Who's Winning The File Sharing Wars?

from the too-early-to-tell dept

Salon is running a very balanced article looking at who's really winning the file sharing war. While the recording industry is convinced that their combination of suing people and backing music download stores is a success - others disagree. There's mixed evidence as to whether or not people have dropped out of file sharing tools. Besides, when Napster was shut down, there were a lot fewer people sharing music, but as other systems came online, the numbers shot back up. It's likely that the next generation of music sharing systems (that will be more difficult for the RIAA to track down) are already on their way. At the same time, many of those promoting ways to bring back "the age of Napster" may be a little overly optimistic as well. The loudest voices are supporting some sort of blanket license plan - but some are warning that won't work well either. Either way, it doesn't look like this battle is going to get any less antagonistic in the near future, which is really too bad.

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