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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)."

5 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. why? by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  2. Peer-to-peer by Nastard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Most relevant point by Logic+Bomb · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The most telling point I got out of the article was the sentence where he said that in the end, a court is really going to care whether any architectural decisions seem to have been made purely to obstruct the law. I think this was the lawyer's way of pointing out that the courts enforce the spirit of the law, not just the letter. When it comes down to it, no matter how well a system attempts to satisfy the various technical legal issues involved, if it's not used for much except infringing activities the courts will try to shut it down anyway.

    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.

  4. Re:what about future laws? by Michael+Spencer+Jr. · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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)

  5. Re:Short answer: nope. by visualight · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 sourceforge

    --
    Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.