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Sought for MGM v. Grokster: Non-Infringing P2P Use
linuxizer writes "Since my last Slashdot entry, I've been discussing various copyright issues with the ever-interesting Peter Fader. Out of those conversations came sniu.info, an attempt to document the various forms of substantial, non-infringing use over peer-to-peer networks before MGM v Grokster goes to the Supreme Court. So far I have about 50 entries, but more suggestions would be much appreciated.
Some fellow /. readers might also be interested in my fairly regular posts on copyright/IP issues, which are mostly links to interesting articles with occasional commentary."
It may just be me who can't spot it in the list, but where is using BitTorrent to distribute the latest ISO images for Linux installs? Not to mention all the patches etc...
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
how about http://www.legaltorrents.com/ URL says it all...
THe problem with this is that their BitTorrent distribution system was much-maligned during beta. It fared so poorly that it had to be scrapped for release.
It was a great idea in theory, but in practice, it meant beta testers were still trying to download the 2.5GB client at a piddling 10k/s days or even a week after a new beta client went live, and downloading the client via BitTorrent in the middle of a particular push was next to impossible. Personally, I found it so slow, I wound up pulling the client down off newsgroups, instead, at a much higher speed.
Blizzard's BitTorrent distribution was a cool idea, and I'm sure it saved them a few bucks worth of bandwidth, but it was a far cry from a success.
Want to distribute 700MB files all over the world w/o breaking your own backbone? Knoppix provides a torrent link that lets you DL it's live CD distribution from the bittorrent network rather than the choked FTP servers (which are often 7-10kb/sec).
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Right now I am using BitTorrent to download disk images of the X Live CD written about here on /. a few days ago and Fedora Core 3. I can't really think of any better examples of a legal use of a "p2p" network. I think BitTorrent is an especially good idea for OSS as it allows free software to be distributed in a manner that lowers the bandwidth usage of the host providing the software.
SIGFAULT
And on top of that, even if somehow weird dimension where you live where that might even be true, Civil Lawsuits require you to to prove your innocence. You would still have to go to court, pay out the nose, to prove you innocence. And based on some crap you heard on the internet. Which isn't true, btw.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Latest slackware distribution was first released only on BT.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Half-Life 2 used STEAM to deliver their product, which was a custom BITTorrent protocol.
/. posts which put up Bittorrents of files of Websites to avoid Slashdotting.
They Even Hired Bram Cohen (guy who wrote 1st Bittorrent client-invented/popularised and coded it) to write it for them.
What about
Isn't the BBC (British Broadcasting) trialing a TIVO like streaming T.V. thing at the moment using Peer-2-Peer tech.
And didn't Downhill Battle help people get WINXP-service hack 2 by Bittorrent.
I'm sure with Downhill Battles Blog-to-Torrent legality will really take off.
Otherwise : A World Without Sharing.
Eve, the MMORPG posted a bittorrent link when they updated their client for faster downloads. It WAS faster to download that way too, much much faster. The link is still there: http://www.eve-online.com/patches/patches.asp
In that case, possibly a better example for BitTorrent could be X-Plane. Austin distributes the demo, betas and updates for the software using BT and he has done since the early 7.x releases. It may not have the tens of thousands of users, but it is a substantial legal use...
http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de:6969/
.ISO were gathered from the mirror sites. I think BitTorrent would be a better way, and will suggest it.
Knoppix has been using BitTorrent for distribution for a while. I think it's an excellent example for other distributions.
Debian tried to use a distributed system where the packages for the
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Blizzard's implementation was broken. Most people use ADSL or other similar network connection which completely chokes if you max the upstream. So the Blizzard patcher maxed the users's upstream, totally killing the downstream.
/ fr eecampaign/
But it *is* a substantial noninfringing use.
Anarchy Online is also distributing it's client free via Bittorrent
http://www.anarchy-online.com/free/ad_campaigns
Uses perfectly normal BT client to distribute free trial of a commercial game. And I think they have already distributed few thousand copies of the client...
http://fedora.redhat.com/download/#download points to http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/ which hosts the fedora torrents.
It's worth noting that all the congressmen who received the "Antrax letters" had voted against the Patriot Act.
Well, it would be worth noting, if it were true. The anthrax letters were mailed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, who voted for the Patriot Act, just like every other Senator except Russ Feingold.
Don't know that I can give references either, but I have heard the same thing. I'll just clarify it a little...
Some pieces of legislation were delivered from the committee to the Congressional offices less than an hour before the scheduled votes. It's not that someone held a gun to their heads and said, "Don't read this, but vote on it!" It's just that delivery was arranged so that there was no time to read it.
I seem to recall that some very high-profile, "can't vote no without a darned good reason," legislation was passed this way. But at the moment, that factoid is fuzzier than the original topic.
My usual news sources are NPR and BBC, though I've been told that both are flaming liberal puppets, and I should be using Fox News as a more balanced source.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I am not the grandparent poster, but hey, it's an open forum...
The laws I believe the grandparent poster is referring to are copyrighted building codes.
As far as legislators not being able to read a bill before voting for or against it, well, that is up to the leadership of the legislature. They set the schedule, and decide when a vote occurs. In a few cases, such as the so-called PATRIOT act and the recent omnibus spending bill, the bill was introduced and voted upon without time being given for the legislators to read the contents of the bill. Sometimes things get snuck in.
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has a section that deals with Congress not reading the PATRIOT Act before passing it.
On his site, Moore has a page dealing with backing this claim up, "Congress did not read the Patriot Act before voting on it"
(I'm posting anonymously since I've already moderated (which means I'm also not the OP))
Not my assertion, but how about John Gilmore's efforts to reveal the Show ID to Fly requirement that apparently is a law we're not allowed to see. Bearing in mind that it's quite easy for conspiracy theorists to purport nonexistant secret laws, this at least has the appearance of one that does.
As for barring reading of laws to be voted on, I cannot cite a blatent example of such. However, the Patriot Act was voted on several hours after a new version was printed (running several hundred pages). It is not clear that there was full understanding of the updated text prior to the vote (this is still a subject of debate).
Betamax, not VHS.
I know: mod self "-1 nitpick"
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
When the "right to share files" is enshrined in a constitional amendment,
The Ninth Amendment.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Also the First. Code is speech.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.