Slashdot Mirror
EFF Seeks Examples Of Legit P2P Use
Electronic Frontier Foundation writes: "EFF is gathering real world examples of actual non-infringing uses of file sharing systems. We've heard about people using these systems to trade medical records, resumes, songs authorized by the author, etc. We need proof of these actions-- the kind of proof we could, if needed, introduce as evidence in court. Notes like "my friend Fred used Gnutella for his resume" are not helpful. Notes like "Intel is sponsoring P2P cancer research . Go to www.fool.intel.com or contact
cancerresearch2intel.com" or "I uploaded my songs and have received
positive messages from others who've listened to them" are helpful.
Points awarded for clarity, brevity and simplicity. Demerits applied for examples your grandmother wouldn't understand and your mom would find offensive. Please email examples to p2p@eff.org. Thanks for your help." It's a sad state of things when you've got to prove that something is good in order that it not be presumed harmful. "This hammer could be used for dangerous purposes -- can you prove there are good uses for it?" Sigh.
Those statistics were contrived by gun control advocates, and have been pretty thoroughally debunked
debunking the "43 times" fallacy
-- Guges --
CSPAN did not cover this government hearing. Nor does the House (to the best of my knowledge) publish an audio archive of the witnesses' and Representatives' testimony and statements. The official Congressional record is weeks - if not months - away, and even then it will be edited and amended ("without objection so ordered") from the actual words spoken.
Fortunately for us a Patriot recorded the live Windows Media stream (which would have otherwise been lost to the 'ether'), converted it to MP3 format, and shared it with me via Napster. And now most importantly I am empowered to share it with you.
As a result, I/we are better informed -within hours- of our Legislators' actual spoken opinions, nuances and proclivities regarding their views on the issues relating to copy-right, music and the Internet.
P2P, or Peer2Peer, is really Patriot2Patriot in the sprit of Thomas Paine, Paul Revere and Thomas Jefferson (to name but a few).
If you only ever read one paper about gun control, it really should be this one !
It is an excellently researched, formal, academic study of the data in support of both sides of the gun control debate, from the University of Chicago law school.
-- Guges --
In NZ cow, steps into milker (ear id transponder), and the machine does the rest. In the case of teat infections, or other problems, Mr farmer can log in from the (tropical resort) and use a computerised camera to see whats wrong, and adjust, or make a phone call. The machine also checks milk quality and other factors - so the milk shed needs to be online 100% of the time. For the sake of the animals, the client needs to be online too. In use now. Also backed by failsafe and computergenerated phone calls, that may need remote updating. The place that sells the eqipment also P 2 P's into the milking shed and the farmer to ensure things are well. Also wireless PC's on the undersides of quadraplegic wheelchairs and beds, the blind and frail. The other half monitors activity or falls, or worse, and the carer also knows what to bring (Big distances). Unlike expensive hospital stays, many countries have 'home stay' or independant living centres, reliant on technology and P2P. There are dozens of other remote medical monitoring in use. As lives are at stake, these systems are kept very low key. Also contracted/outsourced health care provider does not want others to know what can be gotten away with.
Yes but it wouldn't propagate because users would erase the wrong files. Go put up a britney spears song in Gnutella with a filename 'Metallica-The Unforgiven.mp3" and see how far it (does not) go...
I've been trying to create a P2P Job/Bid protocol and mechanism to allow people who have jobs/rfp's to share them with folks who bid.. Bids would be places in connection with the RFP, so that the two become a public forum for bids and exchange.. you just control the "scope" or the exchange by controlling the scope of your bid "Illinois contractors only...", etc.
The idea is that a forum for job exchange can be hard to find for the "local" users, and P2P is great for reaching out to where the other forums don't reach.
I've had a project started on source forge, but I was planning to start up here in the next month or so on actual software. Been working on the XML DTD's, and other porjects
Mike
I am aware that the cvs system for the linux kernel team may not be that distributed but it is p2p in alot of ways. Because people are uploading as well as dowloading to the cvs system it is different then just a ftp server which mostly only offers files as downloads.
A good court arguement could show linux development which is a case of good case of file sharing with non infringing uses via cvs.
Perhaps if mp3's are filtered out it could be used for good. Like the other slashdotter who mentioned that "IF flying was illegal, would you encourage the non flying use of an airplane?" I would also discourage any mp'3 trading, even if its legal.
It would harm the case for legal use. %95 of the mp3's on napster are illegal a jury will know this.
If you use the arguement with legal mp3's in court the jury or judge will infact raise concerns and assume that all p2p users are pirates or at least %90 of them due to those dangerous mp3's. It's a shame that a whole bunch of pirates took away are freedoms but we need to show linux, some cancer sites and medical research being done. ALso these sites need to filter out mp3's legal or not just so the RIAA won't shut you down. Remember all you need is to point or index a perfectly legal file and they can sue. The problem is it takes lots of money to defend yourself in court. In all maters you are assumed guilty and pay a price even if you are found innocent.
The problem is complex p2p networks have just left the experimental stage so cvs is the only sucessfull low end p2p system I can think of and perhaps some ftp mirror's may be another example. Gnutella an Napster are mainly for pirates or mostly used by pirates so that arguement will not fly in court.
We need to build a Gnu-p2p using sun's jxta and have a cool user interface and groups for things like medical research, code sharing, OSDN, Thesis'es, etc .
all deaths are fatal? That's a wonderful conclusion.
No joke. Murder rates are higher in America because of economic and social factors, not because of guns. Encouraging lawful gun ownership (eg, through concealed-carry permit legislation) decreases violent crime relative to a country's baseline (though not necessarily making it lower than another country's baseline), and laws which prohibit law-abiding gun owners from owning firearms increase violent crime relative to that baseline.
This is, largely, why violent crime rates increased in the UK and Australia after they adopted laws banning gun ownership recently, and why crime rates dropped in every American state which passed concealed carry permit laws. Criminals aren't so stupid that they don't realize that if guns are outlawed, they are less likely to run into a citizen with a gun, and can partake in violent crime rather boldly without fear of reprisal. They can also get away with relying on just a knife, or their bare hands, instead of a gun when they know they are likely to meet only unarmed resistance. Evidence supporting this position is cited in the University of Chicago law school report I linked in the thread above.
It ties right back in with the P2P issue, actually
At that point, it will be nearly as hard to detect P2P users as it would be to detect a homemade double-barrelled shotgun made of steel pipes and mousetrap parts in some anonymous citizen's garage.
-- Guges --
background
The major biological databases (EMBL, GenBank, Swissprot etc.) are repositories for sequence data, the information that describes the order of the DNA or proteins (depending on the database). This is collected and curated by a relatively small number of people compared to the size of these databases.
This information is relatively useless without annotation. Annotation is the description of the biological role of the sequence and which bits are important. Unfortunately annotation is difficult and time consuming for people who are non experts to maintain. THis means that many of the entries in the databases are either poorly annotated (poor), have out of date annotation (poor) or blatently incorrect annotation (really bad).
A system of P2P sharing of annotation data has been devised where an expert working on gene Xyz can make available his own annotations without having to burden the overworked people at GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ to make updates to the central database. Interested parties can access this data in a P2P manner (ie a query on 'what does anyone know about Xyz').
One of the main protagonists of DAS (Distributed Annotation System) is Lincoln Stein at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (yes, of CGI.pm fame). It will also be presented at the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference in July this year (where I hope to find out a lot more about it too..)
This sounds like a perfect example of productive P2P.Have a look at http://stein.cshl.org/das/ for more information. I know that at least one of the authors on the paper referenced has been guilty of reading Slashdot in the past so maybe he would comment.
Gee, what about that thing called The World Wide Web? Anyone with a connection to the Internet can either put up a server, or browse with a browser.
It is the same thing as Napster, or Gnutella,etc... Centralized server holds the addresses of the hosts (DNS...), a person runs a server app (just because Gnutella/Napster/etc have a combined server/browser doesn't make a big difference), and makes a list of his/her files to share available (ie, web server with a list of files, with or without an index.html.). You use a search engine to find the files you want (Nap et al. simply have that built in, again).
THE INTERNET IS PEER 2 PEER in it's very design.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I've covered all this in the letter. If they want me to come say it or a summary of it in person, and can get me there, I will go. I consider nothing more important than helping EFF, at this point, in whatever way I can. And I'm a damned good cold-reader/speaker
Even ignoring for the moment the distinct possibility that the methods and assumptions used in the study are flawed, which I believe they are, you seem to have disregarded the remainder of the article after coming across the statement that you cite. It goes on to say:
But even this number is of precarious significance, for it embodies the dubious assumption that comparing "body counts" is a meaningful way to report the usefulness of firearms.
As reported by Gary Kleck's study, the vast majority of defensive uses of guns do not result in injury. Guns are quite effective at deterring crime. Criminals don't like targets that can defend themselves and possibly kill them. Additionally, as the article says:
One does not measure the effectiveness of a police department, for example, by comparing the number of officers and criminals killed over some time period. Rather, one asks what effect the police have had on the rate of crime. Similarly, one should not compare the number of burglars or other intruders and civilians killed by domestic firearms, but rather ask how many burglars or other intruders were driven away or deterred by the firearm.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Statistical statements such as "a gun is 6 times more likely to kill a resident of the household than an intruder" can also be quite misleading. How likely is it that you will kill an intruder with the gun? 10%? 0.01%? It makes a difference. Top that off with the fact that the statistics are highly suspect themselves and it becomes meaningless. The study seemed to be deliberately misleading. I've been trying to find the actual paper so I can read the whole thing, but haven't hand any luck so far. I've only found pieces of it, and they seemed misleading.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
P2P is just a fancy name for a file sharing method, and sharing files is not illegal. So I don't see the connection between the original case, and your analogue.
Analogues almost always muddy the debate, people start arguing the analogue instead of the original point.
If you had said "if airplanes had got a reputation for being primarily used for smuggling, and you wanted to prove they were useful for legal purposes, would you find examples of using airplanes for legal purposes?", the analogue would be almost one-to-one with the original scenario. However, like the original scenario, the answer would be obvious. If you want to demonstrate that a technology is useful for legal purposes, an obvious method is to find examples of such uses.
I share my recently created or downloaded packages for Debian GNU/Linux on gnutellanet. Redistribution is always authorized by the copyright proprietor. I'm also working on an enhancement for apt that will enable it to download packages from gnutellanet and share recently downloaded packages. (I'm also carefully following developments in Debian that will eventually lead to cryptographic signatures on packages in order to reduce the risk of a rogue package being inadvertantly installed).
Now what does this have to do with P2P and IP laws?
Yes, sometimes new technologies replace old technologies. But the airlines became successful by convincing passengers to travel with them, not by swooping down picking up the rail cars and forcing them to fly.
If you were deathly afraid of flying, wouldn't you rather have a choice?
"Download redhat? Make it available to someone else!" The problem is that all p2p networks to date have been built on marginally legal materials. We need to change that. A p2p enabled browser might be a very good start.
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
No, file type and creator information is not stored in the resource fork of Mac files. That is directory meta information which is in neither fork. When a Mac file is transfered it is first flattened together with directory meta information which is extracted at the receiving end in order to reconstitute the file. One such standard is MacBinary. On the other hand your observation about file name extensions is mostly valid. However, services like Internet Config tries to provide PC style mapping according to file name extension on the assumption that such a file comes from a PC.
