Should the movie industry leave P2P alone?

P2P has been around for as long as there have been modems and BBS's, but suddenly the movie industry is attacking these forums of file sharing because of the alleged prolifiration of pireted movies. I have done P2P and as a gag I searched for some movie titles on emule, edonkey and LimeWire and not once was I able to download an entire movie. So what is the movie industry attacking, the possibility that someone might get a song or movie?? P2P is needed and important because a lot of people use older hardware and the driver files and such are not readily available on the net and sometimes totally unavailable anywhere except through P2P. What do you think?

Should the movie industry leave P2P alone?
I don't think this is sudden or without merit. The movie industry has been trying to protect their product for many years, going back at least to the entrance of the Betamax onto the market. They need copyright protection to survive.





This isn't about greed. It's about preservation of the right to intellectual property and the rights of creative people to make a living off the product they provide. If people weren't trading movies and music on the internet then it would certainly lessen the effect. As it stands, it's too easy. There was a copy of the Incredible Hulk movie on the internet before it hit the theaters!





At some point the latest stuff cools off and it's perhaps reasonable to say a little trading on the internet isn't digging into sales. But when millions of people have ready internet access to the summer blockbusters, that's hurting the industry. They earned the right to charge money for that product.





If you have a DVD ripper and copy your friend's movie, that's one disc. You probably weren't going to buy it, anyway. But if you offer it up to the entire world to download, you're a free source competing with paid sources.
Reply:The rights of the big studio should be in balance with the consumer rights. They claim all right and send forceful warning to everyone they do not like.





Note that once they push too hard on the p2p networks the p2p networks will go underground into anonymous networks like freenet. Is that a wanted situation? these are the same networks that are used for transaction that cannot bear the light.
Reply:As a film Producer i do see it as a threat after the amount of hardwork and expense that goes in to making a movie, the worst thing is to be able to buy your film down the local pub while it is still on cinema release.I know of plenty of sites where you can download whole movies.
Reply:I have tons of songs/movies/videos from P2P programs. The movies I have download are complete and really good quality [dvd-rip]. To me is really not that important that the industry is fighting over this matter. but hey, I'm not the one "loosing money" over this. If they would have really have this programs gone, I think they would have done it a long time ago ;)