Slashdot Mirror
The New World of Gnutella
Frater 219 writes "The censorship-resistant systems Gnutella and Freenet got some reasonably positive editorial coverage in the Sacramento Bee and Nando Times today. Here's the article. It's rather good stuff: 'Echoes of the old hacker manifesto begin to ring loudly once again: Information wants to be free.'" Good piece, go read it.
--
--
"Information wants to be free" and it wants somebody else to pay for the bandwidth.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Well... an informed and concerned population is the best defense against larval tyranny. If you oppose would-be dictators, and reveal them for what they are to people who care, you'll nip it in the bud.
But having a second line of defense is not a bad plan. Should tyrants assume enough power that morals and laws can't stop them, a greater price must be paid to set things right.
I think that we'd be best off if we'd prepare for what has to be done if we fail, and then do our damnest not to fail. For when we do, we'll no longer get to prepare.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Performance would be utterly dreadful, but it'd be quite cool to have an encrypted VPN on top of the normal internet, with loads of redundant connections which dropped in and out of existence. Ok, this isn't workable.
Recognition of any "property" is an "artificially created situation". Look, the idea that you "own" your computer is artificial, but that in itself hardly gives me the right to steal it.
At the end of the day though, IMO what it comes down to is this -- at the very least, it's rude and disrespectful to ignore the wishes of the artist who has released under a non-free license.
On the other hand, I really wouldn't hold it against a college student who temporarily freeloads until they can afford the CD. I used to do it (-;
Seriously, the reason why prices are what they are is that money is intercepted by several layers of middlemen, each who marks it up a percentage ( so the cost rises exponentially with the number of middlemen ). The record company is just one such layer.
As for paying money for music whose authors are dead, I believe usually such music costs less, but also there's the issue that copyright law is imperfect.
It does not cost schools all that much money to change firewall rules and the like. With my previously mentioned perl script, which logs into the "distribution network" (whatever it may happen to be at the time), and reports the students at each offending institution, for any action the school wishes (e.g., automated network disconnect/firewall for offending student for a day), the costs are negligible. I could write it once for every instutition in a few minutes, and there is no forseeable way students can avoid this.
To get to the point where more than just geeks and a handfull of others used this, was atleast a couple weeks. Furthermore, they've had the advantage of being the first and being highly centralized, whereas programs such as GNUtella lack this.
And that java code must come from somewhere, each popular java code server could be firewalled or shutdown before students begin to use it. (e.g., you may get it on AOL, but AOL likely won't allow it for long). Also, none of this prevents my perl script from reporting you...I think it is unwise to underestimate the persuasive powers of INSTANT punishment. It is far more effective than only catching 1 in 100 (or even 10) warez pups, and punishing them after 2 years of trading, for rather serious penalties. If virtually every time a student connects to a GNUtella network he losses his network privilages almost instantly for another 2 days, he is probably not going to keep it up. [Especially since those who use napster and company tend to use the internet heaviest otherwise too]
Internet service provider operations DO NOT enjoy common carrier protection. Because they're not required to provide anyone access (internet is viewed is a privilege still, and further, the law hardly recognizes internet privacy), they are not in the same boat as phone companies. Period. If anything they're closer to a distributor (e.g., Cubby vs Compuserve), because they do exercise some control in other areas (the existence of an AUP speaks volumes). But nothing is cut and dry here. The phone companies enjoy a long and well established legal precedent, ISPs enjoy no such protection.
The university's position is precarious, and because of that the liability risks cannot be ignored. The remaining portions of the CDA (USC 230(b))hold that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information by another information content provider". This is, in fact, what many people confuse with common carrier protection. Yet this law has primarily only been applied to libel cases, and really can't hold up here. Especially if they profit from each abuse by charging for b/w usage (e.g., vicarious liability)...
Furthermore, RIAA could actively inform these schools on a real time basis of who is offending what. Which would allow RIAA to say they institutions were not ignorant (completely knocking out the possibility of proving ignorance---which is necessary for a vicarious liability defense).
