One of the problems that I have with the current Supreme Court ruling over file sharing is the assumption that this stuff can be legislated absolutely.
As media is reduced to an atomic state of bits, it starts to show quantum-like uncertainty, is it a thing like an LP or a transmission like a song on the radio, a particle or a wave?
Hidden within the Supreme Court ruling is the other side of the coin:
Just as people have created software that allows people to share things they don’t own, with copy protected digital media nobody owns anything. Everything you buy is actually rented.
Why is it legal to develop software which necessarily prevents ownership of something you buy?
At the moment I buy albums in flea markets for 10c a song, read books that I bought in the UK in the US and can read all the books I want by checking them out of the library.
I cannot buy second hand MP3s, watch DVDs I bought in the UK (without hardware that will surely be banned at some point) or check out unlimited electronic books from the library.
The bottom line to all this: stuff should just be a whole lot cheaper and the problem would surely go away.
The role of the media industry has always been to promote and distribute media – when the network replaces these what is that role?