[LINK] New lawsuit targets '21st century piratical bazaar'

[geert]

> 4. The music industry takes them to court.  They may win.  The fact that
> FastTrack is an identifiable company that licenses its code to MusicCity
> for Morpheus and to Grockster, is a likely weakness.
>
> 5. Someone will write some newer software that doesn't have this
> particular weakness
>
> etc.

Most likely no etc.

The history of social movements and subculture shows that tendencies such as
peer-to-peer can indeed disappear. Repression can take out the whole
dynamics and turn it into an almost invisible phenomena (which is what the
IP-driven industry probably wants to achieve). Technology development is not
a linear process and can certainly not be described in terms of the law of
Moore (doubling every 18 months) as in this case of file sharing programs
there are lots of social, political, legal and (sub)cultural factors
involved.

The US-American conservative business journalist Michael Lewis, in his new
book The Future Just Happened describes the Gnutella phenomena in much the
same cyclical terms as Mark Hughes, where some sell out, other step in etc.
They both do not take into account what the intimidating effect of
repression of techno-social tribes of geeks and hackers can have. In my view
this a very limited techno-determinist 'dotcom' view of the world, one of
eternal growth, seamless opportunities and long booms. The current recession
(which should not surprise anyone and was long due) proves otherwise. I
think it is time for a bit more complex, dynamic and dialectical (!) view of
technology, one which peer-to-peer software, for instance, can very well be
crushed by the powers to be. I think it would be good to prepare the
youngster involved for such a clash with authorities instead of continuing
to spread the myth of seamless progress.

Geert