Frist of all what on Earth has any of this got to do with what I said? Secondly it was you who brought up the subject of 'illegal' file sharing, not I. At the end of the day anyway, file sharing is a political issue, whether you like it that way or not. A lot of pressure for other countries to change their laws has come from the US, who in turn have been influenced by big business and big business dolnations to party political funds.
The last I looked anyway, file sharing was still a civil offense and not a criminal offense, so given this and given as I have said the kind of people I meet every day in my job who are real criminals, I think calling peeps who share files 'criminals' is well over the top.
@codemastr; you sound like someone with some kind of vested interest in all this. Normally my experience is folks like you are either developers, or shareholders, or involved with those industries that you evvisage are being affected by this practice. Am I right? Anyway I think we come from opposite ends of the scale. I have no vested interest in this subject, so by and large I'm a lot more ambigous. (Besides as I said I recognise it for its political standpoint - which means overall I don't necessarily feel enclined to agree).
The problem with illegal music downloads for example (which is also something I have never indulged in) is that untill very, very recently, the recording industry of America just hadn't cottoned on to how dramatically the world had chaged with the advent of the net and all of its implications for digital entertainment. Until now they have kicked, screamed spat and resisted every inch of the way, to try to prevent these changes from happening. (While to everyone else in the world (bar possibly a few right wing American zealots) they look positively like a dinosaur that belongs to the prehistoric ages). Rather than resist these changes, the RIAA, the MPAA (or who ever it is in the US who deals with movies) and pretty much everyone else, are going to have to find a way to embrace these changes, or be swept away in the process.
You may not like that idea, you may indeed feel a great deal of resistance to it, but as the amount of avaiable bandwidth to ordianary users increases (in the next 10 years the average line speed for DSL customers is expected to rise to 20MBS+) the demand for digital entertainment is only going to increase, not deminish. You are in effect fighting a loosing battle.
There is also a resistance among the generral public to the exorbatant prices that are being charged by many companies for their products. A good example for instance is the few c's it costs to produce an average music CD, and the typically thousands of percent in increase of price made before it is sold on to the general public. Ordinary people it seems are not so much the mugs that many people in big business have mistaken them to be.
I do not want to turn this into a political argument - beyond its already somewhat political nature (it was after all as I said just a simple suggestion) however I have noticed a desire among many right wing Americans to want to try their best to silience any dissent against their govenment, by being rude and telling people they have no right to comment. Well unfortunately (from their perspective perhaps) the majoity of us still live in a free world so it's pretty much up to us if we want to say whatever the hell we want. You can't/won't ever silence dissent no matter how much as you might want to, whether it comes from your home shores or not.
Anyway like I said whether you want to argue if its a good thing or not is irrelevant (if you're trying to argue from a moral standpoint that is) since effectively there is no difference between passing commands directly to MIRC, or just clicking a link in an MIRC window (so long as those links could be made to produce exactly the same commands). Foras long as it is already possible to download illegal content via MIRC, that particular agument is void.
So ok the technical objection is that it might cause n00bs to click on links they shouldn't, but there is also a setting in MIRC that says 'autoget file and minimise' (or words to that effect). Enabling this feature promts all kinds of dire warnings about the potential risks and concequences of doing so. An option for clickable links could carry similar dire warnings and disclaimers about the potential concequences of enabling this feature (providing it was even technically possible to do this - which isn't even clear yet. Indeed it would be quite funny if we we're actually arguing over nothing), so pretty much it should be up to the user and their own dumb fault if they screw something up.
Anyway as I said, although you appear to have missed it, I have no need for the vast majority of this so called illegal content, as a linux user all my software needs are met for free, I prefer to own music CDs (although I uttely resent the extortionate prices that the recording industry charges for them) and if I want a movie, I'd rather just go to my local video store and rent one (I'm not a big movie buff, so I would never buy). The bottom line is I just wouldn't have the patience to sit for endless hours downloding a low quality movie anyway, as by the time I got it, I would probably have lost interest in it.
There is of course lots of free content on Linux channels, and it would be nice to find a way to make accessing this much easier. (Yes I know there is a debate among the American right at the moment that say Linux is Anti-American because it's free. But I personally find such arguments hilarours, as to me they are just another example of how much the American right is out of touch with the realities of the world).
Well anyway, I'm sure I've said enough here to keep people fighting for quite some time. But bare in mind if you do, that no one's opinion on this is likely to change. So all in all it's a pretty pointless pursuit.
Whether this feature ever get's implimented or not (politics and vested interests aside) is I guess up to the developers. I've said my piece - and I don't see any point in arguing about it. Its a feature I would like to see. Others would not. What else is there to say?
Q
