First, let me be very clear that I have, in the past, downloaded music illegally.  I have also used pirated software in the past.  And while I can’t say that every song I have on my iPod is legal (simply because I can’t remember where I got some of them), I can say that I discontinued the use of pirated software a while ago.  So, moving on…

Don Tennant is an editor over at Computerworld, and he is also a blogger.  He recently posted a story that his son wrote while attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.  The story was about a group of pirates (software, music, and movie pirates – not the kind who says "ARGH") at his school who were very prolific in their pursuits and ended up getting caught and quite busted.  It is a great read, and it goes into a lot of good detail (Don, looks like your son got your writing talents). 

But as good as the story is, my point for this post is the comment that was made on the post.  Someone that didn’t post their name (people like this usually don’t) wrote a fairly lengthy comment.  Here’s the main excerpt that makes me cringe:

Sure what the students is doing is "illegal" but the fact of the matter is that there is nothing that they could ever do to completely stop this type of illegal activity.

Here’s my reply:

I worked for a company a few years back that built apartment complexes at major universities all over the country. We were also the ISP for the students that lived in our complexes. The network became a huge P2P site after a while (as well as a rampant malware playground). We received notices from the RIAA and others on a fairly regular basis about copyright violations coming from our IP space. It was nasty. We ended up putting in "application aware" security appliances and throttled down the traffic for everything but a few known apps. This worked even for traffic being tunneled over http, but anything https got through. Advances have been made since then, but it is still going on.

But this is not really a technology problem, is it? This is a moral and ethical problem that will never stop because people like Anon put quotes around the word "illegal".

That is really what this is about.  As long as people can justify in downloading music, movies, and software illegally, it is going to continue to happen.  This is not a problem that technology is going to solve.  The different industries have tried again and again, but to no avail.  It really comes down to people’s hearts. 

And having made that disclaimer above, I also want to say that I am not writing a "holier-than-thou" post.  I am simply writing this post to say that when you are breaking the law, no amount of quotes around the word "illegal" makes it OK.

Vet