sadly I too am pretty sure Hilary sleeps just fine at night (in silk sheets perhaps) but I'd still love to see her accept the challenge of a head to head public debate on the ethics of p2p versus the ethics of the companies she represents
re your other points: - yes here in Aus Sony just lost a court case that means its now legal to insert a chip in playstations that lets you make and play home burned CD copies and play CD's that were bought outside the designated 'region' (ie you can now legally use something legaly bought in Europe or America) - they also lost in their claim that people selling copies were selling 'fakes' (on the grounds that the copies were so obviously copies nobody could possible be fooled into thinking they were buying the real thing) - the loss to Sony is really only symbolic - the chipping was being advertised and done very openly anyway
as to 'fair use' etc - of course I accept that p2p means copywrite breaching - the point though is that
(1) the majors use and have extended copywrite in a bloody minded attempt to force consumers to minimize what they access and maximize what they pay for
(2) p2p sharing arguably at least increases rather than decreases actual sales (every download is NOT a lost sale and does anyone seriously think Radiohead would've made the charts if all those files weren't swishing around the net for months before the oficial release)
(3) if the state attempts to protect private profit making interests to the extent that extraordinarily widely accepted practices are criminalised all you achieve is making people hold the law in contempt - which - is a dangerous thing to do in free and civil societies that depend upon willing acceptance of the rule of law rather than forced submission to the rule of law |