Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the hey-buddy-gotta-file dept.
Kaseijin writes "'We believe that if peer-to-peer flourishes, the Internet flourishes.' Earthlink's Research and Development division has released SIPshare, a prototype file-sharing application based on SIP. The code is available under a BSD-style license."
If I recall correctly, ISPs would not be held liable for content traded over P2P networks, recent legal case. But how does this change when the ISP develops a P2P client?
"Not anymore than crowbar makers can be liable for breaking and entering."
The crowbar analogy isn't so great because, on the other hand, lockpick tools are (generally) illegal.
The difference between the crowbar and the lockpick tool isn't that they have the potential for bad uses (obviously both do) -- it's about what they're generally used for.
The question about this Earthlink P2P will boil down to: is it mostly just another market for illegal filesharing, or will it mostly be used for legit sharing...
They have JUST called me (last half hour) and woke me up to tell me that I was pirating a copy of Windows 2000 professional using "some kind of file sharing application", and that "in case of reincidency I would have my account cancelled" and legal measures etc etc
Needless to say, they got their butt cancelled in the same hour.
The studios/labels should leave the MPAA/RIAA
by
ShatteredDream
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What good are laws that are simultaneously unenforceable and make the people more contemptuous of the thought of paying for your products? If the labels had said publically, "we believe the No Electronic Theft Act more than adequately addresses online piracy, and the DMCA is bad for consumers" then they would have been the good guys. The people who pay attention to what they were doing at the time would have bought more CDs, and the RIAA would have been right, the NET Act was more than enough.
As I have pointed out on my blog before the solution to illegal file sharing is not in lawsuits, but in repealing the DMCA and replacing it with a "right of private action for prosecutions in IP." That's right, let copyright holders hire a lawyer and prosecute you. Think about it for a second. It makes them pay to prosecute you, which means your tax dollars don't get drained by endless hours of DOJ/US Attorney expansion and action. It also gives the copyright holders a real means to go after people that'd work in the USA. Lawsuits aren't too scary, private initivative on prosecution is to college students and other young file sharers. When 5,000 sit in prison, not getting hit up for a few grand, people will stand up and take notice.
Yes, it would cost the RIAA considerably more in the short term, but it'd put a deep chill on illegal file sharing use. I have lost my patience with people who steal from the labels and musicians and hide behind things like "oh I am just sampling." If I sample something off a newsgroup or something, I either delete it right away and buy the album or I delete it because it's pure shit not worth keeping on my hard drive or buying. A few of my friends work the same way, but most of my peers do not.
The only reason I still have some support for the "other side" is that if the RIAA and MPAA were left unchecked they'd make my computer into a VCR that can run Microsoft Office and licensed video games. But seriously, the copyright holders are not entirely wrong. There is a moral problem with those who say that no one gets hurt. We have already been forced to deal with the fact, thanks to people like Courtney Love, that the artists don't get a fair deal in most contracts. Are you going to compound that by making it even harder to get out of debt? I seriously doubt most of the whiners even buy merch or go see them live.
"Normal people" aren't nuanced, at least in America. They will end up just seeing a bunch of free loaders and will be too lazy to challenge the MPAA/RIAA's latest IT industry killing plan du jour. If you make moral arguments for your freedom to be left alone from the copyright holders, you have to be virtuous so that the people can see that you are a libertarian, not a libertine.
Re:The studios/labels should leave the MPAA/RIAA
by
squiggleslash
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Precisely how many juries do you think are going to send a 19-year-old college kid to prison because he downloaded some Usher tunes?
Probably the same number that'd send some 19-year-old college kid to prison just because he possessed some dope.
-- You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Looks like...
by
cs02rm0
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's written in Java. Write once, run anywhere!
Well. Didn't work when I just tried it in 2k. I only wanted to try it at work because I think they used a look and feel I've been trying out with some of my apps.
I'll "induce" a moral conflict: Earthlink is often accused of directly supporting the Church of Scientology. In fact, Sky Dayton, the man responsible for Earthlink, is a devout Scientologist.
Why they did this.
by
Sheepdot
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
For those of you scratching your heads for a reason to implement this over SIP when established protocols exist out there, here's what you were looking for:
Companies and universities use packet-shaping to stop and block P2P from taking up too much bandwidth. They wouldn't dare touch the data over SIP though, their bosses would kill them if the conference calls ever died.
Hmm. I wonder what will happen if the "VoIP" protocols (SIP and H.323) are suddenly used for much more than only VoIP? If apps like this generate a lot of traffic how will it affect the CALEA and other IP wiretapping efforts? Suddenly the SIP data is just a bunch of garbled white noise. Is it encrypted or is it P2P traffic?
-- Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Scientology out, Christian Right In
by
ToasterTester
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Sky Dayton is long gone from EarthLink and the Scientology crowd that was there. After MindSpring took over control of Earthlink the Atlanta Christian Right took over. If you weren' t part of their in-crowd your days as at Earthlink were limited. That is unless you're in India and work for two dollars a day. Then you're okay.
Re:Earthlink supports P2P!
by
squiggleslash
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Disclaimer: I'm not the original poster, I was the one clarifying his point.
There are issues with blocking outgoing port 25.
Issue one is one of configurability and roaming. Right now there's no standardized way of passing on SMTP server information to clients, which means a user roaming on two or more ISPs cannot easily switch without going into the preferences of every blasted mail app they use and change the settings. This might be described as an annoyance, and is probably achievable via some funky scripting and configuration of a local, forwarding, SMTP server, but that kind of defeats the purpose.
Issue two is one of privacy and network transparency. You may want to route email via a particular relay (for example, one that supports Alternic hosts, or a work relay that supports internal-only FQDNs.) Yes, you can ask for that relay run on a port that isn't 25, but that's still relatively unusual, so unusual in fact that many mail clients still do not support anything but port 25.
Issue three again goes back to network transparency: what if the service you're trying to contact is not an SMTP server?
"Now wait!", I pretend to hear you reply, "I don't give a crap because none of these apply to me, and they can all be fixed with complicated Perl scripts, or convoluted network configurations, and by upgrading to the latest versions of the latest email programs regardless of whether the one you use, that you like, that you've been using for years, supports what you want." Well, I know many who'd argue this.
Likewise, I suspect the same people would argue that it's ok to draw on someone's livingroom wall, because the wall's owner can always paint over the marks, or put down wallpaper if the pen has created grooves. And it'll not cost anything because everyone has spare paint just lying around.
In other words, someone somewhere is taking something that's previously been ok, causing a problem, and expecting everyone else to make the effort to get things to work the way they were.
"But, hold on" says the straw man I'm arguing with. "Nobody has to draw on a livingroom wall, whereas we have to deal with spam." I'd say dealing with spam is a "want to" rather than a "have to", but more importantly I question whether taking email out of the hands of the users has been particularly successful at eliminating spam. I would argue it hasn't. I'd argue that nothing has been more destructive to the integrity of the Internet and nothing has helped spammers more than this type of anti-spam system. And when I say "nothing", I pretty much include spam itself, unless you see anti-spam as caused by spam of course.
The bottom line really is that blocking ports breaks things. You can come up with an argument for saying that that breaking is simply necessary, that the circumstances simply require it, just as we're all (well most of us) against killing people but (most of us) see the need for the occasional war, or at any rate self defense killing. But people do end up dying in wars, and legitimate activities do get hampered when you arbitrarily block ports.
Why am I still with Earthlink? Because of all of the issues that can affect my broadband, this - the blocking of outgoing 25 - is minor. Most importantly to me is that they do not blocking any incoming ports, they do not ban me from running my own network (though they refuse to support it, but that's fine) or servers, and they let me use any OS I want.
-- You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Slashdot Mirror
If I recall correctly, ISPs would not be held liable for content traded over P2P networks, recent legal case. But how does this change when the ISP develops a P2P client?
WRONG!
That would be TERRA NETWORKS.
They have JUST called me (last half hour) and woke me up to tell me that I was pirating a copy of Windows 2000 professional using "some kind of file sharing application", and that "in case of reincidency I would have my account cancelled" and legal measures etc etc
Needless to say, they got their butt cancelled in the same hour.
What good are laws that are simultaneously unenforceable and make the people more contemptuous of the thought of paying for your products? If the labels had said publically, "we believe the No Electronic Theft Act more than adequately addresses online piracy, and the DMCA is bad for consumers" then they would have been the good guys. The people who pay attention to what they were doing at the time would have bought more CDs, and the RIAA would have been right, the NET Act was more than enough.
As I have pointed out on my blog before the solution to illegal file sharing is not in lawsuits, but in repealing the DMCA and replacing it with a "right of private action for prosecutions in IP." That's right, let copyright holders hire a lawyer and prosecute you. Think about it for a second. It makes them pay to prosecute you, which means your tax dollars don't get drained by endless hours of DOJ/US Attorney expansion and action. It also gives the copyright holders a real means to go after people that'd work in the USA. Lawsuits aren't too scary, private initivative on prosecution is to college students and other young file sharers. When 5,000 sit in prison, not getting hit up for a few grand, people will stand up and take notice.
Yes, it would cost the RIAA considerably more in the short term, but it'd put a deep chill on illegal file sharing use. I have lost my patience with people who steal from the labels and musicians and hide behind things like "oh I am just sampling." If I sample something off a newsgroup or something, I either delete it right away and buy the album or I delete it because it's pure shit not worth keeping on my hard drive or buying. A few of my friends work the same way, but most of my peers do not.
