said by MaynardKrebs:But to scream at the top of one's lungs that trolls have no rights is also disingenuous. Content creators do have rights too, and it's important to remember this at all times in the action at hand.
I have been giving this much more thought, and I can see where Jason is going with this...
Content creators also had the rights to stop people from using their VHS (or Beta) machines to record movies from the TV. And to record songs off the radio. And to create their own mix tapes. And to format shift their songs onto tape or CD. And to share media with friends.
But that happened, and it happened a lot. Just like the modern-day equivalent does -- Canipre said they were tracking 1 million households out of the ~9 million that CRTC say had broadband last year, so at least 10% of us have been flagged by these guys as pirates.
The big difference I can see here is that it is potentially much easier for the content creators to track down the casual pirates who are still using BitTorrent (let's be honest, the serious pirates aren't going to be caught in this dragnet unless they're included ironically due to an error by Canipre or the ISP.. they've moved on just like they jumped ship from Napster, Kazaa, etc when they became risky) and sue them.
Is that morally right?
My initial objection to this whole mess was one of fairness: that whether you were guilty or innocent, as soon as you were identified you had to pay big $$, either the extortion demand or court costs. All they needed was a name and a mailing address and you were screwed.
Now I'm thinking that in our society personal copyright infringement has always been acceptable and part of fair use, and that it is wrong for us to allow technology to automatically bestow rights on the content creators that they didn't have before.
It makes you think... Well, it makes me think.