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Protecting Clients: Legal Impact of Filesharing Network Design

Posted by michael on from the when-lawyers-attack dept.

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)."

3 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Freenet by jchristopher · · Score: 5, Insightful
    An encrypted, anonymous network can completely ignore legal implications, because there is nobody directly responsible for it, or even for any single transfer.

    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?

  2. Amen! by SCHecklerX · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The internet should be illegal. It's one big "p2p" network, after all.

    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!

  3. what about future laws? by jesser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.