Red Herring Trend #2 - IP
General IP Issues
11/1/2000; 1:00:11 PM

'In the year 2001 the debate over intellectual property and what constitutes fair use will intensify. Copyright owners on many levels -- from artists to multinational corporations -- will continue to aggressively protect their intellectual property by suing pirates, while consumers will find swapping illegal files so easy as to be irresistible.

'The programmers creating these file-swapping programs have no qualms about what they're unleashing. British programmer Ian Clarke deliberately designed his file-swapping program FreeNet to attack the whole notion of defensible intellectual property. FreeNet offers complete anonymity for its users, has no centralized control, and no way even to determine where files are being stored in the system (see chart Music To Your Ears).'