Wait, so someone who must, according to every law be presumed innocent is, according to you, GUILTY and must prove his innocence, even when it turns out that the DMCA notice sent was invalid?

This is a major flaw and one I would like to see clarified. I have heard it said that copyright infringement is a regulatory offense (in some countries perhaps) which, along with safety concerns like jaywalking and speeding, assumes the guilt of the party by simply the act occurring. In other words, you are seen jaywalking, you are guilty, full stop. You are “caught” infringing on copyright, you are simply guilty, and it removes the mens rea as a requirement to prove guilt.

The problems I see are twofold: one, why is it regulatory when everything else is for the public safety, because how is copying a file or record or book a safety concern? And two, how exactly do you prove that someone has committed copyright infringement? While you don’t need to prove intent for personal infringement (as opposed to criminal infringement), you still need to identify the guilty party, and an IP address doesn’t do so. Short of that IT crowd commercial where the FBI is standing behind you with a loaded gun pointed at your head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg how exactly do you prove it??

Not all of those 30% are new users.

Of those 30% some are new users but you can’t be sure how many and there’s also some new users on the 70%.

If you take the number of visits at 2 different points in time, the difference between them might show the number of new users (but not entirely because some people might visit more often and there’s still new users even if traffic declines) but it’s still more accurate than assuming 30% of the traffic is new users because it comes from google.

Why?

Because of those 30%, there’s a portion (and not a small one) who has maybe 10 sites of the kind mentioned on the article bookmarked and who write the name of a song on google and then click on the first known site. Because it’s faster than going through all 10 and because the MAFIAA’s censure is failing terribly at even stopping such a low-level piracy attempt.

That portion will the cycle through all those 10 sources if (big if!) what you propose was ever going to happen. So of those 30% only a small portion of the traffic will disappear (the remainder will go to the 70%). The portion of new users on the 70% group would increase though since, again, there are other ways to find these sites and people would use these more as a way of discovery.

Also, in such a scenario, I wouldn’t be surprised the first page for a search “Nice sites to download music” would lead to a forum-post with a list and an answer to someone asking that question.

Of course a small minority would stop trying, just like a small minority is overwhelmed by how torrents work. But the decline (if any) would be so low that one has to wonder how “kill it off over the long run “ will really take.

Unless there is a handy woodcutter’s axe to throw at the nearest one, it is doubtful standing defiant alone will get you anything but bruises.

So sneaking is what you do, up to the point where you and the rest of the picked-on kids can dish out an object lesson in why pissing most of the school yard off is a bad, bad idea. Usually by beating the bully-boys into quivering jelly on a daily basis, burning their school books, and dropping their bikes in the ocean.

Which is what has, in some cases, happened.

You don’t get points for self-destructive courage. All that nets you would, in this case, be the *AA’s not believing their luck.

So sneak. Until you can change the game.

Honestly, bobmail, you’re a Whitman’s sampler on educational deficiency. A wonder to behold.

See, that’s not how it works. NONE of the initial filesharing tools had hefty advertising or required searches on what was, then, a rather primitive internet.

They were coded, released in the wild, and then just exploded. Because they were suddenly on every BBS and their relative merits debated by all and sundry.

Just as today there are thousands of forums, IRC channels, and twitter feeds where the crowd continually debates which filesharing client, which web adress, which cyberlocker and which VPN is the current best and brightest.

You appear to live – fully – in Anon’s little la-la land now, making assumptions about society for which history is already calling you a bold-faced liar.

And speaking of Anon, I almost miss the poor little sod. Almost. Because with the little gem below you’ve lost it to the point where it’d be mighty hard to tell any difference.

“Once you remove the source of fresh users (Google), user depletion will generally erode the traffic on a site over time,..”

I hope some raging lunatic has managed to sell that idea to the *IAA’s. I truly do.

Because that’s not how it works. Is Google going to de-list every facebook group, tweet feed, or forum where filesharing is discussed? I’d like to see an attempt made, actually. Because by then we truly DO have a very clean cut-and-dry case for SCOTUS.

See, information distribution on the internet can be summarized by the words ad-hoc networking. Google is as powerless as anyone else to prevent or hinder that. It becomes particularly laughable when you consider that anyone who even asks “where can i find this…” invariably has at least three suggestions on the url or ip addy of a filesharing site posted in minutes.

So what you claim is again flat-out that the tide will stop because you’ve found a bigger megaphone than King Canute had.