The bill of rights protects our freedom and guards our rights to say, write, and ultimately share whatever we want without government interference and censorship. Censorship is the most dangerous action that a government can impose on a free population. In the aftermath of Napster, the recording industry has pushed the government to pass legislation that would inhibit our freedoms. No government should be allowed to tell their populations that they cannot say show or listen to whatever they want. It is a person's own right to decide for himself or herself what they will or will not listen to, say, writes, or sees.
Participants in peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs such as Kazaa or Freenet are staunch defenders of freedom of speech. P2P networks work by the use of software to allow end users (you and me) to be able to access and download other users shared files. Shared files are the files that an individual user has chosen to share with other users on a network. Kazaa is the most numerous of these programs with over ten million members in the U.S. and over four hundred thousand downloads every day. Freenet is the newest of the P2P programs with advanced encryption and anonymity capabilities. Freenet was designed with free speech not free entertainment in mind. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has blamed file sharing for plummeting sales numbers. The RIAA took down Napster and has been instrumental in convincing the government to pass new copyright laws. The RIAA has had to resort to using legislation to take down P2P networks because they, unlike Napster do not use a central server, but are spread out amongst all users on the network. This form of organization makes it almost impossible for someone to shut down a P2P network with lawsuits against a single company.
The First amendment ensures our freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The legislation that the RIAA has been trying to pass goes against that freedom.
