P2P Now and Then

brajesh writes "There was an earlier story on Slashdot regarding eDonkey overtaking BitTorrent in P2P traffic. The BBC story was based on this press release by CacheLogic. To expand on this, there is a comprehensive analysis of P2P trends in 2005 by the same firm. The report makes some insights into the present and future of P2P, particularly interesting in the light of recent steps taken by BBC -BBC iMP and others. The analysis also makes some observations about the break-up of P2P content."

Comments

P2P Now and Then in a nutshell

[WellAren'tYouJustThe]

Now: stealing stuff
Then: stealing stuff

Feal free to replace stealing with infriging if it will help you get through the day. And don't give me no "linux ISO" bullshit.

a new conduit

[Brigadier]

I may sound like an idiot for saying this, but does anyone ever get the impression that p2p is going to be the new conduit for the oppressed ( oppressed being everyone subject to coorprate america). The first conduit was the free press on obstructed information flow allowing abolitionist and the like to band together and spread there cause, then radio TV etc . Now there is p2p another on obstructed means of passing information uncontrolled by the cooprate majority.

Re:a new conduit

[Neil Blender]

I may sound like an idiot for saying this, but does anyone ever get the impression that p2p is going to be the new conduit for the oppressed ( oppressed being everyone subject to coorprate america).

I'm sorry but not being able to get music and movies for free is not oppression.

Re:a new conduit

[Anonymous Coward]

p2p does not == stealing movies and shit.

p2p also offers darknets and structures such as hidden services on tor, I2P sites, and freenet and freesites. This allows for *any* information to be distributed. If someone wanted to start a site leaking thousands of corporate secrets and doing things that are blatantly illegal they could. If someone wanted to oppose policies of a repressive govt. they could. p2p offers a new method of distributing information. Certainly copyright infringement and the like are the most popular uses. But when a new technology comes along that sort of thing should be expected. The rise of home-video offered many new possibilities, but mostly it was used to film home-made porno.

That sort of straw-man argument ("I'm sorry but not being able to get music and movies for free is not oppression.") doesn't mean that the technology itself is not able to create a new paradigm that allows for more freedom for everyone. The ability for free flow of *any* information is certainly an amazing change, and it offers methods to circumvent oppression.

Your same argument could've been made about the nascent internet.

Claim 1: The Internet will allow for free flow of information and the ability of mankind to learn and be more Free!

Claim 2: I'm sorry but getting massive amounts of pornography is not learning and Freedom.

Re:a new conduit

[Anonymous Coward]

The govt. is "corporate america". Maybe you don't see the tie-in, but the govt's purpose is to benefit corporations and increase corporate profits. It's subservient to corporate interests and the amount of overlap is astounding.

Any good /.-er should know dozens of instances of this tie-in. Copyright extensions, bullshit patents, corporate welfare, the corporation getting all the benefits of a person but none of the drawbacks, subsidies being claimed to be part of the "free market", lobbyists, opposition to campaign finance, implicit support for china and anyone with money or something we want (oil, cheap goods), on and on, corporations are the ones who run things and influence our govt. That is what the GP was referencing. Corporate America being the expression of our current system.

Now you can disagree and talk about certain points and nitpick. But without a doubt this is a very valid political viewpoint regarding the current "oppressive" system here in the United States. It certainly is a POV that is worthy of some respect.

Re:a new conduit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but not being able to get music and movies for free is not oppression.

Actually, it is.

The state of nature (the "default" as far as political theory goes) doesn't stop anybody from copying anything.

The government uses force (it boils down to men in guns) to stop people from copying copyrighted stuff.

That's oppression.

Okay. It's a form of oppression that society mostly agrees with. Like the oppression that backs currency. Like the oppression that stops people from taking your property. But it's still a form of oppression that you have not consented to.

When it comes to media that is over twenty years old, you won't find many people agreeing to this form of oppression. I don't think many people will agree that if you haven't managed to recoup your losses from something you made twenty years ago, you should be allowed to prevent people from restricting the copying of intangible things.

Why P2P is not like the printing press

[Nom du Keyboard]

Printing presses are large, expensive, hard to hide, and easy to suppress. This is why they have such high Constitutional protections. Their problem is that whomever anc afford and control the press controls the news. For The People this is a double-edged sword.

OTOH, P2P is small, cheap, everywhere, and hard to suppress. While it cannot merit the need for such heavy handed protection yet, it disseminates information broadly and uncontrollably. For The People this is often a good thing!

what i'm curious about...

[XO]

Are there any P2P networks left that you can actually transfer data at a reasonable rate, that aren't full of viruses?

eDonkey/eMule take hours to download small files, and days/weeks to download big files

bittorrent is virtually useless, apparently everyone only has parts of any data that i want not equalling a whole

limewire is all viruses

The Internet without P2P Networks?

[theJML]

Ok, so as far as I see this the entire internet is made up of P2P connections. Heck, I made a point-to-point connection to pull down the slashdot page. Distributed P2P networks (where files from multiple systems are put into a list as available from my location) like Kazaa, Limewire, etc... are pretty much just fancy extensions of what I do at home when I'm on my laptop and want to pull a file from my server or workstation. So unless I'm missunderstanding all the buzz, I've been using P2P since way before Kazaa and Napster and don't see how anyone (including the *AA groups) going to interfere with my ability to transfer a movie from my PC to my laptop.

Having said that, anyone can transfer information in a number of different ways, be it open or copyrighted so how can the *AA ban a service from working because when they checked it, it happened to be transfering copyrighted material... the same service could transfer legal data (like a webserver). P2P networks will be here to stay in one way or another. That's just the way the internet works, and, as a previous poster mentioned, the Industry will just have to get over it and *gasp* use that to their advantage!

You don't understand English or Economics

[geekee]

"While *some* used/use it as justification and denial, I have also seen, ans have used it because when talking about FACTS (not opinions or personal beliefs), the crimes involving p2p and copyrights involve piracy copyright infringement, not rape, murder, larceny, stealing, theft, etc.

Copyright infringement (gain + no loss) != theft (gain + loss. Copyright education + RIAA/MPAA/BSA = PROPAGANDA AND F"

You don't understand English:
Or are phrases such as "you stole my idea" or "you're stealing cable" not correct English

You don't understand Economics:
Claiming copyright infringement causes no loss to the producer is a fallacy. Illegal sources of the product lower the effective value of the product i.e. the price at which it can be sold. So therefore a loss of the product's value has occurred. Note that /.ers often say that labels should make albums cheaper so they'd buy them instead of stealing them.