This is an article by Tom over at Slycks and seems worth a read
http://www.slyck.com/story1642_P2P_Downloads_Crush_iTunesDigital_Sales_201Suing file-sharers has accomplished little more than foster the abandonment of the FastTrack (Kazaa) network
And as far as flooding networks with corrupted files goes, one only need to peruse MediaDefender’s leaked emails to see how well that’s going. With all attempts failing, the last line of defense against the growing surge of file-sharing rests with the ISP.
Here are the staggering odds they face:
1) P2P downloads outweigh “legitimate” downloads 20:1.
2) iTunes has sold about 3.5-4 billion songs since 2003, while P2P networks trade over 1 billion music files per month (not including BitTorrent, Usenet, etc).
3) The public has expressed its vehement disdain toward ISP filtering. The file-sharing community will see this as an act of war.
4) The technological arms race is heavily in favor of P2P. It has a massive resource of talented, motivated, and angry programmers working to defeat anything thrown at their beloved networks.
5) The ISP is the last line of defense against file-sharing. If they fail, there’s nothing left to stop the spread of file-sharing. Laws won’t deter the lawless.
The article goes on to explain why the recording industry are hedging all their bets on forcing ISP companies to do their dirty work, something that will of course cost them dearly should they decide to act as the online private police force.
We have seen how indescriminate they are in throttling P2P applications, what right do they have to decide that the major 4 music companies can distribute music online and anyone else will be throttled, this is big business looking to do a back door deal with another big business, lets hope ISP's dont ask us to pay them for their stupidity and mistakes when customers take their business elsewhere, and rest assured they will, no one likes big brother watching over their online activity
