The news media are full of the story that FBI and Customs agents yesterday shut down the Elite Torrents website and arrested a bunch of people for making thousands of copies of pirated movies and software programs available. It was, say the Feds, "the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks using cutting edge file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent."

Logging on to the Elite Torrents now produces a glaring red Federal notice that it has been taken down. However, a Google search for "elite torrents" produces 61,000 hits, and one can soon find moviecodec.com, promising links to "Best Torrent Websites" and containing posts like

hey suprnova was great but there is another better torrent website called the pirate bay where u can get movies music tv programs and programs like nero burning rom,microsoft office.there is also a faster torrent client cause azureus is going slow for much people ther is a downloader which is called XBT Client its faster better and its just fast if i was u download XBT cause ive been downloading 7 years if u want to know anything e-mail me on chriswatts@hotmail.com

So the Feds will be kept busy, at least until the sharing community recognizes that such downloading is a breach of faith with fellow movie fans, not a blow for freedom against "the studios."