Please remember that copyright law is only something which a state decides to promote or not based on its purported beneficial effect. While copyright is specifically in the US Constitution, there is nothing about intellectual property which tends to be a term used to obfuscate by setting up false analogies. Copyright is a government enforced, time-limited monopoly used to promote the dissemination of knowledge for the advancement of arts and sciences. Fair use is there because it also promotes the dissemination of knowledge for the advancement of arts and sciences. The primary good here is not the government enforced monopoly despite the beliefs of the copyright cartels. Insofar as the current law tends to impede the advancement of arts and sciences, the case could be made that it has become mostly counter-productive and a possible candidate for the ash heap of history.
With the existence of nearly zero cost replication of digital data of any type it may no longer be logical for society to try to do anything as fraught with danger as attempting to prop up monopolies. (Especially if it requires the introduction of police state laws and practices). The usefulness to society of maintaining these monopolies may have been mooted by the new dynamic inherent in digital media. If the only (or principal) beneficiaries are media cartels which as a result promote the dissemination of meretricious tripe to the near exclusion of all else, maybe we should consider getting off this particular train.
In the end I don't know if it matters much how we reason about some of these issues. When a dam is proposed for a specific location it might be discovered that its presence could lead to the extinction of a particular species which could not survive in the new habitat. People might have the option of moving the proposed dam but in this case we are talking about foregoing some of the principal benefits of a ubiquitous, unfettered, digital network. If the choice comes down to extending copyright law as media cartels desire or building a robust, largely unconstrained internet, I'd rather work on building the infrastructure of a new P2P framework where a number of new applications can evolve.
The point so many people are missing here is that P2P is just a technology, and like any technology, it is neither good nor bad. The good and the bad come from how it's used.
One of the problems with the internet today is that 99.9% of the content is being provided on 0.1% of the machines connected to it. The idea of having centralized servers is nice because it makes administration easy, but lacks many advantages of a distributed environment which P2P provides. P2P promises to even out the numbers above. Instead of 0.1% of machines providing 99.9% of the worlds web pages, we could have 80% (maybe more, maybe less) of the machines providing that same 99.9% of the content. Furthermore, by distributing content in this way, it reduces the strain on any given web server. A large number of hits on a single web server can bring it down. In a distributed environment, these same hits will be distributed across a large number of machines, and even if one goes down, the rest will remain up, making it possible to still retrieve the requested data.
Some examples of P2P (some of these may not be to purists) would be things like email, chat clients (ICQ, AOL Instant Messanger), Usenet news, IRC file transfers, networked games (not the massively multiplayer ones like EverQuest, though). We might even consider PPP, which stands for Point to Point Protocol, though the way in which it is most often used isn't fully P2P. With the influx of people running private web servers off their home machines, even the world wide web is turning into P2P. Also consider file sharing on an intranet. Each machine acts as both a client and server, and is therefore P2P.
I think P2P has the potential to make networked environments far more robust and sustainable than the client/server model which is so widespread these days. Its advantages, in my opinion, far outweigh the disadvantages.
--
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
No need for going to the library or paying outragous subscription fees for journals.
The May issue of CACM has several articles about the need to establish free digital libraries of scientific papers.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
It's hard to argue airplanes are inherently dangerous to people
I think it would be really easy to argue, actually. Look up the accident statistics yourself. It's still safer than driving... but would we have known that (or believed it) before public air travel became popular?
But some of us feel that all this is irrelevant, that you shouldn't need to be sponsored by a noble cause (TM) to write or use a computer program!
Repeat after me: "My life is my own. I do not need to justify my life to others." You especially don't need to dredge up something like cancer research to justify the existance of an entire class of computer programs to, of all plaintiffs, the entertainment industry!!!
The EduCommons project at Utah State University is comprised maily of an educational P2P application that allows teachers, students, and researchers to share syllabi, lecture notes, research instruments, and data sets they already have laying around their machine directly with each other. After securing some funding from the University itself to get the project going, the project team is expecting to hear regarding two seperate NSF grants within the next month or so.
This is just the type of legitimate app you are looking for. NSF spends millions each year on the development of collections of digital educational resources through its NSDL initiative, when many of those resources already exist on Joe Professor's computer in Nebraska...
This spring I spent most of my Internet2 talk time in front of university NOC folks saying "Sure, you're planning ways to shut down Napster now, but in 6 months we're going to have a P2P app directly in line with your organization's mission that you won't be able to just 'turn off'. You'll actually have to deal with it".
By the way, the project is all open source, and we're still looking for client/peer programmers on the Linux and Win32 side. =) EduCommons project.
--------
meta4
dw2-dont-spam-me-@opencontent.org
http://davidwiley.com/
"This hammer could be used for dangerous purposes -- can you prove there are good uses for it?"
Actually the current state of things, is...
"This hammer has been used for all manner of illegal purposes -- can you provide one legal example of how it has been used?"
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Proof by analogy is fraud, and the above analogy is too flawed to be useful.
Serveral games use p2p networking to update game information, ie original diablo.
Mirrors, seems to me that systems that sunsite.edu would fit into the classification of peer to peer for rapid disemination of files.
DNS, I have multiple DNS systems that feed each other information.
Failover synchronization: Hot swapping computers generally talk between each other to synchronize files and insure that if one machine goes down another has the same information... Haven't worked with clusters but they probably are the same.
News headers, seems to me that news sites, such as slashdot and fresh meat which exchange article headlines should be able to fall into this system.
These are just suggestions, should fall into P2P definition, if not perhaps someone can post what P2P means?
Lando
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
The reason proof of good use is needed for P2P filesharing is that there's been precious little evidence of P2P filesharing being put to good use so far.
Since the first ever (well, fist well known) P2P filesharing system was designed specifically with illegal activity in mind, you shouldn't be suprised if people view it in a similar light to say... a lockpicking set. Sure, there are legal things you can do with it, but most people are gonna question why you want one...
It's a sad state of things when you've got to prove that something is good in order that it not be presumed harmful. "This hammer could be used for dangerous purposes -- can you prove there are good uses for it?" Sigh.
So stop voting for the Republicans, and the Democrats, and the Greens, and all the other political parties that promote socially-coercive agendas and support laws that make it impossible for the courts to behave in any other fashion.
Start voting for parties that favor strict liability as a standard for both civil and criminal action.
Or, to put it another way; hammers don't kill people, people kill people, sometimes with hammers. P2P doesn't "steal" intellectual property, people do, sometimes with P2P.
-
I will immediately sell my loft, my airplane, and most of the rest of my worldly possessions and emigrate from this country (USA).
I will then, at my new location, immediately set up a freenet node for those unfortunate enough to remain within the borders of this once-free land.
Perhaps political asylum in Canada would be worth getting, assuming they still have the kind of backbone they once had during the Vietnam era.
In any event, I will cease contributing to the economy and power of a nation which goes down this path. Indeed, I'm on the verge of doing so already, with all the freedoms they have stripped from us. I'm not advocating a mass exodus of intelligent IT people (although the idea has a certain appeal -- do you suppose a country run by idiots would notice the brain drain and force us to stay, at the point of a government gun?), but voting with one's feet is a very legitimate action, one which, in a generation or two, might even effect the kind of change made virtually impossible by our entrenched and corrupt political apparatus.
--FreeUser, fondly remembering living in Europe, which even twelve years ago was more free than the less-draconian-than-today United States of the time...
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I like the new acronym, IANALBI(U?)LWO :)
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
The idea is a P2P client that monitors a host, and it has a list of other hosts to gather information on. It transmits the data over a P2P network gathering data on all machines (latency times, services up, etc) and then each machine can report a failure on a node to email or pager.
This seems to be a sound idea and a good idea for a network monitor tool. And, as it is stated here if this were the case it seems a plugin to an existing P2P architecture system is all thats necessary, thus making a beneficial legal P2P network.
Or.. Im just clueless which is entirely possible.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
OJ wasn't guilty, but he was liable.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I don't disagree that the proper way to view this type of statisics is in terms of risk management (which seems to be where you're headed with this). However, I disagree that the "how many burglars" question is the only one we should be asking.
Statistics like these can be used to address any number of questions, but matching the right statistic to the right question is a tricky one. It is not at all far-fetched to predict that many people would consider a gun fatality to be the worst possible outcome of purchasing a handgun. In this event, asking questions like "what is the probability, based on the national average, of someone being wounded/killed with a firearm in my home if I purchase one," or "who is the person most likely to be wounded or killed," is perfectly rational.
Hmm... so let me get this straight: most people who have telephones in their homes, have them in order to get their hands on copyrighted material without paying for it?
Perhaps you haven't thought about what p2p really is.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You and the guy above have completely opposing arguments, how can you both be insightful. One of you has to be wrong
What does being insightful have to do with right and wrong?
Ayn Rand and Karl Marx were both insightful about a great many things (and diametrically opposed to each other). Neither is 100% correct, but they both bring insight to the discussion of economics and the relation to society...
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I'm guessing this submission was just a moronic employee at EFF who overheard something in the hallways and decided "hey - I bet /. would be great for this!"
To use the words of the submission, "demerits applied" for most useless information request from an organization that should know better.
Dude, your Athlon peecee running Linux is in absolutely no way, whatsoever, a peer of the cluster of 64-way UltraEnterprise 10K servers which power eBay.
/dev/null ? Funny I can see ebay then.
So, you think that ebays server dumps its packets right into
I think you've misunderstood what a 'peer' actually is on the internet.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
The entire Internet is built around the Peer-to-Peer principble. Of course, firewalls & NAT-devices break this principle all the time - but basically - Internet _is_ a peer-to-peer network.
Some peers are called 'servers' since they contain more data and serve more people than others. Still, they are just peers.
But, to get real examples. IRC-Botnets - the bots are connected to eachother, and talk to eachother. They maintain stability on IRC channels, or perform other functions.
Another example, the good old fashioned 'talk' program is a nice peer-to-peer thingomajig.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
I question how it is possible for anyone to come up with any definition of "point to point file sharing" that will allow microsoft.com to send files to users and yet not allow me to run gnutella.
A Server is a Point on the Network. No more, no less. There is NO technical difference between me running Apache and www.google.com running Apache. They just have more computers to run it, and a larger bandwidth to run it on.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You mean, "I didn't know P2P could get cancer!"
If its any consolation, I do agree with the other poster.. he just didn't take it to the logical extreme ;)
His is marked insightful because it IS insightful.
My point is, given this hypothetical situation, the railroad companies would most certainly try to pass laws restricting air travel.
;) so railroads still have a niche.
They CERTAINLY had the resources. I'm not sure the political climate would have allowed legislative manipulation on that level (like today).
They would also have tried very hard to gain mindshare by arguing that air travel would ruin their business, thereby threatening the US economy.
Unfortunately for them, there was NO PRIOR restrictions on air travel, since it was never percieved as a threat.
Fortunatly for them, however, air transport can be expensive (especially for very heavy things
P2P, however, has always been basically illegal (in a capitalistic structure) from the BIRTH of ideas in the form of patents and copyright laws. What kept it going was that the widespread transfer of large chunks of information was relatively expensive/hard and restricted to publishers of books and newspapers.
Once the technological/cost barrier had fallen, everybody started scrambling to keep the house of cards from completely collapsing.
It can't be stopped now - and unlike heavfy freight for railroads, I doubt there is a sizable niche for the retail information business model.
I am interested to read what examples can be provided for positive usage of P2P, but I'm afraid that like guns, it will be shown that overwhelmingly P2P is used to flout the law and that our society is better without it.
It will be shown that P2P is used to flout several stupid and shortsighted laws, and that our society is better without said laws.
.. and you wanted to prove airplanes were useful, would you find ways to use the airplane on the ground?
I think not.
P2P blows the top off of what the conventional wisdom of intellectual property says, and THAT is why there is a debate to begin with.
