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Sought for MGM v. Grokster: Non-Infringing P2P Use

Posted by timothy on from the that-lessig-fellow-might-have-some-words dept.

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."

55 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. My non-infringing use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I use the P2P network to get free copies of Brittany Spears' latest album. Since it is not spelled "Britney", it does not infringe, so back off, MGM!

    1. Re:My non-infringing use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I think there are some people who would love to sell you some v1agra, then.

    2. Re:My non-infringing use by WombatDeath · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, it's a new exhibit at Madame Tussauds, showing pop nymphettes impaled upon a variety of medieval weaponry. Well worth a visit if you've ever fancied seeing Kylie being violated with a halberd.

  2. BT has a valid use, for example. by keyne9 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    World of Warcraft by Blizzard utilizes the BitTorrent methods to distribute patches/updates. That's basically rousing support for a peer-to-peer method from a very well known company servicing several hundred thousand users.

    1. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by Dragoon412 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by jdreed1024 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It doesn't have to be a success, it just has to be non-infinging. If a major company, which has previously been pretty darn vigorous in defending its "intellectual property" (think bnetd) decides to use this technology, that's a pretty good indication that it has a legitimate use. Now, if it turns out that the technology doesn't work, for whatever reason, that's a different issue. But if it were technology that could only be used for "evil", no company would be stupid enough to use it, no matter how fast it might be.

      --
      There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
    3. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by AllUsernamesAreGone · · Score: 3, Informative

      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...

    4. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by Dragoon412 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      True enough, I wasn't trying to disqualify the parent's suggestion simply because it didn't work out. But let's be rational:

      Say a politician wants to ban cars because they can be used to cause so much death and destruction. Someone wants a list of safe, legal applications for cars. Well, there's driving to work, driving to school, fetching groceries, etc.

      Considering the abundance and usefulness of all the successful and purpose-built functionality cars have, would makes they make a damned fine counterweight for turning a cherry picker into a trebuchet really carry much weight? Probably not, and neither should the failure of Blizzard's awful BitTorrent implimentation.

      Sure, it can be used that way, but it's not particularly well-suited to it, and it sort of caught me off guard that considering what (legal) uses P2P technologies do use, one of the lamest implimentations yet was the first to be mentioned.

    5. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by Jarnis · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      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/ fr eecampaign/

      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...

    6. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by acidrain69 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Say a politician wants to ban cars because they can be used to cause so much death and destruction. Someone wants a list of safe, legal applications for cars. Well, there's driving to work, driving to school, fetching groceries, etc.

      You're opening up a can of worms with that argument. You have to be above a certain age and licensed to drive a vehicle, and their use is HEAVILY regulated.

      Same goes with the gun argument. People kill people, not guns; but that doesn't mean you want to compare it to P2P use.

      A better example is the classic MPAA vs Sony argument (I think it was sony. the VHS case). MPAA thought it would be the death of the film industry, that it would let massive piracy take place. It didn't. VHS had plenty of valid uses, and some not-so-legitimate.

      --
      -- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
    7. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by arose · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't forget to put the right spin on it: if BitTorrent wasn't available the developers of X-Plane would have to pay more for bandwidth, so having BitTorrent is good for commerce.

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
    8. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by networkBoy · · Score: 2, Informative

      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
    9. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by sconeu · · Score: 2, Informative


      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.
    10. Re:BT has a valid use, for example. by zuzulo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I do not understand how this is even a reasonable question. There are far more *non infringing* uses for peer to peer networks than *infringing* ones.

      To enumerate a few:

      1) Distributed source versioning (several open source projects working on this)
      2) Collaborative work environments (ala MS Exchange, Lotus Notes (not saying good environments), etc etc ad nauseum)
      3) Social networks ala Friendster that allow data exchange
      4) peered IRC/IM networks
      5) Distributed peered backup / data archival networks (a personal favorite)
      6) Distributed database applications
      7) DNS
      8) Distributed load sharing applications (ala bit torrent and others - automated mirroring stuff fits in here)
      9) Grid computing applications ala SETI etc

      I could go on and on. The reason *most* applications are not peer to peer is that these sort of networks are the most difficult to build algorithms around and to model. Remember the early conflict between 'distributed' database applications and 'relational' databases? The reason the relational class of databases won in the end was that no one could build a properly functional distributed database protocol. Parallel operations are almost always more complex than sequential ones.

