Age of Reason

Killing the Internet to Kill P2P

Copyfight has the best summary I've seen yet of the issues surrounding the weird attempt of MGM v. Grokster to illegalize peer-to-peer file-sharing.

Making "P2P networks...illegal" involves more than flipping a switch and banning P2P networks narrowly. As Ed Felten explains, crafting a definition that includes P2P and leaves out most other Internet technologies is basically impossible.

The problem, as most Americans know in their gut, is that making a copy of something you own is inherently legal in our free society -- the right to do what one wants with one's own property is just so deeply built into the fabric of our free society, that overzealous attempts to limit it often threaten much broader elements of our civilization: in this case, our internet.

posted by conchis @ 3:13 PM