Silk Road is a good example of what will happen. Some media mogul will eventually cajole the government into acting. The government will go to the NSA, find the true identities of those responsible, then cook up nonsense about how they gave away their identities due to some weird Stack Overflow question no one could ever notice. The US Attorney will prosecute, and claim that it's a felony because of economic benefit, even if no money was exchanged. The culprits will end up in supermax. They can't afford to do this to everyone, obviously, but they'll pick up to 100 or so of a mix of the worst offenders and the most casual users, to "set an example". The media will publicize it to the point of absurdity so the message sinks in.
There are other countries in the world, in fact, that's where most of these digital libraries of Alexandria have been hosted. That's why I framed it as a technical question, because while any government may decide to combat it, it is unlikely that all of them will. Given the ongoing collapse of the US-led unipolar world order, the reach of US law enforcement will only shrink in the coming years.
I believe the owner of Kickass Torrents was either in Ukraine or Poland, can't remember anymore. Didn't save that one. Kim Dotcom was in New Zealand, and the crime he was accused of committing in the United States (when he had never stepped foot in the United States, and also a crime that isn't extraditable under New Zealand law) he barely managed to avoid being shipped off in chains.
That won't save anyone.
>Given the ongoing collapse of the US-led unipolar world order,
I wouldn't recommend relying on the "collapse of American hegemony" to save anyone. But especially not anyone you care about (like maybe yourself).
> then cook up nonsense about how they gave away their identities due to some weird Stack Overflow question no one could ever notice
In case people don't understand why the government can do this, it is called parallel construction and the SCOTUS deemed it constitutional.
Btw this comment is not me approving this behavior. And that last sentence was not a hint of me approving that behavior in secret :). Those last two sentences are a hint of what I think about the scotus on this topic though :)
Silk Road is a good example of what will happen. Some media mogul will eventually cajole the government into acting. The government will go to the NSA, find the true identities of those responsible, then cook up nonsense about how they gave away their identities due to some weird Stack Overflow question no one could ever notice. The US Attorney will prosecute, and claim that it's a felony because of economic benefit, even if no money was exchanged. The culprits will end up in supermax. They can't afford to do this to everyone, obviously, but they'll pick up to 100 or so of a mix of the worst offenders and the most casual users, to "set an example". The media will publicize it to the point of absurdity so the message sinks in.