Summary: A recent UK government inquiry into the challenges faced by the film and high-end television industry has recently received submissions from major Hollywood studios advocating for KYC (know your customer) rules for hosting providers, similar to banking regulations to identify money laundering. If adopted, this would help them to identify people hosting pirated content.
The submissions are united in identifying the same solution to this problem: the UK must implement a ‘Know Your Business Customer’ regime to compel commercial entities (including online intermediaries) to establish the true identity of their business customers as a precondition for selling, and receiving payment for, digital services.
Napster was amazing for this. You’d start by searching for something specific but it would show you the library of the person you were downloading from. Browsing through their library would lead to all kinds of discoveries. Seeing the raw data yourself and being your own recommendation algorithm was the shit.
That does sound good but I can’t imagine it’s quite as good as it once was?