The problem with this is one of trust... people would start naming other files that "predictable" name. The same kind of people who engage in meta tag abuse, and goat sex tactics.
So probably a digital signature scheme would be required in this case. That could all be built in to the client easily enough. ( As long as you trust the client...)
As this would confirm the source of the content, it would also allow people to sue for libel, slander etc. So it still might be worth posting some stuff completely anonymous.
"It's a sad state of things when you've got to prove that something is good in order that it not be presumed harmful. 'This hammer could be used for dangerous purposes -- can you prove there are good uses for it?'"
they do it with guns every day. and i know a gun's primary purpose is to kill, but it's a friggin inanimate object...it takes a finger on the trigger to make it function. you could kill just as many kids in a high school with a good katana (and it'd be a lot messier), but i don't hear people screaming for bans on sharp objects. sorry for going OT, just had some interesting (read aggrivating) conversation with the housemates.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
By this argument, napster isn't p2p: both users log in to a server, after which they are connected to each other. Or they connect to their ISP's before connecting to each other.
The telephone is a prime example: both peers (phones) send data and receive data through a network, directly to each other. The data just happens to be sound. It's an example that I had not thought about. It's the first time I actually feel narrow minded. I (we) should think broader than just computer(networks).
----------------------------------------------
the pun is mightier than the sword
This question almost looks like a troll.
First, why would a marketing term need a defense?
Second, who gets to define what p2p is? I would argue that the first Internet connection was by definition peer-to-peer. When do boxen stop being peers and start being, well, something else? According to Microsoft SMB file sharing -is- peer-to-peer. And the business I am in lives and dies by SMB file sharing. As do a lot of businesses where the 'Network Neighborhood' icon can be found. The water gets awfully muddy if we do SMB file sharing to a box that has a 'server' name tag on it. If SMB is p2p but the connection is between my workstation and the server, is it still p2p?
If p2p isn't the connection type, is it the boxen? I could say 'no, we're NOT using p2p communication since we just hung a 'server' name tag on the box where the files are stored'. Sit someone down at the console and have him run an app. Now, is it still a server? Does a telnet connection become p2p if someone is playing Tetris on the console, and start being client/server when the game ends? If Tetris doesn't make the box qualify as a workstation, then what about Solid Designer?
Someone needs to define the terms. I suspect this is why p2p is such a versatile marketing term - anything that was plain ol' networking can be called p2p if you keep the definition vague enough.
I believe peer-to-peer would be a good way of distributing "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine.
:-)
all of the free software projects using CVS and variations there of
Isn't that client-server, not peer-to-peer?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
For a long time now we've been hearing of this supposed information economy, for over twenty years in fact. In order to sell something you've got to be able to control it to the extent that people who aren't willing to pay you for it don't get access to it. P2P sharing of information undermines this.
I personally don't have a problem with this, but only because I believe that freedom of information is more important in the scheme of things thatn whether someone gets paid for that information. I have no problem with the idea that someone should get paid if they produce and distribute something.
The problem is that when you try to base an economy off this when the thing being produced is information, you end up with things being controlled that have no business being controlled, such as the distribution of information on what laws have been passed or enacted, which was in fact covered in a recent slashdot article.
The DMCA is the perfect example of the types of abuses you can expect from an information based economy.
Freedom of information is necessary for freedom of expression because freedom of expression is itself dependent upon freedom of thought. Freedom of thought is in turn once again dependent upon freedom of information because information control is thought control.
Here in the US we are very sensitive to the right that we all have to freedom of expression. But for whatever reason we are not so sensitive to the right upon which it depends, freedom of thought. How can someone truly speak their mind when their ideas are controlled by another?
This is why P2P is an important social good. It allows and encourages the unregulated exchange of ideas and information, which in turn promotes and helps ensure a well informed public, which is something that democracy is itself dependent upon.
It has often been said that the first amendment makes all others possible. I'd argue that the first and the second amendment make all others possible, but for either of them to actually be there and exist, you must have freedom of information.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Here is an example: TCP/IP
All internet traffic is P2P.
Nuff said.
It is a violation of copyright.
Except for one thing....
It only applies to textbooks.
One thing that I think is totally lost in most P2P networks is the potential benefit to amature photographers like myself. When I'm connected to gnutella, which I am fairly often, I offer up a selection (currently 6) of my own photographs including some nature shots and some people (including a very strange self-portrait). Of course, you would have trouble finding these right now, amid the piles of porn which dominate the visual offerings on gnutella, which I find somewhat distressing.
The DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine) standard is one implementation of the P2P that needs to be looked at. the principle behind the communication according to the DICOM standard is that EVERY "Station" is both a client and a server. you have of course dedicated storage station such as PACS (Picture Archiving System) for obvious reasons [the Files are quite large]. This standard is used and developed by people all over the world). You can find one open source implementation of the DICOM standard here (OFFIS) and other DICOM ressourses here Any How, this is only one example and I'm sure people can find better one.
I'm not sure how much this would count, but - how many services from yahoo, excite, aol, etc. offer chat rooms that allow you to swap pictures (albeit fake) of what you look like to a potential love interest.
It's got everything - love, trepidation, a hint of sex, adventure, all the makings of a summer blockbuster!
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
It's a sad state of things when you've got to prove that something is good in order that it not be presumed harmful. "This hammer could be used for dangerous purposes -- can you prove there are good uses for it?" Sigh.
Well, here's the poop. Napster, the primary critter defendant in these matters, isn't itself copying any content, it is merely indexing p2p sources. We all get that. The Copyright law distinguishes between Direct copyright infringement (you did the copying) and Indirect infringement (you take the hit for someone else's copying).
Indirect infringement takes the form of contributory or vicarious infringement. To be liable for indirect infringement, a plaintiff must be able to prove not only that the third party infringed, which requires every element, but some other stuff as well, including actual knowledge of the third party's infringement.
One defense to infringement (and this is why VCR and copying machine manufacturers don't spend much time in court these days) is that the technology aiding the infringement is capable of a substantial noninfringing use.
Plaintiffs in these cases are suggesting that there may be no substantial noninfringing uses for p2p, and EFF would like to rebut that.
There are plenty of "good" reasons to use distributed peer-to-peer file sharing. Personally, I think that these systems would make a good replacement for servers like astro-ph, once someone gets around to adding support for searching for keywords in parts of files besides filenames. (As it stands, including all of the relevant keywords in the filename leads to unreasonably long filenames.) People who want to distribute their own music, essays, or video productions could benefit similarly. These are all legal activities that we have every right to engage in, but the intellectual property industry will argue that those concerns are inconsequential next to the menace of "piracy". They will argue that I should give up my right to use my computer equipment in a perfectly legal manner because somebody else might use the same software to perform some illegal activity, and my activity just isn't important enough to justify that risk. Of course, that's easy for them to say, since they aren't being asked to give up anything.
By making these arguments, media companies are in effect saying that nobody but themselves has anything worthwhile to say, and therefore if anyone other than themselves is saying something that people are listening to, then that something must have been stolen from the purveyors of intellectual property. This sort of reasoning is an anathema to free speech, and we must resist it now, before it becomes entrenched in the form of legislation.
-rpl
Digital signatures work very well for that sort of thing. Plugins could be developed for various P2P clients to automate knowing whether or not you're downloading the "right" one.
- bytes.mp3
So how to you authenticate without downloading the file first? Sign the filename and include the signature in the filename like this:
TellaDDMMYY__signature-of-TellaDDMMYY.mp3. You could it a bit stronger by: TellaDDMMYY__signature-of-TellaDDMMYY+filesize-in
I'm no lawyer, but I have made a priority of studying individual rights issues.
As I understand things, the burden of proof ought to be on whoever wants to remove something from public access, and they must prove that P2P software has basically NO legitimate use. I don't think that can be done -- for example, just off the top of my head I came up with this example, and I'm sure there are more:
-- example begin --
As Programmer Bob, I run a service for the Quake community. I've developed an app with the following functionality:
1. Provides a chat area with multiple channels for people to talk, meet people and look for other people to play with.
2. Serves as a central server repository, for people who don't want to bother with hand-picking their players in the chat area.
3. Designed to integrate with game setup -- game options can be changed from within the app, the game can be launched directly from the app, etc.
4. (this is where the P2P part comes in) Facilitates a mod/skin trading service. Different users can share mods and skins by dropping them all in a directory and sharing it. The app can then be used to search for different mods, a là Napster/Gnutella/SMA/what-have-you, which are being served by OTHER USERS. There is no charge for the service (which prevents any problem of indirectly charging for the work of others, i.e., mods), and if any mod authors request that their mod be removed from the service, that mod can be filtered.
... and make the assumption that Bob has iD's blessing. I don't see why they'd care -- if anything, I would think they'd choose to support it, since it will add to the experience of the game, and in so doing drive more sales.
-- example end --
(This is of course a fictional app -- I don't know of one that includes all those functions. But then, I don't play Quake much.)
It seems to me that such a beneficial, community-serving, perfectly legal thing ought to AT LEAST justify not outlawing P2P software as a blanket statement.
And we shouldn't even be required to justify it (although I suppose some examples are required to combat allegations that it HAS no non-infringing uses). But this seems like a perfectly plausible example.
Based on the ease with which the P2P class of software can be collectively justified, I don't see how it can legitimately be banned. There may be some specific instances with which certain P2P apps can be used for illegal purposes, but I don't see anyone trying to ban copy machines. Or scanners. Or VCRs.
inigima
. . . it allows them to get their hands on copyright material without paying for it.
Are you aware that this is the main function of the WWW and, in fact, any sharing technology (including libraries, radio, and TV)? Somebody pays at some point, but the actual user of the copyrighted information is rarely taking on the (full) burden. Computers just make it something individuals can do without construction of a publishing empire or a broadcast station. There is nothing special about P2P in this regard, either; it's just another way two computers can talk to each other and exchange information. After all, on the Internet all computers are peers.
At least the idea is valid, even if there's no implementation yet.
I'm involved with an effort (however slow) to make a multimedia chat environment (Project Elysium), and one of the big concerns as far as networking is lag. Lag for a graphical chat environment is especially bad because of all of the graphics files that need to be downloaded. Peer-to-peer filesharing appears to be an excelent way of helping to eliminate the the bottleneck of the server having to simultaniously send everyone in the room a graphics file, however, as the task can be split up between the server and everyone who's already seen (and therefore downloaded) the graphic.
-Golden Eagle
Sometimes I chat, VC, swap config files, patches, jokes, trivia, URLs, etc. with the bloke who lives across the road from me. It's only a 45-second short walk to go see him but sometimes it's late or raining or we're busy. There's no super-duper gnutellas napsters freenets or mojos, we just interact using Netmeeting or pscp or something. This is what _I_ call p2p.... will someone tell me there's something wrong here? (Maybe if I shout across to him that should be illegal too.) Supposing I e-mail him instead, now we have at least one server - I don't think this makes it better or worse. BTW we don't even live in the USA and it's scary having all those people there always trying to dream up Internet Laws to stop us doing stuff.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
the irony is dripping. He fucks with your mind so you fuck him right back :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
perhaps the most utilitarian aspect of Freenet. Sending the same page across the atlantic every time someone on the other side of the world requests it is just lunacy.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Or better yet, show the harms that are obvious when guns are outlawed, namely, only outlaws will have guns, and it is impossible to keep the government under control.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yes, one global windows nt domain would be the equivilent of napster, it is true. Think about it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
wow, it's like you have an original idea but you actually just did s/freenet/gnutella/g
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's specifically the constution that you're trying to protect. A government of the people for the people and by the people. We're not yet at a point where that is blatantly being stomped upon. The the diluting of the trial by jury system that is happening in this country is actually coming close to it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If you guys at the EFF fuck up and the judge says "point to point file sharing is illegal" I'm going to be very very pissed. Outlawing a technology is just outrageous.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Or you know, you could take a stand and say "hey, if he wants to do that let the copyright holder sue him, I aint the RIAA's whipping boy". You service providers who dilute due process disgust me.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How about fair use laws. If I own a CD then I should be able to get MP3 tracks from that CD. Back when Napster functioned the great majority of the things I downloaded I already owned on CD or Vinyl, and I just wanted to get for my MP3 player without the hassle of ripping (which they're trying to do away with as well.)
