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Newsbooster Creates P2P Newsbrowser
scubacuda writes "Newsbooster, the Danish company that got busted for deep-linking to newspaper stories, has created a new P2P version of its service to get around European law. Newsbooster's "Newsbrowser" software works like Kazaa - users download the software and it networks their computers together, instead of serving up files from a single server."
I suppose what is needed is some sort of cross between
Or maybe just bloody mirror the links...
Cool, but useless.
Wait a minute, they're deep-linking, against European law, in cyberspace, where we can't claim they're under our legislation, since they're not in out country?
;)
Bomb them!
Seriously though:
Could people 'fake' news through this net?
I mean, what format are they using? Someone could (theorically, for now) break the format, and post any news he wants (or rather, links to what he wants) that seem like Newsbooster's content
This whole story is interesting: It seems that any law on Internet content can be solved with a decentralized network.
This could also make internet traffic very interesting - everyone will always be connected to several networks - one for music/video/files, one for news, one for subversive terrorist activity.
Im sorry, did I write that out loud?
<bad UF reference>Then we could run a TCP/IP network on top of that...</bad>
My other
I haven't been able to dig up more on the story. How are the appeals going, for example? I'm not sure it is a good idea to route around the court before you have gone through all possible appeals, especially since they've got TimBL on their side.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
But it seems to me that this is an example for people using P2P to get things done which are illegal.
This deep-linking stuff the company did seems to be clearly illegal, ripping off other peoples creative work.
And now they are using P2P to do it again.
The RIAA will like this. It will give them ammunition for killing all P2P based apps.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
How does Google's News-service differ? Google even has pictures of the stories, so it certainly breaks some copyright laws.
Okay for a moment, I'll just pretend the obvious "adult reference" never occured to me and I won't mention anything about what "my girlfriend likes."
Can someone please spell out the argument against "linking" in general and why it's so offensive to anyone? (Let's leave the slashdot effect out of the discussion because that's an anomoly of another sort.) Why is linking to a news site any form of infringement, tresspass or offense of any kind? To me, a link is nothing more than a pointer or a sign post and only slightly more convenient than spelling out a URL explicitly so that I don't have to type it in or cut'n paste it to my browser.
I sincerely want to know, even if it's invalid, why people are concerned about linking.
Next, I am concerned about spoofing and validation. For news to be worth reading, there has to be an element of credibility. What are the assurances does a user have that it's not news created by some sensationalist with his own personal agenda (say, for example, some **AA group trying to spread their message?). Given all the news about people putting out unreliable and corrupted data on P2P networks already, I think it's a natural concern that information be valid.
I think that decentralized news is a great idea but validation is a big concern. If there is an original source, then I think there should be a central validation store that would hold a registration for articles that are "verified" in some way. I haven't put a great deal of thought into the concept but maybe some sort of decryption key to allow the reading of the news that is downloaded from the P2P news resource network appears to be a direction that would make things work nicely. That, of course, would require the cooperation of news services.
In summary, what's the problem with linking? And what about validation/verification?
The printed media obviously fears that the Internet business model will hurt the printed business model. We all thought this in the dotcom days and it will happen but most likely not anytime soon.
However, according to this article about NYTimes.com the online readers are not the same as the print subscribers.
The paper's typical reader is 45, while the site's average reader is 35, said Calder. And while 85% of the website's users come from outside the New York designated marketing area, 44% of the daily's readers are inside the area.
Furthermore:
Since January, NYTDigital has been examining the overlap between site users and the newspaper's readership and found that only 8% of site users are also print subscribers.
It saddens me that the news media do not seem to get that the Internet is a way to expand their business model. A study would most likely show that the newsboster readers are new readers.
I don't know if that's true, but in any case google's site is automatic and these days automatic machines can get away with alot more than us intelligent entities (I don't want to seem like a human chauvinist)
All they need to do is prove in court that they selected the articles in an automatic manner, without any intelligence. This would be extremely amusing to witness
"Your honour, my client moves that he is not intelligent"
My other
Really, I do. I have always felt that the concept of P2P would lead to the sharing and distribution of many types of information, not just music or thieved software. The RIAA would like everyone to believe that - P2P=piracy software. How stupid. P2P is far from perfect in design and security, but it is only a few years old. Who knows what its future holds? I believe there was a link on here a while back about IBM or someone using P2P to distibute company information and databases on a intranet. I hope more companies find legitmate ways to make P2P work for them. Each time someone does, it discredits the RIAA's piracy claim.