DEMOS

Reading a story about a further round of lawsuits from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, I was intrigued by the reference to what sits at the home of former file-sharing service Grokster.

Trotting over there, I found a stern reminder of the illegality of p2p content sharing - followed by a thoroughly sinister last couple of lines:

"YOUR IP ADDRESS IS xx.xx.xxx.xxx AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous."

It's a hilariously threatening spot of text, especially as those who have been caught and prosecuted are largely teenagers, their parents and the odd grandma.

Aside from the heavy hand of the IFPI, the Grokster text betrays a serious point about out online privacy. We don't know a great deal about how our habits online are seen or tracked, who tracks them, and for what ends. It's a really important question if we put it in the context of the behaviour, attitudes and relationships that technology facilitates; and how 'our' (state, private sector, individual) responses to technology in turn start to regulate, or change, what we can do online and ultimately our behaviour. It's one of the questions we are looking at in our FYI project.

I hardly think the scare-tactics from the Grokster site help, even if they are unintentionally very funny.  If you don't mind being logged, have a go.  Then you could go and check out Frostwire or Soulseek for some free (non-copyrighted...) music, then head over to the maverick techno-law agitators Electronic Frontier Foundation. There's a really interesting press release from them about online monitoring here - another example of how copyright and the culture industry is exemplary of where the monitoring of online behaviour can head.  It's a great area to keep watching...