Kazaa: Happy In the Global Legal Briarpatch

Steve0987 writes "The Washington Post has an article on the entertainment industry's atempts to close down the file-sharing system Kazaa. I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint. However, the entertainment industry has been acting in an arbitrary manner trying to impede anything remotely impinging on their industry. Go Kazaa."

Comments

Re:Just in case...

[liquidsin]

hmmm...P2P sharing of articles to defend against the slashdot effect. It's about time KaZaA got a legitimate use ;)

But seriously, since /. is so reluctant to set up a cache to protect the sites they link, how about a distributed /. client? Sits in your tray, checks slashdot for updates every couple minutes, and if it finds any new links on the front page, grabs them and stores them on your harddrive. Then some sort of link system on the sidebar of the mainpage ("view the cache at http://slashdot.org/p2pcache?articleID=whatever") that links us all together.

Anyone else find it strange?

[Anonymous Coward]

That the article makes casual mention that the programmers who wrote the original Kazaa are now working on a new program with built-in DRM, for a company called Altnet? Sound familiar? It seems this Washington Post correspondant didn't bother to investigate how Altnet is linked to Sharman Networks... Altnet is virtually Sharman Networks...

Civil Desobedience

[famazza]

Is a way to protest against laws that you don't agree, usually associated with passive resistence.

This means keep doing whatever you have always done ignoring the law, and of course paying the consequences. It works as a colective form o protest.

Let's suppose that the speed limit becomes 20 mph at highways. If everybody ignore this limit then the police won't be able to fine everybody.

The same happens here, if a considerable number of citizens ignore the way copyright works today it will be impossible to sue everyone, and of course they won't sue none of us!

That's how it should work, passive resistence.

Re:Just in case...

[inerte]

Yeah, it's possible... you could use GnucDNA to make a browser plug-in that would request contents of a webpage not only to its server, but also by querying the p2p network for it.

I've tought about doing it several times, but couldn't find the time. It would not only help slashdotted websites, but anyone with large files (images, music or video).

And if you could setup a system where the server, while saving bandwidth, compensated an user who upload the content, it would be a success.

LEGITIMATE USE!!!

[Cyno01]

Me and some of my friends just shot a short film(sort of) and have been distributing burned CDs with the movie in several formats (*.mov, *.mpg and DivX'd *.avi) and with a readme file on the cd urging people to share these files on KaZaA, gnutella etc. and to burn copies for their friends. Now to me this seems like a perfectly legitimate use of both CD burners and P2P file sharing. I'm not naieve enough to not think that 99% of whats on P2P nets is copyrighted (its against the law, but i'm not morally opposed to it as i have 100+GB of tv shows on my computer) but what about the other 1%. These are easy means of distribution to independent content producers, if they're shut down, what are we supposed to do.

PS: Anyone interested in a Star Wars Themed Mullet Hunting video(complete with rotoscoped duel) search KaZaA for Mullet Wars: Episode One the Phantom Mullet or star wars mullet or something of the likes, also feel free to e-mail me about it.