The exec producer of a BBC show that ran a short segment on BitTorrent where file-sharing was equated with theft has apologized:
First though, an apology. File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong and has unthinkingly absorbed too many Recording Industry Association of America press releases. We know that script line was wrong. It was a mistake. We’re very, very sorry.
If copyright infringement was theft then I’d be in jail every time I accidentally used football pix on Newsnight without putting “Pictures from Sky Sport” in the top left corner of the screen. And I’m not. So it isn’t. So you can stop telling us if you like. We hear you.
He goes on to talk about how spooks use the fear of paedophiles to argue against widespread use of privacy technologies like crypto that make it harder to snoop on our private conversations — all in all, a refreshing, honest, and thoroughgoing treatment of the subject.
I wish, though, that he’d been a little more skeptical of the claims by cops that they need to be able to wiretap anyone and technologies that keep our conversations secret are bad for society. I’m pretty sure that no one’s made a spook-friendly crypto that can keep the mafia out, for starters: if we can’t keep secrets from cops, we can’t keep them secret from crooks anyway. And crooks, being crooks, will go on using unbreakable crypto to hide their conversations even if it’s illegal, so restrictions on privacy technologies only hurt non-crooks.
(via Digg)