Another step backwards

I officially hate capitalism. See, in a non-capatilist society musicians would see access to their art as a good thing. But in our wonderful society, musicians would rather have their music not heard then not get paid for it. Oh, actually, that's not entirely true. People who make money off other's artistic talent would rather have that music not heard if it isn't paid for in full. The buisness men of the ARIA and RIAA who do nothing other then whoring art for profit have once again paid out the courts for an entirely backwards decision. In a court decision that appeared in the news today, our wonderful Australian justice system ruled that Kazaa is illegal. They said that because the technology of Kazaa can be used for illegal activites, then the makers are responsible for the infringing actions. If this ruling was used a precedent, it would be possible to outlaw the following technologies in their current state:

• VCRs
• Cassete recorders
• DVD recorders
• CD/DVD burners
• TV and HD-TV tuner cards for PCs
• devices simular to TIVO
• Computers with soundcards/video capture cards
• FTP
• WebDAV
• IRC (everyone knows how evil IRC is...)
• Non-Goverment regulated web servers
• CIFS, NFS, DFS, SMB, AFP, etc.
• etc., etc., etc...

Meanwhile, all the Kazaa users migrate to eMule or Shareaza or some other client that will meet their needs while Kazaa, which was on the cutting edge of this stuff when it started, becomes impotent in the P2P technology development game due to a lacking userbase.
The courts have ordered Kazaa to modify it's software to include keyword filtering. However, who is going to make it's users upgrade to the new version? Whatever version they're at presently will probably remain as long as it can sustain itself, while it's new "Record Industry Friendly©®™" version will probably get downloaded by a handful of people who never realised that they could get copyright protected content off Kazaa.
I think most interesting in the music insdustries comments about the case is the constant excommunication of Kazaa from the "music industry". Quotes like "Kazaa is not and has
never been a legitimate player in the music industry"(Michael Speck) abound. Personally, I don't see the benefit of music as industry. I think Kazaa promoted music. Music was always meant to be shared. Creativity is nothing without inspiration, and inspiration comes from shared ideas. And yet, now it's illegal to share. I must remember to teach my kids that - sharing is illegal. Seseme Street has a lot to answer for.