The RIAA knew SOPA and PIPA were useless

It turns out that during illegal music sharing is all in all quite popular among the kids, most of the swapping takes place offline, not on. As the following chart shows, only about one out of six music files is exchanged via a P2P network, while near half are traded via a physical hard drive or ripping music purchased by others. Cyberlockers like MegaUpload contribute just 4 percent to that total.

The last 3,247 years

Author Dan Tynan has been writing about Internet privacy for the last 3,247 years. He wrote a book on the topic for O'Reilly Media and edited a series of articles on Net privacy for PC World that were finalists for a National Magazine Award. While his spare time he is part of the dynamic duo behind eSarcasm, the not-but-award-winning geek humor site he tends along with JR Raphael.