> One of my coworkers forwarded this to me by email yesterday, and I thought it was quite an interesting read. I was especially intrigued by the point made by the author in the last paragraph. As I have had many debates on this subject here at Rinkworks, I was curious to hear the thoughts of others on the subject and the particular ideas raised here.
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> Don

An interesting read indeed. Although I certainly get what the author is saying (and it's definitely possible that Internet privacy will be whittled away by things like this) I do sometimes have a problem with one of my old enemies, classification. Everyone who downloads MP3s is automatically classed as "a music pirate", and everyone is treated the same because of this.

I can probably best illustrate my problems with this by using myself as an example. I download the odd MP3, when there's a particular song that I really want (or that I've heard of and am interested in). It saves having to buy an entire album if the song is no longer on release as a single. However, in the majority of cases I have really liked the song, and gone on to buy an album anyway. In this sense, downloading the MP3 did no more harm than borrowing the album from a friend and listening to it, something that no-one would seriously class as a crime. However, under the suggestions in the article I would be in the red to the tune of something approaching $1,000,000. Of course, the police would have to identify me as a "megapirate", which is unlikely. But still, I would be classed as "a music pirate", when the objective harm done is practically nil.

In terms of software piracy, I do frequent the Home of the Underdogs website, which some of you may know. However, when I download from there it is always a game that is no longer on general release, that is very difficult to find in bargain bins, and that in some cases is from a now-defunct games publisher and would not benefit them anyway if I did buy it. Under these terms, I don't think I am doing any harm. Yes, if you like to call it "stealing", I am "stealing" the game developer's intellectual properties. On the other hand, I could just as easily be said to be enjoying and appreciating the developer's work in a way that I could not have done were it not for the website in the first place; HOTU only publishes games online that did not do well on release and which can't be got any other way.

You may well have heard most of these arguments before, in which case I apologise for putting you through them again. Still, that's my thoughts for now...

Si-"TEH MEGGA-PIRTAE"-gi