France Makes Attempt to Stop Internet Piracy

[A Black Falcon]

Sealand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

Um, how would they know what's legal or illegal? This is a simpler way of asking how the heck they would ever be able to moniter everyone on the frickin' internet.

Magic!

Seriously though, they'd only be looking for things that rights-holders tell them to look for, I'd imagine. That would narrow it down a bit, but yeah, it'd still be very difficult.

It's like someone read 1984 and not only didn't realize that the sheer logistics would render it impossible, but thought it would be a good idea.

Some aspects of 1984 happened... but not the whole thing. And yeah, you're probably right that the whole thing wouldn't be possible... but some elements... yes. I agree, though, that it isn't possible to stop piracy. These attempts just fail and make people mad at you for trying.

The best method is still to target the distributers, not the downloaders. That's something that would be far more feasible. Heck they would be far more capable of tracing massive uploads and being reasonably sure something may be going on than tracing massive downloads which could be anything from WOW to a remake of King's Quest.

So you relocate your servers to countries that don't go after software pirates... but yeah, up to this point, it has always been uploading that gets people in trouble, not downloading. That's because it's so much harder to figure out what someone is downloading than what they're uploading. But as this shows, trying to figure that out is almost impossible without massive rights violations... in the US at least, as much as some industry people wish they could attempt this, I think it'd be impossible to pass such a bill that would hold up in court. In Europe... well, they don't have the First Amendment. Maybe it's possible there. But the article says that even there, it's of questionable legality even if it does pass, and for very good reason...

Basically, the problem is that it's not going to be possible to stop internet piracy... but no one is quite sure how to deal with that and have people able to get compensated for their work, in an environment where many people are unwilling to pay for things. Trying to ban it and pretend that the problem can just be made go away, though, will do absolutely nothing. As any nation that actually passes something like this would soon find out, I'm sure. We need to work on actual solutions. This kind of thing... is not exactly helpful.