Oh, as readers of my blitherings no doubt recall, I have been firmly against the on-line theft of copyrighted material, i.e., unauthorized/uncompensated music downloads. Theft is theft, and any arguement I've heard in favor of unregulated peer-to-peer file sharing (of others' Intellectual Property) have pretty much just boiled down to justifications of why it was "OK to steal" when the technology makes it so easy (so is "robbing the blind paperboy", but that doesn't make it right).
Anyway ... deathboy posted a link to a VERY good piece analysing what would be necessary to make file sharing "honest" ... which turns out to being about $6/month per broad-band connection. The author goes into a lot of detail of the advantages of a system like this, and I am quite hopeful that something of the sort mgiht be implemented. Read it here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/01/free_legal_downloads/
deathboy posted a link to a VERY good piece analysing what would be necessary to make file sharing "honest" ... which turns out to being about $6/month per broad-band connection. The author goes into a lot of detail of the advantages of a system like this, and I am quite hopeful that something of the sort mgiht be implemented. Read it here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/01/free_legal_downloads/