Well last week saw the final nail in the coffin for the popular file sharing program called Limewire. For years now the feds have been on the case of Limewire, and they finally won. The peer 2 peer sharing program has been a stronghold for file sharing since the collapse of Napster. Now with Limewire gone the world of file sharing has grown dimmer. Mega sites like Piratebay, demonoid, and others, are still available, but for how long? While I do respect that philosophy that information should be shared, and the idea of peer 2 peer sharing is enticing, obviously developers, record companies, and software designers are losing massive amounts of money to these file sharing programs. Just last week a friend of mine downloaded the entire cracked version of Photoshop CS3. What do you guys think? Should people be able to share and swap programs for free? Do you think that inevitably thats what the internet will ultimately turn into? What I'm seeing here is that its the Software companies, and record labels that are going to have to adjust to this. I do believe that with all the Web 2.0 additions, and the growing mainstay of user based media, I think the government will be hard pressed, to be able to stop them all. When Napster fell, it was big news, and it sparked massive retaliation. File sharing programs were popping up all over the place. Many still exist today. I honestly don't think there's enough man power to put down such a wide spread issue. They'll have to conform, not the people.
Piracy is stealing. At the same time, with how easy digital content can be copied and shared, I don't think its possible to ever put the cap back on.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, software developers are going to have to sell their products for cheaper to make up for the piracy. There is no way around it, assuming the internet doesn't disappear in the near future.
It's not that I think software piracy is good. It's that I don't think software piracy can ever be effectively stopped.
Well it's a tough situation. People say 'I'm not stealing I'm making a copying.' 'I'm sharing' ETC.
ReplyDeleteI don't think music is as bad, even though it's still stealing. But I think when you download programs like Photoshop and Adobe which are hundreds of dollars, that's when it starts to become an issue.
An argument piraters have is that you're going to lend it to your friends anyways. But you're still obtaining a copy free of charge, which is illegal.
A program or CD is meant to be purchased per household, which is an average of 4 people, not 4 million people.
That just brings Forstwire more profit. There will forever be an amount of the Limewires, Frostwires and torrent websites.
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