This was really just the last straw:
The Supreme Court ruling is set to have a devastating effect on P2P networks. Though hobbyists may continue to write file-sharing software away from American jurisdiction, reputable investors are likely to steer clear of any commercial P2P operations for fear of legal repercussions there. The legitimate uses for P2P technology will suffer a severe setback and developers of any future technologies will have to consider possible illegitimate applications before unveiling innovative software or gadgets.
Those "hobbyists" are the ones who actually do most of the work of software authoring, whether for pay at their day jobs, or as contributors to Open Sauce Projects. To be honest I'm glad that corporations can no longer participate in the grubby business of bundling spyware into half-assed P2P apps. As critical as I can be of Open Sauce, when it comes to the eyepatch-jockey stuff, there's really no beating them. If you want the bleeding edge stuff, you're doing to find it in eMule and Azureus, not from Microsoft.
One of ISOHunt's taglines pithily sums up the reality of the situation: "Where did half the internet's bandwidth go?"
If people are moving to using crippleware services, that's up to them, but the overwhelming majority (let me say that again: overwhelming majority) of what is going on is still going on far beyond the ken of geriatrics. People who say otherwise are just plain lying and spreading FUD - or worse, don't even know they're lying.
There are times when you might think the Economist is simply trying its best to steer a moderate course through extremity; but sometimes they are just cluelessly, and comically, out of touch. And they had to annoy me with that fucking hair.
One word, 3 letters: Arr.
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