> <i>But in what kind of parallel universe does a professional, western police force think it’s appropriate, proportionate and a good use of tax-payers’ money to send officers to a citizen’s home for a petty file-sharing issue, one involving the downloading of a single music album?</i><p>That's just it. It's not a usage of <i>taxpayers'</i> money, it's a usage of government money that just so happens to have been taken forcefully from taxpayers. And when you phrase it as "government money," it's not at all surprising that its used this way. Just look at the relationships between a anti-piracy groups and government.
Hopefully this girl will create a paradigm shift. All of this anti-piracy prosecution makes me feel like im in a dystopian future where hearing music and watching movies is forbidden. :(
The problem with this matter is it's been done before. In 2000, pictures of Elian Gonzalez being face to face with swat forces caused only limited outrage. The public was exposed to that case so much that they pretty much got numb to the situation and were downright sick of hearing about it before the raid happened. If anything in overall U.S. Cuba relations changed, it probably had nothing to do with the kid.<p>It's not that different with regard to file sharing. We've been hearing horror stories over extreme anti-piracy tactics for close to 15 years now. Your average 20 year old doesn't know of a world where this sort of thing doesn't happen. So in this kind of environment, I just don't see how one little girl is going to change anything.
Here is the thing, someone has gone ahead and spent time and effort to create and sell something, someone then has gone on out of their way and attempted to steal it.<p>That being said with any form of piracy it is in effect stealing. If one were to go down to the local store and steal a product from the shelves and make a run for the doors, you will also be caught, brought up to the police, charged and taken before the courts.<p>Now is the methods being used by the record companies correct? probably not. But do they have a right to try and protect their profits from looters and moochers of the world? they sure do.<p>I think digital media is the way of the future, especially being able to access it from anywhere in the world with little or no effort.<p>I just think that piracy in this sense has been taken for granted for much to long and we should work towards naming it as it should be named and stop getting up and arms about it as much as we do and just pay for what we use instead of running off to the local torrent site and downloading the shit out of it.
I think for most of us we have gone past the issues with semantics, that file sharing is no the same as stealing.
What I am more intersted in is how can content producers be fairly rewarded in this new world and what the future of content production looks like if there is less money for producers. Technology destroying some of the middle men should make producers more even with a smaller pie, which will help a bit.
File sharing has been around a long time and yet it still seems more quality content than ever is being produced, maybe the incentives are less of a problem than I think.
"Because the public are angry, politicians will be nervous too, and uncooperative politicians are bad news for tougher copyright law. But in the short term anyone sent a “pay-up-or-else” letter from CIAPC (if they even dare to send any more) will be thinking long and hard about paying. The chances of the police coming next time must be slimmer than last week.<p>And the fact that they will be able to thank a child for that is why this is some of the best news all year."
This "piracy war" is starting to look more and more like the drug war. I could see how in US especially, if marijuana is going to be legalized, all those agencies which would now be left out of work, could refocus on raiding "pirates", barging in and shooting people's dogs, and whatnot. Then this parody might become a reality (the part with the girl at the end):<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg</a>
It's not good to have nine years old girl used in propaganda.
We can't prevent this from happening but we should not force it.
It's halfway as bad as using child porn fear to censor "pirates". Even half of that is still very bad.
Eventually this will just make people transfer to, for example, I2P torrents or something.<p>It takes one good effort that bundles the I2P codebase, the required plugins and an I2P BitTorrent client such as Robert into a single application that just launches with one click of the mouse and without any further configuration needed and provides a browser view to the I2P torrent trackers as well as the BitTorrent client itself (or the equivalent hops for some other onion style network) and you're pretty much set for genuinely anonymous BitTorrent masses.<p>These systems, such as I2P and Tor, are designed to be resilient against oppressive governments so the MAFIAA just don't have a chance if the traffic goes underground. What next? MAFIAA would try to make it illegal to use your computer for anything else than connecting to pre-approved websites with MAFIAA approved browsers? Gimme a break.
<a href="http://i45.tinypic.com/ljwnl.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i45.tinypic.com/ljwnl.jpg</a><p>I read this comic when I was a child. I was appalled by the cruelty of this scene. It was about illegal artifacts from different time but I it really comes to mind when I'm reading the story of that girl today.