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XP SP2 Torrent Shows Legal P2P's Promise

Posted by simoniker on from the come-get-some dept.

Downhill Battle writes "With Congress debating new legislation that would ban p2p networks (along with other innovations and beloved products), we thought it was important to demonstrate the huge potential of p2p software to benefit the public. So now at SP2torrent.com you can get Windows XP SP2 via BitTorrent." Update: 08/09 21:10 GMT by S : As commenters note, you can also get XP SP2 from Microsoft's site, but it's explained: "DO NOT CLICK DOWNLOAD IF YOU ARE UPDATING JUST ONE COMPUTER: A smaller, more appropriate download will be available soon on Windows Update."

6 of 529 comments (clear)

  1. Loads of uses on legal P2P by barcodez · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out The Linux Mirror Project for example. Which has torrents for Slackware, Slax, Fedora, Mandrake, Knoppix, Debian, Gentoo & FreeBSD

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  2. Re:Now, really... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why wait? Get it Here :)

  3. Get it direct from Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can now get it directly from Microsoft.

  4. Re:Slashdotted ? by barcodez · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, it is entirely possible to slashdot a torrent. Each client polls a central server (or in more modern clients one of a number of servers) for new hosts and to update the server on its progress. If this server can't service all the polls from all the clients then a torrent has been ./ed.

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  5. Re:Now, really... by riscthis · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes -- it's linked from here:

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displa ylang=en

    Although Microsoft would prefer people that only need to install on a single machine wait for it to be pushed via Windows Update, which will be a considerably smaller download specific for your OS version.

  6. Legal? by Karma+Farmer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Has the copyright owner approved the redistribtion of this patch by third parties? Or can this be described as "Legal P2P" only using some brand new defintion of "Legal"?

    I think inexpensive distributed file hosting is a great idea, and I think P2P networks are a great way to implement that. But, copyright infringement is still copyright infringement, even if you're able to justify it to yourself.