Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>
http://torrentfreak.com/illegal-downloads-150x-more-profitable-than-legal-sales-091009/

  What happens in the following scenario:

  Some random person is browsing the internet, and clicks on a link. The link
happens to point to, let's say, a youtube video which contains an entire
copyrighted song. This person does not realize that he is now illegally
downloading a copyrighted song. (It could be, for example, that the song
is being used as background music for some animation or whatever.) Then
one of these copyright vigilante companies resolves his address and sends
him an email demanding he pay 450 euros, or he will get sued for ten times
that amount (a very common and extremely effective scare tactic).

  You don't even have to go to youtube.com in order to "infringe" copyright
accidentally like that. Youtube (and other similar) videos can be embedded
in web pages, so just browsing a random blog or whatever website out there
might automatically make you download a song illegally without you even
knowing what's happening.

  If these companies would have their way, it would soon be impossible to
use a web browser for anything because you could have a lawsuit in your
hands just by going to some website. It would be like a virus, but instead
of fucking up your computer, it fucks up your wallet. Or worse. Some people
could even get jailed because they browsed the wrong blogs and they don't
have money to pay for the extortion.

  At the same time the real criminals, the ones who do it intentionally and
for profit, will be undeterred. They know how to use anonymizers, they know
how to mask their IP addresses, they know how to get around the vigilantes.

  The internet has not killed music, but music might well kill the internet.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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