If you caught Monday's edition of the New York Times and turned to page C7, you'll find an interesting, and interestingly small piece on a piece of software being developed by Audible Magic, which will reportedly be able to track copryrighted materials being swapped over P2P networks, and even stop the swap altogether.
Apparently this technology is being pitched at Capitol Hill. Its potential raises a few questions in my mind:
1. The law should continue to follow the principle of neutrality; mandating a specific technology in an industry is almost certainly a recipe for freezing it in time when the rest of the world moves forward.
2. If this were made a standard feature in P2P networks, what will keep it from becoming a monopoly like the DVD CCA (which I think is what they call a "natural monopoly")? And would one such monopoly be legal if created by law? Or would the necessities of file-sharing require this software to be made open-source?
3. Arguing for Joe Citizen, I think that this would be the next step beyond ex-parte seizures. A lot of work will have to be done to pair this technology with Due Process if it were to be used to stop the sharing of files, even if it were known that they contain copyrighted material. It could be something like the "automatization of justice".