The Gradual Evolution Of File Sharing Tools: A More Anonymous BitTorrent
from the gee,-was-this-hard-to-predict? dept
Just about everyone outside of the recording industry seemed to know this would happen, but apparently the folks at the recording industry are still a bit slow in having their pattern matching mental algorithms kick in. They shut down Napster because it was centralized and more decentralized apps showed up. They go after users of those systems, and newer, more anonymous systems show up. For every file sharing system they try to shut down, a more secure, more secretive one shows up, pushing file sharers further underground. So, with the entertainment industry’s bizarre new obsession with BitTorrent, is it really any surprise that people are working on more anonymous versions of the technology? Who knows if this particular system will catch on, but clearly every move the entertainment industry makes is just causing things to get worse, pushing users further underground, rather than opening them up to more legitimate forms of content distribution. It seems clear now that the entertainment industry can’t think more than one step ahead, and has yet to consider the reaction to any of its moves.