Where the entertainment industry is going with all of this is to turn the PC into a freely explorable tool into a walled off content-playback device. Sure it seems perfectly reasonable to shut down napster now. And in five to ten years it will seem perfectly resonable for them to have copyright monitoring systems forcefully installed on every hard disk sold in the USA. Its where we draw the line.
Personally I think they made a huge mistake. Napster had a big enough user base to start turning big profits, and they were going to fork over billions to the record companies. The RIAA court case made it pretty clear that something decentralized wouldn't be able to be shut down. It's only a matter of time now...
Basically there is a demand for free/very cheap music that is selectively downloadable. It is ridiculous to charge $16 for a downloaded album, the $16 you pay in the store covers shipping, storespace, and retail markup, the record company doesn't see more than $7 or $8 of that, once again they only see an immediate way to increase their profit margins in a new technology, like when they doubled album priced during the CD conversion. Frankly I say screw the RIAA, they steal from most artists (your favorite bands do not own their songs, the suits do) and are responsible for the past six or seven years of nearly pure crap on radio and mtv. It's been a long time since a Nirvana or Beck quality artist broke into the popular view, and there are plenty of good bands out there, but they don't fit with the spoonfed thirteenyear old market.
Hmmm.... that rambled.... perhaps I need to sleep more.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Keep government under control...
My friends and I were talking about this. We came to the interesting conclusion that America is short on political options. It seems that the constitution provides for only very slow control within the bounds of what the current government finds acceptable (i.e. elections) or rapid violent change (i.e. militia, guns, revolution) i think right now that there are serious problems with america that are not being addressed by the political parties, and thus no viable candidate could ever do anything about, but aren't fundamental enough to require an armed coup. It also ties into the problem that in any sort of election system, 51% of the people get 100% control.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Hey, I actually use P2P in a way I consider quite usefull, and I think I can achieve historical evidence of it helpiong the general advance of sciences, human knowledge and welfare in general.
The technology I am talking about is based in wireless peer to peer analogic audio streaming between two or more organic entities, known as "speech", and actually had its role in civilization development.
Well, but maybe the comunication between two individuals is in fact too dangerous a thing to be allowed, as they can infringe a lare number of copyrights, and there would be no one nearby to check if one of them happen to sing a copyrighted song, let alone the danger of hidden terrorist conspiracies against the corporate welfare.
-><- no
Currently, P2P services usually advertise connected persons IP addresses on a public server. This could still happen, but subjects or uses could be advertised as well. The servers, can also use P2P to share their information.
Want a site to discuss and distribute folk music from a remote part of South Africa of which there is an audience of maybe 100 people? Currently, someone has to setup a free homepage for this information to be shared. With P2P, we can create a subject list and people interested share files, emails, whatever. Obviously, some more technology has to be built on top but this will always be the case. Raw P2P is only useful for copying and searching files of specific names (almost exclusively useful for music and video).
Perhaps a nice new XML format can be created to describe the nature of such information and do it.
I could talk about all the research that's been done on P2P systems in both the OS and the DB worlds. But this item about P2P in the Federal Government, which just came across ACM TechNews, seems to say everything anybody might want to communicate to the court:
Any time a product or technology is used (or appears to be used) primarily for illict, illegal, or harmful purposes, it is the court's -responsibility- to look for legal uses of the product. This applies to anything. Guns, lockpicks, pepper spray, and peer-to-peer sharing. This doesn't imply that all technology is evil until proven good, but if something is obviously used illegally and never used for the Forces Of Good, then there's no reason to allow to to exist and plenty of reasons to ban it.
I don't support the banning of peer-to-peer. Not because I believe the ban will be unsuccessful. Bans are almost never 100% successful; that's not their point. Their point is to state that you can't ____, and give the justice system grounds to prosecute you if you do do it. I don't support the ban because I put P2P in the same category as baseball bats - easy to use for illegal purposes, but just as many legal uses.
But I object to Timothy's statement that "It's a sad state of things when you've got to prove that something is good". That's incorrect. It's a sad state when the courts DON'T try to prove something is good. They already know there are illegal uses. If the courts said "P2P is used for some illegal purposes, so ban it", they'd be dropping their responsibility. By saying "Are there legal uses, and are they persuasive enough that P2P should be legal?" they acknowledge that they've only seen the illegal uses and that that's probably a one-sided story.
Now, does anyone know if there's an immediate reason the EFF wants this list, or is it for future use? Either way I support it, but I'd like to know if the courts or legal teams have requested this information.
Then I'll watch what happens down south and ponder the ramifications this might have up here in Canada, where the entire topic has hardly come up.
The Mad Hobbit
"Guns don't kill people. People kill People."
becomes
"Software doesn't commit piracy. People commit piracy."
Most good scientists recognize the value of skepticism. It is a very good idea to prove the existence of something, instead of waiting for it to be merely disproven.
This is no different. P2P is a new paradigm, something new and different. It's important to show that it has legitimate uses, instead of simply accepting that these uses exist.
The point? That this is the right thing to do, not a sad commentary on anything at all...
I host my Project Guttenburg E-Books on Gnutella as well as many shareware and freeware games spanning all the way back to the early 1980s. To my knowledge I do not have one single copyright violation in my shared folder.
What is so special about that, why all the fuzz? Even the notion of defending P2P makes me sick and is absurd. The Internet is built on (mostly) the TCP protoco, which allows for any node to connect to any other node directly. The Internet *is* P2P and has been so from the beginning.
It is normal to telnet from machine A to machine B, and then telnet back from B to A. It is normal to act both as an ftp client and server, in fact before the web became popular, in the old days, almost any connected node to the Internet acted both as client and as server.
Why is this "evidence" needed? People trying to forbid P2P are trying to forbid Internet, or at least trying to fundamentally change its netowork protocol (which is impossible).
Only ISP's could block incoming connections, thus making "P2P" (how I hate that word, describing something that has been around for ages as if it were something new) impossible. Not many of them do (luckily), only having no fixed IP address makes acting as a server a bit more complicated, but things like dyndns get around that.
One might imagine a future where anyone with a dynamic IP address (hard to trace) is prohibited by the state to have incoming connections. That is a nightmare but I don't think such a draconic law is very probably, and it would be very hard to enforce too.
The mass digitization of our heritage needs a driver, and it's not going to happen if we're so paranoid about copyright that we don't act now, while the source materials are still available.
The RIAA had a GOOD THING in Napster, then they fucked themselves (and us) by getting greedy, being penny wise, and pound foolish to a degree which just pisses me off every single time I think about it.
We need to revisit the concepts of copyright and cut DOWN the time frame to 10 years, no more. We need to cut down the patent to 7 years. It's obvious that you shouldn't be able to patent software or business methods (which are all ideas for using existing systems, not improving a machine.)
This topic ALWAYS gets my blood boiling. /FLAME
--Mike--
The correct term, I believe is tele-dildonics. Originally coined in the era where that chap with the glove existed. It was talked about as much as it is today, with just as many products on the market, as are today.
Can't think of anything finer...
Which seems to be the most trivial and common example. Just about any company is using some kind of sharing protocols. While larger companies use some sort of centralized (or department-wide) file servers, the smaller outfits often resort to peer-to-peer sharing of their Windows disks. Granted, they use SMB for the purpose, not Napster, but used this way, SMB is peer-to-peer too.
Say no to software patents.
To distribute Linux releases, you'd probably want to modify the mechanism somewhat - Nx600MB is a large chunk of data to need to transmit reliably, compared to the reliability of modems or servers. (Linux servers *are* much more reliable than Windows, but the reason you're distributing a new Linux release is so people can shut their systems down while they install new software on them.) So you'd need to distribute the thing as some collection of smaller packages, plus the software's critical enough that you'd need a centrally distributed digital signature mechanism (which is primarily just another file to ship along with the rest of the distro, except that everybody would probably want to verify the file centrally.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well said.
My neighbor uses Juno/Win98 and a digital video camera to video conference with other family members.
I'm not sure how you would do it, but the Cheese-worm thing on slashdot yesterday got me thinking...
What if we could have a Distributed/Peer-to-Peer virus protection system? Basically a similar concept to the Cheese-worm, but a system would have to explicitly run a small daemon to participate in it. Then whenever a virus comes through, the first system it hits gets attacked, but the daemon sees what it does and intelligently creates a definition to protect it, or adds it to an existing `behaviour definition' that covers several viruses that do the same/similar thing.
Once one machine has been hit and a definition created, the definition is spread through the peer-to-peer network as the virus hits other machines and is blocked. At most you might lose some systems to the virus initially, but the definition spreads, it would save a lot more machines than not having any at all.
I don't think what i've said above exactly explains the idea i have in my head, but i think the words peer-to-peer antivirus are closest to what i am looking for. If others could come up with a better way to implement it, i would be interested to hear them. I am not much of a programmer myself, so i don't know how this would work, but i think the idea is good.
life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
Aren't copyright laws loosened with regards to educational material?
They're not loosened... it's the same law. What you're referring to is the notion of 'fair use', which has been enshrined in the very same copyright laws that say it is illegal to do the converse: to make full copies for your own profit (distribution), or to make partial copies passing it off as your own work (plagiarism). This is not just for educational use, but that's one large area of concern here.
[
P2P is not centralised, this is different from almost all comercial models of selling content.
Centralised content distribution lends itself to censorship and control.
P2P ensures free speech. It is the modern equivelant of word of mouth.
In this climate of mass-consumerisim and mass-media word of mouth is something that the next generation is mostly ignorant of.
a valid example of P2P is freenet. Freedom of speech is legitimate. Some things need to be said.
This is my sig, exciting huh!
im beginning to feel the same
Rangers Lead the Way!
Piper: http://bioinformatics.org/piper/
Piper is a peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed workflow system. It is an independent, GNU-based project which brings the power and flexibility of the GNU/UNIX command-line interface (CLI) to the graphical user interface (GUI) and Internet-distributed computing.
Networks, programs, files, widgets, and so on, can be Internet-distributed components represented in a GUI as the nodes of a flow chart. The user can join nodes via lines that depict links for data flow, procedural steps, relationships, and so forth.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
2) This would follow from 1) ... since searches match pathnames too... even if the servents strip them out and don't display them.
3)Since the gnutella protocol uses a subset of http/1.1 to transfer files between servents and also implements the range parameter, you can already do this. Just no clients out there that do it yet... but i suppose if you knew the file index numbers for the same file on two different hosts, you could probably use getright to download from both of them at once. But that would be far too much like hard work.
4)I read somewhere about somebody proposing a few extenisions involving different levels of caching and mirroring of hosts/file lists. Looked like it was going to be a bit of a piss around getting all to work without breaking compatability with everything else, though. Something will have to be done eventually, though... that scalability thing isn't going to fix itself.
5)This would just be a client specific feature... wouldn't require tweaking the protocol after the md5 thing had been put in.
hope i haven't talked too much rubbish here.
Some peers are called 'servers' since they contain more data and serve more people than others. Still, they are just peers.
