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Firefox Gets File Sharing Extension
Jonnty writes "Firefox finally has a good P2P extension.. "[It] incorporates peer-to-peer capabilities into the browser via a sidebar. AllPeers "combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent" to add media sharing to the long list of available extensions." "
Now Firefox can be sued by the RIAA! Seriously, won't this draw unneeded criticism of Firefox while it is still establishing its place in the browser market?
They call it free software but I suspect they mean "free beer". It sounds like nothing more than another bittorrent client.
There are other protocols that, in my opinion, are better that BT. I've seen a few that use other (third party) users to mask both the sender and receiver from one-another. I believe this is going to be important especially when it comes to government regulation and censorship. I'm anti-copyright, so I couldn't care less about who owns what.
Awesome, write the plugin and get into the browser. Perhaps if everyone has easy access to it (like they now will w/BT built in) then they will start to use it. The reason that HTTP and FTP are so popular is because support for those protocols were built into the browsers and you didn't need to have an external application fielding the transmissions.
If Foo P2P protocol is made available to everyone easily via IE and Firefox then they will pick it up quickly.
These protocols need one or more centralized server(s) to function properly.
Another idiotic idea. Why the hell would I want to spend my time LOOKING for the website I want, instead of just plain visiting it? Yes, this WOULD require me to look for the website. Also, security (Login information, et cetera) is practically impossible in such situations.
What you're basically saying, is that we should all go back to sharing plain-text ASCII, but in a new way.
I say NO THANK YOU, please leave the internet as it is already.
Why is this impressive, again? My browsing and file-sharing are completely separate tasks, and the integration is as logical as putting file system defragmenting in a sidebar.
This would be a good analogy if the only way you could defragment your hard drive was by clicking on links in firefox. When I click on an ftp link in firefox, firefox doesn't launch my ftp client. Why should clicking a torrent link be any different? To the average user, they're both just download links.
What you propose with users "instantly sharing webpage packets, image packets, and even the music/programs they download" by means of a public portion of a "Temporary Internet Files" type folder is interesting, in theory. But realistically, I don't see it happening any time soon.
Among other things, it makes the assumption that users have plenty of upstream bandwidth, so their Internet performance won't be drastically impacted by this process running in the background.
In reality, the ISPs have *no* interest in giving the "average user" very much upstream bandwidth at all, because that's still their cash cow. The people publishing content are the ones in the best position to pay a premium price to make the publication possible. That's why T1 and T3 circuits still cost hundreds or even thousands per month, while you can get DSL or cable broadband for between $19 and $50 a month. Ability to download (or in other words, view or receive content) is cheap. Ability to provide/distribute the content will cost you much more.
On another note, I'm becoming convinced that as things stand right now, your best bet for "safe sharing" of copyrighted content lies in the realm of private servers and sites which require passwords to use them. P2P will never really be the "optimal" method for distributing content covertly or without fear of legal punishment. Ultimately, any software that can mask the sender and/or receiver's IP addresses still has to have a way to know how the data *really* gets from point A to B and back. That means, someone can always "unmask" it again with some sort of clever reverse-engineering.
The nice thing about a strictly private server, message forum, etc. is that by its very nature, it's not sharing content to the public. If enough different "private sites" were put up that each happened to contain a lot of the same content anyway, law enforcement would have a very difficult time dealing with them. (EG. They can't just connect up, grab a file from your IP, and thereby prove you're "guilty of distributing copyrighted content on a massive scale". For all they know, you could have only a select group of friends using your private site who all own legal licenses for the music they're putting up there, etc.)
Since you've never lived in a society without copyright, how are you so sure you're going to enjoy it?
I look at the fact that I've earned a VERY good living the past 18 years by providing all my "creative" productions for free, and have never asked anyone to give me a dime or even give me recognition. My company wrote a very popular (in our market area) POP3/SMTP server over a decade ago that we gave away freely, and it made us a ton of cash in service. I write a few newsletters that I freely mail out (costing me thousands annually) that makes me decent money on speaking engagements. I've written 2 books that I've handed out person to person that nets me about $20 per reader (I request the money at the end of the book and I've received more than I've paid to get the books out). I've produced a few indie bands that have made more money giving away their music and not binding the listeners to copyright -- they make their money producing live music for their fans.
