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Censorship

The New World of Gnutella 201

Posted by emmett from the who'da-thunk-it dept.
Frater 219 writes "The censorship-resistant systems Gnutella and Freenet got some reasonably positive editorial coverage in the Sacramento Bee and Nando Times today. Here's the article. It's rather good stuff: 'Echoes of the old hacker manifesto begin to ring loudly once again: Information wants to be free.'" Good piece, go read it.
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The New World of Gnutella More

The New World of Gnutella

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  • "Information wants to be free" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm yet to be convinced that Information has any opinion whatsoever on the matter.
  • If you have a distribution model that enables you to better compensate the artist and at the same time offer lower prices, then go ahead and form your own non-greedy non-evil record company...

    After that find a way to get radio airplay for your artists. The majors all have local reps who call and visit stations constantly to keep their product on the air. Bring plenty of CD's and concert tickets. Buy lunch. Then all you have to do is convince the national chains to buy your product. Since the majors own the existing distribution channels , it might be tough. Then consider what to do when the majors counter your success by pressuring them to drop you. It won't be above the table of course, but it will happen. Buy you or buy Sony. Hmmm, looks like things are getting tougher. Then of course, if despite the distribution roadblocks your company makes headway, keep a plan in mind for when the majors show up at the door with truckloads of cash to buy you out and make it part of the family. Or steal your artists and starve you.

    The music software/hardware industry is a cartel, with maybe 3-4 mother corporations controlling everything. A garage startup has little to no chance of challenging them. That's just a fact. Telling a critic of the music industry to 'start their own' is really no better than telling them to screw themselves, both physical impossibilities.

    The Sony plant I toured five years ago was completely vertically integrated. They could, if desired, record, master, manufacturer and create the artwork for a release without leaving the building. At that time the total cost of manufacture was less than $2 for a product that retailed for $20. Who are the supposed middle men causing the order of magnitude markup? Is markup typical of any other industry outside of Columbia?

  • A private party (including a massive corporation) using the body of law to protect its interest again another private party is not censorship.

    I'm sorry, but I have to regard this as very nieve. Your arguing semantics, not the way that things work in real life.

    In a situation where a large corporation can afford to keep an army of lawyers on call to keep a case tied up in court until a less wealthy opponent goes broke, that is censorship pure and simple, regardless of the nicities of legal definition.

  • I'm totally right on with everything you say, but thought it worthwhile to point out that emmett wasn't the author of the text you're taking issue with, that was Frater219. The only parts emmett wrote was "Frater219 writes" and "Good piece, go read it."


    --
  • >So I need a license that says "you are free to distrubute this content unchanged for
    >non-commercial use" while withholding both ultimate ownership and right to profit for the
    >copyright holder (I'd say artist, but that's not the reality). Which is where copyright law comes
    >in.

    And what makes you think there won't be a grillion folks out there saying "some rules NEED to be smashed" and breaking your license right and left for their own profit, just like you're doing to the existing schemes? And what do you do if they do? Threaten them with legal action? Try to get a restraining order on whatever hypothetical share-for-profit Open-Source analog to Gnutella comes along?

    Not to say you're not on the right track, but all of a sudden doing a bitflip and saying that copyright law will be your friend after alleging "some laws need to be smashed so hard their teeth fall out," or whatever... sits weird. It kind of reaffirms my opinion that this whole Slashdot crowd hypocritically rallies behind copyright only when it supports their ends....

    >If you've got the VC I'm ready to go.

    This also sits funny with me. If what we're on about is getting paid from the end user directly to the artist in some strange math, what startup do we need? Shouldn't some free MP3 encoding tools and cheap webspace work, analagous to Metallica becoming the #1 metal band in America strictly based on tape-to-tape cassette copies being handed around the scene freely? Why can't you be doing this already out of wahcentral.net? If you think we need VC to do this, you're already thinking like that which you claim to despise.

    I know I'm being a bit of an antagonistic asshole, but I'm not 100% sure that you've thought completely through these good seeds of ideas you have.
    --
  • > Debatable: 'Protecting one's copyrights' is censorship.

    No, because censorship can only be performed by a governing body, definitionally(*). A private party (including a massive corporation) using the body of law to protect its interest again another private party is not censorship. It might be objectionable and annoying, the laws might be wrongheaded and stupid, but it's not censorship.

    (*) At least as far as the US legal definition goes. YMMV.
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  • This is an important point, and the worst part of Napster's horrific interface:

    Now, admittedly, the biggest reason for the outgoing is most likely the fact that Napster doesn't close when you click the "X" in the upper right of the window.

