more p2p legal woes

Not easily deterred, the entertainment industry is trying to take down Grokster and friends. But they're fresh off a loss at the highest level to Sony which basically said P2P is cool as long as it actually has legitimate uses, as noted here. From what I can gather (from reading this and some of this, among other things) the difference here is that MGM is making the case that Grokster and Co. are knowingly promoting and profiting from illegal file-sharing.

As convenient as P2P programs are, I can't see how anyone can defend the rampant theft of intellectual property that they allow. I'm not saying the programs should be held responsible, but every now and then I hear someone talk about how there's supposedly nothing wrong with such file-sharing. Whatever...get a brain, folks. Taking movies, music, etc. without paying for it is theft. Is that so hard to grasp? Another thing that gets to me is that the each side's favorite argument sucks. The entertainment guys claim that the sheer volume of piracy warrants shutting down such programs and the software guys say they should not have to care about any illegal activity their stuff can be used for. The answer is somewhere in the middle. We can't hold programmers responsible for everything their programs can be used for, just like we can't hold gun manufacturers responsible for all shooting deaths or blame cigarette manufacturers for all cases of lung cancer. But we can expect said programmers to make reasonable efforts to prevent illegal use of their software (like oh, say, not promoting piracy for profit), especially when they are well aware of the problem already.

If it turns out that the evidence shows that the companies producing and marketing such software have their hands in the cookie jar on purpose, I hope they get punished hard for it and future programs will be expected to have some level of control measures. They'd already be responsible for more crimes than anyone can count. But, that being said, I think the government would be in over its head if it tried to do much of anything about the situation. Whatever the intentions, file-swapping will continue, probably unabated, regardless of whatever regulations are put in place. For one, geeks have consistently shown that they can stay ahead of attempts to slow down the practice. Just witness by the multitude of P2P programs at keep springing up whenver one gets shut down. And said geeks have shown no regard for the law anyway, so extra regulations on the books without teeth are unlikely to have any effect. And giving them teeth would likely get us into risky territory with the Constitution. (Oh, wait, nobody pays attention to our founding framework anymore.) In short, I can't see any way the authorities can ultimately come out ahead on this one. At least not this side of communism.

If the entertainment industry wants to put a stop to it they're going to have to enter the tech war and play by tech rules, not rely on the government or anyone else to come to their rescue. They need to shift their focus from punishing those caught in the act to preventing the piracy in the first place. Again, I'm not saying some common-sense requirements and controls aren't called for here. But file-sharing is like tax evasion or speeding--no matter how many people get in trouble, it will always be a rampant problem simply because so many people are doing it that most don't have to face the law.* There's too much software piracy going on to prevent by punishment, and focusing on the technology end would make solving the problem much easier and faster. Assuming it's possible, that is.

*One can legitimately question whether tax evasion and speeding are actually problems, but they're the first things that came to mind and they work to prove the point.