Reply #120: Okay, there's a REAL misunderstanding of what we're talking about here. [View All]

[Occulus]

These are protocols we're really talking about- not client applications. So long as the public has the ability to write and compile code, there will always be unrestricted filesharing. As I said on another thread earlier today, that genie is well and truly out of the bottle. IF the RIAA members had been on the ball and gotten a "pay to play" sharing client out there as soon as they had heard about it (even if it had been a weekend hack by some RIAA code monkey), they would have had a chance- thin as it may have been- to get the public onboard with paying for music online.

They did nothing of the kind- instead, they chose to start fighting a war they had already lost. And this war is lost- the RIAA cannot, ever, keep people from sharing music online. Nobody can. The only way to do it is to pass a law making the protocol itself illegal and the operation of such software a federal offense. That is not possible, as code is speech, and cannot be infringed.

Even the DeCSS code, which allows you to decrypt a DVD, was found to be a violation of (I think) the DMCA or some such; in response, some incredibly clever soul translated a written description of the code into a traditional 5/7/5 epic Haiku. Yes, the whole damn thing. Even though DeCSS is "illegal", this epic Haiku poem cannot be restricted, because it is by definition poetry and thus protected under the First Amendment- yes, even though the data produced by proper application of the Haiku results in software the use of which violates the DMCA:

Arrays' elements
start with zero and count up
from there, don't forget!

Integers are four
bytes long, or thirty-two bits,
which is the same thing.

To decode these discs,
you need a master key, as
hardware vendors get.

(This is a "player
key" and some folks other than
vendors know them now.

If they didn't, there
is also a way not to
need one, to start off.)

That's neither here nor there. If the RIAA truly wants to stop filesharing, they have to abandon all forms of digital distribution and move back to vinyl. It is in the nature of the bit to be copied, and so copied it will be. What the RIAA needs to understand is that their old distribution model has been ended. Until they understand and accept that, the fruitless lawsuits will continue.