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

I bet it's closer to 100%

[melted]

If you count IP infringements made by software vendors. Face it, in the world where One Click patent can even exits, you're _guaranteed_ to infringe on someone's intellectual property if your code is more complicated than "Hello world". And software vendors can't guarantee non-infringement, either, because there are tens of thousands of vaguely worded patents.

Constitutional Rights?

[fataugie]

So I guess screw innocent until proven guilty.

Becuase I have bittorrent installed to download Mandrake, I *MUST* have illegal things on my machine?

Screw that report and the assholes who wrote it!

Almost all computers use IP

[corsec67]

Since the concept of intellectual property is almost completely meaningless, the title must be about Internet Protocol, and I bet close to 99% of the worlds computers have IP, and most use it every day.

Oh, you mean that 36.4% of the computers have tools installed that facilitate copyright infringement?

Can we please stop using the term "IP" or "Intellectual Property" and actually specify what we are talking about, which in this case is copyright infringement? Especially since the source articles never use either of those two term in them?

It would be very hard to infringe on trademarks using limewire or bittorrent in any way, and the same goes for patents unless the patents cover the implementation of the software.

Re:Voluntary systems scans

[Anonymous Coward]

So, 36.4% of computers of users who are dumb enough to use a site like that have Limewire installed?

Is this like one of those sites that tells me "YOUR REGISTRY MAY BE CORRUPT!!!"... on a linux box?

Re:40000 songs = $40,000 sounds right to me

[LMacG]

You are assuming that all of those songs need to be purchased at $1 apiece. What about the CDs I already have at home? I know that Sony lawyer said that ripping even one song is OMG theft, but I don't live on her world. What about all the stuff I downloaded from eMusic when I belonged? There was a cost, but not anything close to $1/song.

Re:It always amuses me

[Frnknstn]

You are forgetting something: Almost all usenet downloads take place from the NNTP server set up by the user's ISP. Each file is only transferred only once to each ISP via the Internet at large, rather than than once per user.

Also, you mischaracterised the the other side of the argument, too: a properly running torrent was many seed, and although each seed may have less uplink bandwidth than downlink bandwidth, the network as a whole should saturate the new peer's downstream bandwidth.