IFPI: File Sharing Is Bad but You Can Still Use It...

Recently, IFPI, an organization that fights for copyrights and struggles to stop illegal file sharing, announced that it had started a campaign supposed to help teachers, kids and parents reduce this phenomenon. At that time, the copyright organization said it would distribute numerous booklets to kids, explaining the risks of using dangerous file sharing applications. Having a look at this booklet reveals a few unexpected details which, unfortunately for the IFPI, do nothing more than to encourage to use file sharing applications...

First of all, let's have a look at some scraps in the booklet (PDF file). "One of the risks with P2P is that children may come across unwelcome content such as viruses, pornographic or violent images. Some files are purposely misnamed to trick people into downloading them. Because of the way P2P services work, filtering tools that can block offensive content like porn or violent images and video on websites are not effective in blocking the same content when made available through P2P. This leaves children at risk," it says. And this is 100 percent true. There are many P2P applications that provide access to all kinds of files with attractive names just to trick people into downloading them. However...

"Millions of people buy songs online at one of the hundreds of download sites on the Internet. A library of over six million tracks is available – over four times the size of the biggest megastore. Once bought, tracks can be ‘burned’ onto a CD, transferred onto portable music players like the iPod or onto a mobile phone. Go to www.pro-music.org/musiconline.htm for a list of legal stores."

OK, so if we want to buy music, we have to check that particular website in order to find legal stores. Well, I've done so but, unfortunately, no stores based in Romania (plus many other countries) could be found on the list. So, what can I do? Not much, I would say. However, here's a more interesting case reported by Ernesto of TorrentFreak.

Since he's based in the Netherlands, he decided to test the music stores included on the list that presumably sell legal music. "To my surprise, the first 4 sites on the list were all gone, some had quit, and others redirected to websites that didn’t sell any music. Even worse, commodore.nl -the first site on the list- served ads for a scam site that sells filesharing software," he wrote.

Finally, after searching a little bit, Ernesto managed to find a website that really worked and claimed it was selling legal songs. However, the songs published on the websites could not be bought, he explains. "Instead, I was advised to download LimeWire, Shareaza and Kazaa Lite."

So, IFPI asks users to abandon file sharing and, in order to do that, it provides a series of alternatives which would help consumers remain on the safe side. Only that these alternatives brought people to same old file-sharing solution... It seems like IFPI is simply back to square one...

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