What should scare them is that they are fighting an exponential. In their daily lives these people have become accustomed to constants that pretty much remain the same throughout their lifetimes, but computing by its very nature is exponential. As people follow Moore's law religiously and the price of computing drops so does, proportionally, the price of digital distribution.
It's this sudden increase of processing power that allows millions of computers to run protocols like BitTorrent. That creates the infrastructure to run them in the first place. Although now they appear to be hardly computationally expensive, but even 20 years ago in 1991, would this have been possible?
Their problem is that this exponential nature of computing has vanished the floor on the price of distribution. Since, they're fighting an exponential this means that iteration also becomes far more easier. It's just a question of just a few more processor cycles.
The real world systems they're using to clamp down are fairly constant. Politicians and the art of law making hasn't really changed over the past 80 years or so. So, by the time it takes them to iterate and be ready for the next wave. It's successor would have knocked them off their feet.
So, in one corner you have a constant system. In the other you have an exponential. Who do you think wins?
That aside as Fuller would say, "don't fight forces. Use them."
note: as donaldc points out it really is more of a result of hard drive growth & bandwidth than pure processing power.
It's this sudden increase of processing power that allows millions of computers to run protocols like BitTorrent. That creates the infrastructure to run them in the first place. Although now they appear to be hardly computationally expensive, but even 20 years ago in 1991, would this have been possible?
Their problem is that this exponential nature of computing has vanished the floor on the price of distribution. Since, they're fighting an exponential this means that iteration also becomes far more easier. It's just a question of just a few more processor cycles.
The real world systems they're using to clamp down are fairly constant. Politicians and the art of law making hasn't really changed over the past 80 years or so. So, by the time it takes them to iterate and be ready for the next wave. It's successor would have knocked them off their feet.
So, in one corner you have a constant system. In the other you have an exponential. Who do you think wins?
That aside as Fuller would say, "don't fight forces. Use them."
note: as donaldc points out it really is more of a result of hard drive growth & bandwidth than pure processing power.