The only reason I still have some support for the "other side" is that if the RIAA and MPAA were left unchecked they'd make my computer into a VCR that can run Microsoft Office and licensed video games. But seriously, the copyright holders are not entirely wrong. There is a moral problem with those who say that no one gets hurt. We have already been forced to deal with the fact, thanks to people like Courtney Love, that the artists don't get a fair deal in most contracts. Are you going to compound that by making it even harder to get out of debt? I seriously doubt most of the whiners even buy merch or go see them live.
"Normal people" aren't nuanced, at least in America. They will end up just seeing a bunch of free loaders and will be too lazy to challenge the MPAA/RIAA's latest IT industry killing plan du jour. If you make moral arguments for your freedom to be left alone from the copyright holders, you have to be virtuous so that the people can see that you are a libertarian, not a libertine.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
It's written in Java. Write once, run anywhere!
Well. Didn't work when I just tried it in 2k. I only wanted to try it at work because I think they used a look and feel I've been trying out with some of my apps.
I'll "induce" a moral conflict: Earthlink is often accused of directly supporting the Church of Scientology. In fact, Sky Dayton, the man responsible for Earthlink, is a devout Scientologist.
Do you like German cars?
For those of you scratching your heads for a reason to implement this over SIP when established protocols exist out there, here's what you were looking for:
Companies and universities use packet-shaping to stop and block P2P from taking up too much bandwidth. They wouldn't dare touch the data over SIP though, their bosses would kill them if the conference calls ever died.
Hmm. I wonder what will happen if the "VoIP" protocols (SIP and H.323) are suddenly used for much more than only VoIP? If apps like this generate a lot of traffic how will it affect the CALEA and other IP wiretapping efforts? Suddenly the SIP data is just a bunch of garbled white noise. Is it encrypted or is it P2P traffic?
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Sky Dayton is long gone from EarthLink and the Scientology crowd that was there. After MindSpring took over control of Earthlink the Atlanta Christian Right took over. If you weren'
t part of their in-crowd your days as at Earthlink were limited. That is unless you're in India and work for two dollars a day. Then you're okay.
There are issues with blocking outgoing port 25.
Issue one is one of configurability and roaming. Right now there's no standardized way of passing on SMTP server information to clients, which means a user roaming on two or more ISPs cannot easily switch without going into the preferences of every blasted mail app they use and change the settings. This might be described as an annoyance, and is probably achievable via some funky scripting and configuration of a local, forwarding, SMTP server, but that kind of defeats the purpose.
Issue two is one of privacy and network transparency. You may want to route email via a particular relay (for example, one that supports Alternic hosts, or a work relay that supports internal-only FQDNs.) Yes, you can ask for that relay run on a port that isn't 25, but that's still relatively unusual, so unusual in fact that many mail clients still do not support anything but port 25.
Issue three again goes back to network transparency: what if the service you're trying to contact is not an SMTP server?
"Now wait!", I pretend to hear you reply, "I don't give a crap because none of these apply to me, and they can all be fixed with complicated Perl scripts, or convoluted network configurations, and by upgrading to the latest versions of the latest email programs regardless of whether the one you use, that you like, that you've been using for years, supports what you want." Well, I know many who'd argue this.
Likewise, I suspect the same people would argue that it's ok to draw on someone's livingroom wall, because the wall's owner can always paint over the marks, or put down wallpaper if the pen has created grooves. And it'll not cost anything because everyone has spare paint just lying around.
In other words, someone somewhere is taking something that's previously been ok, causing a problem, and expecting everyone else to make the effort to get things to work the way they were.
"But, hold on" says the straw man I'm arguing with. "Nobody has to draw on a livingroom wall, whereas we have to deal with spam." I'd say dealing with spam is a "want to" rather than a "have to", but more importantly I question whether taking email out of the hands of the users has been particularly successful at eliminating spam. I would argue it hasn't. I'd argue that nothing has been more destructive to the integrity of the Internet and nothing has helped spammers more than this type of anti-spam system. And when I say "nothing", I pretty much include spam itself, unless you see anti-spam as caused by spam of course.
The bottom line really is that blocking ports breaks things. You can come up with an argument for saying that that breaking is simply necessary, that the circumstances simply require it, just as we're all (well most of us) against killing people but (most of us) see the need for the occasional war, or at any rate self defense killing. But people do end up dying in wars, and legitimate activities do get hampered when you arbitrarily block ports.
Why am I still with Earthlink? Because of all of the issues that can affect my broadband, this - the blocking of outgoing 25 - is minor. Most importantly to me is that they do not blocking any incoming ports, they do not ban me from running my own network (though they refuse to support it, but that's fine) or servers, and they let me use any OS I want.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.