Report Says 36.4% of World's Computers Infringe on IP

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a new report by Digital Music News, 36.4% of the world's computers have LimeWire installed. Given their claim that filling an iPod legally would cost about $40,000, they're pretty sure that most of those computers are infringing upon at least a few imaginary property rights. BitTorrent shouldn't feel left out, though. BitTorrent actually uses more bandwidth, but the article suggests that this is because it is used to share larger files, like movies."

Comments

Re:That's It?

[RingDev]

I buy all my music on CD.
I listen to other peoples' music on Pandora.Com.
I get movies off of the Premium channels on demand service from Charter.
I won copies of Office 2k and 2k3 for my wife and I.
I got vendor copies of VS.Net 2k3, 2k5, and assorted other dev tools from user groups and conferences.
I use 'free' licensed alternatives for much of my other work (Gimp, MySQL, etc...)
At work I insist on valid licensing, which the big wigs usually come through on (although they have been known to buy licenses post hock on occasion).

I'm sure my wife and I are breaking someone's IP, as others have pointed out, there is such a huge volume of IP, it is virtually impossible to not be violating someone's rights.

And heck, I've even used Bit Torrent to pick up Linux distro's before ;)

Not saying we're perfect, but there are a lot of people out there who go about their business as good little consumers that don't purposely violate IP rights. That said, I think current IP laws are a bit out of whack and could use some trimming.

-Rick