Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Peer-to-Peer (File Sharing)

File sharing is a term that has been thrown around by the music and movie industries. It is not nearly as innocent as the name makes it seem, though. The term 'file sharing' refers to the use of p2p (peer-to-peer) software that allows people to send and receive music, movies, computer programs, etc. There is no question that this practice is very illegal, parallel even to walking into a music shop and grabbing all of a certain band's CDs. But no one who does this sees it as a problem. Why? There is no demand to catch the people that do this. The amount of money that it costs to catch the people that do this far outweighs the money they lose when people do steal this media.

As long as this is the truth, I will continue advising people to file share. In my opinion, the act of file sharing is the way that the current mass-media frenzy will correct itself. The only people that are hurt by file sharing are the huge producing giants, not the actors/directors/artists themselves. These people get paid during and after production, whereas the producers get paid by all the copies that are sold. Because of this, I imagine that in the future, all movies will be released independently, away from these large moguls, leaving more cash flow for the people who deserve it.

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