I see no need for copyright, and I've made good money without it. The only people I see making money WITH copyright are the publishing cartels, never the artists (except in extremely rare cases).
If you're a publisher, artist, musician or writer, don't look at copyright to make you rich. Hard work and getting out to see your fans makes you wealthier than protecting you work from unlimited copying.
I'm anti-copyright, so I couldn't care less about who owns what.
I find this position slightly disturbing. Well, more than slightly.
Has copyright law gotten out of hand? When work is copyrighted for the life of the creator plus 75 years, that is excessive. When copyrights keep getting extended and extended to protect works owned by companies, that is excessive.
However, the basic premise behind copyright is sound. If you write a book or compose a symphony, you SHOULD have the exclusive copyright on that work. It's your creation to do with as you see fit, whether it's put it in the public domain right away, lock it in a drawer, perform it in public for a fee, publish it, etc. It is completely up to the copyright holder to decide what happens to the work.
Your attitude, sir, carries a message of disrespect and contempt for copyright holders. Basically you're saying "F*** you and your rights, I'm going to take your creative work and do with it what I damn well please." Fair Use rights, you say? Why should I as a content provider respect your Fair Use rights if you don't respect my copyrights?
While I have no solid facts to back it, my gut tells me that if the content providers' copyrights were respected, then DRM wouldn't come around. DRM R&D costs time and money, and if copyright was on the whole respected, then the costs would outweight the revenues thet it would protect, and as everybody knows, a business won't do something if it doesn't bring a profit.
However, as long as there are enough visible attitudes like yours, DRM development will continue at the expense of Fair Use.
(and yes, I live in a Utopian world where political correctness and DRM isn't needed because people just "get along.")
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
The order of downloaded packets is not necessarily random. There are clients which prioritize early packets. However, this is harmful to the network in that if all the seeds go away, and everyone is prioritizing early packets, then the file will not be completable by anyone.
As for the lifetime of the BT process, generally speaking people tend to close their clients when they're done downloading, unless they set it and went to work or something. So that's a non-issue.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hmm. So if you memorize one of my poems and want to recite it to a friend, I should have the right to use force to stop you? "Shut up or I'll shoot!"
No.
Ideas are not property. If you recite my poem, you take nothing away from me. My poem is not "mine" in the same sense that my guitar is "mine"; it more "mine" in the sense of "that's my girlfriend" or "that's my father". To say "the poem is mine" expresses relationship, not ownership. Any artist knows that the work "comes from, but mostly through".
My ethical rights as a creator are to have that relationship recognized, and to get my cut of any money that someone makes with that work. I think the way songwriter royalties currently work is the closest thing to a a workable "rights" system: you can play my songs all you want, but if you cover them on a CD, or play them and get paid, you owe me a royalty.
A copyright is an artificial legal creation. A "fair use right" is not a right unto itself, but a limitation on those artificial legal creation - these "fair use rights" (and many more) would exist if all copyright laws were repealed.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Unless this is bundled with Firefox, and I've seen no indication that it will be, this changes nothing. Users will still have to download and install this plugin before they can download bittorrent content, just like they need to download and install a bittorrent client before they can download bittorrent content today.
I essentially leave the site for a couple years, then come back to find nothing at all has changed! Even the "slashdot is dying.. are you listening, Taco?" comments are essentially copied and pasted anew to every single article!
We have it now. They are called servers -- FTP servers, web servers, etc. I can put an image up with one command and anybody in the world with internet access can see it with a simple text string called a URL. The same goes for a Kubuntu DVD image or pictures of my ex-girlfriend naked.