Dude, your Athlon peecee running Linux is in absolutely no way, whatsoever, a peer of the cluster of 64-way UltraEnterprise 10K servers which power eBay. You're missing the point: P2P means consumer grade machines connecting to each other, and that's _not_ the traditional internet, which is large centralized servers develivering data to consumer grade machines.
Since there really ARE NO legal uses of P2P today, we should ban all peers. Quick! Before someone invents something legal, companies are losing money! In fact, for the good of all, I will volunteer right now. It was fun while it lasted, but they found us out. Bye for ever Internet. *waves to cyberspace sadly, tears flowing down his cheeks*
Btw, what happened to `until proven guilty'?
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I agree. As I read the meta-post, It occured to me that this is how usenet started, Peer2Peer message exchange for academics and the first real hackers (probably best to call then Computer Scientists/Researchers in any legal brief). Usenet messages are propergated to/from peers only, between the various news groups, and certainly initial was only done on demand (subscription). They are stored as seperate files, seems to fit the criteria specified.
Indeed in many ways this is not dissimilar to the relationship between Telco-Carriers.
...but yes, it seems to me a hammer is often used for such marginally legal activities as house construction, wall hangings, beating one's own thumb senseless, and, of course, bludgeoning Slashdot editors.
On a slightly more serious note, a hammer (and a knife, and yes, even a gun) all have very obvious positive uses that everyone, even the EFF's grandmother, can understand. P2P does have good uses, but nearly ninety five percent of everyone I know uses it exclusively to break the law. I mean, really -- who honestly uses Gnutella for their resume? People use email for file sharing on a low-quantity bases; by their very nature, Napster and Gnutella are blobs of 'HERE LOOKIT WHAT I GOT TAKE IT ALL' that, while very convenient and even amazing, are, in fact, against the law.
I'm not arguing that the law is right, that the current form of RIAA music publication is a good one -- merely observing that Gnutella and Napster, as the largest 'public' examples of P2P file sharing, are infamous for their illegal uses, so yes, you do have to stop and ask 'does anyone actually use this thing and not break the law.' It is, using your analogy, closer to having to ask if anyone uses an Uzi for something good, rather than a hammer -- at least for the public.
As long as we trade .mp3, .mpg and .avi on these services, they're "illegal" in the sense of the media/lawyers. We need to start sharing .medicalresearch, .picturesofmomanddad and .myfreecontributiontohelpdefeatworldhunger instead!
it's in my head
"Can you give me an example where two people, treated equally under law, should be permitted to communicate with each other freely and equally?"
Isn't that really what they're asking? Personally, I think it's the wrong question, because the question inherently assumes that you are NOT generally free, with minor restrictions for the betterment of society.
And that's really what laws are supposed to be FOR in a free society - to say "you are free to do absolutely anything that you want, except for these few items so that everybody else can continue doing what they want and all are happy."
To answer the question - isn't a TELEPHONE P2P? It just uses a different network.
Morning rant concludes...
sig fault
In terms of the FCC liking P2P, the fact that one of the Four Pillars (and, frankly, the Good Witch) is willing to back the idea ought to stand as excellent character evidence, in my opinion.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
On the other hand, wouldn't it be rather simple for ISP's to inflict this on their customers? Considering all the funky programs and drivers I had to install in order to get DSL connectivity, it seems that the ISP's easily could make it impossible for their users to run servers -- by preventing other users from making incoming connections to THEM ... it could be as simple as interposing a proxy server. Unless you upgrade to a Super Ultra Enterprise Dizzy-Bizniz account for more $$$$, of course.
'Round here, Pacifik Bell has already run the other DSL ISP's out of town by telling them that they don't have a good copper line to give them -- and then, of course, immediately raking in all the end-user accounts themselves.
This doesn't look draconian OR hard to enforce. This could happen tomorrow.
We had a small office (during previous employment c. 1997) that didn't want to "trust" our NetWare server with their financial data (despite my protests that it was much better than their PC's). So I helped them setup a small NetBeui network to share Lotus files amongst their 3 PC's.
This is about as "P2P" as you can get without using "the Internet", and definitely a valid use of the technology.
(Note: I'm sure there are thousands of us that have done similar things, but this article asked for a specific example, and I gave one).
--
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
I already responded to EFF with this. The data is public domain (paid for by your taxes). People usually have Digital Raster Graphic maps for their area but not others. Sharing would be a good way to make all the US available. There is a naming convention, and a standard file format (GeoTIFF).
you have got to be kidding. file sharing is the greatest thing since sliced bread and floating soap. using it takes advantage of the massive connectivity now available without needing to host your crap on somebody else server's, effectively increasing the scale and ability of any user to disseminate their ideas and knowledge. it ensures that nobody need be held hostage to material and resources they might not have access to or want to compromise them with.
its the new USENET, only without the god-like whimsy of sysadmnins. I have a great deal of trouble beleiving you can see "no honestly persuasive case for" a system of file sharing that allows unfettered access to just about anything anyone might care to make available, without constraint and without fear of arbitrary caprice, TOS and the like.
what could be better? what could be more effective, more populist, more empowering, on the internet?
the IP issue seems to be a vanishingly small issue in the face of those benefits. let the poperty holders look to their wallets, and not to our hands- it has ben ever thus.
if they weren't fatal, they wouldn't be deaths!
It's a joke, f00...
I once saw a bumper sticker that said "90% of all people are caused by accidents."
nt
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
People pooh-pooh the idea of the "music community" that Napster(tm) is trying to put forward, but when the music isn't being "stolen" (can music be stolen? or is it always given... but that's for a whole different discussion), meaning that it is freely given, as many electronic musicians are doing these days to promote themselves, the networks really do turn into a community.
I can't count the number of times I've had someone downloading a track from me on napster (or opennap, or what have you) where we've started up a conversation about the track and recommended stuff to each other. Many of the times the person would then point me to some of his own music or sets that were also on Napster. I've found a lot of good music this way, and I'd be really miffed to miss out on that opportunity to find new music.
Another use that I've only touched on here is that of DJs trading their sets on P2P systems. Almost every DJ I know who isn't already a superstar wants more exposure, and p2p networks are great for that.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Simple, you realise that your enemy is not the desperate, but their despair. The only way to achieve peace is to form an alliance with your fellow humans to fight the real enemy.
This is not at all meant to be specific to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though that is the context that brought it up.
The fact is that LOTS of blind & visually-impaired students are out there who need various text books & reference materials transcribed into voice (e.g. MP3's or RealAudio).
All it would take to couple volunteer readers (who, after all, get to learn as they read for the student) to users of the services that they would provide is:
This is a particularly appropriate use of P2P because, if one student (somewhere) needs a textbook read, there's a good chance that (somewhere else in the world) another student needs the same book read.
P2P could help minimize the chance that the same book would need to be read -twice- in order for both students to get access to it.
You mission... if you choose to accept it... is... ibid. ;-)
Microsoft has stated on numerous occasions that SMB on Win9x (and NT) is a peer-to-peer based system when the machine is not part of a Windows NT domain.
SMB on windows is used as both a server and client. SMB is used to share files among linux systems and windows computers.
SMB is indeed a peer-to-peer system of sharing legitimate data. Many business offices, schools, and government use SMB to share files. Why don't we use RIAA as a good example of someone using peer-to-peer to share their MS Word documents about the trial on their lan?
:)
Ever need an online dictionary?
I'd like a list of small bands that pass out full mp3 tracks so you can here there works. So far, I found this awesome artist (listening to his mp3s made me buy his CD), John Lardieri and apparently this artist, Down to Zero, will be putting their MP3s out. Anyone else contribute to this list?
And the list goes on, and on! All networks would be useless if there was no p2p!
** this brings up a usefull p2p use (if we are discluding client/server transactions), some of the instant message protocols out there use p2p to exchange messages between users, I think this is fair use and actually useful (disregarding the inherit security concerns that is...)
That you could use it to distribute fan missions for various FPS games, which tend to be huge. It was specifically for the Thief Fan Mission Archive, which was distraught at the time. Unfortunately, this never actually happened.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
What needs to be implimented follows:
1) MD5/CRC checks so that a file that has the same name/size but has different contents is not used as a mirror.
2) Searching for file mirrors based on he MD5/CRC instead of the name
3) Segmented downloading of one file from multiple servers. This allows you to dowload at your maximum speed, while using only a portion of the bandwidth from any one-host. (currently implimented in 'getright' downloader)
4) Passive Gnutella. Gnutella should download a list of all available files from your connected hosts, along with the lists they have collected. Your node sends a request every few minutes to verify the CRC/MD5 of the list is still the same. If it isn't, you download the new list and pass it on. Now, you are searching a local database of files and hosts that is up-to-date. You can set the interval it checks the host's filelist so that modem users can still participate (404 errors will be slightly more common on slow connections tho, but with auto mirror calculation, this shouldn't be a problem)
5) A automated function that checks the project's web site for the latest MD5/CRC then downloads any new versions, then you have the most recent version of your favorite project and are always an up-to-date mirror. The user can of course choose which projects/files to mirror automatically, and since the web site distributes the MD5/CRC of the files the file is known to be the true file.
Of course, once this happens, the MPAA will go after any sites with the MD5 sums/CRCs of DVDs or MP3s.
In the future, the download links you click will look like: "gnutella://edf5c7822381acfb44c094d5161b37da WordPerfect8.tar.gz"
____________________________________________
I don't respond to flames, but any suggestions/critizms are appreciated. It would be amazing to get something like this working, and it's just a few (fairly extreme) extensions to the current Gnutella technology.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As far as anonymity, Gnutella is just as anonymous as FreeNet. I've read the papers, I've used the program, etc. What you download on FreeNet is very clearly recorded in ISP and router logs. The only claim to anonymity a FreeNet user has is the claim that it was the automatic caching feature which downloaded the file and shared it (the author clearly states this on the web page). Meanwhile, with Gnutella you can claim you just accidentally downloaded it (I searched for Adobe and downloaded the resulting list, how was I to know Photoshop6 was in there) and Gnutella automatically shares files that you've downloaded.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That's the point, FreeNet doesn't give you any more privacy than Gnutella.
Furthermore, you must realize that your orginal post suggested an idea (requesting files by their hash in order to verify the contents of the file) that has been in Freenet for a long time, and then you flamed Freenet for being behind in development. Um, yeah.
I wholly admited that FreeNet has one or two features that Gnutella doesn't, but FreeNet is not functional as Gnutella is, and even when it is finished, there's very little reason to use FreeNet over Gnutella.
There's no conspiracy, but it's always nice to know you've been picking battles all across the internet on behalf of FreeNet. With or without any evidence.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO 1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm& r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='5,126,932'.WKU.&OS=PN/5,126,932&R S=PN/5,126,932
Disclaimer...I am one of the inventors.
Back in 1990, we didn't have the term P2P, but that's what it is.
P2P is such a buzzword. Let's just call it "sharing". Sure, there's a beautiful argument there in the definition, but hey, this is my post. So, really, they're looking for good reasons to share. Like every new technology, you start using it for what you do the most. Well, hate to break it to you, but a lot of the net is porn and music. There you go, they're going to use that for this new technology. As people use it, they will think of other reasons to use it, and finally it will become main stream. Anyways, I know P2P will become a regular part of the net, it's a great technology, it's simple, and as bandwidth increases, so will it's use. People all figured VCR owners for pornographers when they first came out. Would that be a fair statement today? Eh it's a specific example but it's true.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
One day I was sitting back reading some email from my brother and couldn't help but notice the astronomical number of CC's he had placed on the email. Of course some of the recipients on that list were clever enough to start using those addresses on their own.
