Music Piracy

Remember back in the days when downloading music was a victimless crime? This has all changed because of the measures taken by the RIAA to curb music piracy; the downloader has become the victim.

It starts by listening to a song on the radio; you then come home and look for that song on Kazaa/Overnet/BitTorrent or whatever vice you use. After finishing that download you start the song and then 10-15 seconds later the music stops and that the digital scratching noise comes on and just drives you insane. Next you download a different file, thinking that the scratching might not be in this one, and just when you're not expecting it... that damn scratching starts again. It's getting ridiculous! Now when I get a song which has only got scratching for 10-15 seconds, I just give up and add it to my collection, which is totally unacceptable, but there's nothing I can do about it.

The RIAA is getting more and more devious every year. Before they just sued the company operating the file sharing program which would lead to their bankruptcy, but there was no fear: another company with a better program would pop up and takes the place of its predecessor. Next, the RIAA sent out cease and desist orders to individual users to set a precedent and discourage file sharing as a whole, but that only partly worked as people just shared fewer files. Now, they are distributing corrupt files on all the popular file sharing servers, and this is probably working beyond their expectations.

I have a solution to this problem. You have to realize that the corrupted files are being shared and this allows more users to get the bad files. How is this the case? It's a fact that boggles my mind. Do users download a file, listen to it, find out it's corrupt and then not do anything? I know I delete the file right when I find out it's corrupt since it's taking up valuable space and another users might mistake it for the actual file, which it is not. Who in their right mind would keep in on their computer? If all the users deleted corrupted files, they would not be kept in redistribution...

If this is implemented as described, it will help in our piracy (err, I mean sharing) of music. But we aren't the real criminals; it's the RIAA who are the criminal masterminds that are trying to deceive us innocent university students.

[Just a reminder to everyone - DON'T use your school account for music files; MFCF will suspend your account — KreasEd]

Sivji