That would explain why they never get into trouble even though others all around them are being destroyed. This would be why they co-operate with the MAFIAA and other government entities, and now are acting as if they are the spokesperson for the entire filesharing industry. They have been giving too many passes, and they are much too vocal about their stance against the people who use them and the companies like them to be legit – I really think they are a front.

A legitamite filesharer would not be taking this stand. They would be fighting to get the government from forcing them to be their unpaid snitches. They would be fighting to stop laws that force them to invade their users privacy (it should be none of their business what people upload, and therefore not be liable for anything the person does). What if I want to upload naked pictures of my wife? The don’t restrict me from doing that – but they don’t explicitly inform me that they will be peering into my files either. I think that sort of thing is an infringement.

What if I upload artwork that I created? What if the artwork I created was only available to view by admission price – like an exhibit in a gallery. Perhaps an online gallery? Aren’t they infringing on my rights to make a profit per view, and accessing my copyrighted materials whenever they feel like it? Why can’t we have truly PRIVATE filehosting, where either the uploader or whomever they allow can access it – and NOBODY ELSE – including the filehost? Its a sad situation that our rights to have and use private assets have been trumped by the likes of MAFIAA and other organizations all in the name of “stopping piracy”.

Yeah – piracy (sharing FOR PROFIT) is a bad thing; but they shouldn’t have unlimited power to stop it. Even law enforcement has to work within a set of laws, even though there are workarounds. But organizations like MAFIAA just seem to do whatever they want, with our tax dollars paying them in the form of free government services. They are allowed to make and change laws to suit their needs; which is a total travesty and miscarriage of justice. They should be relegated to finding and pursuing pirates at the civil level, with no free resources just like everybody else. If they can’t catch them, well tough chi-chis – our government(s) should not be bending over backwards to make the laws more efficient for them than any other infringement laws. The ISPs filehosts, linking sites, Usenet, irc, Torrent sites should not have any part in helping their cause, nor should they advocate for them. they should all come together and state that they will not co-operate with infringing on their users right to privacy and freedom of speech (expression). They should make a clear stand that they will not be held accountable for what their users are doing with their private files, and that they will not invade their users files by peering into them. the only thing they should be concerned about is malware, and as long as the files are clean thy have no responsibility or right to access them beyond simple storage.

Unfortunately this is not the case, and companies like Rapidshare are just making things worse, for us and themselves. But of course – isn’t that the point of a sting operation?

That would be a socialist internet. The issues we’re having now were created by freedoms given to corporations, which they exploited to make enough money to bribe officials to create laws favorable to them. In the end it doesn’t matter what asinine sociopolitical theory word you use to describe a system, because the root cause of all these sorts of problems will always be unbridled capitalism in a virtualized democracy.

“For the people, by the people” would fit best with a libertarian-socialist system, or at least a democracy where campaign finance isn’t bum****ing backwards.