Wednesday, March 23, 2005

File Sharing: Lost in Space

Here's some file-sharing news from rollingstone.com:

"A week from today, the Supreme Court will hear the case of MGM Studios vs. Grokster to decide the future of file-sharing.

...Recording Industry Association of America president Cary Sherman told Rolling Stone, 'Any business that is based entirely on copyright infringement should be held accountable.'

Grokster will argue that there are legal uses for the application: Some indie artists encourage fans to share their music freely, and NASA uses the technology to distribute bulky files."

Bulky files like Pearl Jam bootlegs, Fiona Apple's unreleased album, and the 26-minute acoustic version of "Helter Skelter." It saddens me to say that I think the RIAA is completely in the right on this issue. Grokster can pretend that they didn't intend for their customers to swap copyrighted material, but we all know that if they didn't have the copyrighted stuff, most people wouldn't be using their service. I have some advice for anyone who wants to get into the file-sharing business: The name of your company should not end with "ster."

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