Friday, October 08, 2004
Movie Studios and Record Labels snitch and squeal
"Major movie studios and record labels on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Grokster decision, which had absolved peer-to-peer networks of responsibility when their users download copyright material without permission [ of the file sharing network]."
Don't these people know when they're beaten? Peer-to-peer isn't going to be stopped without stopping the Internet, because the Internet is itself a peer-to-peer network. If the recording and movie people think they can actually win this fight even if they win in court, they got another think coming. See, we've got this thing called the Canadian border, and something else called the Supreme Court of Canada (now with four of nine judges being women- a world first), and if there is NO way the kind of nonsense like "shutting down peer-to-peer" would get past them. Not a chance.
We've also got the CRTC and things like compulsory licensing for audio recordings, and we're keenly aware that most of the money Canadians spend on music and movies flies south to the United States, and out of the hands of Canadians. Our pharmacies are doing a land-office business selling American-designed pharmaceuticals back to Americans at fair prices, rather than the profiteering mark-ups they force upon American citizens through their private health-care plans. Just imagine: Canadian servers sending gigabytes of music southbound, all completely legal in Canada... The war on drugs didn't do much to stop the flow of narcotics, I'd bet he would be at least as hard to try and stop something that is invisible, weightless, odorless and grows for free. Hear that, G.W.?
Don't these people know when they're beaten? Peer-to-peer isn't going to be stopped without stopping the Internet, because the Internet is itself a peer-to-peer network. If the recording and movie people think they can actually win this fight even if they win in court, they got another think coming. See, we've got this thing called the Canadian border, and something else called the Supreme Court of Canada (now with four of nine judges being women- a world first), and if there is NO way the kind of nonsense like "shutting down peer-to-peer" would get past them. Not a chance.
We've also got the CRTC and things like compulsory licensing for audio recordings, and we're keenly aware that most of the money Canadians spend on music and movies flies south to the United States, and out of the hands of Canadians. Our pharmacies are doing a land-office business selling American-designed pharmaceuticals back to Americans at fair prices, rather than the profiteering mark-ups they force upon American citizens through their private health-care plans. Just imagine: Canadian servers sending gigabytes of music southbound, all completely legal in Canada... The war on drugs didn't do much to stop the flow of narcotics, I'd bet he would be at least as hard to try and stop something that is invisible, weightless, odorless and grows for free. Hear that, G.W.?
