FriendFeed started file sharing yesterday which could be problematic for one of the coolest social networking services on the planet. Risking the ire of RIAA, MPAA, BRIEN, GEMM, and every other copy right protection agency in the world, has FriendFeed taken on too much risk by allowing file sharing?

Imagine the surprise when a number of known copyrighted works by the Beastie Boys, the Beatles, and a pile of other known copyrighted songs ended up in my FriendFeed stream yesterday. While the intentions of file sharing of documents and papers are good, FriendFeed might have opened up a very large problem to their continued survival. Copyright Protection Agencies are very protective of their rights, and they have sued, and will sue, and will continue to sue everyone who for any reason allows anyone to post anything that they think is theirs. With the new file sharing by FriendFeed, the lawsuit potential here is going to be awesome for them, and bad for FriendFeed.

I hate to see a service that I use, love, and interact with become a target for lawsuits that they could have easily avoided by filtering out file extensions and header tags within the file. But after seeing many known copyrighted tracks being shared o the service you have to wonder what they were thinking. It seemed like a good idea at the time will not hold up in court.

While the stance might be unpopular, and no music does not really want to be free if someone thinks they control it, and no data does not really want to be free if someone thinks they control it, the new file sharing process on FriendFeed is akin to jumping the shark. In the longer run, once the lawsuits start (and they will) it will not be pleasant to point the finger and say “we told you so”.

Another big difference between Friendfeed and Twitter is that on Friendfeed, you can make rooms private, so that prying eyes can’t see what goes on inside. This makes the new feature great for sharing music with a large or small group of friends — but don’t uninstall that bit torrent client just yet. You can only upload three MP3s per day to Friendfeed and that limit could change over time, according to what Friendfeed co-founder Bret Taylor told TechCrunch. Source: Wired

Rapid share had a similar process of only allowing small communities to share information, but once the system was infiltrated, Rapid share got sued, then rapid share got fined 32 million dollars and told to filter user uploads. You know this is coming, and why FriendFeed would put their service in jeopardy is anyone’s best guess. While we all hope this ends well, in the longer run, FriendFeed just painted a huge target on their service, one that the copy right protection groups are going to go after.

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