The lawsuit parade marches on, this time kissing college students on Internet2. The numbers on this next generation network are astounding in this excerpt from the article.

[T]there were 7,070 users connected to i2hub sharing 99.2T bytes of files, according to the MPAA. "Ninety-nine terabytes is enough storage space to hold all the movies that are available in a local Blockbuster store," ... said Dan Glickman, the MPAA's president and chief executive.

Hollywood may be winning individual lawsuits, but the effect on curbing consumer P2P use is marginal at best. In an entertainment industry best case scenario, the Supreme Court will send the case back to a lower court where Grokster & Streamcast will lose the suit. It will be at least 2-3 years before they're effectively put out of business.

Meanwhile technology is marching far ahead. Look at what's happening TODAY.

• The primary entertainment argument at the Supreme Court hearing was the profiteering by P2P makers at the industry's alleged expense. That works for a few high profile developers. But that whole cause of action fails when developers offer the software totally free, such as bit torrent and open source clients.
• Much P2P software is developed outside the US where it can't be touched.
• Mobile technology and other are now increasingly being used to obtain copyrighted content. Consumers now use portable players and IM, just as much as P2P, to share files.
• Technologies that allows P2P users to stay anonymous are now being developed..
• Internet2 is in development, which will make it just as easy to share movies as songs are now shared.

Fighting, and not accommodating P2P, is simply not a viable long-term business strategy.

Marc Freedman
RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles, the leading multiple network P2P file sharing software
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