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It's easy to see why the movie,
music, and gaming industries are up in arms, and file sharing to
some has a bad name. Laws making it illegal to download copyrighted
or otherwise protected materials are unenforced and unenforceable.
With bootleggers all over the country openly selling hundreds of
copies of movies still in the theaters, and games by the crate full
that are still not released out of the back of vans and station
wagons on busy street corners without a word said, it's kind of hard
to tell "little Eddie" to stop downloading 1 copy of a CD his
parents can't afford.
But that's not what file sharing is all
about. It's just the most publicized. File sharing also allows
friends, newsgroup members, organization members, students, special
interest groups, hopeful bands, struggling writers, etc., etc., to
share many forms of media of all sort. |