So I setup a mailing list and subscribed everyone to it. About 80% of the people replied and started using the system. "Joke of day" no longer needs to be carbon copied to 80 recipients anymore, making life easier for everybody.
This peer-2-peer mailing list network gathers about a meg of traffic/day on average. Trading pictures, mp3's, jokes, favourite links, etc is all common.
Of course I would prefer to see mailing list software outlawed because on occasion I've used it carpet bomb an entire list of people with illegally obtained mp3's. For the sake of justice and to preserve the rights of intellectual property rights holders, I demand this software be banished from the earth.
with Gnutella you can claim you just accidentally downloaded it (I searched for Adobe and downloaded the resulting list, how was I to know Photoshop6 was in there) and Gnutella automatically shares files that you've downloaded.
And you can't say you "accidentally downloaded" something off Freenet??? In either case, I don't think the feds will care.
Furthermore, you must realize that your orginal post suggested an idea (requesting files by their hash in order to verify the contents of the file) that has been in Freenet for a long time, and then you flamed Freenet for being behind in development. Um, yeah.
Look, Freenet and Gnutella are about equal in how well developed their respective ideas are, Gnutella just got a click-and-drool GUI longer, so it gives the appearance of being better developed. In truth, both are very beta code.
BTW--Are you the same guy I've been having this long, drawn out flame war with on K5? Or do you two just happen to use the same bunk arguments? Or maybe its a VAST GNUTELLA CONSPERICY :)
------
Not a typewriter
We're doing this in Freenet. Check out http://eof.sourceforge.net/APT/index.html.
------
Not a typewriter
In Freenet, this is solved by what we call a "subspace" (which goes under the name of "SVK Subspace Key", or "SSK", an SVK being a public/private keypair). You can only post to a subspace if you have the private encryption key. To request from it, you need the public encryption key. So, you just need to insert under "SSK@/newsTellaDDMMYY.mp3" and no one can hijack it (provided you keep the private key private).
------
Not a typewriter
I'm doing something similar to Freenet, although we didn't require any new code to get apt-get to work. See http://eof.sourceforge.net/APT/index.html.
------
Not a typewriter
I've never actually seen p2p been used for anything like configuration files but it might be useful.
I was thinking it might be somewhat useful if you could trade XF86config files so that someone that has a certain graphics card or wants to use thier mouse to do something special, they could use someone else's config files to figure out how they do something.
That is just an example though, but i am sure there is other stuff that you may have on your computer that you have customized or made that may be useful to you but not really worth going to the trouble to post it on a website and create a page for it.
Another thing might also be source code for very small simple programs that don't do much or even anything productive at all but may be useful as an example to someone that is just starting out in programming to figure out how to make a gui.
Although I think that one thing that would really make p2p much more useful for this sort of thing is some sort of searchable file description (that could store more than the name could).
Just some thoughts, anyone else agree?
"Alcohol, cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson
It seems to me that there is no honestly persuasive case for P2P. Sure, advocates will be able to dig up some supposed example of legitimate use, but if we are honest, we the reason people really like P2P is that it allows them to get their hands on copyright material without paying for it.
Of course the P2P advocates will claim that P2P can be used to distribute legitimate material. While this is true, it is not persuasive: why bother with P2P if you material is legitimate - why not simple upload your stuff one of the free web space providers, then your material available 24/7 without sucking up your machines clock-cycles or bandwidth.
Even though I only connect at 28k, and with all the failed downloads it is still much cheaper and quicker to download these songs from napster, than to try and get them off the original records.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
I don't think that the RIAA would go after M$.
Fight Spammers!
At best it will be a collection of ideas on how P2P could be used, which is nice, but isn't the idea to get something more concrete than that?
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Communication of information (songs, pictures, documents, credit card numbers, purchase orders, etc) from one entity (Person, Business, Cowboy Neal, whatever) directly to another over the internet is the INTERNET (surprise)!
For example, I take pictures of my family and make them available on the internet (lets call the software I use to do this a "web server"). Next, I provide my friends and relatives with a client (we'll call this software a "web browser") and instruct them on how to use it to see my family pictures.
Is this not P2P? If not, then lets extend the example:
My friends and relatives use their "web browser" program to copy my pictures and place those copies on their own "web server" programs and tell their friends and family how to access them.
Businesses develop software to do things like advertise their inventories. Other entities use software to view (and even forward to other entities) copies of this information to aid determining if a purchase is warranted. Just because at least one of the entities is a business doesn't make this NOT P2P.
Ebay is P2P in the exact same model as Napster. I have an item (presumably one that I've created or which I've paid to obtain). I advertise over a central medium that I wish someone else to have this item. For a little closer tie to the analogy, lets say this item is copyable, so if one person receives a copy, it doesn't diminish anyone else's ability to receive a copy.
Another peer comes along, decides they want a copy for themselves. They then consider the cost of acquiring a copy (Napster = click here, Ebay = win the bidding and send the money). Once the aquisition requirements are met, then owner sends the item.
Just because with the Ebay model the owner is required to take an action to complete the transaction and the transaction isn't finalized over the internet doesn't mean it isn't P2P.
Fayd (running with scissors)
Much of today's business uses filesharing software. The protocols are all very different, but basically the function is the same. A user wanting a file or files connects to a server. The server provides access to files that have been made available, in turn, by other users. The user requesting the file(s) can in turn make their own files available for sharing. The model is the same, only the protocols and terminolgy have been changed (mostly for marketing purposes). After all, if Napster had announced "Look, we have NFS!!!" would anyone have been interested? I doubt it.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
(somehow I get the feeling that this argument won't fly in court)
[pink beam of light]
...imagine when the first asshole decides to post his own newsTellaDDMMYY.mp3 a day before yours. As there's no central control people can do that, you know.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Aimster licenses their software to several multinationals.
It is commonly used to exchange engineering documents through a multi-platform enterprise.
Check the webpage for details.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Er, no. Our biased internal news reporting is CNN and NPR, who are biased in favor of Palestinian murderers. (Okay, I've reflected my own bias now.) Knight-Ridder and AP follow the lead and are sometimes two days late reporting events that take place- I suspect because they have to figure out their spin on it.
Impartial news reporting is largely dead- it's only a matter of how thinly veiled the bias is.
You should change your .sig for greater justice.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Here's a question than, AC:
How do you defend against an enemy living within your borders when that enemy has bombs, guns, and other firearms, and is desparate enough to resort to stones?
How do you defend against this enemy when the enemy has no clear plan other than chaos? no strategy, no easily identifiable clothed army to battle against?
Make no mistake, this is a war, and the enemy is recruiting their children for pawns. The enemy is willing to order their soldiers to commit suicide.
Israel is 200% larger than when it was recognized in 1948? Geez, I know they gave the Sinai desert to Egypt, effectively halving the country. What information do you have that says otherwise?
Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the
modern State of Israel.
Arab and Jewish Refugees In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.
The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is
estimated to be the same.
Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out
of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country
no larger than the state of New Jersey.
The Arab - Israeli Conflict; The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one
Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost.
Israel defended itself each time and won.
The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them with weapons.
The notion that Israel should even supply the enemy with weapons is ridiculous and it's still not enough to satisfy your ill-informed mind.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
The telephone.
Each phone both sends and receives data.
Wow - the US is spinning in a sea of shitte. Is P2P on trial now...?
This is what I did...
1. I composed and recorded spoken poems, with a microphone, on my PC.
2. I titled and clearly labelled these files as original poetry.
3. I placed these files into my Napster shared directory and ran Napster.
4. Now this is the really cool part. I waited and watched and watched and waited, and sure enough, people began to download my poetry. This is FANTASTIC! The world needs more poetry! And there are clearly enough people interested in listening. Knowing that the P2P file sharing will get my poems heard, I'm inspired me to write more poetry! This is great. PC microphones suitable for voice recording can be purchased for less than $10, so I hope more people start sharing their thoughts and voices on the internet. People want to hear it!
Just because we can't think of any "legal" examples of P2P technology there should be no reason why P2P should be outlawed. There's a very real threat here that an entire class of software development could be made illegal.
:-(
Take for example virus technology. There is no reason why a benevolent virus could not be written, but here in England and Wales (not sure about Scotland) it is *illegal* for me to write a program that has any virulent properties, regardless of whether it has a destructive payload or not. Even if I wrote the virus for my own personal curiosity, and never released it into the wild makes no difference (I suppose they would get me on a conspiracy charge in that case
Not that I'm a virus writer but I find it hard to stomach that as a programmer, there is a possibility of being imprisoned whilst in the pursuit of my craft. I just hope that P2P is not tarred with the same brush as the computer virus. You never know, we may come up with a "valid" use for P2P one day and find we are legally prevented from doing anything about it.
Anybody using www.groove.net's Groove? It's a Ray Ozzie (formerly Lotus) software product that combines combines ICQ-esque instant messaging and Napsteroid P2P file sharing to create communal shared screen-space(and therefore the underlying shared hard drive space)on the desktops of 2 to 20 groupworkers.
This soft is ment for a business environment, and I think is the best source to fish for usefull P2P usage.
I think that the old arguments in defense of music sharing were best.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Wasn't internet was suppose to be P2P? Every
computer back then was equipped with FTP server
and registered with multiple archie engines. And
uhm there were not masquerading firewalls and
networking traffice greppers, and everyone had
their own IP adress?
Fanning could've just modified archie to use
'file' command or code of that to provide a
multimedia service, not MP3 sharing service.
Good programmers don't start from scratch, unless
there is a good damned reason not to see the
alternatives, especially with great legacy,
like archie. But then Fanning isn't a good
programmer either, so this is expected. =)
Oh, you mean legal uses? I'll have to think about it...
Maybe you're not with the in-crowd on this so I'll fill you in... "Management Partners" is actually a front for a divx group for people who don't check their links before posting bad attempts at humor. And people who click on links posted by people who don't check their links before posting bad attempts at humor... I guess.
Hmm, in order to find out whether or not P2P is good or bad, you have to *BECOME* P2P...so let's see... If I was a P2P network... ..Rich people would hate me, cuz' P2P makes their huge investments in the entertainment and information technology industries (infotainment?) a kinda useless (as long as these industries want to stick to broadcasting instead of narrowcasting). ..Poor people would love me, cuz' i'm bringing them all the infotainment they ever wanted, but never had the budget to pay for.
So, if i was a P2P network, i'd kinda be the Robin Hood of the Digital Era ;p
What about the "psycho ex-girlfriend" guy. If I recall correctly, he couldn't afford to keep up with the demand on his web site, but you could find all the messages up on napster. Voila, instant legal distribution machine.
Unfortunately this isn't the most wholesome example, but it does demonstrate something. If the public domain weren't so impoverished, it's not hard to imagine that the "heavenly jukebox" we all want wouldn't be centrally located, but instead would be a distributed network like freenet. Why? Because the RIAA may be right that there wouldn't be the same incentive to throw millions and billions into distribution and marketing if copyright weren't such a racket. So no one wants to take on the task on their own? We'll distribute the processing/storage. This is where their view of IP breaks down, that somehow their extreme view of copyright is the only thing standing between us and a musicless society. What nonsense.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
The now-infamous "Call #31" has been removed from from the voicemails page. A new, edited version of the call should be released soon. Check Napster for the old version.
This is from the front page of psychoexgirlfriend.com. I imagine the guy had issues with his webmaster where they felt uncomfortable with some of the content. It's not baseball and apple pie or anything, but it certainly doesn't seem to be an IP violation.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
So, I have this idea, and I think it's pretty good. If I had the time, I'd do it myself, but maybe someone else will pick it up and run with it.
