The conclusions you have arrived at are the correct one. copyright infringment is copyright infringment no matter how you cut it.


I doubt if any judge will provide a ruling that states that it's okay to pirate content from the internet. No judge has the power to effectively reverse the standing copyright laws. The most the file sharing community can hope for is that they stop drawing heat for the actions of individuals. When I say the file sharing community I mean the P2P application producers. Technology should be free to innovate.

Now the purpose of my many discussion is NOT to discourage people from participating in file sharing network. It's to help people mitigate their legal issues while doing so. If you listen to the media reports you get the impression that P2P = piracy This is largely a falacy. It is more accurate to say that P2P is one of the way people pirate content. Alternatively, if you listen to those in the P2P community mainly users--RIAA and MPAA are the evil empire and they are infringing on peoples rights and in invading their privacy. This is also a falacy of omission.

MPAA and RIAA are groups the represent the interest of their members i.e. record companies and movie studios. People do you P2P to pirate content. The ISPs fight for the users rights to protect their own interest. NOT because they support piracy. The ISPs don't want to get sued for forking over people information without proper legal documentation. People commonly confuse this with the ISP is protecting me. No, the ISP has a legal responsibility to enfource its TOS and AUP policies. It also has the responsibility to respect the privacy of its customers. This does not equate to protecting pirates.

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Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com