    It took me several days to figure this out. When I kill a program, it's supposed to die. Plain and simple. It baffled me that, even though it was supposedly dead, something was still slamming my bandwidth.

    The numbnutzim behind Napster musta been born with a big Kick Me sign on their backs -- they had a sorta good idea, then implemented it incredibly badly. But not badly enough for it to fail immediately.

    Gnutella at least is an improvement (though as an active musician, I have serious qualms about its use).
  • WARNING: I'm playing Devil's Advocate in the first paragraph; I don't believe there's a reason for anyone to own, say, a nuclear missile. However, I do believe the banning of certain types of handguns and such is going too far.

    Are you so certain? It is indeed true that these weapons did not exist when the Constitution was written. However, consider that at the time it was written, a citizen had full access to anything the military did. There was a reason for this. The Framers had just (well, not just, it had been several years) gotten away from a corrupt government. They saw how governments could get. The Second Amendment was another step in the "checks and balances" system, this one being that an armed citizenry and a military check each other. The Amendment guaranteed that the government would not have an easy time becoming oppressive, should it ever try to take that road, because the people had the means to defend themselves.

    This is quite possibly the one thing the American government has of which it can really and truly be proud. Not the Second Amendment in particular, but the whole Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. Look over its wording. It doesn't say what the government can do; it says what the government is forbidden from doing. The Bill of Rights doesn't grant people their Constitutional rights; it guarantees them (there is a vast difference from saying "you have this right" and "no one can take this right away from you"; this is why I still assert that at least thus far the US is the only nation which guarantees such things as free speech). It's an elegant document indeed; it has been in force for over two hundred years and has been amended surprisingly few times, and one of those amendments was written only to undo a previous one (Prohibition).

    I do wish the government would follow it more closely these days, though...
  • To reinterate here, MP3's are relatively new! Although the format may have existed previously, they didn't become largely distributed until late summer of 1996 by a group called CDA (Compress'n da Audio) of which RNS and a few other groups split off of, and pretty much all of them but RNS died in 1997. But, the point is, MP3's are still young, so don't blame Napster for causing the itch, it's just starting to catch on that its important. The only thing I would blame napster for is bandwidth loss.
  • Please. Why do people feel the need to gloss over the purpose of programs like Napster and Gnutella. I'm an Open Source Programmer, and I know damn well that Napster is used to download illegal mp3s more than anything else. Same with Gnutella.

    Napster and Gnutella are just for people who don't know how to se up FTP servers. Should we ban FTP because it can be used to download "illegal" MP3s?

    ...richie

  • You mean Clarke wrt communications satellites. But there's certainly no lack of stuff that has come from Einstein's work either. Bagels for instance ;)
  • I'm not sharing mp3s at all, but 30-90 second video clips. Uhh, I guess I am really going against the spirit of gnutella, huh? But people are uploading like nuts. And I'm happy with that.

    Sometime here I'll add my download directory to the gnutella path with my ill-gotten mp3s. Gotta do my part. But I'm not going to link whole albums. Singles. So what.

    Search for carrey, carvey or xmen and get some cool vids!

    kabloie
  • I'm serving 100 Meg of legal videos. I guess I am not doing this thing right?

    If some dork wants a 50 second clip of the Superfriends saying WASSUP!, he/she can search yahoo, for a link to someone's page, with a broken link to a nonexistent FTP server.

    OR they can type superfriends wassup into the Gnutella search engine and pick .mov, .avi, or .mpg. It's easy now.

    It's really cool, man. Why don't you get it and try it yourself instead of pontificating? Then you can download all the legal material you can find, which will be quite a bit.

    kabloie
  • Trolling wee will go!

    kabloie
  • I've independently and completely orginally been developing protocol similar to GNUtella's. It is far more complicated, but the pay-off is much better. Instead of linking hosts, it links networks. It uses a combination of UDP and TCP, and offers complete anonimity.

    While in it's infancy, I hope to get it moving soon. I'm hoping that I some of you can take a look at what I have thus far and hopefully send me some input on how I can better the protocol. It is online at: http://logan.datacurrent.com/dftp.html [datacurrent.com]

  • You know, despite your total idiocy, you may have a point. Our current copywrite laws can't last much longer.

    Speaking of idiocy, the word is copyright. As in the right to copy. Not as in writing a copy.
    Sheesh.

