In an attempt to rein in filesharing, the US sentate has introduced a bill to bring heavy penalties, including upto 10 year jail sentances. In an attempt to stifle p2p, they plan also to impose penalties on devices that enable filesharing. This could include devices like ipod.

Wired reports

Technologists and copyright activists were most alarmed by the Induce Act, backed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who in the past five years has received $158,000 in campaign contributions from the television, movie and music industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Critics say the bills would make computer and electronic companies think twice before introducing any device that could conceivably distribute copyright works. Even existing devices and software — like iPods and FTP servers — could run afoul of the law.

“The reality of this is that you’re going to have a world where Hollywood controls technology,” said Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “If you don’t get Hollywood’s approval, no one will fund your project out of fear of the lawsuits.”

At a very fundamental level, the legislators have lost it. Unless you monitor every computer, every electronic device – including the mobile – you are not going to get rid of file sharing. If you introduce that level of monitoring, then there are major privacy infringement concerns. Placing a blanket ban on the development of technology – harks back to the dark ages.

The really serious file sharers seem to be in Europe – Germans, Russians, The Brits, The Dutch , Spainish. There seems to be a growing trend in Asia with Koreans and Taiwanese being fairly active. Most of the stuff on these sites are verified links that let you download films, music, anime, porn, comics, books, programmes, and games. Most of these sites are built around fairly tight knit communities. Extremely active social groups. These are the guys who rip, verify and upload hole chunks of matter.

The way most P2P works today is files shared on 1000’s of hard disks across the world. Each file has an identifier. You click on it and your P2P client starts simultaneously downloading it from other machines sitting in other parts of the world.

How does the US plan to prosecute someone sitting in Australia who downloads a German film – whose rights lie with a US studio – from hundreds of different hard disks across the world? How is the piracy going to stop

Remember the stupid foreign currency and taxation regulations most nations had a few decades ago. Well, the way people used to subvert it was a numbered account in Switzerland or Cayman islands. These nations offered extremely secretive banking arrangements.

Soon, we probably would have a whole bunch of P2Pers’ booking ‘numbered ‘space on servers in similar countries – where cyber privacy is maintained