The joy of the Internet is that it is not a smart network, it doesn't know what kind of traffic it is carrying, it doesn't provide any clever services, all it does is transfer bits from A to B. Industries whose business models are threatened by an increasing inability to control their customers' behaviour are screaming for File sharing technologies to be clamped down and tied up. They thought they had an answer when they realised that most file sharing applications sued the same "port" to exchange traffic. Plainly the technobunnies in the media business assumed that this "port" was a physical thing that they could plug. It's not, its a metaphor.

The latest move is for file sharing tools simply to "port hop" using many such channels to share their files across.

The media people should have figured out that it would happen, even Hedy Lamarr understood enough about the way a transmission uses its carrier to invent Spread Spectrum in 1939. Port hopping is the same kind of idea, applied to the bandwidth of the Internet.

Worse for the media people is that one of the biggest drivers of broadband Internet is file sharing. They haven't a hope, why don't they get with the program. We want acceptable use (the customers will decide what that means) of digital files for an acceptable price. Maybe 20c a time. Think that is small? According to The Age, "More than eight billion pirate music files were swapped online [in 2001].

The Music business had spent $4 billion by March last year on trying to stop this flood. If they had left their $4 Bn in their pockets and found a way to charge even half of those file swappers 20c a piece, they would have been, over 12 months ago, the best part of $2 billion up and $6 billion ahead.

The stupid network is busy destroying stupid businesses, nothing will stop that.