The electronics field has always lionized tinkerers - those with the engineering skills to augment equipment. They're the Roger Wilco version of all the gearheads who rebored stock engines into something badass. All this hacking and file-sharing and end-run tech shit has less to do with 1st Amendment rights than with the intrinsic drive of whizbangers to cobble something elegant, to get over, to beat the system. It's endemic to engineering and it's an important part of the arc of invention. The civil liberties talk is mostly just second-hand smoke.

Once, I helped a friend of mine move in to a new apartment. On the bathroom mirror he pointed out a sticker the previous tenant had left behind: "Sloppy thinking gets worse over time."

We found it kind of funny that someone would want to remind themselves of that fact every morning, but as time went on I could see why.

Saying "file sharing is a code word for piracy" is like saying "adult literature is a code word for pornography". There's a nugget of truth there, but it's not the whole truth. It's sloppy thinking, and over time, it erodes important distinctions, like the fact that there is adult literature that isn't simply pornography.

File sharing and piracy aren't interchangeable -- they just overlap. Saying otherwise is sloppy thinking, and it leads to errors down the road.

"File sharing" is in fact a code word for "piracy." People only want to share things that are of value to them, and 99% of things that have value to people cost money. If all you could find on Gnutella was shareware and Grateful Dead bootlegs, nobody would use it; the whole point of "file sharing" is getting something valuable for nothing -- without anyone being able to catch you at it.

This whole P2P thing has been quite a disillusionment for me, and that's quite a trick considering how cynical I was to begin with, but I nevertheless clung to a belief that most people are basically honest. No more, sadly.

That's not to say that the secondary effects of file sharing might not be beneficial (i.e., perhaps people who download MP3s really do buy more CDs), but the decision of whether to allow this sort of sharing is, by law, entirely up to the copyright holder.

The point isn't just spin. After all, sharing isn't always good -- needle-sharing, anyone? You can argue rationally about whether sharing files is a good thing or a bad thing, the same way you can argue rationally about whether sharing needles is a good or bad thing. You can set limits on sharing. But you *can't* do the same with piracy. Piracy, by definition, is illegal. You can't just have a little piracy. You can't support a Right to Piracy.

It's important to use the words that mean exactly what we want to say. The RIAA is using their words to shape the debate, and if you think that ALL file sharing is piracy, they've succeeded in their manipulation of you.

File sharing is a neutral, fair term that describes the practice. Piracy isn't. It's that simple.

Yes. Let's not be labelled thieves by redefining 'theft' as 'sharing', shall we? That's so much nicer.

It's unfortunate that the anonymous hacker chose to use the word "piracy", as that's the RIAA's word for what we reg'lar folks call "file sharing". "Piracy" is a loaded word -- it's illegal by definition. "File sharing" at least puts the practice on neutral ground.

Nicely done hack, other than that.