Again, they're not common carriers. Further, who says RIAA needs to "force" them? The schools are having their lines saturated because students pay a flat rate. So unless ALL students are either willing to pay more (or if they can find alternative sources of financing), they need to charge in a per byte basis. None of these options are all that appealing in the short run. Thus, this leaves them with cutting down on the warez/mp3 trade--which is why they'd cooperate with RIAA. In addition, who says RIAA can't incentivize the schools to enforce, or simply pay for their additional "enforcement" costs above and beyond what the schools would do to protect their bandwidth?
In closing, I think GNUtella is overhyped anyways. I was skeptical when I first heard of it, its design is quite impractical for anything sizable. Even the original creator at nullsoft thought it couldn't scale past 250 (approx.) users. Having used it, I can tell you empirically that the way it is implimented and/or "networked" now, it aint much better. One might be able to see, say, 2000 hosts on a good day, but the message propogation and the searches are poor. It's generally a pain in the ass to use, and I think less technical users are going to find it very difficult. Add to adaptive firewalls, decent enforcement, logging, and other such issues to the mix, and there is plenty of reason to doubt this being a significant threat to RIAA's interests. In other words, a small group of people may still spend a lot of time at this, but the vast majority of people will find it easier and more economical to get go out to the store and buy whatever they're looking for. 0 piracy isn't necessarily the objective. So long as RIAA (and other interests in line with them) can raise the bar high enough, they're quite safe.
This argument is getting academic, but I do have a couple points before I bolt.
a) GNUtella is overrated. Have you actually USED it yourself to acquire things you are looking for? I have, it's more trouble than it's worth for me. While my standards may be higher than most, I can tell you it's not going to hold up for most college kids.
b) It sucks now, and it has yet to face any real barriers.
c) My script would absolutely work against GNUtella.
d) Your idea is just theoretical. At the very least it is one extra level of complexity to something which hardly works now. So long as trading is point to point, I doubt its resistance to "attacks" operating within the system, like mine. You fail to remember that this is RIAA, they represent the IP owners, they own the damn music. They can trade as many mp3s as they damn well please to gain "trust."
e) There is a world of difference between building networks and punching holes in them. Ironically, the situations are reversed this time. The hax0rs are trying to create a network which can't be broken, and the admins are trying to break it. The difference is that the admins (and RIAA and company) hold all the keys, they are on the side of the law, and dare I say it on this forum, they are on the side of right.
In any case, you're too entrenched in this to listen to reason. Although I may not have hard "proof", I'm not the one claiming the walls are about to fall. There is simply too much at stake here. There resistance you have seen to napster and company thus far is NOTHING, RIAA has yet to feel a significant pinch from this kind of piracy, but when and if they do, you can be sure heads will start rolling. In any case, time will tell.
The mere fact that it gnutella downloads may utilize the HTTP protocol does not make them indecipherable from more legitimate connections. Furthermore, even if they can't decipher gnutella from "legitimate" connections, they can filter all incoming HTTP connections to student machines. Only a select few students run servers, fewer really "need" or desire to, and they could always ennumerate those few incoming connections. This would save their upstream connections at the very least. If every university were to do this (no uploads), this would have a dramatic effect on the number of available/operational file servers for download, thus reducing downloads too.
Although there might always be a way to get around, that does not mean that most students will have an effective way to get around most of the time that is within their means. In other words, if the universities take a real interest in stemming the trade of mp3s and other elicit files, they could adapt (block) to these new variations faster than most students can or will employ them. Likewise, there are network effects here. The fewer student servers (e.g., no more newbie students, only geeks), the fewer available downloads, the less desirable the "network"/software is, the smaller it gets. This is especially true with gnutella where that initial connection, for each respective client/server, is important.
