Ah yes. Our good friend Rockford again with yet another gripe about the power-mad and stupid staff. I said this a couple weeks ago and I’ll say it again. You need a new fucking hobby; this one’s gonna give you an ulcer. When was the last time you had something constructive to say here? When was the last time you made a substantive contribution to these boards? When was the last time you posted something that wasn’t critical of the staff? Really man, if the environment here is that bad, wouldn’t you be happier seeking greener pastures? Or is your perverse desire to be persecuted so overwhelming that you have to stay here and engage your fancy by creating it?
Not arguing with the policy, but do you have a cite for this? Sounds a little to me like one of those “oh yeah, everybody knows that” kind of common knowledge tidbits that we’re so fond of debunking around here. SDMB has fostered those red flags that go up in my mind whenever somebody pulls a “but mostly” out of the air like that.
TBH, I don’t think there will be a cite, because gathering data on that sort of thing would be remarkably difficult, and is only likely to be done by the sort of people who would rather just shut down whatever repository they’re looking at than study it. Anecdotally, however, I have absolutely no doubt that it is true; of filesharing utilities which I have participated on, I would estimate that upwards of 95% of the shared content is copyrighted. Most hub descriptions are of the “WAREZ/APPZ/MOVIEZ” type, and those cruddy disclaimers along “no-one is allowed to download anything from here, ever” lines just don’t wash. Sure, intellectually it’s a little bit uncomfortable just going along with an “everybody knows” statement, but I think this is as safe as they come.
While it’s perfectly possible to use filesharing for evil-free reasons, think about the actual practicalities of it. Let’s say you want to distribute something you have made, be it music/whatever; filesharing is nigh on useless, as it has no mechanism for direct linking; you rely on someone stumbling on your content by luck. As filesharing is search oriented, inevitably the searches are going to be for popular content, and that means stolen content except in rare cases. An up-and-coming musician gets nothing out of filesharing; (s)he needs a website and promotion. Filesharing simply isn’t much use for anything but swapping popular stuff.
So, yeah, I completely agree with Lynn; not only are filesharing programs mostly used for nicking copyright material, that’s also the task to which they are most suited. While part of me’s irritated that certain people like the RIAA want to stop me doing certain things on my PC, I have to be honest - what else would I go looking for on Kazaa if not copyrighted material? Buggered if I know.
It’s easy enough to see what’s being shared out there and how popular any given item is. Just look at the number of results you get back from a search.
The reality: It’s not unsigned indy recording artists spreading their own wares around for self-promotion. It’s top-20 singles.