Haha!!! What did they expect???? For us to give up? Hell no!!!

Anyway, the RIAA lacks a Carrie Nation (or someone more charismatic) to spearhead a more effective anti-P2P movement.

“Congress should move on to the task of remaking the copyright system in order to make sense of digital technologies, not fight them. It should at a minimum completely deregulate amateur remixing, as well as establish a collective license to compensate artists for peer-topeer file sharing.

“And while it is at it, Congress should also radically increase the efficiency of the current copyright regime by requiring rights holders to at least help keep clear the records of who owns what. These changes would help us build a system in which artists actually get paid, rather than one that simply renders our kids criminals.””

And who will have the money to bribe… sorry, I meant “lobby” the politicians to make these changes?

I was lambasted back in 96-99 by the underground community by voicing my opinion about the need to obtsuficatie our dealings, and pointing out the imperative of adopting encryption in our file sharing. This pretty much fell on deaf ears. Primarily due to the fact that the platform of choice was obscure enough to go unnoticed, and secondly, there was not a readily available process that would facilitate such an implementation. During this same time, while working my deeper and deeper underground, I found out that something similiar to this was already being utilized. A protocol known as FirstClass was being used by a substantial amount of the underground. It was very difficult to use, robust, and offered an option for encrypted packet transfers. Needless to say, I migrated to this platform in early 2001, begrudgingly accepted by my membership, all for the primary sake of anonymity. A substantial portion of the underground still uses this platform of choice, however, I found it highly counter-productive from the primary goal, socialization and file sharing.

I have noticed that since 2001, just about every single file sharing software application that relies on client/server interaction has a system of encryption built in. Necessity is the mother of invention, and it is plainly obvious to me that pressure from the assholes that are anti-file-sharing, regardless of their affiliation, software, books, music, movies, they have all introduced the necessity of encryption in order to obscure their proclivity of enforcing their will upon us.

For me, it began as ‘kewl’, being able to assess different types of software in order to make an educated decision on what to use moving forward, regardless for professional reasons, or for file sharing reasons. Initially I didn’t host a server, and I was more interested in the social side of the file sharing community and not so much the files themselves. Files can be replaced, people are unique, and cannot. Also, there were significant impediments to sharing large amounts of data, broadband did not exist, nor did Gb size harddrives. As my file sharing evolved, I met a significant amount of incredible people from around the globe. I played chess with a friend in India, I spoke with a friend in Japan for research into a college project, I found out how hot the summers are in Australia, on and on and on. To me it was a cultural explosion. When the fascist mainstream media played down the riots in France, I had a friend that lived on a street in France where the cars were burning that told a different story. When the fireworks plant in Holland exploded because the company ignored safety regulations, it wasn’t even on the news in the USA. The grounded Russian submarine that had Nuclear missiles on board, that the media SWORE didn’t have any, well a friend in Poland cleared that right up.

After a while, I opened my own server, in order to help those that were like my before, without contacts. My ideology was based on a particular tale: Adobe Photoshop was around 600USD in 2001, and I knew many budding artists that had incredible talent, but unable to access this high priced software package. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I was idealistic, and facilitated getting that artist a copy of Photoshop so that he could learn how to use it, and once out of college, he could apply this skill to earn a living, and offer his art to the world. It cascaded from there…

My point is Michaelangelo and Van Gogh were adversaries in the art world, they competed vigorously in Italy for work. If you look closely, you will find a substantial amount of similarities in their works. Imagine the world if Michaelangelo could have copyrighted the vision of an angel, refusing to allow any other artist to sculpt anything similar. There would be alot less angels in the world today.

The MAFIAA is destined to follow the results of prohibition, there is no question.

Just for a second, I was worried about more disturbing images…
:S