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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."
I hope it doesn't bring down GAIM.
Once again, how people use a tool shouldn't affect the legitimacy of the said tool, but it's RIAA we're talking about here.
BitTorrent is pretty concerned when more and more pirates are using it to illegally distribute software, not that BitTorrent is an illegal tool, but you just don't want the trouble of lawsuit, and not to mention you're not guaranteed innocence in court (if your bank account can last that long).
So personally, I don't think changing the "method" is going to help anything.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I doubt that Gaim would be held responsible for a third party plugin that allowed it to do file sharing. Thats like suing the maker of Windows because it runs BitTorrent.
Perhaps if GAIM had a list of plugins that it officially supported, it would have solid footing for saying that this plugin was off the reservation, so to speak.
I know they don't officially support any of these third party plugins, but in a way similar to microsoft warning you before you install third party hardware drivers, gaim could warn you that it's an unreviewed unsuported plugin? Just a thought.
I think then even the dumbest civil court judge would be able to understand that GAIM isn't a part of this p2p shennanigan.
Why would they want to do something that could possibly bring down gaim? its like painting a target on it...
...fairly stupid. Not only is this a mix of two seperate things, but why would making a plugin for GAIM do anything? It's the same thing for people who want to merge WASTE with Miranda or GAIM. I do fine with my P2P seperate from my IM, and I don't WANT P2P with my AIM, etc. It's not going to help stop the RIAA either, they will just go after people using the plugin. I'll take mine seperate (and secure as in darknet) thank you.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Not smart... Public statements like this will rile things up too much. They'll end up shooting themselves in the foot by pushing the government and the RIAA like that.
It's like over-vaccinating diseases: While it solves a problem at hand, the disease evolves because of it, possibly into something really bad.
Look at the DMCA: that is drastic, malevolent evolution if I could ever spot it.
No, no... I think that the way it's been since Napster is just fine: Slow, steady activisim that pushes authority in the correct direction without unnecessary vigor.
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
With Bit Torrent creating 35% of the Net's traffic, is it really time to declare it dying, and in need of a successor?
The nice thing about Bit Torrent that Napster and Kazaa never had going for it, is that legitimate companies are already using it to distribute their product. Blizzard, Mandrake, and others with large applications that geeks primarily download.
While adding P2P to Gaim may look important, Bit Torrent is the wave of the next few years.
If someone is designing a Gaim P2P, make sure sharing a file with a contact is as simple as MSN where you drag the file to the chat window, but have it resume broken transfers, etc.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
But for $500, it just doesn't seem worth it to me. I mean let us, for the moment, ignore the other arguments. Personally it's going to take more money than that to make me a target of the RIAA.
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
How many of us actually TRUST everyone on our buddy lists? Hell, I keep my enemies on my buddy list.
Also, this proposal doesn't answer that lingering question of what happens when a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend is an RIAA employee.
the IM services (AOL, we're looking at you) will be coerced into more aggressive Gaim-blocking in fairly short order. This will result in your loser friends that you can't get to use GPG or gaim-encryption complaining that it doesn't work (they're too lazy to get the update the Gaim people put out within 3 hours of the block, remember) and forgetting the whole idea. Good idea in theory, but you have to convert your friends to Jabber at the same time.
-insert a witty something-
I think this sort of integration takes a neutral position, actually. With encryption and private trading groups, the RIAA has to go a LOT further to stop it. They need to start doing more than connecting to a tracker and getting a list of IPs and send out an automated e-mail. Maybe then people will see how silly the RIAA has become.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
It's weird how insightful some Jokes can be.
Well, they would if the fight ever happened. Only their lawyers would win.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The RIAA has deep pockets and can outlast any competitor
Not if EFF decides to take the case and gets a summary judgment in favor of the party it's defending, as in the case of MGM v. Grokster. A summary judgment decides solely on the question of law, interpreting any disputed facts as favorable to the other side.
Last time I downloaded and tried Knoppix, it threw my Radeon 9000 video card into unaccelerated VESA fallback mode, which I don't find comfortable even for 2D apps such as OpenOffice.org.
..that's becuase it's Knoppix. They do shit like that. You'd need to get a real distro to get better drivers.
Uh
It's the "human shield" theory of software development. If P2P features are incorporated into lots of "innocent" software, then the INDUCE act becomes a sort of doomsday device -- it can only stop P2P by stopping the entire software industry.
It's too bad, it could've been great
Three are ex-spinner.com/AOL and one is ex-Microsoft.
;-)
AOL and MS? This is supposed to make us trust them MORE?
Right now, I would be oh so happy if Gaim just supported file transfers period. MSN Specifically. All my friends use MSN, and whenever they're like, "Hey, let me send you a picture!" I'm like, "Hey, let me switch Operating Systems!" Last I checked, Gaim did not support file transfers on MSN, but they said it is possible and would get around to it in the future. If this has changed, then I blame SuSE since their Gaim package is still stuck on version 0.75 and I am too lazy to compile my own.
"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."
Interesting... do you have a citation for RIAA claiming that file sharing is only used for evil? I can imagine (and vaguely remember) them saying something to the effect of 90% of Kazaa traffic being unauthorized copyrighted stuff (and I think they'd be right) but have they made a statement that encompasses a totally different type of service, like etree?
It would be great to see a link. Unfortunately I think you may be putting words in the RIAA's mouth or using a tactic called a straw man, defined as mischaracterizing your opponent's position so that it can be torn down easily.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
The copyright system two hundred years ago was a good deal for the public, because it encouraged authors by restricting publishers without affecting the general public's rights in practical terms---because reproducing books required expensive technology and specialist skills.
The current copyright system benefits publishers more than authors and severely restricts the public, since the technology for reproducing digital information is within the reach of ordinary people.
So we the users should demand a complete revision of the "copyright bargain".