      *Any* server network is simply a peer to peer network with a restricted set of peers and limited functionality. All networks are essentially special cases of the general case we can refer to as peer to peer networks!

      To continue, the *internet* is essentially a special purpose peer to peer network - so my question is why distinguish the very specialized class of peer to peer networks designed to do anonymous file sharing from all the other very real and non infringing purposes we use or will likely use peered computing for?

      Clearly this separation is a ploy by organizations interested in regulating a very specific use of peer to peer networks that has been *bought* hook line and sinker by those of us in the opposition.

      Letting your opponents define the terms under which you argue is always a loosing proposition. Dont let special interest groups redefine 'peer to peer' networks so easily!

      Besides, this is going to be a moot question at some point soon - there are enough interested parties trying to design and build fully anonymous and encrypted peer to peer protocols (some functional prototype projects exist and provide varying degrees of protection) that my suspicion is that we will have at least one cryptographically secure anonymous network protocol within the next 18-24 months.

      I could go on and on, but I will refrain. ;-)

      --
      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
  3. Distro ISOs? by jacksonj04 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?
    1. Re:Distro ISOs? by Odin's+Raven · · Score: 2, Informative
      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?

      There's an entry for "Linux Distributions" on his UPenn SNIU page under the "Other SNIU" section, roughly 2/3 of the way down. Currently lists Debian, Gentoo, and Others. Certainly the list could be extended, but there is an entry for torrents of Linux distros.

      For me, this is my primary use of torrents/P2P. I've found it much easier to get first-day Linux releases via torrents than the previous madhouse of hammering the living daylights out of a handful of overloaded ftp/http mirror sites.

      For distros that have been out for a while, I found my P2P mileage varied - sometimes ftp/http sites provided faster downloads. But it's been good enough often enough that I'll try a torrent first if one exists.

      --
      A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
  4. Misleding by northcat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    First of all the article's title is misleading. It makes you think that in a recent event a non-infringing use is actually being requested in the court. Second of all the article should be submitted to ask-/. not yro.

  5. Do you need a screenshot? by m50d · · Score: 2, Funny

    Some guy downloaded the GIMP from me over Gnutella a couple of weeks ago, but I'm afraid I don't have any proof.

    --
    I am trolling
  6. etree? by garcia · · Score: 2, Interesting

    bt.etree.org for distributing legally traded music via torrents? Along with various other P2P protocols for doing the same thing (FurthurNET, etc).

  7. Getting around Censorship by GoodNicsTken · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Durring the beginning of the Iraq war, I used P2P to get video and pictures that were censored from the US. The instant I hear about pictures, recordings, etc. on another network they can't show in the US, I go find them on P2P. Along with that search, I also found pictures that solders had taken along the way. Then I found gunship video (de-classified and classified because it had altitude/other readings) showing people walking into a building. The order came, and they leveled the building. Then started firing on anyone leaving the scene. You could actually see the men get thrown around after getting hit with munitions. On, and this video just happened to show one man running into a mosque so he was let go. (sure it wasn't leaked on purpose)

    1. Re:Getting around Censorship by GoofyBoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How could BitTorrent be used against an oppressive govt more than http or ftp?

      If the government detects that you are uploading or downloading part of a forbidden document, you are screwed. BitTorrent does not protect you against this.

      You might be thinking about Freenet.

      --
      The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
  8. LegalTorrents.com by jhalludel · · Score: 5, Informative

    how about http://www.legaltorrents.com/ URL says it all...

    1. Re:LegalTorrents.com by gnalle · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Reading todays story I get the feeling that the poster wants to use a few law abiding OSS-file sharers as an excuse for letting everybody else share copyrighted music. However this attempt is misguided and meaningless.

      RIAA is not filing legal charges against bittorrent as a program. Perhaps they would like to shut down the sourceforge site, but it is much easier for them to attack the torrent providers.One of the qualities of bittorrent is that it is fairly visible whether a torrent provider links illegal stuff, and therefore it is easy for RIAA to track down the right people.

