The way the RIAA and their ilk have been attacking Gnutella isn't by attacking boards like this. You can talk about Gnutella all you like - thankfully that's one right the corporations still haven't bought away from us yet. Also there's nothing illegal about the g-net itself (or at least there shouldn't be) since it's just a form of file transfer like FTP or HTTP. Even so, with enough political power paid for by corporate special interests I wouldn't put it past them to try and outlaw it "for the sake of the children".
How the RIAA have been dealing with it is to hire scabs to search for supposed "copyright infringement" and sent threatening letters to the ISP of the person sharing the files. Do they actually download the files to check that they really *are* infringing and don't just have a couple words match in the title? I doubt it. In fact, I doubt they usually bother to have any real proof of the beyond their assumed "Gnutella user=pirate" equation. Problem is too many ISPs have no backbone (heh) and will kill the account anyway. Heck, the ISPs probably would like to get rid of file sharers anyway (since they actually dare use the bandwidth they pay for) and just sell to the "you got mail" crowd. |