The RIAA is intent on killing P2P technology
Understandably the recording industry is targeting piracy online. They should. While we have some problems with their methods on using ex parte subpoenas, we understand their plight. Now, to focus attention on the P2P technology they are trying to stop, they are switching tactics. They have switched from talking about the horrors of music piracy and instead are now focusing on P2P being a hotbed of porn and especially child pornography.
In some ways, the claims are true. P2P has lots of porn, real and virtual. It also has child pornography. But when the child pornographers are stupid enough to use P2P to host their child pornography, they are easier to find than when they are using any other technology.
P2P is just like the Internet as a whole. There are good uses and bad uses, good places and bad places, good people and bad people. But to focus only on the bad uses of P2P we are missing an important fact -- P2P allows anyone to publish videos and large files to anyone who needs them. Our online safety videos will be hosted in P2P. So are Microsoft's marketing videos. No one fights child pornography harder than we do. It's how we started, and why I devote most of my time and all of my money to fighting cybercrimes against children.
But trying to throw the P2P baby out with the child pornography bathwater isn't the way to do it. Funding and training law enforcement to be able to put the child molesters and child pornographers in jail is the way to fight it.
I wish the RIAA would spend as much time on solutions as they are on PR. Then, everyone, especially the recording industry will be a winner.