Here goes. What does p2p get you? Free distribution. What do you lose? Centralized control. So the materials best suited for distribution over a p2p network are 1. things you want as widely disseminated as possible and 2. things that don't have to be constantly updated and revised.
My idea, basically, is to use napster/gnutella as a publishing medium for original content that is specifically designed for p2p. If this works, you can distribute a reasonably large file over a very large network in a very short period of time, and here's the kicker- if your stuff gets popular, you don't have to pay out big bucks for akamai and better server hardware.
So what kind of content would fly? I think sketch comedy that gets updated daily would be ok, or better yet, a comedic news program. I love reading Suck.com on my palm pilot on the train every morning, I wish someone would do a Not Necessarily the News style 5-10minute news bit every morning and distribute it over napster/gnutella with a predictable filename (maybe newsTellaDDMMYY.mp3 or something like that). Eventually you could get sponsors and integrate little ads into your content, or maybe you'd spark a phenomenon and some radio network would pick you up or something, or maybe even just sell archives of your work on cdrom or something. But it seems like the way to really capitalize on the medium is to take advantage of the fact that a public media distribution network has been made available to you. It's not the web, it's not tv, and promoting your stuff i nthis media doesn't work the same way it does in these other media. If you publicise the fact that you're doing it and update consistently and often, and actually produce some funny/interesting content, I think you'd be onto something really big. Let me know how it goes if you try it.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Groove Networks is a P2P company that is all about providing secure exchange of information. They are aimed primarily at businesses. Ray Ozzie of Lotus Notes fame founded the company. Check out their web site http://www.groove.net.
Yes, the Internet is a network of machines connecting directly to other machines (peer-to-peer network topology), but most applications of the network are not peer-to-peer. That's the point.
The only real, widespread, mainstream application of peer-to-peer filesharing systems seems to be piracy of intellectual property. 'talk' isn't going to convince anyone otherwise.
They also say that virtually all deaths by firearms accidents are fatal.
{@?B£|FF even playing on the same field?
The way I see this, this is a Constitutional issue.
Anonymous Political Speech (for example VOTING) is the MOST protected form of speech by the US Supreme Court. The Court has protected forums for speech on just their potential to be used for anonymous political speech.
Remember that the Amendment protecting free speech is the 1st, and was intentionally made so by the Founding Fathers because of their belief that all other rights are protected by the 1st.
Now consider the HUGE potential forum for anonymous politcal speech [APS] presented by P2P networks and file sharing.
Aside from the initial node that brings the file containing APS to the network, it would be almost impossible to know who originally sent it.
Set aside for a moment the fact that it would be easy to corrupt the message, co-opt the message etc. You could just as easily fake a newsletter.The bottom line is that a political message could be distributed anonymously to millions of people and be heard.
Compared to that, potential illegal uses become a minimal worry.
Explain - after surfing to BadBlue (an enterprise P2P package). Specifically P2P sharing of Excel and Word data. Lots of business applications I can imagine for this - mobile/wireless etc.
In addition, there is a white-paper on the site describing a P2P approach to B2B marketplaces. I think there a boatload of legitimate P2P applications.
go tell the spartans stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.
In fact, I, er, use it to maintain all my network installations. Yeah, that's the ticket... it has saved me mucho time and frustration.
Aren't copyright laws loosened with regards to educational material? I seem to remember being able to use copyrighted images for a web report in one of my classes, provided I give photo credits and not charge anything. Is that simply a moral issue, or would pretty much anything downloaded for the sole purpose of educating others / yourself be legit?
:-P
And before it even starts, I'm NOT talking about "illegal Metallica MP3s playing in the background helps me study!"
---
i saved a lot of money due to using Napster, and with the money I didn't spend on cds, I was able to buy a hit afacid, which after tripping, increased my spirituality...therefore P2P Sharing is good for religion too
Vol. 15, No. 14, P. 20;
by Caterinicchia, Dan
the article
Summary from ACM TECHNews:
The federal government is starting to harness the power of peer-to-peer computing. FedStats.gov and FedStats.net are excellent examples of the resources that P2P technology opens up. Users logging onto the FedStats.gov site can search a database of published government data in XML format from over 70 federal agencies on such topics as demographics, foreign trade, agricultural trends, and health care information. The new FedStats.net initiative allows federal employees to mark documents on their connected computers for file sharing. Eventually, officials at the FedStats Interagency Task Force expect to gather enough data and develop the technology to allow government workers to compile personalized data sets and searches that can be re-accessed on the network. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been working on P2P for the battlefield longer than the popularization of Napster and instant messaging, says Small Unit Operations manager Paul Kolodzy. The agency is developing a P2P wireless network that would transmit both voice and data, enabling soldiers in combat to access updated geographical and organizational information instantly. Additionally, the P2P model would have the benefit of having a lower vulnerability to eavesdropping because the wireless devices would only have to power a signal to reach the nearest user whereas traditional radio signals must be strong enough to reach the edge of the network.
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
Shakespeare is public domain, and likewise in Europe, so is any sound recording older than 50 years. This is what allows labels such as Document or Chronological Classics to systematically reissue 20th century jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, etc., from collectors' 78s onto CD.
Such documentation is invaluable to (e.g.) researchers, and we know damn well that it would not be happening if we relied on the goodwill of former copyright owners (RIAA companies, for the most part) which concentrate on much more lucrative goals.
Given that these 78s are justifiably free for anyone to publish on CD, I see absolutely no reason why anyone could not likewise distribute them on the internet. As (and so long as) the public domain grows, this makes a hell of a lot legitimate uses for p2p.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
I work for an medical software company, and we're thinking about developing a highly available database using a peer-to-peer style architecture.
How about examples like Internet telephony and video telephony? For that matter what about FTP and aptget? Or, one that we all know and love... Windows Update. There are also many networked games that are P2P.
Don't let THEM define the term P2P. P2P is anything in which two or more network peers communicated with each other as peers. It isn't just file sharing.
StoneWolf
Dissemination of knowledge ("educated public") is recognizeded to be Public Good by the US Constitution. While the Constitution limits dissemination of "Useful Arts and Inventions" for a limited period of time, after that period any means of distribution must be acknowledged as serving Public Good.
Anime fansubs distribution is done on numerous p2p networks. It's perfectly legal if you only trade fansubs. Some people trade bootleg pro shit, but they're fools. I share digital fansubs with all kinds of other people and it promotes anime. When people come to me and ask for pro stuff I tell them to buy it. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep because of a cs project. excuse my bad note writing.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
The old Archie databases of FTP sites worked in a way analogous to Napster, less well integrated - though clients and servers were distinguished, it is not an important distinction. Now clients and servers are together on each machine.
I'm guessing you didn't see the post about 3 minutes before yours, but it is the first legit use in existance that I've seen so far...haven't read those below yours, but there are plenty.
So, who is asking for us to justify our communications? Red China? Iraq? The NWO? Are we somehow compelled to respond?
Ask the simple questions first!
What you should be seeing is the simpler fact that the power to meddle in the communications of the people is first not given to the federal government in their charter, and second prohibited to the federal government by the specific terms of the first amendment to their charter. They can't do it, period.
Where most "patriots" get off track is in assuming that these documents "give" the citizen these freedoms. It doesn't. They already had them inherently.
But if you set up a contractual basis, thru the 14th amendment, for some government-created entities (you, if you accept their contract) to have a government-granted privilege they may or may not have inherently had, then you do have the situation as you stated above.
And you, contractee, will be subject to regulation , licensing, and taxation on that privilege. See the difference?
Score:1 Let's bury this one.
Okay, we're maybe 65 posts into the thread, and I haven't seen a single legal use of P2P above this point that is in actual implementation today. If the Slashdot crowd has no real idea of any current-day, non-theoretical use of P2P, it's likely that there is none. Screw P2P. Stop stealing stuff with it.
Whatever happened to the notion of being innocent until proven guilty?
My kitchen knives can be used for bad purposes too! For crying out loud, have these judges and presecutors lost their minds!?!?
In the MPAA vs. 2600 case, all they seem to talk about is "possible illegal use" and while the defense talks about legal and fair uses, they keep bringing up infringing uses that have NO proof of ever occuring!? It's insane! They have no evidence of it being used for inappropriate purposes yet they persist on the "possibility" angle.
They call it a digital crowbar and crowbar's aren't illegal either!
Sorry if this seems off-topic, but this is more of the same crap isn't it?
You sir are wrong.Freenet has existed as long if not longer than gnutella.IIRC gnutella was out in March 2000.As far as Freenet is concerned it is anonymous and will be quite efficient soon enough.Gnutella has potential but you can't say it works yet.
What does Management Partners have to do with DivX?Very very weird.
P2P doesn't have any good legal uses. That's the sad truth. People use what works, and P2P is designed in such a way to encourage mass piracy of copyrighted works. If Bob wanted to share is resume, there are better ways to do it than using P2P systems. P2P, from its inception, was designed to share copyrighted materials. It was a work around. It wasn't designed to tackle other problems or be applied in diverse field: it's going to be what it already is.
It's also interesting to note P2P systems live and die by user submissions, so the most popular content is always what's going to be there. Mom and Dad pictures just aren't in high as demand as Britney Spear's latest single, which is by chance copyrighted. Popular works are worth money, and thus are copyrighted so as to get paid for that popularity. Not necessarily the work mind you, but the popularity and the willingness for people to buy what's popular.
There are lots of neat-o uses people are coming up with for P2P like network monitors, etc. but most all already have good or better solutions to what's offered. Having a solution in search of a problem usually won't lead up to any practicle applications: most I've seen have only created problems but to solve them.
Despite these unforunates, I can think of one good service: FreeNet. While not exactly following the model of P2P, it could be passed as and could be looked at as Napster by naive politicians and citizens. Imagine headlines "Napster-like technology encourages freedom of Speech.". Now people, especially Americans (where the trouble is right now) love their freedom of speech like they love football and beer nuts. The recording industry would be belitted by such a statement. Obviously, something like FreeNet would work well and would contribute to the lasting of P2P, which would contribute to the real reason why EFF is "seeking legal examples".
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Flipr is a p2p music sharing software that will only share content that has been "cleared" by their copyright holders. In plain old MP3 format without subscription fees.
I think this would be a "constructive" use of p2p.
Alex
const static char std_disclaimer[] = "I work for them.";
I thought the entire WWW was for the purpose of file sharing. Silly me. I guess I am just a newbie.
When debating gun laws, gun advocates are often asked to supply examples of legitimate usage. The intuition, I suppose, is that the harm caused by guns is obvious; what needs debated is if any good can come from them.
How does this relate to P2P? Well, it is obvious to anyone who looks that such applications are used to pirate immense amounts of protected material. This doesn't need to be debated. However, a case does need to be made for allowing such applications to exist at all. If the only examples of usage truly are illegal and harmful, then defending P2P becomes untenable.
I am interested to read what examples can be provided for positive usage of P2P, but I'm afraid that like guns, it will be shown that overwhelmingly P2P is used to flout the law and that our society is better without it.
The truth shall set you free.
Of course that's just because there isn't (to my knowledge) a Porn Industry Association of America. If they were to make a big deal about it, then maybe it would move from the quasi-legal category to the blatently illegal. Till then it's a valid use. Whether you morally approve of it or not.
I notice a lot of people here saying "just look at the Internet as a whole...". This is fine and all, but still doesn't provide the clear example of so-called 'legit' usage. So here is a few that I've been exposed to.
