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New P2P Battle is Heating Up
Digital Dharma writes "News.com has an article about a new P2P war just getting underway in congress. With Senator Hollings retiring, the RIAA and MPAA have found suitable replacement hosts in three key members of the House of Representatives. Lamar Smith, R-Texas; Howard Berman, D-Calif; and John Conyers, D-Mich are taking up arms against P2P networks with a bizarre new bill that would require companies that create certain types of software such as web browsers, instant messaging clients and e-mail utilities to add a warning that it 'could create a security and privacy risk.' How this would deter P2P activity is a bit of a mystery. The article also talks about putting software company executives in jail for failing to correctly label said software, empowering the FBI to release anti-P2P propaganda and other typical RIAA/MPAA sponsored oddities." A network application can create a security risk? Best firewall off every port!
...firewall off the entire United States, like they've done with Red China? I live outside the US and the odds of my complying with this asinine request are about...zero!
America we hardly new ye!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Wow! Stop the presses, this is a big shock. In 2004 here's the synopsis on how much milk each of these candidates sucked from the Entertainment titty. (They open in a new window).
Lamar Smith received a little over $21,000 from the TV/Music/Music lobbies in 2004
In 2002 he received almost $25,000
Howard Berman received a little over $4,000 from the TV/Music/Music lobbies in 2004
In 2002 he received almost (can you believe this?) $223,000!
John Conyers received almost $5,000 from the TV/Music/Music lobbies in 2004
In 2002 he received almost $50,000!
The ROI on congressional payoffs is insanely high..
Don't laugh -- many incompetent managers think this way. I am sitting behind a firewall that blocks all outbound traffic, with the exception of ports 80 and 21. This, I am told, will help prevent viruses from entering the network. Moreso, I might add, than any kind of coherent patching strategy.
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
maybe the congress should fine Darpa for funding the creation of TCP/IP too.
These kind of laws are showing how the government has always treated citizens, with mistrust. They are doing more for copyright protection then they are for things like healthcare, it really shows their prorities.
-Seriv
It would be nice if companies set up bittorrents of those files. Say the new LOTR trailer comes out and they set up a normal server and a bittorrent for it. When more people get on the normal server, it goes slower and slower until everyone is waiting hours for it to finish. When more people get on the torrent, it goes far FASTER (it also uses up less of their bandwidth). I've been seeing more torrents lately, but not nearly as many as I'd like... and most of them are set up by users, not the company. I have no clue why they don't do it (except maybe not knowing about BT), there doesn't seem to be any disadvantages...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Same goes for IM. THe only port they can connect on is through the secure port 443. Of course none of the employees have quite figured this out so I am the only one that can IM with outside people. Rendevous only works on the internal network so they can only chat with other employees.
I guess I may be one of those "Pointy Haired Bosses", but we're a small shop and cannot afford to have someone download a warezed application then get busted by the software wannabe police & music police. One employee had about 6GB of mp3's they had downloaded on company time. Plus we're not paying people to chat with friends. Funny how project completion times went up after I disabled the port.
If we were not in graphics & printing, then I would have Linux thin clients that would give empolyees access to only what they need.
With such a warning, maybe some would heed it. I don't think many would, but some might think twice about it
Yes I am an ass about our technology policy, but coming from a technology security background, I am not going to take stupid risks when things can be made reasonably secure.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Yes, there are disadvantages. I do not want to share my bandwidth, simple as that. I am using ADSL, 1024/256 and when I download something from bitorrent it completely drowns my internet connection. I understand if small studios provide an alternative distribution through bittorrent but I'll be damned if I accept big studios cutting down on their costs hijacking my internet connection. And not just movies, software too. As a paying member of Mandrake club, I found it insulting the only apparent way of getting the new version was through bittorrent. Fine, saves on their network bill but I my throughput was PANTS!
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
a bizarre new bill that would require companies that create certain types of software such as web browsers, instant messaging clients and e-mail utilities to add a warning that it 'could create a security and privacy risk.' How this would deter P2P activity is a bit of a mystery.
It is possible that this is meant in part to help RIAA attack users' machines through the P2P medium... if everyone accepts the risk, the RIAA could claim that this is a sort of consent to allow projected electronic damage by those running the software, or at least an acknowledgement that it may happen. I know it is a stretch, but why else would the RIAA push for this?
You have to allow some slack in the protocol for people who are just starting a download and don't have anything useful yet. When I start a BitTorrent download it can take up to 30 seconds before I start uploading because I don't have anything useful.
Plus a lot of people are on asynchronous connections, so they may be capable of receiving more than they can send, and shouldn't be punished for that. Besides, BitTorrent already has measures in place where clients will cut off bandwidth to peers who aren't uploading enough. However, if there's an overabundance of bandwidth, they'll still receive some data and be able to download anyway.
Not that any of this matters, since BitTorrent is blocked on my network connection. *grumbles*
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Didn't you ever see that movie "A Beautiful Mind" starring Russel Crowe? Anti-hollywood/MPAA/aussie FUD aside, it shows nicely with a dating analogy why, for the best results, each entity should do what's best for their own interests AND the group's interests. Bittorrent is the very embodiment of this for the internet.
Isn't it funny how whenever Microsoft builds something in, people complain about bundling or lack of modular design (and usually point out how the Unix way of having separate components for each part of a job is better), but when Microsoft does something the Unix way (e.g., the browser browses, and if you want pop-up blocking, get a pop-up blocker component), and the major Unix browsers do it the Microsoft way (incorporate the pop-up blocker into the browser), suddenly that is the right approach?
Quite frankly, if I knew of a BT client that flat out rejected people refusing to upload, I'd use that instead.
Well, BT clients essentially participate in a tit-for-tat; that means that anybody not uploading will have a horrendously slow download, because no clients will want to give them anything. There is a bit of slack for people just starting out, of course, but if your client doesn't upload a single byte of the torrent, you'll have a hard time downloading anything. You know how BT is a bit slow to start, until you have some of the file and it starts getting fast? Well, if you didn't upload, it would just stay slow like that until it's done downloading.
IIRC, the only nodes on a BT swarm that will upload to somebody who isn't uploading are the seeds who don't need to download and won't care that that node isn't uploading.
I want a *Secured* P2P client. What I mean by secure is that it searchs only the 5 or 6 computers that I tell it to. Think friends and family only plus six degrees of freedom outlook. I want to only let my direct family or friends search or download by box. This would be a very very short list for me under 20 boxs computers. But I wouldn't have to worry about copyright and who was searching because every single person searching or downloading my machine, I know. The same would apply the other way as well. I might have only 20 contacts, but my brothers would have about 100 each. My mom most likly only 5 or so. Anyone that searchs the box that hasn't been expressly granted permission is hacking and is a terrorist that needs to be jailed and fined for every attempt to gain access to my or a family members box! Ok. I could see that working against me as well. The big threat to P2P is that you don't know who is searching your machine and downloading files. Actually, I'd be happy to burn family members CD's rather than P2P. At home, I'm on a 56K line. (Only option which really sucks.) It would be nice of having very very limited extended family or extended friends search. I would not want anyone downloading though from my machine with out my express permission. Maybe a system that I search one hop away through friends and family, but any downloads have to be downloaded by the family memeber or friend that they *trust.* O.k. maybe it would be a download request on my part that my friends and family could look at. If they want to download or introduce me to the person that has the information that I want ok.
Is there a system already like this?