Oink File-Sharing Case Illustrates Cultural Paradigm Shift

As for manufacturers of crowbars and alcohol producers, well, crowbars (like knives) are overwhelmingly used for legal activities with a tiny minority using them for dodgy activities.

But there are anecdotal evidence that P2P is used mostly (though not entirely) for illicit activities. Last April, when Sweden introduced a law allowing copyright holders to gain details of file sharers swiftly, internet traffic in the country to drop by a third mostly due to a massive decrease in P2P consumption.

As for alcohol, well, there's a heavy tax already on alcohol which, in the UK alone was expected to bring £13 billion in VAT and duty.

So back to Oink which some have compared to Google and other search engines. Well, again, Oink Pink Palace was put in place almost exclusively to share high-quality sound tracks and nothing else. 

Google and other search engines and media repositories - including the infamous Megaupload and Rapidshare - have simple and effective processes and mechanisms that allow content owners to remove illegal content even if this is a tedious procedure.

Music, so many of us have forgotten, is a service that needs to be paid for either through advertising (radios) or otherwise. Producing content is not free or exceptionally cheap except when it is generated randomly by computers.

Ultimately though, if labels decide to call it a day because music is no longer considered to be making enough profit, the whole industry will suffer, and that includes the music lovers, the artists and everybody else.

An industry, where the overwhelming majority of its customers think that getting its products for zilch, cannot possibly survive for long.