h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Would anybody like to share their thoughts on the following article?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4758636.stm

I use BitTorrent to download a whole heap of podcasts and vidcasts perfectly legally. It makes good sense in so many ways - the load is spread out amongst people who share it with each other instead of the producer of the cast having to pay for massive bandwidth to continually provide downloads.

I also use it to download live shows from a BitTorrent community with strict rules about the content of what can and cannot be uploaded to their tracker. Nothing that's ever been officially released for instance, even old 78s that are most likely in the public domain by now. They take no chances with copyright in that respect.

So before we start debating whether or not file sharing is theft, we need some definitions and ground rules.

From the article: 'If copyright infringement was theft...' (Although previously it does say 'file sharing is not theft'.) From that line it appears that the problem was not saying any type of file sharing was theft or copyright infringement but saying that unauthorised file sharing of copyright material is theft when it is in fact not 'theft' but 'copyright infringement'. (However, I haven't seen the original broadcast.)

Discussing the same article: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/03/01/1619216.shtml

Home taping is killing music.

RF