  • That's part of the reason they picked it. Not very much chance of accidentally infringing on some unknown trademark this way.
  • Maybe help is on the way. The battle between good and evil (I'll let the reader pick the side they are on) with regard to the internet will be a continuing struggle. When ppl talk about peer-to-peer connections, one forgets that in general, these TCP/IP packets are generally passing through routers. Advancement in technology will allow future routers to better filter (block) packets that pass thru them. The key questions are cost and protocols. Cost is obvious; improved filtering (and tracking) requires faster processors which means increased costs.

    The "white hats" are well aware of this bandwidth problem and are looking [sans.org] at the signature of gnutella.

    One thing that will happen is that the increase in network traffic from "weird" external sites will cause some consernation for network admins.

  • You make some really good points. As soon as a pattern is established and filtering is in place to counter this pattern, changes will be made. Then the battle resumes.

    However, all the university has to do is block all packets that their routers can't decipher. Kind of extreme, but this may be something that may happen in the future. Of course, the routers will have to be able to handle this. Universities will not like the increase cost of upgrading their routers.

    The short-term solution is to enact draconian measures. Another thing would be to just ban Napster, Gnutella, etc... from the campus internet connection. Get the student to sign an decipherable legal document that says yada yada yada, NO! The network admins monitor network traffic. They know what is going on. However, the school admins usually don't want to rock the boat unless some bigger fish (like RIAA) jumps into the boat.

  • There is nothing you can do to stop this! :)

    Im having a great time reading all the replies here with people saying 'napster is a problem' and 'gnutella WILL be stopped.' .... sha, right! just try it. if certian routers stop routing packets with 'gnutella' in the packet, then 'gnutella' will be taken out of the packets and warez will keep on flowin.... woohoo!

    Its actually kind of funny watching all these administrators getting pissed they cant stop whats going on... If you REALLY want to stop this, put EVERY connection on your network on a switch, and limit the bandwidth of each port, one at a time. Linux can do bandwidth limiting as well... put a linux router in place and limit bandwidth to each ip, and quit whining that your users are using too much bandwidth. You gave them the bandwidth in the first place, didnt u? ;)

    I personally, LOVE gnutella. I was wondering when something like this would come out... I used to pirate warez on bbss, did it for years, and i used to think, 'i wonder what "they" would do if everyone had a warez bbs' , heheh dream come true i guess ;)
  • If information were alive what would it want ?
    If information were a tree, what kind of tree would it be?
    Sorry. I just had to say it.
  • oh wait, you mean like it is now?
  • The music software/hardware industry is a cartel, with maybe 3-4 mother corporations controlling everything. A garage startup has little to no chance of challenging them.

    If they really do, as was claimed, have a business plan that enables them to distribute more efficiently, then they certainly do have a chance.

    As for "getting national chains to buy your product", well these "national chains" are part of the problem -- they are another middleman who takes another percentage markup, inflating prices. To come up with a better business plan than the status-quo, you obviously need to do something different.

    They could, if desired, record, master, manufacturer and create the artwork for a release without leaving the building.

    Yeah, but they can't distribute it without leaving the building. If they sell the CDs to a middleman for $3- each, and the middleman marks it up 100%, then the retailer marks it up another 100%, the consumer gets the CDs for $12- a pop.

    My girlfriend works with a software wholesaler that buys software in volume, and their buy prices are ridiculously low.

    This "$2" CD of yours is not directly marked up to $20. What happens is this -- first, the artist wants some royalties. If the artist gets $1-, then the CD costs the label $2- to produce. The label also have other costs like recording, marketting etc. I'm not clear on whether or not you're counting that in your "$2-" figure. By the time the record company are done paying salaries, and recovering their costs, they want to sell the CDs for say , $4-. By the time this goes through a distributer and a record store, it sees a lot of markup. Since you say that CDs cost $20- , I take it you aren't in the US. So there's a good chance everything you buy is subject to import duty ( more percentage markup ) and/or an importers markup.

    Anyway, in summary, my main point is -- before you whine about the "big evil record companies", do some research and find out how much it costs for the next middleman to buy a CD. Without any figures, you are just blowing smoke, and your accusation is groundless.

  • It's fairly standard practice for bigger record companies to own at least part of any number of the distributors, retailers, shippers etc that all grab a piece of the cash action.

    If they own all the "middlemen" , they still incur the costs of those middlemen. The point is that distribution is expensive because it involves several layers of middlemen, and each middleman biz needs to add a markup to stay alive.