      This is good news for the open source community, because in a year or two there will be no more sites like supernova.org, because the RIAA have sued the illegal trorrent providers into hell, and the open source community will still be able to use bittorrent to provide download of open source software. Of course the closing down of illegal bittorrent sites will not be the end of P2P, but it will render todays story meaningless. Whats the point listing up legal use of P2P, when bittorrent provides a transparent effective technology?

  9. Uses ? by butlerdi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We use P2P (JXTA) in our food traceability project. Users keep their data locally but allow others within their group to access the data to build the required product documentation. This is done to comply with upcomming EU and US legislation.

    --
    "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
  10. Well... by fitten · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Assault rifles can be used for hunting, target practice, target competition, and recreational shooting (as can most guns).

    Assault rifles, and guns in general, aren't "evil" or are built to serve nefarious purposes.

    Similarly, P2P networks can solve a host of distribution issues.

    It's the idiots that use them for illegal purposes (assault rifles, guns, or P2P networks) that cause the problems. Since the world is made up mostly of idiots, well... there you go.

    1. Re:Well... by TrollBridge · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except that most guns aren't used to commit crimes.

      And though we'll never have conclusive, accurate metrics on leval vs. illegal use of P2P, common sense tells me that the majority of users aren't downloading the latest version of Gentoo.

      --
      There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
    2. Re:Well... by l4m3z0r · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most cars(probably all) are used for speeding and breaking various other road laws, let's ban those as well.

    3. Re:Well... by cluckshot · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I love this myth that "Assualt rifles" were specifically to kill human beings. The Geneva Conventions actually have made them be developed for entirely a different purpose and it is most definitely and amazingly not to kill human beings. Assault rifles were built to WOUND people.

      You see in combat if you wound a soldier it takes out of action 2 or 3 buddies as well. Killing him usually just gets his buddies mad! It is much more effective to wound. This is also why land mines are most often calculated to blow off a leg or a foot.

      Acutally the nice 30.06 rifle of the earlier times of US Combat was a most effective Killing weapon. That is why the USA Hunters tend to prefer it or variants of it such as the accelerator versions at lower dimensions. I suppose this might hurt the feelings of those wanting to regulate guns but it illustrates how arguments get smashed out of reality in such topics.

      To apply this to P2P networks is a pretty good example. The arguments are just plain wierd. P2P is nothing but what the name says. Communication between two parties without the moderation of a third party. Of course this private communication lets in people who do illegal things. Of course it is nothing more nor less than communications. There is nothing really wrong about it.

      I remember in the early days of Cell Phones and Pagers, many facilities assumed that children with these devices were trading drugs. (It started out that way too!) Rapidly other uses developed and most if not all kids using cell phones and pagers is now legitimate. I assume P2P is going to do about the same. Outlawing it serves no purpose.

      --
      Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
  11. FreeAudio.org .... by Art+Pollard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I run FreeAudio.org. The goal is to create audiobooks of the most important literary works on liberty and freedom. I regularly share our first work: Frederic Bastiat's classic book "The Law" via LimeWire. The works are intended to be downloaded and shared. (You can even post them on your website as long as the copyright info is kept intact.) Sometime today or tomorrow, I'll be posting our second work: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. With both of these works, there is a statement at the beginning encouraging people to share them "via their favorite file sharing service." So, not only is sharing via P2P allowed, it is encouraged. (Add one more to your list.)

  12. Knoppix. by Demon-Xanth · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  13. Ask this: Why does it exist? by dilute · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Grokster is a business. If you couldn't use it to trade infringing copies, I'm afraid the service would have no commercial viability whatsoever. The mere fact that it's CAPABLE of exchanging noninfringing files I don't think is sufficient justification.

    A better case, perhaps, could be made for bittorent.

  14. Well... by dfj225 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  15. A distinction may be drawn by Microlith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    between systems like BT versus Kazaa and Grokster. Their network structures are inherently different and as such must be considered independently.

    Legal uses of BitTorrent have been shown, but legit uses of Kazaa and Grokster are slim from what I've seen.

