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.

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?