Paul Boutin slams P2P file-sharing in a great caffeinated rant. The real threat/opportunity for exchanging huge volumes of MP3s is old-fashioned sneakernet, assisted by newfangled toys like iPods and CD burners.
Cheapskate yuppies like me have already taken piracy to the next level. In the past, a stack of 20-cent CDs let me copy my friends' favorite albums in 10 minutes. Now, for $499, I can dump their entire collections onto an iPod in an hour.
iPod is marketed as an MP3 player, but under the stylish skin it's nothing more than spinning media. It's a 20-gig disk drive with a firewire connection that can suck down an album's worth of music in less than 15 seconds – with room for 400 more. The interface puts P2P freeware to shame, and it even talks to PCs. With an iPod in my pocket, I don't bother asking for CD recommendations anymore. I drag and drop my friends' entire jukeboxes. Rip 'em now, decide what to play later.
Ironically, Wired published Paul's editorial one year after laying him off from the magazine's editorial staff.
(Thanks, Paul!)
