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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)."

2 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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.