Thomas Mennecke, publisher of Slyck, writes about the P2P industry in Pirate Bay Traffic Surges. I agree with his view of entertainment industry propaganda and the questionable success of RIAA activism. These are themes I cover here, as well at DiaRIAA.

I do take issue with his claim about a "growing escalation". There's been a fairly constant (and mostly ineffective) attack on P2P since the Napster days. I grant that the number of individual actions against P2P sites is higher. A few dozen tracker and torrent listing and search sites have been served, sued or closed, certainly more than just suing Fast Track, Streamcast, and Grokster.

The reason is the architecture of the Bit Torrent network. Bit Torrent splits the software client (such as the official Bit Torrent client) from the search, which is web server-based The search requires a torrent to be found (typically via a web site) and downloaded. Then the client connects to a tracker server to find other users currently sharing the file. The entertainment industry is working with the developer of the official Bit Torrent client. Therefore any effort to combat unauthorized downloads and sharing must go after the tracker and torrent listing and search servers.

Unlike the decentralized P2P networks where there are one or a few software developers that claim the bulk of users, there are hundreds of Bit Torrent web sites and thousands of servers. It's not like suing just Sharman and Grokster to shut down Fast Track. So RIAA & IFPI act against many more sites in the Bit Torrent world. That's not due to escalation. That's just the ante to attempt to make a similar impact over the Bit Torrent network.

The irony is that while more sites are being attacked, the actions are far less effective, due to the diversity of such sites and the ease of simply moving the site to different domains, or servers such as in the case of The Pirate Bay.

Indeed, if penetration of a network is the gauge of the RIAA & MPAA wars, the war is declining, not escalating. Follow the trend below, roughly chronological. Penetration estimates may vary. Share your own numbers if you have better ones.

1. RIAA just needed to sue one company, Napster, to kill that service. Penetration 100%.

2. Fast Track had two heavies, Sharman (Kazaa) and Grokster. Penetration 95% of Fast Track users.

3. Gnutella network. About 5-10 companies have been sued or received cease & desist (C&D) letters, including Streamcast (Morpheus). Penetration 75%.

4. eDonkey. Metamachine (eDonkey) got its letter. Penetration 50%. I've been told emule has more downloads.

5. Bit Torrent. Say 25 companies have been attacked. Penetration 0%. Bit Torrent users simply went to other sites.