    You might argue that you could distribute public domain works, or GPL works, over Kazaa/Grokster but for things like Linux ISOs, BT works better and for low priority things HTTP and FTP work quite well.

    And please, people, don't bring up the "we should make all X illegal" analogy.

  16. Re:Legal Use? Workaround... by 3terrabyte · · Score: 2, Informative
    That's a complete urban myth.

    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?

  17. BBC by Sirch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The BBC is apparently considering using P2P for the distribution of their archives once it goes live.

    --
    We Build Beautiful Websites
  18. slackware by IAR80 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Latest slackware distribution was first released only on BT.

    --
    http://ebgp.net/ccc/
  19. Top Selling Industry Games - STEAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Half-Life 2 used STEAM to deliver their product, which was a custom BITTorrent protocol.
    They Even Hired Bram Cohen (guy who wrote 1st Bittorrent client-invented/popularised and coded it) to write it for them.

    What about /. posts which put up Bittorrents of files of Websites to avoid Slashdotting.

    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.

  20. Eve patch download by ebrandsberg · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

  21. Ringtone sharing by zoeblade · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One of the legal uses of P2P networking listed is ringtone sharing, but ringtones are the same as any other form of music: the owner of the copyright dictates whether anyone is allowed to copy them or not. This means that ringtones based on chart music or TV theme tunes, for example, cannot legally be copied.

    It's not uncommon these days for a record company to make more money from a ringtone of a single than the actual CD sales, so I wouldn't be surprised if they got upset about them being shared freely.

    Free music you can copy

  22. Re:Censored? No. by MarkusQ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ummm. there were no video/picture that were "censored from the US".

    Except for the more graphic images of US military personel torturing foreigners. And killing them during "questioning." And the bodies of US service men coming home. And who knows what else, because when stuff is being censored you don't necessarily know it.

    Remember, this is the country that routinely dropped colour from video taken "behind the iron curtain", leaving the impression that everything there was black-and-white. The country that loudly objected to the development of biological weapons anywhere, by anyone, until some of our congress critters got mailed samples of weaponized anthrax we had made in our biological weapons labs. Oops.

    Our legislators pass laws without reading them, in some cases without being allowed to read them and/or discuss them, and we pass laws which average citizens are not allowed to own a copy of.

    If you think there are no images censored from the US, you are nuts.

    --MarkusQ

  23. Knoppix by Bob_Robertson · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de:6969/

    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 .ISO were gathered from the mirror sites. I think BitTorrent would be a better way, and will suggest it.

    Bob-

    --
    The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
  24. Local Distributed Storage Solution by Teancum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One of the best examples of a P2P network that I havn't really seen done too well yet is a local distributed storage solution. The idea here is that you have some huge datastore (such as a file system or a database) where you want to put the data into the datastore and allow other individuals on the local network to be able to fish the data out.

    The point here is that by going the P2P route rather than a fixed central server model, you both balance the network bandwith, particularly for "distant" nodes, and you allow the redundancy that the internet is so hyped over (you can nuke any node and the rest will compensate) but in practice is far from the truth. In theory you can still lose some data, but with a well built P2P network of this nature that could be minimized, and only seldom accessed data would be the most vunerable.

    Another big plus of this is that not only does this type of storage system work well for limited bandwidth, you can also install more modest "almost thin terminals" into such a network that keeps only frequently accessed data locally, and other nodes can compensate with data storage elsewhere.

    Unfortunately, I havn't seen any really good examples of this. Freenet comes close in theory, but even that has some ways to go to do this effectively.

  25. Mod me -1: Religious Nut, but... by eSims · · Score: 4, Interesting
    We use a digital recording system to record mp3s and burn CDs of our church services. We intend to use P2P to defray the costs of bandwidth to be able to distribute the recordings freely. Since the church owns the copyright there are no legal encumbrences to this distribution.

    A Bit Offtopic: But Slashdot provided much of the info required for designing and building the recording device and to my knowledge there is none like it elsewhere.

    --
    I .sig therefore I am!
  26. 3 uses, personal expirence. by nurb432 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    1 - Getting legal to re-distribute software and information more efficiently then only using the base FTP sites..

    2 - time-shifting of broadcast TV shows that i have a legal right to record, but missed due to any number of reasons.

