U2girl said:
You think there is no way for ISPs to know what internet cafe users are looking at/downlading ?
Of course there is. What I'm saying is that people will use cafes to download music without risking their own internet connection.
I've never been to a cafe, so I don't know what's required of you before you can use a PC there. If they require a photo ID, then I can see them possibly being able to associate a downloaded file to a specific user, but if you can just go in, plop down cash and hop on a machine, they'll have no idea who's downloading what.
Even still, there are countless ways to hide your real IP address online. Then there's always the people who poach other people's wireless signals, and even their
non-wireless signals.
The record industry has been suing people for around 8 years now, and even with all the courts on their side, the law on their side, all the tech people they can afford at their disposal, and courts willing to bend laws into pretzels to help them, they still haven't made a dent in file sharing. There are still millions and millions of people online sharing music.
These lawsuits aren't putting a dime of extra money in the pockets of the artists (the RIAA uses the money won in suits to fund the next round of suits), and they aren't slowing down the file sharing. They are however starting to cause some popular artists to look for ways to sell their music without involving the record companies (which is a good thing) and they're creating a quickly growing market for independent artists (another good thing).
At the rate things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years down the road, most artists sold their own music without involving the record companies at all. Between now and then though, it's going to be a really rough ride, because the laws on how you listen to the music you pay for are going to get increasingly tight.