After reading about Matt Oppenheim's dental threats to college student Jesse Jordan, who unfortunately fell in the sights of the RIAA, I suddenly flashed on this quote from Marathon Man.
And no, it's not safe. It's not safe to in any way enable, support, build, look at, pet, feed, or even contemplate any sort of indexing technology. Jesse was one of the college students who ran a service that indexed files (ALL files) on a local area network (NOT the internet, a network within a contained community.) Because this service was capable of reporting that MP3s existed on the network (along with myriad other files of no interest to the RIAA), even though it did not HOST these MP3s itself the RIAA nonetheless decided to help itself to Jesse's life savings via Extortion-By-Lawsuit (although it's unclear why they haven't similarly tried to help themselves to Microsoft's billions since Windows supports a technology that essentially does the same thing).
Jesse says he settled to avoid the costs of litigation, but now the RIAA has issues with him exercising his freedom of speech so this may go to round 2.
Is it safe? To express oneself? To develop innovative technologies? Not by a long shot. I hope Jesse fights the RIAA and takes them to the mat. Or at least takes them to the dentist. There's something rotten over there that needs pulling.