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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."
If you're looking for the buddy to buddies of buddies, why not just use WASTE? Doesn't take down GAIM with it and it makes a nice little secure private network.
From the requirments part of the bounty article:
They were probably talking about WASTE when they mentioned this. My friends and I tried it for a while. It was too complex to set up and maintain. My friends need simpler point and click installation. Firewalls gave a lot of greif, too.
I have, however, gotten several of my friends to switch to GAIM after they've realized how crappy and bloated MSN messenger is. I hope something useful can come out of this.
I see many uses for this, but it shouldent be seen as a compeditor against large P2P networks. This would be great if you were a group of students working on a project, and clicked a button and saw a list of project related files on your group's computers, or even had access to their music. I dont think this is meant as a replacement for large-scale Networks like eDonky or GNUTella(2). Keep up good work and PLEASE dont focous on illagel sharing of files, rather on colaboration and efficency of groups. [redundant] Do whatever to keep RIAA out of this[/redundant]
Sticking your head in the sand is an interesting solution to a problem that is currently being dealt with by content distributors, internet providers, and producers of content.
Yes, P2P itself is legal. To think there is no controversy over its use is naive. Software manufacturers include LENGTHY cd keys and broken audio tracks on CDs in attempts to prevent illicit reproduction of their products. Movies are being increasingly traded across bittorrent, gnutella, and other p2p services. Music is not the only area where there are legal problems, it's just the one where the content distributor is actively targetting those who swap its product.
To contaminate pieces of software (e.g. Gaim or Firefox) which are open source and provide a real service to a lot of us, with all the problems currently associated with p2p would be ill advised.
I agree, you can get some really good music in other ways than through the RIAA, but you have to be a realist (rare on Slashdot, I know) and see that mixing well-intended software with controversial software contaminates the former.
RTFA. The software meant to be truly peer to peer, so it only talks to the other buddy you're sharing with. So, as long as I'm sure that my friend, who identifies himself with a key exchange, is not the RIAA, the RIAA won't know you're downloading (you can even encrypt the download itself if you don't mind the overhead). The framework already almost exists with the gaim-encryption plugin. I don't think it would be too hard to extend.
Now, once you start sharing with random people, then yes, you have an untrusted network, but I don't think that that's what this project is aiming for.
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
Secure filesharing for everyone
Making a program that only geeks can use won't cut it. The goal, after all, is to keep people out of jail. What's great about integrating filesharing into an IM client is that the interface will be familiar and non-threatening to everyone. And the interface itself explains the security advantages of the program in simple terms: you share with friends.
[my emphasis]
The whole idea DownhillBattle proposes is predicated on the assumption that you can trust everyone on your friends list.
If friendster has taught me anything, it's that the word "friend" is used pretty loosely by most people online.
One of the things that bothers me about search based networks (bittorrent, eDonkey, Gnutella, Kazaa, napster, etc.) is that you already have to know what you're looking for before you find it. Anything that requires you to type a search query to find a music file is useless as a tool for serendipitous "surfing" that allows you to stumble on new music.
This problem partially undercuts a major argument of file sharing proponents- that file sharing exposes people to music that they wouldn't have considered buying before.
If I can have a "buddy list" of people whose music libraries you can casually browse through, I'll be much more likely to experiment with new music because there'll be less fear of encountering music that 5u><0r5. I understand there is already some filesharing software that offers this functionality, but bundling it with a IM application that people already use heavily and like to leave open as much as possible is a good way to build a user base fast. In fact, I can see Joe User types switching from AIM to GAIM once they find out it has secure file sharing capabilities.
Also, if communities like AudioScrobbler or MusicMobs could be integrated into GAIM, it would extend its use to being a tool for finding people who have similar music interests that you can add to your buddy list.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Given that it is a plug-in, I really don't see what the threat is for a person that doesn't want the feature. Just don't install the plug-in.