Furthermore, although I have yet to read the entire protocol, rather than trying to constantly find a signature of the latest and greatest software, I see no reason why the music industry, a university, or a coalition of them, can't write a script in perl (or whatever) to search WITHIN the entire database all day long, and just create a list every day of hosts (read: students) who serve files. [I would think most universities will have a plenty sufficient reason if the pipes are saturated strictly as the result of piracy] Any offending hosts within the defined network(s) would simply get their network connections "cut" or firewalled out for a day or two, or worse... For a less draconian measure, they could attempt to do it in "real time" (really just shorter intervals). I could easily write such a script in perl to scan, find offending hosts, telnet into router (scripted), add firewall rule for offending host, logout. It would curb the "velocity" of student expectations of pirating quite effectively without having to resort to scare tactic.
Gnutella may be primarily used for copyright infringement, but where do you draw the line? IRC isn't all that different from Gnutella and it also makes it easy to exchange copyrighted data. What about FTP and web servers? Web browsers?
Another problem with your argument is that it leads to limitations on fair use. It is perfectly legitimate for me to convert my CDs into MP3s, carry them on my laptop or with a portable player. But the new legislation along the lines you propose already in place have restricted the utility of devices and stifled innovation. For example, many MP3 players would make nifty portable, USB-attached drives. But because of recently enacted laws, thsoe devices need to be hobbled so that they can only play back MP3s and not be used for data storage.
Software and software-based devices are very malleable. I think if you start banning software that, right now, looks like it might be used primarily for infringement, you end up infringing on the rights of legitimate licensees and you severly restrict innovation. And that is a David-vs.-Goliath issue, because the big, established companies dislike the new technologies, not because of copyright infringement, but because they break their long-standing business models. And that should be of concern to everybody.
I think information wants to be bundled up and sold to the highest bidder.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The most important paradigm shift of the digital age is the transition from an information-scarce system to a services-scarce system. Gnutella and Freenet are the next step in that revolution.
What traditional media companies realize all too well is that once any piece of information is transferred to a digital format, it becomes impossible to limit its availablity. The best way to make money is to provide a service on top of it, so that people pay you for adding value. The information is abundant, its the collection, interpretation, and presentation that are limited.
Gnutella is another step toward free information. Companies like IBM will be winners, while the RIAA and the MPAA will be losers unless they start to justify their skimming off the top.
What would that difference be, exactly? Its all information, the only difference is that some of it has had arbitrary restrictions placed on it in an attempt make information creation more profitable. Both for individuals, and later corporations (copyrights now last 90 years after the creators death).
But, that doesn't change the fact that Human beings still have a natural inclination to share information with each other (witch is what 'information wants to be free' really means)
It's a bit like some Paris intellectual saying "All people are free," and then Thomas Jefferson saying "Yeh," and then still owning slaves.
Lets take the slavery analogy a bit farther. It was just as illegal to smuggle a slave up to the north, or Canada as it is to pirate an MP3, or some Microsoft software (well, the penalties were probably higher). And it was still stealing. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't have been done.
Just for the record, I do think piracy of Software and music and movies and such is 'wrong' just not 'wrong enough' for me to care. And certainly not wrong enough for me to loose civil rights.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The way you'd like to have it distributed won't work at all
yes, after 2 months and more lawsuits to stop it than I care to count, it's obvious this method is doomed to failure. I mean, why even try, after all The current model SUCKS at that; the artists get cheated and gypped.
You're missing a point somewhere, I made it a while back in a different thread. There is value in having attention paid to you. When that value is gained without any effort (on the part of the music artist in this case) then the excess value created through freely sharing digital music is left to be recouped by the artist. THIS is the right we need to protect, the ability to capitalize on the value. NOT the ability to control an infinite product.
--
+&x
And what makes you think there won't be a grillion folks out there saying "some rules NEED to be smashed" and breaking your license right and left for their own profit, just like you're doing to the existing schemes?
/. style submission and comment method to generate content. It's not doing much right now, that's where the VC comes in. (Oh and if you "steal" my idea, let me know, and you can hire me to tell you how to do it right). Here's another one that's come to my attention from these discussions. Someone DOING something. Try here if you want to help with a cool project. ('sup numb :-) Locally is the best way to start revolutions.
