Its wrong, immoral and fun..here's how to do it.

Something I have noticed in regards to media reports on the evils of Peer to Peer file sharing technology is that every article is basically an instruction manual on how to do it. The latest one from Australia is a hoot:

The report opens with:

MISSING one episode of West Wing, thanks to constant schedule changes, was enough to set Mark and Kim down the road to online piracy.

In language reminiscent of the moral panic surrounding drug abuse, Mark and Kim, "suburban thirtysomethings with a young baby" are swept up in the technological ease of instant media gratification:

And they can just as easily download music and movies, although Mark and Kim generally restrict themselves to television shows. A cheap DivX-enabled DVD player lets them watch downloads on their television as easily as watching a movie, and at practically the same picture quality.

And now we are aware that a DivX DVD player (which sells at my local supermarked from about $60 US) is what I need to satisfy my need for American television drama. But that's not all. The article ends with a detailed description for setting up a P2P file sharing node:

To take advantage of file-sharing, users can start with an internet plan offering as little as 3GB per month at speeds of 512kbps, which retails from $25 per month according to Broadband Choice (bc.whirlpool.net.au). Australian consumer broadband plans offer download speeds up to 24Mbps per second, with some plans offering well over 100GB of data a month. But plans offering unlimited downloads sell for about $100 per month, while restricted to speeds of 1.5Mbps.

Resistance is futile!