EricNoah said:
I think file-sharing software should have built-in features that a) would alert you when items in your Shared folder are being downloaded from you, and b) would require you "digitally sign" a statement for each item you place in your Shared folder stating that you are the copyright holder or are otherwise authorized to distribute the file in question (of course, you could lie about it, but it could then be used against the distributor in court), and c) marks each file you distribute from your Shared folder with your name and address in case there's any need to know where it came from.
The intent of the Digital Millenium Act was to make a correlation between crimes commited in the "real world" and similar crimes in the cyber world. So lets look at how they enforce "real world" copyright infringement and create a cyber version of that enforcement.
Crime Enforrement
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Individual copys a rented movie *Nothing
Individual photocopys book *Nothing
Individual sells illegal VHS tapes Fines, confiscated goods, jail
* There may actually be a law against these, but individual privacy prevents the government from checking every VHS tape you own for illegal copies.
So a cyber version of the existing laws would NOT target those who are "sharing" file but would target those who "sell" such files. The problem with this approach is that is would virtually ignore the 99% of file sharing that occurs (and cuts into the movie/music industry proffits).
In my opinion, the chief problem lies not with those doing the downloading (yes, they're making illegal copies, and it's wrong, but it's also understandable -- people like "free" stuff) -- but if we could better deal with the sources of these files (the masses of users who store files to which they don't own the copyright in their Shared folder), I think the problems would begin to diminish a bit.
I think this is a possibility, wowever it would not eliminate the problem.. it would just make the line between legal and illegal more defined. I know for a fact the current detection methods of many cyber police are adeqiate to detect when someone is sharing a particular copyrighted item. I got a nasty email for sharing the spiderman movie within 8 hours of my actual download. (oops, I was sharing everything i downloaded by default, so I had a nasty email from the cyber cops and my isp in the morning. That simple message detered me from using any of the Kazaa clones. It drasticly cut back my downloads, and I stick to private FTP groups or IRC. IRC is a great example of a program that has the pottential to distribute huge quantities of files, but the learning curve and lack of pretty interfaces keeps the majority of casual file swappers away from it.