Maybe you could explain how they could? Given freely distributable music, where is the profit for pirates? Who, since they know the artists are making a leap of faith, would knowingly go through some other source, pay some other source, when they know they can buy it straight from an artist? And if we keep the insanely high prices of CDs standard, 1 sale from the artist whould give them as much revenue as roughly 20 sold under the yoke of an RIAA member company.
If what we're on about is getting paid from the end user directly to the artist in some strange math, what startup do we need?
Remember they are getting paid with the same value they get from radio play, free exposure to create rabid fans. What startup do we need? Why can't you be doing this already out of wahcentral.net? Glad you asked. And I am. It's a section called "Digital Caffeine" and hopes to use the
--
+&x
Joe's friends come over to his house. They all listen to his music.
Friend1: "Joe, that's a cool band, where'd you find 'em"
Joe: "Napster, then I (outlines the hour(s) long process of making his own CD)"
Friend2: "Hey, Friend1, I'll save you the trouble, go to their site and order it for $5. Saves time , frustration. Plus you get real CD quality music, cover art, and a cute jewel case"
Friend1:"Thanks guys, I can't wait to see them live. When are they coming to town?"
'cause the world ain't full of geeks.
--
+&x
Basic copyright laws? Are you aware how our economic system works wrt IP?
I think they need to be rewritten to some degree. They are not all bad, just like patents aren't all bad, but as I hope that links demonstrates, they are being taken too far. The rules as they are written today are NOT promoting the arts and sciences as well as they might. Too much selfishness has created an imbalance of rights. It's time to take the power back.
When you download songs off of Napster, the artist gets no money. No matter how much you pay for diskspace, bandwith, etc. When you buy a CD or legal mp3s, the artist gets money. How hard is that to understand?
It's not money, per se, but value. How much did it cost 20, 10, hell, even 2 years ago to give 100,000,000 million people access to your music? How much can it cost today? We need to protect the right to capitalize on that value, but to equate it anacronistically directly to money is flawed. That's why we need to rewrite the crufty copyright laws that we are now subject to.
--
+&x
However, illegally copying/stealing music is not the way to do it. That will simply encourage the government to pass stricter laws to stop you.
Exactly, and when our laws require that 25% of the 18-25 year-olds in this country go to jail for copyright infringement, it will be obvious to everyone (and not just the gifted souls who can pick points out an idiot's rantings) that our current IP laws are a pile of shit.
MP3.com is not bad. I prefer streaming music, since I have my own pipe and limited disk space. Try here and here for starters.
--
+&x
Blame the sys-admins, or better hug them now they fixed it.
Dont blame an innocent victim-of-its-success application. Seems stupid to me.
Greetz SlashDread
Yes. Not only does information want to be free, it wants to peaceably assemble.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
This is untrue. We need to demand free information. All revolutions start some where. People need to "Think Globally, Act Locally."
All revolutions start somewhere; all revolutions start small.
Open access to information will not come overnight.
This is totally the best part of the whole piece.
It promises us that we will always have a job.
We just need to choose which side of the border we stand on.
Hopefully we can stand firmly on the side that assures us freedom of information.
Knowledge, it is a very powerful tool!
I sometimes question the quality of online journalism... seems that some of them like nandotimes could be dime-a-dozen.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
You know, despite your total idiocy, you may have a point. Our current copywrite laws can't last much longer. In a few years, information will simply not be marketable. At that point, we will have to re-work capitolism such that it is compatible with an information economy.
However, illegally copying/stealing music is not the way to do it. That will simply encourage the government to pass stricter laws to stop you. Instead, you should be supporting legally free music. That way, the free music scene will grow and possibly overtake the RIAA. You can start with mp3.com. They have some really good stuff there. It is pretty much all I listen to these days.
------
My school (U of MN) is a major internet hub with an incredible amount of badwidth. Several T3's at least. Napster was taking 58% of our bandwidth before it was banned.
------
OK so the article says that there is no way to bring down a distributed system but there is.
First, catch one of the pirates (preferably an 18+ YO pirate) by tracking his IP address through the IP service provider and then sue him for all he's got, make a poster child of the poor sap. Keep doing this and sue everyone you can. Sure you can't completely shut the thing down but you can knock the breath out of it.