I think the problem is that they already realize that ... and simply don't care. Why should they? The RIAA and the MPAA want to maintain control of content distribution at all costs and they don't care who they hurt in the process, so trying to raise their awareness is a futile effort. Never depend upon another man's better nature (he might not have one), and I think that those two groups have already amply demonstrated that they have no better nature. And so far as the government is concerned (and in this case, we really mean Congress since they are the ones considering creating new law) they don't concern themselves with justice or long-term effects or any real understanding of these issues because the Congresspersons involved in them have already been paid not to. I understand what these developers are trying to do but they're wasting their time. The proper (and the only even remotely effective) course of action is to raise the awareness of the voting public, and make this enough of an issue that the ??AA's can't totally rubberstamp it (as they did with the DMCA and the various copyright extension acts.) The problem there is the print and TV media have swallowed the RIAA/MPAA's line pretty much hook, line and sinker (or have had the proper palms greased) and are in the process of convincing the public that copyright infringement is some kind of heinous crime and that the public has no rights when it comes to copyrighted materials. Try explaining "fair use" to someone who has been accustomed to hearing the "the music industry is being decimated by rampant piracy" on the five o'clock news every day for the past couple of years. This goes beyond mere PR, it is a vast, orchstrated example of the "big lie" and it's working.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
IM, to me, is a one-on-one connection with another person on the net. I think that IM, or what IM should become, is a more boundless way for me and person X to share.
It started as text sentences, but it shouldn't be limited to that. Audio, video, files, white boards, co-op file editting collaberation, call it a peer net, call it p2p, I don't care, i want Person A and Person B to be able to send that person a file, without it being an email attachment, just a file. I want to be able to connect to that other user, not just type at them. I want to have the options to shape how I converse, wether I use them 100% of the time with 100% of my friends or not. I want flexability.
Anyone here remember DirectConnect? I don't have a link handy but it is *exactly* what they are suggesting here. A small closed network of only "trusted" members. The problem with this, and why very few people still use DirectConnect is that the files are much easer to trace to people.
Let's say I'm using bit torrent and I forget to turn on my IP blocker, If RIAA finds me downloading something they don't like then they have my IP address, which changes daily. They would have to go through all the legal troubles of filing a John Doe suit, and subpoena my DSL company for my information, assuming they even keep records of what customer has what IP at what time.
If this were integrated into GAIM then anyone who knows how to check the "look at profile" thingy on gaim could see information about myself that I wouldn't really want then to find that easy. This is exactly what killed of DirectConnect back in the day.
(This is of course assuming I ever download something other than anime over bit torrent)
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
After reading through those links, I actually didn't see anything that stated that Gaim supports this idea. What do they think about this initiative?
- dshaw
PS: If I missed it, please point it out.
With Bit Torrent creating 35% of the Net's traffic, is it really time to declare it dying, and in need of a successor?
Yes, that would be about the right time. Remember Napster? Remember Kazaa? As soon as one of these P2P networks hits sufficiently mainstream use that large number of non-geek, non-early adopter people are using it, is about the time that it gets serious attention from the RIAA shutdown squad.
Now BT is a bit different because it's just a protocol for P2P file transfer, not a directory or lookup mechanism itself, and BT is used by a large number of software companies as a cost effective way to distribute large, legitimate files - I've downloaded Mandrake and MEPIS ISOs, and several multi-hundred megabyte game patches and mods using BT.
But suprnova.org, torrentreactor, and all the top directory sites of warez, movies and music are big, easy targets. The torrents and torrent directories give nice centralized locations to smack down with lawsuits. BT just isn't a legally resilient P2P technology in its current form.
Putting all discussion of what this could do to GAIM aside, I'm not sure if downhillbattle.org really considered if this could be done. I run DoorManBot on AIM, so I've run into many problems which will prevent them from being able to do this.
The issue is that on a network such as AIM, clients talk only to the AIM servers, not to each other, leaving no room for behind-the-protocol interactions between clients.
This means that the plug-in would need to be able to identify buddies also using the plug-in through something such as a tag in the user's profile; not the cleanest thing to do, though still doable.
Now comes the biggest problem. How will the plug-in communicate with others to do searches? Inter-client communications can only be done via the basic IMs that are sent between users. This would mean a new IM popping up every time one of your buddies decides to search for a song. Even if the search was hidden inside invisible tags, the IM would still need to present itself. This alone, I believe, would drive off any potential users.
Unfortunately, MSN and Yahoo! are just as bad as AIM in this respect, leaving any potential plug-in to work only with a different protocol. But with that, the user base is lost, destroying the purpose of the plug-in in the first place. A great idea, but sadly without hope.
Send offline messages on AIM with DoorManBot
Hmmm, let's all visit the site with a script on a daily basis. Put these bastards out of business...
