In fact, to a great extent that seems like the crux of the debate, since many netizens support enforcing anti-piracy laws and even enacting new examples, but oppose wide dragnets, permanent road blocks and privacy violations. I oppose those infringements while supporting new legislation also, but the pretense ANY new legislation inherently creates such infringement is specious and uncredible, so Congress will dismiss it as such. That is already happening; Obamas "give us better ideas" was just another case of him trying to please everyone, and will ultimately prove just another case of him ANGERING everyone instead, but, as with so many previous instances, it is also the prelude to a new law that will be passed in one form or another whomever it angers. In that respect, SO/PIPA opponents are little more than an online Tea Party; they can be as outraged by SO/PIPA as the Tea Party was by Robamacare—with no more chance of preventing the source of that outrage.

So instead of simply providing knowledge of how to commit crimes, that can be downloaded and either used or just innocuously placed on a bookshelf, they provide knowledge criminal to even place on that bookshelf. While use of and access to that knowledge might be free, providing access creates revenue. Criminalizing and detecting both things does not seem difficult for those with THAT knowledge.

The tricky part would probably be targeting downloaders forced to simultaneously act as uploaders. However, one would think millions of people simultaneously accessing each others computers for that kind of high volume high user transfer would stick out like a sore thumb. If that is as much the norm as you say it probably accounts for 90% of online bandwidth at any given time. There is most definitely "communication between users," because that is how the snippets of files are sent back and forth among hordes of users simultaneously.

The thinking is not yet obsolete just because most downloaders make themselves uploaders in the process. That merely means they ceased to be trivial annoyances and graduated to serious threats (probably why Big Media has begun pursuing them far more aggressively.) If the mechanism of piracy no longer permits downloaders to remain no more than that and below legal radar, that sounds like a problem between pirate users and pirate providers. If the former can no longer operate without becoming, and thereby facing the legal liabilities of, the latter, their complaint is with those who created that requirement, not Big Media. Regardless, liability for one criminal act that another requires can be avoided by avoiding both.


Regarding true peer to peer file-sharing of copyrighted materials, I cannot believe that is the bulk of piracy any more than when my dad was taping thirty year old 78s in his garage for himself and friends doing the same. It may be technically easy to send twenty albums to a dozen friends while receiving as many from them, but how much bandwidth does it take? That is, how long does it take, and how long do RAFO, Facebook, etc. take to load while doing it? Particularly when there are five other people on ones router doing the same thing.

Alternatives to DNS and other uncharted territory aimed at reducing control by the authorities are inevitable whatever happens with piracy. Many people want to preserve their beloved lawless frontier, and it is harder for the authorities to dispatch a marshall to the frontier and police it than it was in the 1870s. Yet if the authority presence is more difficult to simply create ex nihilo, nearly all online creation is ex nihilo and reliant on a physical architecture and sources for its very existence. That physical architecture is how authorities will ultimately retake control of the cyberfrontier they created, either directly or with things like spiders and trojans—to the extent they have not already done so, which we can only guess.

The government won the FISA argument before Obama took office, and once he took office he forsook his pledge to reverse that along with so many other campaign pledges. The FBI began using Carnivore in '97, but did not tell the public until 2000; does anyone think abandoning it in '05 meant they abandoned the practices for which it was used? According to the below linked story they simply switched to unnamed commerical software, while increasingly asking ISPs to do the dirty work for them, requests that have largely been granted despite howls from users with no recourse except account cancellation when their private ISPs reveal their online communications to the government. Cases like al-Awlaki provide incentive, demonstrate need and ensure public support even when such government actions are discovered. To borrow a line from Rumsfeld, we do not know what we do not know; we are ignorant of even the LEVEL of our ignorance. Ill conceived and wrongly motivated, but active and concerted, efforts to escape supposed government tyranny only encourage more covert instances of it.


It still seems more accurate to compare Pirate Bay to a store that sells silencers and grenades than one that sells information on how to construct them. There is a reason even having those things is illegal, whether or not one has already committed a violent crime with them, and why stores cannot sell them. Giving them away for free while charing others for advertising to ones users would be no more legal. Yes, I realize we are talking about theft rather than murder or even robbery, but that only justifies less severe penalties for less severe crimes, without changing the basic criminality and thus need for penalties.


So Megaupload was operating the online equivalent of a crack house or a hotel catering to prostitutes; law enforcement can and does shut down those places, too, without the ability to target all home or hotel owners. The suggestion the former requires the latter is disingenuous, whether it is Big Media or netizens making the suggestion. Indeed, arguing piracy cannot be effectively stopped without a cyberpolice state is very dangerous, because if Congress accepts that argument it could well adopt such draconian measures. The best "brick and mortar comparison" to Megaupload, however, is warehouses and pawnships filled with stolen blackmarket products: If law enforcement proves the contents stolen they close and seize the building; if they prove the proprietors knew the products were stolen, they prosecute him, all without threatening legitimate warehouses/pawn brokers even slightly.


I am fairly certain Google knows how to track and ban IPs; I may not be an expert, but neither am I an idiot. Most likely, rather than bans, they would simply do as so many ISPs have done and cooperate with the FBI and other authorities in providing evidence of piracy to prosecute people posting copyrighted material and links to either that material or the means to acquire it. Keep in mind that practically all online activity in the US falls under the authority of the FCC, and anything crossing state lines (which, at various times, is all of it these days; the whole point of the internet is providing instant access to data anywhere on the planet) also falls under the authority of the ICC. If the US government wanted to impose a jackbooted crackdown, they already have authority to spare. They also have bigger fish to fry, but being a low priority is making cyberanarchy and piracy increasingly fat flounders demanding more and more attention.

The real moral is probably not that reducing piracy requires Big Media voluntarily accommodate user demands, but that preventing cybermartial law requires users voluntarily curtail currently easy cybercrime. Those who "value" convenience and (relative) privacy should be careful not to kill the goose that laid their golden egg.