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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Not without destroying modern business practices.
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How? Details, please.
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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Bittorrent was invented by a "software maker." The "software makers" aren't a cohesive, pro-government anti-piracy group that are going to blithely agree to cripple all internet activities in order to reinforce artificial scarcity.
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What just happened to Megaupload?
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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
The government could, with a lot of cost and effort, stamp down on a lot of filesharing--with the side-effect of making a lot of businesses slow to a crawl.
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Supposition.
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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Copying doesn't get harder. EVER. It never has, in the history of humankind. Copying will not be harder in 10 years than it is now.
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Controlling where copies can go, and who can access them, CAN get harder.
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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Digital piracy is never going to be "stopped". It could be mitigated--reduced to a level of nuisance rather than threat to livelihoods...
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Exactly this.
Assuming that governments cannot enact laws and enforce them... assuming that legitimate businesses cannot create ways of functioning within those laws... assuming that life will somehow grind to a halt if this takes place... is ignoring thousands of years of established history. The web is just another tool, and it can be controlled and regulated.
Even more importantly: No one likes laws on the surface, especially when they seem to restrict things they can do. However, if those laws prove to be beneficial to them, in the form of improved personal security, easier use or lower costs (or all of the above), people tend to accept and eventually support those laws.
None of the stricter web laws we have discussed here will automatically result in the crash of civilization that so many people seem to expect. That is an over-reaction to the possibility of any new laws that is completely expected of people, but in the long-run, usually unfounded.