Comment Hoping their go-to mantra holds out (Score 4, Insightful) 723
As I understand it, TPB has long held that the website does not contain any copyrighted material, and that they don't distribute any copyrighted material. I guess what I'm getting is that the prosecution is trying to prove that pointing out the location of copyrighted material is a crime.
Given that corporate greed is a constant, (as evidenced by the US banks, who hoarde bailout money and spend it on sports stadium naming rights in the face of imminent economic collapse) I see this snowballing to the point where companies that manufacture software, like BitTorrent and Azureus will soon come under fire. They tried this with the gun industry, and have had mixed results for years. I think it's rediculous that you should be held accountable for someone potentially doing something illegal with the software you designed in good faith, and under the allowance of current law. It's an erosion of rights thorugh corporate lobbying that leads to this sort of behavior. As others have stated, artists won't see any extra income if bittorrent traffic in its entirety (not at stake in this trial, I know) comes to a halt. In fact,there is a good chance, I think, that the media companies pushing this witch hunt will find that even if they were somehow successful in completely ceasing all P2P trading of their content, they would not see any increase in revenue. To the contrary, the large population of people that hear about an artist via the medium will no longer have access to this method, and the proliferation of new music will slow down considerably, fueled only by expensive promoting methods. If the media companies want their 1970's revenues back, so be it. But I think they're also looking at 1970's revenue minus the adjustment for inflation.