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Darknet for all within months?

By Kevin Heller et a.

Can lawsuits or a new push for legislation be a fix for an easy to use anonymous Darknet file-sharing program? I think it will take more than Grokster or the Induce Act to deal with this...

Software that will allow people to anonymously swap music and other files on the Internet could render copyrighting of songs and movies obsolete by year's end, a creator [of Freenet] said. A test version of the "darknet" software was made available on a Freenet Project website early Wednesday and a refined edition could soon be ready "for general consumption," Ian Clarke of Freenet told AFP. The software is intended to allow computer users worldwide to exchange files online in a way that hides them from industry investigators, vindictive politicians and others, Clarke said. Music recording industry goliaths have fought to crush such renegade file sharing, which they claim fosters piracy of copyrighted material by musicians. Darknet software has so far been treated as a tolerable bane by copyright defenders because programs have been difficult to use and limited to sharing between groups of no more than five or 10 computer users. "We've devised a way you can have a darknet with potentially millions of users," Clarke said. "We hope we will have something suitable for launch this side of Christmas."

And another thing...why are people/news articles still saying things like this: "Music recording industry goliaths have fought to crush such renegade file sharing, which they claim fosters piracy of copyrighted material by musicians." Is there still really a debate about whether file sharing fosters copyright infringement? Maybe I'm missing something. There have been questions about the extent to which widespread file sharing has hurt industry profits and to what extent file sharing benefits society as opposed to how badly it damages the music & film industries, but not about whether file sharing fosters piracy. That much seems pretty clear. Let's be a little more intellectually honest people, please.

Stealth online use by Christmas: software designers - Yahoo! News

Full post as published by Legislating IP on August 10, 2005 (boomark / email).