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P2P Filesharing vs. The Web

Posted by michael on from the inculcating-values dept.

The Importance of writes "The recent RIAA lawsuits have raised many questions and issues, but the focus has been on P2P filesharing. Before there was P2P, though, there was filesharing via webservers. There doesn't seem to be much complaint about the RIAA shutting down people who upload MP3s to their homepage. Why do many people seem to treat http filesharing different than P2P filesharing? LawMeme has one answer."

9 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. People dont share much anymore by adamruck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    people dont file share anymore.. for the most part they just leach. Thats why if I use networks like direct connect that force people to share. People still try and get around that though.. its kinda sad.

    --
    Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
    1. Re:People dont share much anymore by Ishin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People don't share because of the enormous constrains on upload bandwidth that broadband providers have made. My DSL line only has 256kbps up, with it only realistically transferring about 200kbps. Quite a bit better than dialup, but still pathetic when you're trying to transfer hundreds of megs of data.

      As a prior post mentioned, prosecution is another problem. The RIAA is attempting to quench the problem at the source, which is definitely the easier way to go.

      I'm not a big fan of neo-modus/direct connect, mainly because of DC++. It's made the sharing requirements for Direct Connect irrelevant. People get on as many networks as they want, and share 2-3 slots with about 15KB of upload between them all between about 10 different networks, making them effectively just leeches.

      Plus the requirements for DC servers have gotten so bloated that they basically require some amount of spoofing to even get on. I haven't used DC in more than a year, and the last time I did, most servers were requiring you to share 30-50 gigs of media, bigger than many casual file sharers actual hard drive.

    2. Re:People dont share much anymore by kscguru · · Score: 5, Interesting
      People don't share because of the RIAA/MPAA threats. Not legal threats - those are too new - but cease and decist letters.

      Most major universities (mine is in that crowd) turn a blind eye to P2P traffic... until they get a C&D complaint. The policy here: the networking people immediately cut off the connection. They will not turn it back on until a student says the offending file has been removed (honor code is involved - very serious honor code). And, if it really was the student's fault - that is, the student can't prove the letter was a mistake - it's a $80 reconnect fee.

      The university I'm at has ~15,000 students. They get several C&D letters a week - many are repeat offenders. Just about everyone I know (or rather, who understands how) cuts off their upload and leeches in order to avoid C&D-type problems.

      Get a single C&D letter, be out $80... whoops, there went the month's beer money. College students ain't stupid, not when it comes to getting that beer...

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      A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire

  2. Maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe because they got the ISP's to take down the servers, because they were hosted by the ISP's. P2P OTH isn't exactly an ISP hosted server, it's something differen't.

  3. Are you kidding? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course they are going after websites that are distributing their music. Just exactly how many sites have you found recently that contain working links to copyrighted MP3s? RIAA's recent lawsuits have nothing to do with P2P applications in particular. They are going after people who are distributing their music. Distributing music with today's P2P music applications is not much different than creating a webpage and registering it with a search engine.

    1. Re:Are you kidding? by SimplexO · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I point everyone to NameProtect. Their NPBot hit my page a couple of times before I told it not to. Basically, it scours your website and looks for songs. It then collects the links (not the music) and tries to get a bounty from the artist (?) by showing you that someone is sharing their music. It's other business model is that it can be contracted to find your music on websites.

      from robots.txt:

      User-agent: NPBot
      Disallow: /

      --
      Get Firefox!
  4. Old Fight by mphase · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There has been outcry over sites being shutdown for mp3 serving, it's was just a small shortlived outcry that was solved by Napster. If p2p is ever succesfully shutdown they will be an instant rush back to http mp3 trading.

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    vampirical
  5. We need to use P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting


    We need to use P2P as the official file distribution system for Linux. I think we should replace the whole ftp web based style with a clicknrun gui style P2P system for file distribution.

  6. Riaa doesn;t need to shut down webservers... by flogger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I post my MP3s on my personal webserver in a streaming Jukebox so I can listen to my rightfully licensed music at work. but Google got ahold of my collection and returns my site with certain searches. I then ended up on a few H4x0r5 WAREZ-MP3 lists. Needless to say, within a week of this "publicity" my bandwidth was shot to hell. The RIAA doesn't need to shut down those that put MP3s on servers. Other leeches will take care of that for them.

    On a side not, I still get occasional mails from people that find a google listing and ask for access to a certain song. I can deal with that.

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    "First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
    -- The Doctor, "Doctor