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Downhillbattle.org Bounty For P2P Gaim Plug-in
thecombatwombat writes "Music activism site Downhillbattle.org has started a fund to pay a bounty on a peer-to-peer plugin for Gaim. With new laws threatening peer-to-peer, Downhill Battle thinks this is the future. Regardless, it's an interesting funding of open source."
and ran across Grouper. Only for Windows, but it does almost exactly what these folks want.
There is no controversy. Technology is not illegal. Uses of it are. People like etree make such a mockery of the RIAA's claims that filesharing is only used for evil that it's not even funny. Perhaps the RIAA is pissed off that so many bands are content with giving their music away for absolutely free.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I (being the project admin) know where WASTE is going, and it's going to be a lot simpler for those users who want it to be. 1.0 was obviously quite unfinished when originally released by Nullsoft. When we hit 2.0 it will be much more like a 1.0 in terms of features and stability. One of our goals is to create a second interface which is simpler. The installer is already a lot more user friendly, and setup is getting smoother (read: less buggy and confusing due to errors - and firewalls/routers tend to work a lot better now, my new DSL router setup without a hitch, zero-configuration no less) all the time. I am afraid these folks have written off WASTE before it's truely "done". A GAIM plugin is not logical to me. Integration of two technologies always kills off both technologies in my experience.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
However, I wanted to point out a way you can help the fight that's not just defensive, but offensive. Let's go after the people in congress who make this sort of thing necessary. Head on over to IPac and sign the petition. Donate. Help elect representatives and senators that understand our issues, and will fight on our side, not the side of the RIAA and MPAA.
In Change the Law I discuss the constitutional basis of copyright law in the US, and suggests a number of steps you can take to bring about much needed copyright reform. The steps range from speaking out to practicing civil disobedience.
There are over sixty million people using p2p networks in the US. That's more than voted for George Bush in 2000. That's enough people to bring about change, if you can work together effectively.
My article has been read by over six hundred thousand people so far but I'd like to see all sixty million American p2p users read it by the time of the 2006 midterm elections. I'd like to see copyright reform become a hotbutton issue in the next election.
If you're sad that Kerry lost November 2nd, consider that Kerry voted for the DMCA. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are on the side of the RIAA and MPAA. They're on the side of the big-money donors after all. That needs to change.
There are very few elected officials who feel that the DMCA is any sort of problem. They think it's the solution. Our elected officials view people who share files as the problem.
If you feel as I do that more people need to read my article, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog or from message boards.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Soulseek has features for "taste-matching" and such things, allowing you to get recommendations based on other with similar taste. I spend some time there.
But I also quite often head over to Musicplasma when I want to explore new music. There I can get some new interesting names based on bands I already know and then use a regular P2P service find it.
here you go.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Here are a couple of relevant mailing list threads: GAIM-Integrated Filesharing (main thread) and Re: GAIM-Integrated Filesharing (a followup thread).
:-)
For reference, Mark Dolinger, Ethan Blanton, and Luke Schierer are gaim developers ( developer list) and Ka-Hing Cheung is someone that has done a lot of work for gaim and is a recognized "Crazy Patch Writer" for his efforts. (and is mentioned in the AUTHORS file)
Hope that helps
The way suprnova.org survives is, I imagine, the same justification that other sites like thepiratebay.org survive.
To use thepiratebay.org as an example, in Sweden it's not illegal to run a site like that because all the site hosts is torrents and a tracker for the torrents. The torrents themselves aren't copyrighted material--that's all on the users' machines--but really just text telling you where to go to find it. So they can't be sued for hosting the torrents any more than you can sue someone for shouting "hey, you can usually buy stolen stuff in that alley over there".
I don't know if that's really appropriate under the law of Sweden (or whereever suprnova.org is), but thepiratebay.org seems confident enough in it to ignore any legal threats they've received and, well, they haven't been shut down yet.
Schlock Mercenary
A response has shown up on downhillbattle, it covers some of the points people have talked about in this thread.
Downhill Battle has responded to some of the questions raised in this thread. This question and forum session proves that discussion makes things clearer.
It seems to me that those for the gaim filesharing project agree to some extent about reforming the music industry and those who write extremely rhetorical questions against the project do not share the proactive sentiments of Downhill Battle's activism, which is totally fine. On a fundamental level though, there will be small-scale sharing as well as large-scale sharing and the two do not conflict, while the small-scale could chip away at the major labels in a different way than the large-scale sharing.
If you don't get to the end of their post about this, their plug for their new slashdot site is actually worthwhile, go to The Regular.
AIM already sends "capability" bits in buddy status notifications, and if a gaim plugin hijacked an unused one, it certainly wouldn't be the first. Once it does this, it should probably be possible to use the exact same hooks that AIM already uses to establish a direct connection for file transfer or IM, with a different "service type" or whatnot, and obviously without the dialog box asking if you want to make the connection, because of course the plugin assumes that if you installed and ran it, you want to use it. :)
I'm not sure how well abstracted the actual file transfer code in gaim is, but considering all the hoopla I remember about it going in, it's probably pretty well, so how hard could it be to hijack that, too? It seems to me that most of the pieces are already there. If C was my thing, I'd take a shot. I sure could use the cash.
Which goes against any common sense, really. Giving a product away for free doesn't help sales in any way.
In fact, working for a small record label, let me just say that it's getting pretty much impossible to bring out any new artists anymore. Only the majors have the money to compete with P2P, and even they have to resort to really massive and creative advertising campaigns to sell any records.
For example, we released a CD two months ago, which is getting great reviews in the press, quite a bit of coverage in both print and the web. In fact, I think a lot of Slashdot readers would know this artist's name, should I mention it here...
We've sold 300 copies. It's available on every P2P, and the last time I checked, there were MORE people sharing it than we've sold copies... Now the next fuck who comes up to me and says P2P isn't hurting sales will get his nerd teeth punched in his face.
Suffice to say the artist in question isn't going to release a CD anytime soon. He's pretty pissed off too, having worked years on the music. From our point of view, endorsing massive music sharing on the Internet seems like advocating slavery. As if musicians were monkeys who do tricks for peanuts and should be happy that people graciously listen to them.
So, basically, we haven't even made back our investment, and we're being given shit for being corporate assholes. None of us is rich by any means. I made a whopping $6000 from the label last year, and that's mostly because we also run a recording studio and I recorded & mixed some independent artists. Needless to say I need to have another job to make the ends meet. Still, people seem to think we should give the music away for free.
But it's all the same because no one listens. Anti-music business posts in Slashdot get modded up and others like me get modded as Troll whatnot. People need to get their music for free, and god forbid if someone disagrees. Oh well, I think after almost 20 years of working as a professional recording engineer, it's time to start looking for other career options. Fuck you all.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
The questions you raise are already answers in the gaim encryption plugin. It's slightly different, but it's doing nearly the same thing. Notifies and remembers that users use the plugin with a system of saying to either send it out, establish regardless, or various other settings for what to do.
It's not the most elegant solution, but when you are piggybacking a large proprietary network for something like this, I think it's more than enough.
That's scary.