RIAA to halt lawsuits over file-sharing!!!
 

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/31678

Still doesn't mean they won't they to thwart you in other ways.

I don't see them ever fighting anything but a losing battle.

But that's just me.

Yeah, I know it's not the last straw, but at least I won't have to worry about a massive lawsuit coming in the mail. This will make me resume downloading some.

They are going to come up with something, just watch.

their new strategy isn't going to work either

it's like trying to stop drug trafficking
it's not going to happen

if bit torrent gets killed
the next thing is going to be private forums with zip files with yousendit/rapidshare/sendspace.

The only reason I can see for them to be doing this is economics. They had to have been spending more on legal fees than they were making in settlements and actual court cases. Doesn't seem too unlikely as people were starting to get less scared of them and refusing to settle and even counter suing.

So now they are "cozying up" to the ISPs which is certainly a craftier strategy that doesn't have to cost them much at all. Comcast is already looking for any excuse they can come up with to do away with flat rate unlimited data movement. They'd be all too happy to collude with the recording and movie industries to put anything you download on your bill.

torrents actually offer a lot of legitimate and legal distribution methods for areas such as releasing linux distros and whatnot.

bittorrent itself wouldn't get shut down because it's the users that upload the illegal material. Same way as kazaa never got shut down because users were downloading off each other, whereas with napster it was an open index from their host.

the next step is the riaa partnering with dhs to search + copy your flash drive while you wait for a plane...

They can suck the soulseek bird's big blue dick.