#!/bin/perl
while (true)
{
system(wget "http://Ididn'treadthearticle");
sleep(60);
}
If you're looking for the buddy to buddies of buddies, why not just use WASTE? Doesn't take down GAIM with it and it makes a nice little secure private network.
Why not make a WASTE plugin for Gaim? That's what I have wanted ever since I first heard of WASTE. WASTE file transfers actually work. And they are reasonably secure. And they allow for browsing and transfering of files if the other person isn't there to attend to his computer. Regardless if I use Jabber, Yahoo!, MSN, or AOL, file transfers rarely, if ever, work. (Due to NAT, proxy, and other firewall related issues. But magically, my friends and I are always able to get WASTE transfers to work.)
I don't think this method will catch on is all. I had a program I wrote that worked with ICQ that did essentially all of this long before Napster and the P2P craze hit. It worked well but it required you to know the people you were trading with in some way and if they didn't have what you needed then you were just out of luck. That is evidently to much work for most people.
I still think personal web servers is the way to go. Use something like XML-RPC for exchanging data about the files on your machine and use the standard method for downloading a file from a machine. SSL wrap it. Require authentication if the user wants. Make it look just like any other webserver until the user is logged in properly. Then the only way to block filesharing is to block web servers. That means blocking pretty much every port or anything that is SSL wrapped. To verify that a server is file trading illegal files they'd have to hack the server which would be illegal in itself. What are they going to do - sue the Apache Foundation?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Let me get this straight. Music sharing isn't actually hurting the music industry, maybe it's even helping them,[I think you're confusing the music "industry," the RIAA, with the music "profession," the artists.] but you should do as much of it as possible because it will bring down the evil music monopoly and then we'll be living in paradise, so don't buy a CD because it won't really help any artist, just download their copyrighted material for free so that you help end the evil empire of the RIAA after which we won't continue to just freely distribute whatever we want to through this massive network of unregulated, uncontrollable digital distribution we've created, instead somehow all the artists will be fairly compensated, I think by some kind of magical money fairy that flies right out of my ass...
I don't know if it flew out of YOUR ass exactly, but that magical money fairy has been around for a long time. That fairy comes from the fans--who pay the artists for the shows they do through ticket sales and other merchandise. "Album Sales == Artist's Income" is the premise that's on crack. It seems to be a secondary income at best. It is the major source of the RIAA's income. The RIAA companies were in the business of promotion and distribution. Now that they've become so powerful, they need to be in the business of litigation, legislation, and popularity control* if they're going to keep their monopoly.
The roles of promotion/distribution can now be filled very inexpensively and mostly by the fans. The RIAA is now only as relevant as their lawyers/marketroids are persuasive. I'm not saying they should be dissolved, but they sure as hell don't need or deserve all the power they have.
*popularity control - the device used by The One True Record Label (RIAA) to control what is/isn't popular by promoting the hell out of whatever they need to sell next, regardless of its quality. That's how we get all that crappy music crammed down our throats.
" They want to push the government to the point that they realize that anything connected to the Internet could be used for copyright infringment, so that they would either have to completely give up on stuff like the INDUCE act and the DMCA, or shut down the entire Internet."
I don't follow. Can you connect the dots here? It's a given that any electronic transport mechanism, such as the HTTP protocol or any other method of sending packets back and forth, can be used to transmit copyrighted material. You know this, I know this, the government knows this. Why would this cause problem for the DMCA or other legislation? These sorts of laws are an effort to deal with the people that misuse technology.
It's happened time and time again that when a new technology has sprung forth, new laws eventually appear that govern the use of that technology. Think of cars and weapons as an example. There were no state vehicle codes in the 1850's (or if there were, perhaps they covered carriages). When cars appeared, shortly thereafter, the rules governing them followed, and now my state's vehicle code is an inch thick.
Is it easy to keep laws up-to-date to cover the latest advances in automotive firearm, or communication technology? Hell no. But it generally does manage to happen, and society hasn't broken down.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Mandrake will do this for you during installation, so you won't need Partition Magic or anything else. Plus Mandrake is a very advanced, newbie friendly choice. That's what I'm dual booting myself.
Bittorrent is actually, quite unlike the other file networks out there, eminently tracable. The person who put up the torrent is well known, all of the people who download from that torrent is tracked... if there were any protocol that were "asking for it," it's bittorrent.
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