    3 - Sharing your own produced content ( such as music ) in order to broaden your listener base without the cost of 'main stream' advertising.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  27. new protocol for heavily loaded websites? by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How about this... integrate the bittorrent protocol into web browswers, so websites can distribute their content in p2p with just a tag. Like, heavy images for example.

    <img src="bittorrent://http://mywebsite/myimage.torrent " title="My 2MB astronomical image of the earth" />

    Just a thought.

  28. YouServ by Bert690 · · Score: 2

    I run YouServ, a hybrid web-based p2p system, within IBM. It is used by thousands for work-oriented content sharing.

  29. I think.... by Audacious · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think one of the things MGM is forgetting is that yelling for contributory negligence on the part of a vendor such as Grokster, Morpheus, et al means that MGM will soon be out of business for producing films that urge people to commit violent crimes.

    Should such a religious change to our laws (basically the "Am I not my brother's keeper?" question) should never be allowed into our laws or court system. If you think about it, our whole basis for our life here is the statement that everyone is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No where does the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, or the Bill of Rights say that we are all responsible for what everyone else does. All of it just states that we are responsible for our own actions. Which is why a murderer is put on trial and not his friends, enemies, family, and the like (so long as they did not participate of course). It is the same with these companies. Just because they make a piece of software which could be used in a harmful way against companies such as MGM is no excuse to hold them responsible for another party's usage of their software. Just like it is no excuse to hold a VCR production company responsible for how a VCR is used. Or Radio Shack for carrying the parts necessary to build a cable box which circumvents the cable company's security measures. Or Intel because its CPU chips were used to create a new virus. The allusions are ridiculous. The entire country can not function if such a law were passed. George Bush's "We are a litigious society," will be absolutely true. For no company will be able to function under such a law.

    I believe that, as Americans, we should all go out and file lawsuits against every major company for psychological damage to our brains for being asked to function under laws which contradict the very basis of the manner in which this country was not only founded (ie: Freedom to do as you please) but to even work in this country (ie: If you get a job then you have denied someone else that very job).

    Think about it. You really can't even respond to this message because you will have broken the copyright laws as they now stand. Why? Because you have to first get my permission to even reference this message. We ignore that here and respond anyway but this is just another example of common sense versus stupidity when it comes to crafting laws.

    --
    Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke. :-)
  30. Fedora by mjfrazer · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://fedora.redhat.com/download/#download points to http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/ which hosts the fedora torrents.

  31. Re:Censored? No. by BCoates · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  32. E-mail by kevinank · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The most obvious (to me) non-infringing use of P2P would be the peer to peer store and forward protocol of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), or what we have all come to know and love as e-Mail. The thing is that the whole of the Internet is designed around smart end-points, stupid but resilient middle. Client/server use, such as HTTP is essentially an overlay network -- the core of the Internet is all peer to peer.

    --
    LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
  33. voting for legislation without readin by dpilot · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.
  34. Re:Censored? No. by Isao · · Score: 4, Informative
    especially that there are laws on the books, copies of which average citizens may not posess

    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).

  35. Re:HEY MODERATORS GET A FUCKING CLUE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The job of mods isn't to please the people they're modding, it's to please the readers.

    If two people post the same thing, then one of those messages is redundant. It's unfortunate that the downmod will result in a karma-loss for the recepient, but that's a bug in Slashcode, not a fault of the mods.

    If 100 people post at exactly the same time posting the same anecdote, do you think everyone reading /. should have to wade through them?

  36. Re:Censored? No. by Quila · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is not clear that there was full understanding of the updated text prior to the vote (this is still a subject of debate).

    This happens all the time, especially with omnibus finance and transportation bills. The final version (all several thousand pages of it) often comes out of conference with only hours to spare before the vote.

  37. Had the same idea, think it makes a lot of sense by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't think you would need to seed beyond the time it took to transer the item to derive benefits.

    For a server that got slammed with something like a slashdotting, even just that short time sharing would take a huge load off the server.

    It seems like this is a case where you could build a custom Apache module to automatically enable this feature for all content above a certain size, and in conjuction add support in Mozilla and derived programs.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley