokster standard, either of the latter could be considered instruments for wanton copyright violation (despite the ridiculousness of it) and be banned...if they were new technologies.
Most any tool, be it software or hardware, is capable of being used illegally. That people do so is not so much a reflection of most tools but instead a reflection on those people.
Rich people win again!!! I like rich people because they're better than the rest of us. I think they should always get their way, because rich people are just better genetic material, it's true, ask them. The government knows it, it's just a matter of time before the rest of us catch on.
There only needs to be one corporation: MicroHaliRIMPAADellAppleMartopoly. And it will pay regular people the same wages, but rich people will get more. And it will know what we're doing at all times (to thwart terrorists) and have total control of all media. Like real communism (not ideal communism). Kind of like what's happening now, but without hiding the fact that regular people are getting shit on.
When I see how eagerly RIAA tries to prevent unpreventable evolution (i.e. P2P networks) I wander, if RIAA was so active couple of decades ago, they would probably try to ban digital coding of information, since it is now their main source of problems. I could bet that they cry for those old times when vinil was one and only. There was no sub-50$ vinil-burner then.
No sig today.
I put forth that if it is obvious to me but not someone else, then that person is not reasonable.
I put forth that you are now qualified to be a SCOTUS Justice.
FanFictionRecs.net
Suppose a for-profit hospital sets up a clinic in a high-crime area, despite the difficulty of operating a business there. Their business plan calls for them to make money from the crimes of their customer base. They report the evidence of crimes they find, but they can't police the neighborhood.
A pawn shop in that same neighborhood sells guns and ammo, despite the difficulty of operating a business there. Their business plan calls for them to make money from the crimes of their customer base. They report the evidence of crimes they find, but they can't police the neighborhood.
What do both of those businesses have in common? They both make crime more convenient. One sells the supplies, the other wipes up the mess (so you are less likely to die if your victim fights back). Both businesses serve the perps and the victims, and both discriminate as best they can between them.
What do they have in common with EDonkey? Either they all need to be shut down for capitalizing on human frailty, or none of them do.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
this is just a case of proving that the *AA really are bullying? If you can't afford to fight them (or just claim it) isn't that bad press for the *AA? Isn't this proof that they are attempting to rule what innovations should be allowed and which shouldn't? Doesn't this demonstrate that you can have a business or technology as long as it doesn't harm anyone else? at least not those with 150 year copyrights (even if your business isnt't designed to ruin them). Wow, those poor folk that owned train businesses! And those bad people that built horse drawn wagons. They got put out of business... shouldn't we pay their families restitution? .... Seems to me that this is the pinnacle of why software patents, DRMing, and such are stiffling innovation, and using monopolistic business practices.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
As others have already posted, the p2p scene is only going to be pushed further underground now. Laws and lawsuits are not going to stop the swapping of copyright protected materials and of course the commercial pirates won't be stopped either. That being said, I think that p2p will disappear from the political landscape because anyone with a high profile service is going to be sued out of existence right away, leaving only the largely invisible underground.
Out of sight is out of mind! *AA will declare victory since there's no point in chasing ghosts (as long as they keep quiet). And the politicians will also declare victory since there is no political hay to be made railing against something that's largely invisible and too technical for ordinary folks to care about. So if everyone is patient, the game will soon be over and those in the know can return to their regularly scheduled filesharing, legal and otherwise.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Small companies are bullied out of business because they can't afford to prove your point, although they haven't done anything wrong.
Sad.
Going offshore isn't much protection if the US gets their way:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651, 39220179,00.htm
Microsoft, *IAA, etc. know they can't win against offshore firms and open source under the current global legal system. They're pushing hard to have US laws (and presumably the US patent/copyright databases) applied globally.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
We may very well be on the brink of returning to the earlier days.
The internet of 1997 with the connection speeds of 2005? Sign me up!
Obligatory responses to this include multiple variations of:
Me too!!1!
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_Victory
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Exporting US culture is a pretty important part of the US economy and, less- tangibley, our politics. It is actually really important for the future of our country that Chinese and Indian people want to listen to Snoop-Dogg on their iPod and drink a Pepsi or a Coke and wear Levi's or Wrangler's or FUBU and Nike or Sketcher and watch Baywatch or The Dukes of Hazzard. And the Movies and Music are a really important part of that. It influences what the world thinks of the US.
If the RIAA and/or MPAA are allowed to kill their competition in the US, they will drive the innovation off-shore, and possibly make themselves obsolete.
We don't want the Chinese and Indians watching each other's movies and listening to each other's music. We want them craving all things American.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I for one say goodbye to our E-Donkey overlords...and welcome our new congressional overlords into our bedrooms. *sigh* Can't I trade porn in peace?
The only way to combat the frivilous lawsuit is to be anonymous. Never let them find out who you are. Frivilous lawsuits can't really punish the person whose identity isn't known.
a member of congress is overheard asking another congresswoman, "Who is this guy and how much did he contribute to my campaign?"
I think most every poster has missed the point here. The eDonkey people are making this claim in front of Congress to show them how the new court ruling/laws stifle the free market* in a certain area sector. If you are unable to start a business because you can't afford the legal costs to prove that what your business does is not illegal, then something is seriously broken. eDonkey is using this opportunity to say exactly that.
Innocent until proven what?
*Tangent: Does it not seem obvious that the RIAA is trying to pass blanket laws to kill "unauthorised" content providers, even if they are legit, in order to continue their monopoly? Aside from iTunes, they are the only ones who can afford to prove that yet-nonexistant music service is legit.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
No, my friend. That would be workers.
Capitalism's Big Lie is that it is responsible for production. Once upon a time, this was true: capitalism freed productive forces from the grave inefficiencies and baseless impediments of the feudal system. But now it merely does a better and better job of siphoning profits to those who own, and contributes no productivity. It serves the interests of the parasites.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
" 'Second, it doesn't matter if he facilitates illegal file-sharing.'
Bzzt! Depends on context."
"If he assisted, he's complicitous. The pawn broker who assists the thief in selling stolen merchandise is an accomplice. "
Bzzt! Irrelevant to the case and the current interpretation of the law ex parte Grokster. Providing the means for illegal P2P filesharing (which is what we mean by facilitating, in this context) is not illegal. Promoting the use of your P2P system to illegally fileshare, however, is illegal.
Please pay attention to the context if you are going to refute my argument based on the fact that it depends on context.
"The pawn broker who assists the thief in selling stolen merchandise is an accomplice. "
According to this example, and your interpretation of the law (as I can see it), then the pawn shop is violating the law simply by being in existence -- since, after all, any item in the shop could be a stolen good.
The difference here is in affirmative action -- does the pawn broker affirmatively take action to assist the thief in illegal activity? If so, he is culpable. Complicity requires willful, knowing action.
In the eDonkey case, there is no affirmative action on the part of eDonkey to promote illegal activity.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I thought about it. The original Cochran quote was, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." The quote has been changed, even in Conchran's memoirs, to "If the glove doesn't..."
I shortened "doesn't" to "don't" because "don't" is better for comedic flow, and because I wanted to drop a syllable to make up for the extra syllable in "transmit."
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They already do that... for as long as I use eMule. eMule downloads a server list and connects to servers hosted by indivuduals, mostly. God, do people moderate at random to get rid of those extra mod points?
Bored? Browse Slashdot with a +6 modifier for Troll comme
If the market moves to using Bittorrent anyway, there is no "center" to sue. Sure, they can attack the current "developer". Then, a new (set of) developer(s)will take over and keep pushing the FOSS code base forward.
Against such overt aggression by the RIAA, I think the only model is strategic passivity combined with highly tactical aggression spread out over many people and countries.
Then the RIAA will have to play a very large and distributed version of "whack-a-mole" which they can never win.
THE Private Pilot Adventure Guide
It's interesting that so many folks would bring up the issue of accountability, really. As with any crime committed with the aid of an instrument or piece of technology of some kind, the instrument itself can not be held accountable for the act it was used to perpetrate. Common sense tells us this. If only common sense were applicable to the Judicial Branch of the United States government, perhaps we would see a sharp decline in incidents such as this.
If I remember correctly, the Supreme Court recently ruled that a gun manufacturer - Smith & Wesson, to be exact - can not be held accountable if their products are used to injure or kill innocent people. When I read of this, I thought to myself, "Finally, common sense prevails!" Did I think that because I want to defend gun manufacturers? No; I've never liked guns, and I've never liked the people who make them, either. I became fond of that ruling because it embodies an important underlying concept: A device, even if it is designed for the sole purpose of causing serious and immediate bodily harm, can not be inherently evil. Therefore, the person producing these devices can't be made to answer for someone else's crimes.
Sure, if a company was producing a dangerous product that didn't have any real legitimate applications whatsoever, they could - and probably should - be dealt with. However, the point remains: Here we have a gun manufacturer, whose products may well kill hundreds every year here in the United States alone, but it's not their fault that people are using their guns to commit serious crimes. It is the motive of the buyer and how the product is actually used that truly matters, not the product itself and the person who made it available. (After all, firearms have other places in our lives. Home defense, hunting, sport, or simply collecting guns, for example.)
You can probably see why I almost shit myself when I first heard about the Grokster ruling. The Grokster ruling is, in itself, a shining example of the ass-backwards logic that exists in the courts these days. A gun manufacturer can't be held accountable if their guns kill someone, but it's Grokster's fault if I pirate a poorly compressed copy of The Boondock Saints using their product. Excuse me? Of course, it also goes to show where the government's priorities really are: satisfying campaign contributors and special interest groups. I know I'm really going off on a tangent here, but if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. The NRA doesn't think gun manufacturers should be held accountable if their guns kill people, but the RIAA and MPAA think it's Grokster's fault if someone uses their products to pirate music and movies. Let's play a nice, fun game of 'Follow the Money', shall we? Wait. We don't have to. It's blatantly obvious.
It's extremely unfortunate that any company can be made to buckle under this kind of pressure. Many new technologies are now endangered by the Grokster ruling, not because they can be eliminated outright, but because it takes so much time, money, and patience to deal with the courts that nobody in their right mind without a few million dollars and an army of lawyers would even try to defend their products.
I just find it very strange that the Smith & Wesson ruling's logic doesn't apply elsewhere. Sure, if a product is defective, and that defect results in bodily harm or the destruction of property, that's the manufacturer's fault. However, if a product does not cause bodily harm or the destruction of property by its own volition, and must first be activated or otherwise utilized by a human being to present any kind of danger, it's the user's fault.
Therefore, the proprietors of a filesharing network and the programmers who created the client software used to access said network can not be held accountable if other people utilize their network to engage in illegal activity. While I do believe that the network's owners should do what th
How do you figure?
Here's how: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
Oh look at the section titled "Development of Gini coefficients in the US over time":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Deve lopment_of_Gini_coefficients_in_the_US_over_time
* 1970: 0.394
* 1980: 0.403
* 1990: 0.428
* 2000: 0.462
This is a FACT, it is BUSY HAPPENING, not some arbitrary abstract tinfoil-hat notion that might theoretically happen. A run-away Gini Coefficient is NOT sustainable.
History has prooven time and again that money is rather like water - if you try and dam it up it will eventually flow elsewhere or be unleashed in a torrent.
No, it hasn't, and it doesn't. If you try to "dam money up", what happens is that it becomes worthless - it loses it's value and the economy collapses. Money is a reflection of the amount of value, or "production" being generated by an economic system, and when production ceases (because the means of production are consolidated and regulated into a disproportionately tiny percentage of hands), that money no longer generates corresponding "stuff" that gives it meaning - everyone is just poor. For references, see, well, pretty much hundreds of countries at all times in history including today. You can print money, but you can't create money. You can only create "stuff". The bottom falls out of an economy when too many people are poor and too few people are producing - e.g. see the Great Depression - and when everyone is poor, it is not easy to get out of it, even if someone came along and gave you a few million dollars, there would be nothing you could do because nobody would be able to buy the products you'd try to produce with that.
First of all, the population base is growing so there are many more people adding in at the low end.
So because more people are born to poor parents it is ok that they are even less wealthy than their parents? I thought the idea that circumstances are a just entitlement went out with feudalism. Just because one person is born to a wealth parent and another to a poor parent does not make their disparity fair by any means.
Secondly the amount of money is increasing over time so even if a small number of people may cotrol a large percentage of wealth it does not mean much without saying how much ecenomic freedom the people in the middle have.
Both the numbers I posted and those from wikipedia were percentages of wealth in the country, not amounts of money. They account for currency, property, and stock.
That has increased quite a lot as the middle class has a lot of financial power they did not have before.
Got anything to back that up? Everything I've seen shows the middle class shrinking and the lowest class growing. Your assertion that the middle class has more financial power is not backed up by any numbers I've seen.
There are no details in the article on how this number was really calculated. Proof my Wiki is not enough to convince me I'm afraid.
The numbers were taken from the census data, so the base data granularity is pretty ideal. The calculated numbers, however, are presumably consistent with one another over time so the trend they show within the United States is self normalizing for that particular aspect of differentiation. In any case, you can calculate the numbers yourself or just look at the census data I posted and that for the last few decades. All the numbers are there plain to see. I've not seen any statistician or economist who has claimed that wealth is not consolidating in the U.S. and that the middle class is not shrinking. Do you have some sort of reference to a paper or numbers that you think imply this is not so?
I can't even conceive of how you can argue that capitalism is working for a country when 40% of the households are completely broke and where a mere 5% of the population has more than half of the wealth, especially since all indications are that wealth is simply inherited, not earned through hard work, intelligence, innovation, or any other useful contribution to society. Go into any kindergarten classroom and give two kids 10 cupcakes each and ask the other 38 the kids to share 20 cupcakes among them. If they ask why tell them because those two kids were born to special parents. How many do you think will think that is fair? Sorry, the system is broken to have reached this state, and is not getting any better. Birth should not be an entitlement and everyone should have an equal chance at wealth and happiness regardless of who their parents are. If you believe otherwise, I'm afraid I can't respect that position, just as peasants everywhere have thrown down kings who claimed political power over them based on birth, so to will the peasants eventually throw down those who wield inherited money as power over them.
If we actually want a Congress that's pro-technology, we are simply as a group going to have to raise enough money ourselves to become the highest bidder, nobody's going to do this for us.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Your argument boils down to, "it is impossible to make everything exactly fair so we should ignore unfair circumstances entirely."
And I guess you are only concerned that some people start out with more money than other people.
Fair means everyone should be given an equal opportunity, or as nearly equal as it is practical to create.
I would agree with this statement.
Fair means one person should not be born into a situation where they never have to work, or think, can buy anything they can think of, are free to flaunt most of the laws and get away with it, and are free from worrying about hunger or hardship, while another person has to eat ketchup packets from fast food joints, has no hope of ever being out of debt, has no chance for a real education, and has no chance to ever be able to afford a home, without turning to crime.
I don't agree with this. Again, you focus on one aspect of fairness -- money. But even if the "rich" kid doesn't have a trust fund, or isn't given an inheritance, this isn't going to change the fact that some people are going to grow up hungry -- unless you are talkking about a redistribution of wealth.
And there are a lot of people who grow up in tough situations, and don't turn to crime. You seem to imply that "equal chance" means "equal chance to become uber-wealthy" -- the reality is, many people who work hard will, eventually, be able to afford a house. Maybe not a dream estate in Beverly Hills, but a house nonetheless. And most kids CAN afford to go to college -- they may have to take out student loans instead of getting mom+dad to pay or getting grants or whatever, but if they want to go to school, they can -- Junior College is an option.
But my key point was -- life isn't fair, and I'm not sure that wealth redistribution (or even taking wealth away from the rich) is the way to make things more "fair."
Neither does it mean we should tolerate a system of government and economics that is designed to keep the rich and wealthy rich and wealthy, and make them even wealthier at the expense of the poor.
Wealth is not a zero-sum game -- just because one person gets richer does NOT mean that someone else has to be poorer.
While I believe those with special problems should be helped by society, the distribution of wealth is the specific problem we are addressing. It takes money to make money and in a capitalist system money consolidates. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer and all economic models show this will continue, despite the relative efforts and hard work of the poor. Any system that consolidates all the money and makes more and more poverty and makes incredibly wealthy people even wealthier as time passes is broken.
