Rasmus Fleischer, Swedish historian and founder of the massively illegal file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, makes so many fantastic points about the dangers of the escalating online copyright war that I fear quoting just one. So I’ll use the same one Reason did:
The real dispute, once again, is not between proponents and opponents of copyright as a whole. It is between believers and non-believers. Believers in copyright keep dreaming about building a digital simulation of a 20th-century copyright economy, based on scarcity and with distinct limits between broadcasting and unit sales. I don’t believe such a stabilization will ever occur, but I fear that this vision of copyright utopia is triggering an escalation of technology regulations running out of control and ruining civil liberties.
I go back and forth on whether file-sharing should be tolerated, banned or just stigmatized. As a believer in, and supporter of the arts, I want to see artists compensated for their work and to flourish. As a developer, I know that there’s little way to guarantee that without fairly heinous consequences, just as Fleischer points out.
I don’t think the answer lay at either pole of the debate though. I do think the answer will inevitably be a technological, not legal one. I have no idea what that answer will look like of course. If I did, I’d be rich enough to live my dream: paying Lou Reed to provide a live, improvised and constant soundtrack to my life.