The MPAA, RIAA, and Big 4 (Sony, EMI, Warner, Universal) music cartel have declared open-season on all file-sharing. In a whirlwind of lawsuits, press releases, proposed legislation, and frothing at the mouth demands, the entertainment industry has attacked every single head of the file-sharing hydra. For starters, the Big 4 have just filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against P2P icon, The Pirate Bay. This brings the total pending legal actions against my favorite Swedish pirates to a whopping *four*, all of them multi-million dollar! As usual, The Pirate Bay has flipped everyone the bird and is continuing on with their business as usual. Methinks things will heat up for them in the near future, though.

Next, in the wake of the Comcast ISP Throttle-Gate, the MPAA has come down from the mountain and announced that ISP’s should begin filtering their customers’ internet connections, and looking for copyrighted materials. “Much of the Internet is being clogged up with stolen goods. Basically you have a bunch of free riders who are hogging the bandwidth (and taking) it away from legitimate consumers,” says Jim Williams, the MPAA’s chief technology officer and senior vice president. Riiiight. As a consummate file-sharer (Now, I didn’t tell you *what* I actually share), I can assure you that based on my $165/month cable bill, no one in *this* house is free-riding! Although the big ISP’s (notably Verizon) have generally opposed this measure due to the costs involved, several like Comcast have already begun experimenting with throttling designed to thwart or slow P2P file-sharing. And now, most recently, UK ISP Virgin Media looks set to cave in to the entertainment industry’s demands and actually begin to disconnect file-sharers!

First, let’s deal with a couple of misconceptions. Not all file-sharing involves copyrighted material. In fact, the majority of open source software is distributed via bittorrent, the most popular file-sharing protocol. So in asking ISP’s to inspect their customer’s internet traffic for “unauthorized” media, the entertainment industry has collectively positioned us at the very top of the proverbial slippery slope. Where does the inspection end? Who gets scrutinized? What constitutes unauthorized material? Folks, we are close to a tipping point…

So what’s a netizen who’s concerned about their privacy supposed to do? Well, if you’re a power file-sharer or just a casual web-surfer who doesn’t want someone else reading your email, there are some privacy services that have evolved to address the threat. You simply need to “rent a VPN“. Yes, it’s more money (up to $10 or $20 per month), but your entire internet connection is encrypted and tunneled right past your ISP’s prying eyes. I reviewed a bunch of these services a few months ago, and since then even more have sprung up. Check out Perfect-Privacy, Strong VPN, or VPN boy. Or just google for a VPN-for-hire. Just bear in mind that as our online privacy becomes more restricted, we will need to make a choice or one will be imposed upon us. Protect yourself before you wreck yourself.