Just because some people are really, really rich doesn't mean that life is hell for everyone else. I guess it depends on what you consider to be a reasonable "outcome" of wealth. You seem to assume that if everyone is given a roughly "even" start, that everything will be okay, or at least, better than it is today. What evidence do you have that that would be the case, other than you don't like rich kids getting a "head start?"
Just FYI, I never had a trust fund, I worked full time through my undergrad, masters and B-school, and took loans out to pay for law school -- but I don't resent "rich kids" any more than I resent people that are better looking than I am, or smarter, or are better atheletes. That's just life.
Simply banishing all inheritance and dumping that money into paying off the national debt and then into tax reductions would be a good start.
The reason why we have such a huge national debt is becuase our government does a lousy job of budgeting its money -- why do you think that a huge influx of new money would change anything? Why is the government better off having that money than private citizens? Will the government spend that money better, or more wisely?
Just capping the total
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
Time to jump in. This is a really interesting back-and forth, but I think you both missed a couple of germane points. Neither of you will dispute that life is hell for a whole lot of Americans, right? I'm talking about the people who live in dirty strip motels, pay more in rent than I do because they don't have enough for a security deposit and don't have a credit rating, and work for minimum wage if that. There are lots of these people. I don't know how they got that way, but a major point was made by one of you early on: when the number of have-nots gets large enough, and the disparity is large enough, they will turn to violence. If you say "well, life's not fair", they'll only yell louder as they cut you off at the knees. If you see injustice, and don't do anything about it because YOU aren't being unduly affected by it, what kind of society will you get?
The other thing I'll mention is, if it were just about money, and who has it and who doesn't, it would be fairly easy to deal with through redistribution of wealth, both voluntary (charity, etc.) and involuntary (welfare, publicly funded education, earned income credit, lots of other things we already have).
The problem is that having money or a good job buys you into healthcare, and good attorneys, and several other things. If you can't buy into these things, then American society treats you like dirt. Don't get sick, and don't make any mistakes, and don't tick off any corporations, otherwise you get taken to the cleaners. And at the top end, if you have a lot of money, YOU GET TO CHANGE THE RULES TO SUIT YOURSELF. This is, in the end, counterproductive because the people on top will find themselves hated and targeted by people who are entirely willing to do violence. It'll be like the South American countries where the rich live in walled compounds, with security guards. (Well, we have that in America, too, but it isn't all that widespread.)
All the rich would have to do is set up a system where poor people continue to do all the work, continue to zone out in front of the TV, their kids have a reasonable shot at wealth and a comfortable life, and they know they'll have a place to live and something to eat, and nobody would rock the boat. Poor people are unbelievably willing to put up with a bad lot. But the rich in this country won't be satisfied until they hold the ENTIRE pie, and can treat the rest as slaves. That will be their downfall. My prediction: it'll happen in under 100 years, maximum.
First and foremost, as I believe I stated in my initial reply, filesharers aren't even a real 'problem', but actually an asset. You can look it up all over the net. Studies upon studies have been performed, focusing on the buying habits of filesharers, and it's a proven fact: people who use filesharing networks buy more music. Most filesharers don't intend to download the music and keep it in that form forever, but instead use filesharing as a tool to sample music at no cost to the producer. Those are the average Joes, and hardly the people that need to be targeted here. Suing college students, the elderly, and computer literate pre-teens has yet to even make a dent in the filesharing habits of the people that partake in P2P networks, to boot.
(Some interesting reading: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/27/p2p_users_ legal_downloads/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,1171 %201,1536886,00.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-898813.html )
On the other hand, hardcore pirates who, as you said, are nearly impossible to stop are a real problem. Bootleggers who participate in real piracy rings, selling content illegally, are a serious problem, and a real menace to the music and movie industry no matter which way you slice it. However, their specialty isn't sharing the music on a network. Their specialty is copying albums and movies bit for bit and selling the copies for a profit.
I'm afraid that I can't see the logic in your argument. At the cost of sounding as though I defend pirates, I will admit that I strongly disagree with you. Piracy is an ugly thing, and I don't believe that someone should be allowed to sell another person's work without permission, but surveillance, DRM, and lawsuits are not the answer to this dilemma. If you can't see why already, fine. You're entitled to that opinion, none the less...