very interesting take on major media efforts to stop new technology

this post, by this guy who is a net security researcher, and all round troublemaker (i think likely in the mother jones good guy tradition of being a trouble maker) posted this very interesting analysis of major media companies efforts to block "piracy". check it out.

if you lazy, and just want the meaty bits, here they are:

"By going after people for sharing movies and music online, the major media companies have essentially created a huge market for anonymous (or close to anonymous) technologies. Technologies such as Tor, Freenet, Gnutella, and Skype arguably wouldn't exist as they do today if the Media companies didn't go after 'pirates' with such vigor. And with the influx of millions of new users, these programs have become better - either through more financial support/advertising, or through new developers/open source coders who are finding bugs and adding features."

and

"What is the moral to this story? The record companies have made an entire generation of college students into criminals, and as such, those college kids have resorted to technical means of avoiding detection - which create a gigantic crowd of encrypted and obfuscated data in which 'real' criminals can hide. These evasion methods are the very same techniques which can frustrate legitimate and useful law enforcement, which as an unintended side-effect, suffer. The ability to catch genuine terrorists and child pornographers is significantly limited through the short sighted actions of the major media companies."