Another approach would be to send that e-mail visur that causes your system to explode to every server you can find.
I think the former solution is the one that the media companies will do but they'd probably attempt the latter if they thought it would work.
I'm surprised that I havent heard of lawsuits against people running gnutella and napster yet. Why is that? Is there a legal loophole here?
no sig.
I would put up thousands of computers running Napster 24/7, and every mp3 file on them would have some really annoying error right in the middle of the song, and then cut off five seconds before the end. Oooooh I hate that!
Such a price the gods exact for song: to become what we sing - Pythagoras
Recreational software has diminished marginal utility. (except Quake. Ecconomists should do a study.)
But utilitarian software never loses it's value, as long as it maintains its relevance, it is supported by the authors and if other people use it.
Game makers don't benefit from opening their source, because people play the game for a while and then move on. (Except Quake.) It may help them write their next game, if people are willing to send in source patches.
Game companies can make money from game sales or selling advertising space within the game, or by doing contract work for multimedia projects and giving away games as a type of advertisement/demonstration of their abilities.
One wonders why it is that illegal stuff is the "primary" purpose of these systems (which I agree, it is). My theory: the demand for legal stuff is higher than anything else.
I mean, in a perfect world, I think it would be great if the latest patches for X software, or the latest Y documents were easily accessible, but for the most part, it's not necessary. You don't NEED gnutella to get the latest distro of you favorite flavor of OS. FTP searching generally will suffice, and odds are FTP's aren't going to be highly over-crowded. You don't NEED gnutella to get the latest issue of Info Weekly, it's easy enough to get it from their webserver.
Really, gnutella and napster arose out of the need to get illegal stuff. This is stuff that probably isn't going to live long if it had a well known central distribution center. This is stuff that is therefore hosted on smaller, overcrowded, hard to access FTP or HTTP sites. Work is still required. So then this new distributed idea is formed, it's basically the idea of the 'underground' taken a little further.. people trading mp3's with whomever they want.
You see, Napster and Gnutella and whatever else were made because it's still hard to get the illegal stuff. Like I said, getting the latest patches and magazines or what not has become amazingly easy lately. Yes, it should be hard to get the illegal stuff, but that's still not going to stop us from making it easier to get it (either warez people, or people who are interested in seeing how a distributed thing like this could work, which I respect)
So, really, the reason you find mostly illegal stuff on these guys is because that's all they're good for. If you have other, easy ways of getting legal stuff, why bother putting it up here? I think it's a shame, cause the convenience could be great and could maybe even in the future help slashdot effect-type scenarios. However, I fear that because of the aforementioned arguement, it will either take a while, or get shut down.
At least.. that's my take on it....
>Please explain to me how having 600,000 songs at my fingertips is wrong when I'm paying for
>bandwidth, diskspace, and promotion. (equivelent to reproduction, distrubution, and promotion in
>the old world)
Because that doesn't at all take into account paying the people that created the music, the artists, the engineers, the producers, the graphic design folk that make the album covers and so forth.
The current model SUCKS at that; the artists get cheated and gypped. I'm the first to say it. But your model sucks even more -- the artists don't see ANYTHING -- not a red cent.
You can pay for all the bandwidth, disk space, and promotion you want, but you're still just being a warez d00d, collecting other peoples' work without paying anyone, and there's no way do dance around it.
>How bright is this?
Brighter than a future where no art gets produced because y'all take away the sole source of artists income without offering anything in return or coming up with any alternatives... But, hey, information wants to be free, gimme gimme gimme.
The way music is distribted now doesn't work well.
The way you'd like to have it distributed won't work at all.
--
(Turning off my +1 because this looks like a long night....)
You're starting to get somewhere, but you're changing the subject. I'm just answering your question "if I have all the diskspace in the world, and I fill it up with stuff that I got free that's actually being charged for by the author, what's wrong with that?"
And it's rather self-evident. The authors and the artists and so forth have released this product with certain terms. You may or may not agree with them, but to violate them is to disrespect the artist's wishes. You're free to do that, but don't expect later arguments about supporting artists to hold any water. If the artists want to give it away free, they will. If their labels won't let them, they'll ditch the labels and do it their own way. If they don't do that, well, then, obviously the money is more important to them than the freedom, and therefore IT'S NOT YOURS TO TAKE FOR FREE.
Now, I like your scenario of everyone doing music for the love of it, and popular artists somehow getting paid just for being popular (although the math is kind of vague in there). I really do. But until and unless such a scheme exists, it's vaporware, and you're pointing to it and saying "SEEEEE, it COULD work!!!" and taking and taking and taking, and not giving back anything to these popular artists that are supposed to be getting paid for being popular.
You want this scheme to work, make it work: set up a record label that gives the music away free. Go on, do it. Get artists to sign up, come up with a business plan that gets people paid somehow for this, and I'll be the first one, really, the VERY FIRST ONE to sign up and help out. C'mon, let's do it, lets figure out free (in the GNU sense) music.
But until it's there, and it ain't there now, you're still just taking free (in the beer sense) music away from people who are trying to make a living selling it on a per-unit basis. And scrambling to justify it with a lot of what-ifs and if-only's.
--
Information does not want to be free. Information is a non-breathing, non-living entity with no feelings and no desires.
People want information to be free, and that's the crux of the problem. As soon as capitalism returns to its roots and begins giving people what they want (in order to make more money, of course), then we'll see a resolution to this problem.
I want my information free. Don't you?
Suppose that your disk is happily sharing with the rest of the world that your DNA has a gene that your employer thinks makes you unsuitable for your work, or anything else you don't want to be known about yourself.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Glad to see someone else has kept some perspective on this whole issue! The great thing about these tools isn't what they're being used for right now (largely "piracy"), but the potential they have to change the way things are done in the future. The legitimate uses far outweight the illegitimate here.
This is much more important than whether John Doe can get his mp3s easier. The distributed nature of things like Gnutella allows for a Net where the individual is *really* empowered, not just nominally so. With traditional avenues like the Web, you're still under the control of a large corporation, governments, etc. This inevitably leads to easy censorship by such groups. Now, however, one can distribute information much more freely.
It could be used by people in countries such as China, where incoming information is strictly censored, to get the information being denied to them by an oppressive regime, as just one example.
The distributed nature of these systems also helps contribute in a way to the robustness of the whole. If one source goes down, there are likely others to fill in. This is good regardless of the type of information being transferred.
And who knows what uses will be found for this in the coming years? When VCRs first came out, it was lobbied against furiously by those in power in the movie industry, fearing it would be just a piracy tool. Yet, while undoubtedly some use VCRs so, the VCR has become an important, legitimate tool for people. And it's created businesses unforeseen when it came out (such as video rental stores).
I think too many people have been looking merely at the first uses to which the technology has been put, rather than considering the potential it has to benefit us all. Criminals have often been the first to use new technology, this doesn't mean the technology is in any way less legitimate. Trying to ban the technology is not going to solve anything. The criminals will still use it, and the public will lose a useful tool.
I don't want the information about my last Doctor visit to be free. I don't want the information about where I live or my favoutite porno movie to be free for every John Q. Nobody to claim rights to and play with until his hearts content.
Of course not, but it wants to be, so you have to fight against it. The problem we have here (if you consider Napster a problem) is that it's not only the information that wants to be free, but an overwhelming number of people who also want it to be free. So while it might be easy for a bank to fight against the natural inclination of information to propogate, after all only an few try to steal money digitally (and it's easier with a gun anyway), it becomes quite a bit more difficult for the RIAA. Especially with information that already is everywhere (CDs), but now it can get everywhere else (Internet).
So it does want to be free. It just is, and just being is quite a good way to be free, if you can follow a sentence with three tenses of the same verb describing a word with multiple correct translations.
--
+&x
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Information wants to be free."
I disagree in some cases.
At my workplace we're about to begin the ever tedious job of an ISO 9000 audit. I have much information that I thought wished to be free that is sitting on my desk. Sadly, it has not yet made that wish apparent by filling out the appropriate paperwork to become free. Of course I can not violate and ISO standards and just give such information to those who need it. After filling out the paper work it must be approved, dated, given some bizarre version number and distributed on the website.
Since it has yet to make it's wishes clear to me I believe that my information in fact does not wish to be free, regardless of it's usefulness to those who might appreciate it. I plan to soon impose my wishes on the information and fill out the paperwork on it's behalf during a midnight run to the copier. May God keep me save from the ISO storm troopers!
Come to think of it, my information has yet to make any requests to me. Has anyone else been able to communicate with their information? If so, what did it say?
Please. Why do people feel the need to gloss over the purpose of programs like Napster and Gnutella. I'm an Open Source Programmer, and I know damn well that Napster is used to download illegal mp3s more than anything else. Same with Gnutella.
Implying that it is "censorship" to protect one's copyrights is absurd. I know that this is an "advocacy" site, but keep in mind that this sort of doubletalk makes you guys look like the small children who, when caught with their hands in the cookie jar, protest their innocence to the last. The fact that Slashdot implicitly condones such action reflects poorly on the Free Software Community. Not all Free Software Users wish to violate copyrights; for many uf us, that's the reason we switched to Free Software.
Sorry, I don't buy that this is the Linux-using David vs. the big, bad, coporate censor Goliath. People use Napster to break the laws. We have bans on certain types of guns which are used to break the law (eg, assault rifles, which have *no* legitimate purpose), likewise, Napster could be legally banned. Sure, maybe 1/100,000th of Napster users download only legit mp3s, but let's not paint to bright a picture of copyright violations, eh emmett?
Information does not want to be free. People want other people's information to be free. How can any reasonable /.er get up in arms about doubleclick.net gathering surfing information, and then claim that information wants to be free.
I certainly don't want the contents of swiss bank accounts to be free. I don't want the information about my last Doctor visit to be free. I don't want the information about where I live or my favoutite porno movie to be free for every John Q. Nobody to claim rights to and play with until his hearts content.
Napster/Gnutella was designed to facilitate the distribution of private mp3 collections. These will generally consist of copyrighted material. I think that its important that people not forget that, while the music companies are big and evil, they have rights too. That means that they have a legitimate gripe with the free distribution of material that they've paid to protect and that they want to sell. I know that napster can be used to distribute other non-copyrighted material, and that's great, but lets not forget the tainted ground on which the thing started. I'm a big free speech advocate, and I download mp3s too, but lets not be totally ignorant as to why napster was created.
The Hacker Manifesto was written back in the ancient eighties by a hacker named Mentor. Read it.......it may be about you.
Also of interest may be the Hacker's Ethic. Something of a code that should be lived by, particularly by those reading these pages. It's where the, "Informationwants/should be free", quote comes from.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
The people here who are defending copyright don't seem to get the point. Freenet isn't about violating copyright -- it's about giving people the power to share information anonymously and inviolably. Freenet can be used to trade MP3s the same way that a 1 GHz Pentium III box can be used to bash someone's brains out.
It's tempting to try to stamp out IP violations (not to mention terrorism and kidd1e pr0n) by regulating probable channels of distribution, but history shows that when the government has that kind of power, it's never used as it was intended. I'd rather have an internet with Freenet and illegally distributed music than an internet where copyright is sacrosanct but everyone who downloaded DeCSS or visited Peacefire.org or looked for harm-reduction information on ecstasy could be traced and have the law loosed against them.
Fantasy? You know the corporations and the government would do this if they could. We need hardcore privacy protection not to permit immoral acts but to preserve our freedom to act morally.
note: if you prefer, "unreasonable/reasonable," "unsustainable/sustainable," and "antisocial/prosocial," among others, can all be substituted into the above paragraph for the controversial m-word...
****
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Am I the only person who hates Napster/Gnutella with a passion?
The network at my university has been maxed out at 98% outgoing or so, 80% incoming for quite some time due to Napster. How do I know? Because last Wednesday, they banned it, and this dropped to about 30% outgoing, 50% incoming.
The network here has been mostly unusable for months, and it has been because of Napster.
Now, admittedly, the biggest reason for the outgoing is most likely the fact that Napster doesn't close when you click the "X" in the upper right of the window. Instead, it backgrounds itself and goes into the system tray. This means that people who have no clue how to use a computer excepting to play mp3s and use a word processor get Napster on the advice of a more knowledgeable friend, and proceed to share out gigs of mp3s to the world 24/7. With Gnutella, this probably isn't as big of a problem.
Anyways, I can't be happier that it is banned, and I can hardly feel bad for people whining that they can't steal music with ease anymore. If you can't even take the time to browse IRC or the web for your pirated music, you're pretty pathetic. You're getting it free to begin with, so I have no sympathy for you just because you might have to actually do the smallest bit of work to get it.
My rant for now,
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
People use Napster to break the laws.
Some laws need to broken. Some need to be smashed so hard their teeth rattle. And please spare me the little kiddy not wantin' to pay for CDs spiel, I've heard it, it doesn't apply here. Please explain to me how having 600,000 songs at my fingertips is wrong when I'm paying for bandwidth, diskspace, and promotion. (equivelent to reproduction, distrubution, and promotion in the old world)
let's not paint to bright a picture of copyright violations, eh emmett?
How bright is this?
Keep the music flowing.
--
+&x
This is perceived as a threat to traditional publishing and recording industries just as radio was, and the mimeograph, and television, and the photocopier, and magnetic tape, and the compact disc, and the videocassette recorder, and many other technologies that made sharing information easier. Freenet doesn't do anything different from what can already be done with those technologies, it just does it more efficiently.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
Just like to mention that an alternative to copyrights is the Street Performer Protocol by Bruce Schneier. He predicted the advent of systems like this and offers up a partial solution.
I haven't seen anyone really take a stab at setting it up yet though.
Debatable: 'Protecting one's copyrights' is censorship. It can be interpreted as warranted in the interest of promoting economic reward for creative endeavors (which is actually intended to encourage creative endeavors, not economic reward per se), but it is still the suppression of someone else's speech.
Non-debatable: 'Protecting one's copyrights' has certainly been used by organizations, normally large businesses, to censor the speech of others in the case of satire, parody and so forth. The key point here is how far copyrights extend. Parodies of Mickey Mouse (including all kinds of offensive parodies that 'most people' wouldn't like) are actually legally protected but despite this are impossible to defend from armies of lawyers. There are many other examples.
People tend to forget that copyright was created at a specific time with a specific purpose, and that as a legal creation is rather malleable (as has been shown by its constant extension...). /.ers should realize this, especially as it is being extended further and further by things like the DMCA.
There are two basic problems. One, as it becomes more ingrained and gathers more powerful interests behind it, copyright begins to seem a natural moral concept (not an economic incentive). This means that the idea of banning devices which could facilitate copyright violations becomes more palatable. Two, as the technology changes, violating copyright law becomes easier and easier.
All this really means is that it will be extremely difficult to maintain the status quo, and that's what we're seeing: large forces attempting to extend the reach of copyright so that it becomes totally ridiculous, and other forces (perhaps only intending to turn the tide a little, perhaps not) straining to render copyright utterly unenforceable.
A simple "for/against" standpoint doesn't really work anymore, especially since copyright is a legal concept and certain players are able to change the laws in their favour. This is a point that many, including the AC to whom I am replying, appear to miss. Is it 'censorship' to say that you cannot reproduce my work now? In 5 years? In 10? 100? 1000? When does my work (which inevitably drew upon public domain ideas) become part of the public domain? Similarly, is it censorship to say that you can't parody my work? Cite my work? Say bad things about my work? Mention my work?
It's a matter of degree. The key point is not really about copyright 'violations' but rather: what do we want copyright to be? What is the best middle ground between encouraging creativity and encouraging a free and open exchange of ideas? And how do we get there?