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Protecting Clients: Legal Impact of Filesharing Network Design
Cryogenes writes "InfoAnarchy has posted an excellent piece on legal issues faced by participants in a P2P network. The article is written by Fred von Lohmann who was previously noted on /. for the white paper IAAL*: Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Copyright Law after Napster
(which you can find on the EFF site here)."
No, you cannot ignore the legal implications, because:
1. It will eventually made illegal to even run the P2P client;
2. ISPs (already have) will start cutting you off for even running Napster, AudioGalaxy, Freenet, etc, bowing to pressure from megacorps.
What good is an encrypted P2P client if you've got no internet connection?
If AOL or another big ISP decided to 'crack' down, I'd imagine that an event could be organized where massive amounts of users cancelled at the same time/same day.
Yeah, just assume that they'd pick the worst possible strategy for their own purposes, because it'd be the way to punish the greatest number of their paying customers. That makes sense.
More realistically they'd:
-announce loudly that P2P clients were banned
-loudly kick a few dozen of the most-connected nodes
-send scary warnings in the email of other P2P users
-continue making examples until the majority complied
This is the way ISPs enforce any new restriction on widespread abuse. It works.
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
One point he failed to make concerning the Freenet issue was with nodes B and C passing traffic, and the DMCA. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aside from it being difficult for the node operators to know about what traffic they're passing along and to remove infrigning material, would it not be illegal, since the traffic is encrypted, for the node operator to find out what that traffic is, and hence filter it?
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
FTP, HTTP, Telnet, Usenet, Gopher, POP, SMTP...and of course, IRC!
Ban it all! One computer connects to another computer and gets stuff from it. That's how it all works and always has, dimwits!
While the article says that Freenet is safe under current US lays, it doesn't address a large potential problem: Congress could pass a law making "anonymous, encrypted, peer-to-peer networks" illegal on the grounds that the only reason you would choose to use that kind of P2P network would be to trade illegal material (especially since Freenet tends to be slower than a P2P network that doesn't involve encryption).
I think we should be thinking about ways to shift public opinion in favor of Freenet, so that such a law doesn't get passed, instead of trying to work around current laws. One thing that might help would be if official videos (movie trailers, convention broadcasts) were officially distributed through Freenet, saving the content providers money on bandwidth. That doesn't help to argue that anonymity and encryption are important, however. Can Freenet be defended, or is it truly only useful for trading kiddie porn and bootleg music?
The shareholder is always right.
No one is advocating stealing CD's or music. Copying is not theft. If you don't want to pay, you can copy it and you still are not stealing. It may be wrong, it may be piracy, but it is not theft.
I know the purpose of something like FreeNet is that the content is encrypted, such that you don't know what you're storing, sending, and receiving. But anyone else on FreeNet also knows that you are running a FreeNet host, and your IP address, correct?
What I'm getting at is that FreeNet sounds great... but what if in the future, it is made illegal/difficult to even run a node? (and that IS coming) What then? Is there any way to hide the fact that you're running a node, and still be able to access the network?
The reason I bring this up is that many people are getting broadband. Frequently, there is only 1 DSL and 1 cable provider per community. You can't afford to get kicked off for a terms of service violation. (Whereas with dialup, you could just get another account...)
So how can you participate in peer to peer networks without endangering your (possibly only) source of broadband connectivity?
And companies seem perfectly capable of enforcing this world, using a variety of strategies: putting "no server" clauses in your access provider's TOS, forcing the world to adopt proprietary and patented content formats for audio and video, and legally going after anybody who writes software that does not fit into their master plan.