That's an already solved issue. What this guy wants is lack of accountability. Which, while nice in a "I don't want to pay for music" way, is really scary in "the CIA and that now-stalker ex-girlfriend have it too" way. Not to mention the traditional criminals engaged in fixing prices of garbage collection, covering up hazmat dumping and running drugs and desperate families across borders.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be good, just that it's not some sort of warm and fuzzy "it's just better" thing -- there are some drawbacks with lack of accountability and some of them are named Enron II, domestic spying, and annoying 15 year old jackasses, not just the traditional and fringe bogeymen of child molestors and terrorists.
The pros and cons of accountability are pretty heavy on both sides.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
This isn't Firefox doing this? The Mozilla organization hasn't done this at all. It's the users.
I'm perfectly content with a fully featured dedicated BT client. I'm perfectly happy with a stand alone Email client. I'm more than thrilled with a separate IM client.
Not only do I rarely use all 3 at the same time, but I also have never seen a single application (including Opera) that can do 50 major tasks as well as 50 stand alone applications specifically designed for those tasks. Combining shit ends up giving you just that - shit.
I disagree. I believe in complete physical property rights -- you make a book, you control the physical book. I will never agree with controlling the thoughts and actions of others (as long as they don't hurt anyone else's PHYSICAL property). I write, but I give my writings away in hopes that I will be hired to speak to people interested in what I write. I've helped bands do the same with their music.
First of all, copyright does NOT control your thoughts and actions. By copyrighting something, I do NOT control you. You are not a slave to my copyright terms; if you don't like them then you can obtain content elsewhere. Believe it or not, the RIAA/MPAA-represented labels and studios are not the only sources of content.
Now, regarding your books and such...
As the copyright holder of that work, that is your choice. You choose to make your money on the speaking engagements that come as a result of your writing.
As the copyright holder on digital photos I take, I choose to sell framed copies at a profit. That's my choice. If you take a copy of my photos and start giving them away, that means that I can't make a profit anymore on my own creations.
To turn it around; in a later post you say that in some of your books you ask for payment after somebody has read it. Now, I copy your book and sell it for a profit. I've hurt your ability to make money on the book, as I've sold it for a profit. (Yes, I'm neglecting the speaking engagements that come from reading it, I'm trying to keep the example an apples-to-apples comparison.)
Payment up front for copies of my photos is my choice. Voluntary payment for copies of your books is your choice. You respect mine, and I'll respedct yours.
Let's take your speaking engagements; I take a transcript of one and publish it. People buy my transcript for a profit to me instead of attending the talk for a profit to you. Going by your anti-copyright position, that's perfectly alright, as you don't care who owns the rights to the work.
It's this situation that I believe copyright is supposed to prevent. I believe that it's the extreme "I'll do what I want with it and screw your rights" that drives DRM development. Because you don't respect my copyright on my photos, I have to take steps to protect them. As I take steps to protect my rights, you take further steps to ignore them...and the snowball grows.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Anime is a genre, just as film noire is; each an adjective expanding the precision of English.
Anime = 3 sylables, Japanese Animation = 7 syllables: a greater than 50% increase in verbage to string it out. Some would have it be Japanime, but most who do know the word will know what one means by Anime. It adds to the utility of the language.
If you really want to rail against a coined word, go after methodology(ies) whenever used to mean method(s). It's the best example of incorrectly inflating a word purely for pretention. Methodology should only mean the study of methods.
The potato it is uninformed.
Should implies a moral position. I completely disagree with your position. I think the world would be far better off if instead as soon as you released a work into the world, it became the property of the world to do with what it pleases. Create a derivative work. Share it with a friend. Shout it from the rooftops. The only copyright I think would be of real value would be to require fair attribution, so that we can reward those who are creative as we see fit (rather than as they think they deserve or can extort).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
if you don't recognize that copyright provides a huge incentive for people to create things, then I feel you're being naive. ...
If you eliminate incentives to create original works, you will absolutely limit original works.
You make a huge, and clearly erroneous, leap in logic there.
While copyright has provided a huge incentive, the world is in the process of moving on to new incentives and dada's own experience is one such example.
When making a copy becomes a zero-marginal cost action, charging for making copies becomes inherently untenable - customers will not see any value in paying for something that costs nothing. Thus old business models based on copyright must be and are being replaced by new ones that provide incentive to create too.