I ran a small ISP that offered coverage to most of our state. We had three offices, which for simplicity, were located in roughly a triangular pattern across the state (physically separated by several hundred miles). Each office had it's own local technical support for its immeadiate area. However, all three needed to collaborate together to solve common technical problems (especially since two of the offices had overlapping dial-in nodes). Our solution was to use ICQ for everyone in all the offices. Once everyone was in for the day and logged on, everyone had instant access to chat with anyone else (you knew when someone was in, out to lunch or home sick). After implementing that our productivity increased approximately 40% and call time decreased accordingly. Phone support was now able to work the problem out with the customer and the rest of his peers around the state at the same time (often with the customer oblivious to this). Meetings between all the technicians were held through a simulataneous chat session (ICQ has simple IRC interface for chat), just like having a meeting in one room, everyone had a chance to speak at those meetings.
Being a P2P connection, technicians were able to use the file sharing abilities of ICQ to send drivers and other useful files quickly between each other when needed (it was able to go directly to the tech who needed it at the time). We even provided some techs with a public ICQ name and broadcast those to our users. That way, they provided online question support to online users using ICQ as well (those customer had other questions than "I cant get online..").
I think this is a very powerful use of P2P-like technology. In fact I remember about a year or two ago several tech-mags having articles about using these programs in that way (we had already been that way for a year). I think some of the new P2P programs might be written for the same useage, but wont rely on a central ICQ-type server. Give a particular company their own server and run the clients within their intranet. This way you offer higher security for your conversations among employees. It will only contain the users of that company (and or maybe any affiliates they let into it), and you wont get random pr0n anouncements from outside individuals.
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
AC
Correct me if I'm wrong, but p2p was originally meant to be completely anonymous. The internet is not anonymous. Posters of original content on the internet are not anonymous in that, in most cases, their physical location can be tracked down. p2p was created in order to provide an environment on the internet in which people would not be considerd publishers.
People should be allowed to NOT be accountable for every action they take or word they utter. Why can't the people have a private area on the internet where they can do or say what they want? Are there not places such as this in the physical world? The powers that be would like to take away this right to privacy simply because it's convenient for them to do so. It causes less hassle in the long run, and they've got a demanding public to satisfy. The public in general just seems to be against whatever is popularly seen as bad. And I'm sure that some of those big mega-corps out there are pretty good at making some people believe that some things are "bad". This is why, I believe, the judicial system seems to be dead set against the free software movement and its gifts to society at this point. Whatever society at large believes in becomes law. Whether it's "right" or "wrong".
But I dunno. Maybe I'm paranoid and bitter.
Don't let the lusers get you down.
all of the free software projects using CVS and variations there of
there are thousands of examples of those
go to freshmeat.net or sourceforge.net to see some examples heh
Use e-mail if it isn't copyrighted material or upload/download to a free web/file server.
P2P are _primary_ used for piracy and I wish people would stop this hypocrisy.
Is there a problem using e-mail or some other medium that don't let you search or act anonymously to do this?
I have absolutely nothing against P2P in itself, just the theft part that is so common.
The best thing would be I think if the copyright holders could develop software that recognise their copyrighted material (Mp3 example: first recognise the name, then grab it and analyse the music) and only go after those who break the law (make them pay for the losses they cause) and the rest of us could use P2P to whatever we want as long as it isn't illegal.
Hey I just managed to use gnutella for a legitimate cause for the first time!
Just searching for "joke txt" gave me about 1000 jokes in 5 minutes.
Ow wait, these jokes might be copyrighted, get rid of them!
-------------------------------------
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Statistics say that a gun is considerably more likely to be used on a household member than an intruder.
Replace statistics with widely published lies and you are almost correct.
The "logic" behind the "more likely to be killed by a household member" lie is as follows:
In the United States, suicides are considered homicides.
In the United States, over 50% of the firearms "homocides" are in fact suicides.
People who commit suicide are members of their own household (and family).
Therefore a gun is conserably (slightly more than 50%) more likely to be used (in a suicide) on a household member (the suicidal person themself) than on an intruder.
When examining the data (and motives) behind the statistics, it becomes clear what they are actualy saying instead of just what they want you to think they are saying.
They also say that virtually all deaths by firearms accidents are fatal.
Well no duh!!!! Where'd you come up with that one? Sure it sound bad, but when you actually read the sentence, it becomes clear that it means absolutely nothing. Of course "virtually all deaths by firearms accidents are fatal". If they weren't fatal, they wouldn't be deaths.
What really has me wondering, though, is the use of the word "virtually". Does this mean not all deaths are fatal? Are there some people out there that are only "mostly dead" as a result of "firearms accidents"? I'll keep an eye out for them in the Weekly World News (a fine publication that caters to those with all the critical thinking skills of the average gun control advocate).
the murder rate in US where guns are allowed are higher than (for example) Europe where they aren't?
Actually, it isn't. What you just said is a lie. It's an often repeated lie, but still a lie. The plain truth is that the per capita murder rate in the US is actualy lower than that of many European countries. This becomes obvious when you realize that the US considers suicides to also be homicides (murder) while European countries make a distinction between the two. If you compare the per capita rate of actual murders (not suicides) between the US and Europe, you'll find the US has a much lower murder rate. You'll also find that while there is a higher per capita rate of "firearms incidents" in the US, the actual per capita rate of violent crime is significantly lower in the United States than in Europe. That is because the per capita rate of firearms ownership is higher in the US, but not all "firearms incidents" are violent crimes (many times they prevent violent crimes). It is still possible to commit a violent crime in Europe using a knife (or club or hammer or whatever), and is in fact much easier to do so given the legally enforced helplessness of the average European citizen.
Where would you be safer? London, England, where they've gone beyond ineffective gun control to equally ineffective knife control and have put Big Brother style cameras on every corner? Or Portland, Oregon, where many many citizens own and legally carry concealed firearms every day(and where the Dalai Llama himself recently advocated firearms posession and use in self defense)? I know where you'd probably feel safer, but the plain truth is that you'd actually be safer in Portland, Oregon (where you also wouldn't be photographed by the police every time you scratch yourself in public).
I mean in the current way SourceForge runs everyone is uploaded to a central server.
Instead have a sourceforge P2P network. You buy your own server space and put your project on it and hook up to the sourceforge P2P network. So there is no central server just a lot of small servers in a P2P network.
Just use Ogg Vorbis so you can label them .ogg
We're rolling it out July 1, so it's not just vaporware. This is totally legit because genealogy information wants to be shared. We don't have the copyright problems that other systems do. However, it is specific to genealogy files only, not general file sharing.
http://genealogy.byu.edu/
Yes, and indeed, travelling to Mars can only be good for getting the attention of those Martians so they will come and destroy earth. bad bad bad.
Electricity for that matter at it's conception was only good to have it's inventor electrocute little animals to prove that DC is safer than AC (how wrong he was though) bad bad BAD littleanimalelectrocutor!
So since something at it's initial stages MAY not have any very practical usefullness but it's only good for BAD BAD BAD things means these days that then it should be forbidden?!?!?!
P2P would be perfect for this.
Mobile phones can be used for good and bad. You can use it to spread lies about a person, you can use it to set up drug deals. But you can also use it to save lives. You can call dial 911 for an ambulance to get to a traffic accident, you can call the coast guard before your boat goes down, the voluntary fire department can use it to call in the troops, the people of a small village in the mountains of Iraq can send a message to the world outside about a nerve gas attack.
The nuclear bomb can be used for good and bad (this one is kind of complicated, because the guys who have the bomb decides who are good and bad). It can be used to kill innocent people, and mutilate their future generations by dropping it over two japanese cities. It can be used to deter two dangerous super-powers from going to war against each other.
Antibiotics can be used for good and bad. You can use it to save millions of lives, but you can also use it so that new and more dangerous diseases appear.
Guns can be used for good and bad. They can save your life when you are being attacked by a polar bear on your solo-trek across the north pole. They can also be used to fight senseless wars, and kill high school kids in places like Columbine. (Anyone find it a little bit strange that some will find a shared file system harmful, while posession of a gun is a basic citizen right, even though they hardly ever travel across the north pole?)
Computers can be used for good and bad. They can be used by authors to type a novel. They can be used to predict hurricane and save lives. They can be used to analyze medical data to cure cancer. They can also cause disability, spread child porn, design weapons of mass destructions, launder drug money.
The radio can be used for good and bad. It can be used to play copyrighted material for anybody to copy. It can also be used to warn about air raids. It can be used by dictators to spread propaganda, start a world war, and commit genocide. (The same dictator confiscated all radios in the occupied countries. Owning a radio was a crime serious enough to to send you to concentration camp.)
Music can be used for good and bad. It can give pleasure and relaxation. It can be played on a boombox to annoy people. It can be used to play military marches. It can be used to manipulate minds of people. It can be used ignite the masses and start a riot. It can be used by extremist terror groups to send their message of hate. It can be used by record companies to sell a fake product to young teenagers. Just a few hundred years ago music instruments, and especially fiddles and drums were strictly forbidden in many countries; since they were the instrument of the devil. Music can also put a crying baby to sleep.
I am sure this list could be completed with every technology known to mankind, but I'll stop at that. Oh, the judge needs some P2P examples, but you can probably guess where I'm going ...
P2P can be used to circulate content forbidden by an opressing government. It can be used to spread music, songs, picnic photos, jokes, porn, essays, poems, software, ideas, art, child porn, racist propagana, bomb recipes, slander, opinions, spam, food recipes, stolen credit card numbers; pretty much anything that can be piped through copper wires.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
I totaly agree. The israelis brought this on themselves and they deserved to get spanked.
One word: pr0n.
I KNOW I'm right. And if I'm not, I'm STILL right...
I know a lot of people who already own CDs, but want to have them in MP3 format as well. Not many of these people are "computer savvy" and don't know the first thing about ripping CDs or DAE (Digital Audio Extraction). Most of them all rely on peer to peer file trading services such as Napster and iMesh to get copies of the songs on their computer. I'm aware that they could just put the CD in their CD-ROM and listen, and so are they, but what if they're doing research on Encarta or the like? They just want some background music, and nothing helps your research more than some Metallica. Why is it they shouldn't be aloud to download the songs that they already have the privelige and right to posses and listen to? Yes, I could just teach all my friends how to use DAE software, but that still leaves a lot of people who won't know how. Also, people could scratch a CD so badly that it's no longer playable. Should these people not have the right to download the songs and burn another copy of the CD. Yes, I'm aware they should be more responsible than to let their CDs get ruined, but it can't always be helped. They'll never be able to totally stop illegal file trading, but the responsibility to not do illeagal things with peer to peer trading services such as Napster falls on the users who agree that they won't download songs they don't have the right to when they accept the TOS (Terms of Service) and EULA (End User License Agreement) upon installation of the software. The servies should not be stopped, the users should no what they are and aren't allowed to download and should respect that. Also, there's the arguement that I have yet to hear anyone besides myself use: "You can record almost any song right from the radio for free. If we don't have to pay for our radios (the service, not the radio itself), why should we have to pay to have the songs on our computers?" I don't claim to be innocent of downloading songs I don't have the rights to, but that should be my responsibilty and I should have to face the consequences of that; not a service that supports thousands upon thousands of perfectly legal file transfers.
If anyone has anything to add/comment on about my little rant, please e-mail me as I doubt I'll ever find the post as it is so far down the list.
People have been swapping pictures on IRC forever. Many users in computer-support channels offer repositories of helpful files to other visitors. Isn't this P2P? If the only difference between Napster and the Web in terms of file swapping is that Napster is a virtual network, here is another example of a virtual network (IRC) which people have used for over a decade now to swap files for many legitimate reasons.
The resurrected Scour Exchange. Works only on Windows/IE5, but is otherwise legit and functional. Not not affiliated.