Entertainment companies need to realize they can’t stop file sharing

People started sharing files with each other – text, games, music – as soon as there was a storage medium you could copy. Originally, this meant the compact cassette which was used for music and programs for the first home computers. Cassette decks at the time had a convenient copy mechanism where you’d insert an original in one slot, a blank tape in another slot, and press a prominent “copy” button to get an analog replica – not perfect, if it was music, but if it was a digital computer file, it would be readable and usable. The one-push copy was even a sales point. Everybody had their circle of friends who contributed to the common collection between them, and we’d always be carrying some copy of something else we anticipated was in demand. People would copy something from you more or less every day. You would copy things from several people pretty much every day.