The new way the feds take over websites
now-movies.com
now-movies.com
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That's quite disturbing.
(source: http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-and-megaupload-escape-dom...)
It is also seems obvious to me that there will be a solution to this very soon: Underground DNS. Since only the DNS addresses were taken and it was facilitated by ICANN, I can't imagine that somebody else (I could even picture it being the Pirate Bay, once upon a time) saying "I'll play root for the sites that can't trust ICANN anymore."
The US always likes to talk about the founding fathers. I wonder if the founding fathers ever envisioned the government, under the framework they laid down, commanding 40% of the economy. I doubt it.
In my opinion, and I like to assume that was the goal of the founders, the decisions of the government should not carry that much weight. But as it is, as they've taken over so much of the economy, and the money supply, and setting interest rates, this is no longer the case. Specific measures were laid down in the constitution to prevent this, which is why they never considered it I suppose.
Why "once upon a time"? Why don't you think they'd do it now.
Maybe the Swedish Pirate Party will host an alternative DNS from the Swedish Parliament :-)
IMHO the long term solution would be to compete with pirates instead of trying to shut them down. There is a simple reason why piracy exists, because there is a demand for it. As long as the demand exists someone will try to fulfill it. Since, you can't sue millions of people in different countries and jurisdictions maybe it is time to sit down and reflect on what is the best course forward.
If I were the RIAA then I would use torrent networks to my advantage. They're ideal to transfer data at negligible cost. You only need to seed the file initially. So you don't have to cough up a lot of money for a high bandwidth server. They could come up with a system which takes money for a download pass within their platform. Don't put up any locks, instead put in a competitive price which will be far lower than iTunes due to the lack of a huge central server.
I genuinely believe that no one wants to be a thief people can't afford to buy media at the audacious prices they charge so they turn to such ways and means. If they can proactively cut this off then they'll be able to make far more money than they can even imagine.
Should I delete it?
Right now, most file sharing is being done on top of a normal stack. I'm not advocating breaking the law, but economics are economics -- I can't change reality for Hollywood and make it 1980 again. I can point out that future file-sharing does not have to be limited to a normal stack. There are all kinds of fun games we can play in this area. It may have been a legal and proper thing for the feds to do, but strategically it was really a bad idea.
The tighter you squeeze your fist, the more that slips through your fingers. True for tax law. True for file sharing law.
Oh boy... these feds never learn...