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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)."
go to so much trouble to hide illegal activity that you believe is right? Instead of thinking of new ways to circumvent copy protection and sharing, how about lobbying your congressman to get the laws changed? They are after all servants to the people they represent.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
There is nothing inherently evil or illegal about peer-to-peer networking. "P2P" is a bullshit buzzword, and it's sexiness only proves how little anyone (including those in the industry) cares about staying true to defined tech terms.
Of course, given nifty things like Freenet, such decisions might be essentially unenforceable, which would finally force some sort of action to move the law into the 21st century. It's a hell of a gamble though: start a revolution and hope things work out ok. To some, it definitely might seem a better idea to make the law safe for modern technology, then put it to good use.
The idea that struck me the hardest from Fred von Lohmann's reply is "substantial noninfringing uses". I already stated in another post how I believe that the ideal filesharing client will be a successful implementation of many ideas in one program.
Hopefully law will follow logic here. If this filesharing network enables something that should be illegal, but is composed of many different parts which are all individually legal, it should follow that the process of combining these legal activities should not be illegal. The *intent* and the *actual usage* can be used to gauge the legality of the whole system.
Note that Usenet isn't illegal. (I missed that too -- I think I wasted some of Fred von Lohmann's time by making him explain that.)
Perhaps the most successful implementation of 'the perfect filesharing client' will create a large number of individual services that have tons of non-infringing uses, establish their value and their common use, and then all at once build a filesharing program that connects them all.
I think that's what you just said. Movie trailers, convention broadcasts, etc.
--Michael Spencer
blocks@mspencer.net
(use my IP's ARIN contact to reach me IRL)
e4m - Encryption for the masses - Both windows and linux
The reason that the companies are so irritated is that they have it in their heads that they are losing big money because of illegal replication of their products. You know what? They ARE!
One little nitpick, along with the usual rant asking everyone not to use the words "steal". "pirate", "protect", etc....a LOSS is when a company spends more than it makes. The big media companies aren't experiencing losses. In fact, they might even be making bigger profits because prices are inflated on the stuff they sell (to compensate for the copying), and they get tax dollars from certain blank media.
So don't confuse "losing money" with "making less money". It reminds me of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire: Regis would tell a contestant they will lose $64,000 or whatever if they miss the question.. well they actually don't lose anything, they don't have to pay $64k to ABC, they just win less!
Since it costs so very little to make a CD (even when you figure the artist royalties into it), I feel justified in comparing media company profits to contest winnings.
The best course of action is to completely ignore the media companies. Don't buy the music, etc., don't even listen to it or talk about it. Support artists who are "sharing-friendly". If you're an artist, take a stand for the right to copy. Work hard to come up with ways to get paid.
People don't copy stuff because they want to "stick it to the man", they copy it because it's a natural part of human behavior. The difference today is that a) it's near-perfect copies, and b) it can be tracked by the media companies. Imagine of someone could've tracked each tape that was traded in the last 30 years!
So really, keeping the media companies rich, with the hope that they'll leave us alone is silly, it's just like paying protection money!
You've touched on what ultimately must happen if individual internet users are to continue have any control over how they use this tool.
A few years ago if you had a DSL connection and you wanted to host a small website it made more sense to use your already existing static ip to host the site than to co-locate or pay rent on a virtual server. That is no longer the case. Ports are being blocked and I for one would not be surprised to see them remain so forever in the interests of "network security". Realize the following:1. Servers are becoming geographically centralized as illustrated by the recent slashdot feature. Co-location and virtual hosting are becoming the only economicaly feasible way to get your site hosted.
2. The big corporations are learning to control the internet. Right now they know that they want to control the content you see but the recent threats of litigation are forcing the big ISP's (who also may be publishing their own content. the lines are blurred here(AOL/TW))to learn how to control content gets published and how it gets published.My gut feeling here is that P2P over the existing internet is a losing battle. Just like you hear people say here on /. "let them make a new copyright prevention scheme, we'll just crack that one too", the big corps will turn that philosophy back on to file sharing networks, no matter the protocol. They own the tools and the talent. Whether it's port blocking, packet filtering, litigation, or what-have-you, everytime a "new" P2P network reaches a popularity threshold high enough to be considered "dangerous" it will be snuffed out.
The only solution is a truly free and open internet that is not controlled by anyone. It would start with me running some CAT5 across the backyard to my neighbors house and setting up a wireless connection to the guy across the street. The biggest hurdle to this "internet" is addressing. The addressing scheme you described may be a solution. This is one of those things that so big no one tries to get it going, but I'm sure there's a few million people who've thought along these same lines. I've never coded anything beyond "hello world" but I do think this is possible if someone just takes the first step and starts a project on sourceforgeSamsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.