    If you really do have a business plan that can better compensate the artists, while providing better consumer prices, then you can laugh all the way to the bank at the expense of the record companies. Otherwise, you are just blowing smoke, and your claim of "high prices" is baseless. No one is forcing the artists to sign anything, they are free to build their own record labels, and in fact they often do, but this rarely results in substantially more money for the artists or better prices for consumers.

    IMO, this "big evil record companies" argument is just a poor excuse pushed by the freeloaders who are after a means to circumvent compensating the artists.

  • I didn't say "The artist doesn't have a right to my money", I said "The Music Companies dont have a right to my money". The music companies didn't create the music. They didn't improve it or make it any better.

    By distributing the music they made it available in the first place. They performed a service, namely distribution, and have a legitimate claim to compensation.

    If I download an mp3 from somewhere, the person I downloaded it from still has it so that was hardly stealing, was it?

    You've just cheated the artist out of his paycheck.

    Also I know that the cost of producing the thing is way less (and I mean *obscenely* less) than the cost they want to charge me for it.

    THe same is true for clothing. It costs $2- or so to make a pair of jeans in a Thailand sweatshop. But that hardly justifies stealing jeans. The middlemen perform a useful service, namely getting the product from (a) to (b).

    Is it immoral?

    At best, it's rude and disrespectful to the artist.

  • Automatic weapons have been outlawed in almost every circumstance in America for quite a long time.

    No, automatic weapons are not illegal, at least not under federal law, your state's laws may differ.

    With the appropriate BATF paperwork you can legally purchase an automatic weapon. It is expensive and the paperwork is a major pain in the ass, including fingerprints, a criminal background investigation and the signature of your local law enforcement official.

    There has been only one legally purchased automatic weapon used in a crime, and that crime was committed by a police officer.

  • We have bans on certain types of guns which are used to break the law (eg, assault rifles, which have *no* legitimate purpose)...

    Assault rifles are useful for killing fascists and thugs, state sponsored or not, seems like a legitimate purpose to me.

  • Charging them for bandwidth is the best solution. The downside is that Universities seldom have the willpower to focus a revenue stream on improving the source of the revenue stream (athletics excepted). So while Joe Download is busy paying an extra $200/semester for unlimited downloads, the University won't be spending that money upgrading its data network, it'll go to the Lesbian Cultural Center so they can put on an exhibit about why men are bad instead, and the University network will still be constrained.

    The solution to the solution is to aggregate the University residential facilities into a common campus WAN, seperate from the University LAN, and allow private internet providers in the same way that many LECs allow private ISPs to use their DSL facilities. This way Joe Student could decide if he wanted free, University-only network access or if he wanted to pay for unrestricted internet access. The students would also learn an excellent lesson in business economics.

    What's amsuing about all these Napster fans complaining about "losing their access" is that many of them are students getting a free ride from the University. And yes, it is a free ride - don't think for a MINUTE that tuition covers a Universities operating expenses. My tax dollars make up the difference.

    I get 768k DSL for $69/month, and my provider doesn't care how many MP3s or ISOs I download OR serve. Any student complaining about not being able to use Napster should remember that they are more than free to move off campus and buy internet access on their own.

    In fact, it would probably be an excellent business opportunity. Convert an old frat or other medium-sized multi-unit dwelling into an "Internet Cooperative" and provide internet access to everyone that lives there. Spin it as a student project and you'd probably get the University to subsidize a direct link to the University.

    When I start hearing ideas like this instead of bitching about lost access, I'll know I'm dealing with adults and not kiddies who lost their MP3s.
  • "I want my information free. Don't you?"

    And yet we cry out every time we find yet another program that "frees" personal information from our personal computers back to the companies that created the realplayers and webbrowsers and office suites, etc, etc...

  • The LAST thing America needs right now is an all powerful police state.

    Too late.

  • most MP3s that people have are indeed illegal.

    I must be abnormal then. The overwhelmingly vast majority of my collection is still self-ripped.

  • Because I am not free to fix, see, or even request the info doubleclick had gathered.

    I don't mind my clicktrails being recorded, if what happens with them is open, available for my perusal.

    All info should be free. What people are doing with information should be open to public view.

    What happens now is information that is really free (what I do with my time, etc) is being comodified and sold, behind closed doors. And that is wrong.

    Those who are watched must be able to see just as much about their observers.

