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From Wired-
...Rep. Howard Berman (D-California) introduced his much anticipated peer-to-peer legislation in the House of Representatives on Thursday. The proposal would give copyright owners, from Hollywood studios down to independent musicians, the legal go-ahead to employ a variety of technological measures that would stop computers hooked up to decentralized networks from trading...
Along with making it open season on individual users, open-source programs and decentralized networks, the bill also gives a free pass to chat applications run by the very media companies that would most benefit from open-source networks being shuttered.... AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger -- which each have specific file-trading options built into their systems that enable millions of users to trade their share without fear of electronic attack -- will continue to flourish. The recording industry and movie studios have largely ignored those three chat applications, which have financial ties to the major record studios and movie studios, in their litigation and anti-piracy activities.
At its height, the Napster network handled just under three billions files a month, where AIM has one billion files a day zipping across its system.
So: what's the point of this legislation? If they close down the independent networks, but leave IM software as is, isn't everyone going to share over IM instead? |
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