AAs hit I2

The AAs are at it again. I'll limit this post to reporting this news and not to express any opinions on the debate. 405 students from 18 campuses - sad. Worse is, MPAA is also gearing up for similar action.

But, having recently graduated myself, I find it very sad that students have been targetted. I had a chance to look at I2Hub at one time - it looked like a neat piece of work. Based very much on the DC++ software, it provided very high speeds owing to the Interenet2 backbone.

More than for file transfer, it was an immense experience to be part of the online chat on I2. I2Hub connected students from hundreds of universities around the US and provided a unique platform for them to interact and share real-time.

In an ideal world, RIAA would actually look at P2P as competition and try to put them out of business. I think 99 cents per song is still a lot - and here we are still talking about 128Kbps mp3s. I could go online and download the same song with a higher sample quality and with the choice of live, acoustic, unplugged, remixed or regular. I still don't see reason to pay 99cents for a song or 20 bucks for a CD which has one good song. But I guess, this has been the debate for years.

My wishes are with the students...