The content lobby's narrative about the Internet's impact on the creative industry has grown all too familiar. According to this tiresome story, Hollywood is doing everything it can to prevent unauthorized downloading, but people—enabled by peer-to-peer technologies, “rogue” websites, search engines, or whatever the bogeyman of the moment is—keep doing it anyway. As a result, say groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), creators are deprived of their hard-earned and well-deserved profits and have little incentive to keep creating.

There's a lot that's wrong with this story (like the assumption that most copyright royalties actual end up in the pockets of the artists). But one of the most pernicious aspects is the idea that Hollywood is actually making a sincere effort to meet user demand.  

The "Copyright Alert System" – an elaborate combination of surveillance, warnings, punishments, and "education" directed at customers of most major U.S. Internet service providers – is poised to launch in the next few weeks, as has been widely reported. The problems with it are legion.  Big media companies are launching a massive peer-to-peer surveillance scheme to snoop on subscribers. Based on the results of that snooping, ISPs will be serving as Hollywood’s private enforcement arm, without the checks and balances public enforcement requires. Once a subscriber is accused, she must prove her innocence, without many of the legal defenses she’d have in a courtroom.