Proving irrefutably that it Just Doesn’t Get It, the US recording industry is surreptitiously developing software tools to sabotage the equipment and network connections of file-sharing computer users.
According to Andrew Ross Sorkin’s story in the New York Times, “Software bullet is sought to kill musical piracy,” the five media conglomerates that comprise the mainstream recording industry—BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner—are financing the development of malicious code that would delete files and freeze systems of supposed copyright infringers.
At the most innocuous level, a Trojan horse would redirect a user’s connection to a web site offering licensed music downloads whenever the user attempted to download a purportedly infringing file across the Internet.
Other software at various stages of development would be much more harmful:
- “Freeze” locks a user’s computer for an indeterminate amount of time—perhaps hours—when the user attempts to download a supposed infringing file.
- “Silence” deletes files that are suspected of infringing copyright from users’ computers.
Consider the common scenario of the user that has legally archived music files he or she has licensed to a server computer in her home or office. She then accesses her server over the public Internet to retrieve her licensed music files on her remote laptop while on vacation. This is clearly non-infringing behavior. But the recording industry, in its myopic zealousness, sees its customers as pirates and first locks up, then deletes her files in the defense of its copyright. Not only has the recording industry lost another customer, it has likely bludgeoned itself into a pretty nasty class-action lawsuit.
While the big five record labels are attributing sales levels that have dropped like a stone to piracy on the public Internet, small independent labels are enjoying record-level sales because of the file sharing boogeyman (and because they’re producing better music). What’s the difference that makes a difference? The big labels see file sharing as infringing behavior; the indies see the same behavior as an opportunity. Who do you want to do business with?
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