    All of the information you mention, short of the porno (which I'm sure, could be found out), is already available for a price. And you don't know, and have no way to find out, who's buying it. Doesn't that worry you? Shouldn't the companies dealing with such information have to fully disclose what they do with it?

    doubleckick.net said they were going to do one thing with the information they were gathering, and then did something else, anonimity was promised and then revoked. I object to that. Not the basic fact of personal information heing gathered.

    m.
  • Actually, I use pine through SSH for my email.

    LinuxStart is my throwaway email address. ie: the address I give to places that I don't care about the spam, etc that might come from it. That includes any web bulletin boards, ecommerce sites, and anything else that requires an email address. I check it about once every month or two.

    So basically, your argument is pointless.
  • $5000/mo for 10mbit? Damn! You university is getting fucked in the ass... I have a 2.5mbit adsl connection for only cdn$65/mo. Your university should move up to Canada, get some DSL lines and save some bucks.
  • So now that napster is gone, 70% of your outgoing and 50% of your incoming bandwidth is not being used and going to waste.
  • A binary tree ofcourse :-)
  • It is the simple fact that an armed populace is the best defense against tyranny.

    I would argue that an informed and concerned population is the best defense against tyranny. Giving everyone in the U.S. a gun won't stop the subtle and persistent erosion of our rights by corporate-backed government stooges.
  • so are child porn and bomb making files "information" or not? it seems that they would want to be free as well.

    i don't think either of the above will ever totally disappear.. just like mp3's. maybe that's unfortunate. child porn is certainly rather sick and perverted. :( bomb making texts might actually be useful if you have a government you want to overthrow, though.

    if we lock up all the books and information so you can only access them for "need-based purposes", then soon we'll be living in a harsh dictatorship where they make me listen to N'Sync all day long. :)

  • this morning on the front page of the business section was this article [sfgate.com], detailing how Napster and GNUtella are outstripping the music and movie industries' abilities to stop people from sharing content. It also talks about diVX (not the defunct DVD player) which appears to encode a VCD from the contents of a DVD.
  • I'm sure the companies can't fight these new tricks forever, they should embrace it:-).Like have their own Napster/Gnutella/whatever servers, where you can find all their cds, and you can download it for a very very low fee (not 1$ per song). Or you can pay some low subscription fee. They have to implement this, I really don't think there is any other way they can make good money on music. I know there are similar things out there already, but they key points are: much less than $1 per song, no timing-out, liquid-audio whatever screwy format, and not just the few demo tracks, but the good stuff, and not from noname artists, but music that is available on napster. ZD
  • Nope, I'm with you, except I love the idea, I just hate what it did to my dorm's netthroughput. My uni didn't ban Napster, the upstream provider did, and man! did the net speed up! It puts me in the position of using the fat pipe at work to get my MP3's, but hey....
  • There's another huge reason why you wouldn't want to download anything other than illegal stuff via gnaptella -- downloading precompiled drivers, programs, etc. from other than the manufacturer or other established sites is just begging to have your computer hit with a trojan or virus.
  • somehow I don't see how protecting a copyright for 75 years after the death of the original creator does much to stimulate new discoveries.
    --
  • Your analogy is flawed. It would be more like after you program for your employer, and he owns your work, you are no longer allowed to build that program again, or one similar to it. Programmers get paid for their present and future potential, artists get paid for the work they've already created. Do you see the difference? If I'm Britney Spears and I write a song for hire, after they kick by 19(?) year old ass back on the street, I can't even sing my own songs without permission. If I'm Roy Taylor (and I am) and I write programs for hire (and I do) then after they kick my 25 year old ass on the street, I can do (basically) the exact same thing for someone else, I don't have to "forget" everything I've done (minus non-competes, IP agreements)

    This is the difference between creating Art and Building stuff. This fundamental difference is why your agreement with the RIAA's lobbying efforts is misplaced, IMHO.

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  • if this is such a "GREAT" model for revenue, then why are all the artists against it?????

    first off, it's not all, second off, because the artists don't own the copyrights, third off, most people are scared of what they don't understand, the vast majority of music artists I know are barely familar with the Internet, half of them even have AOL accounts....

    Did you read this?. [livedaily.com]

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  • Now, I like your scenario of everyone doing music for the love of it, and popular artists somehow getting paid just for being popular (although the math is kind of vague in there).

    See also, Phish. The value comes from the effort put forth by the fans to spread the music. The artists don't have to pay promoters, and neither do we. I understand the math is vague, but the whole picture is cloudy at this point.

    The reason most record companies can't and won't go with this model, is that it takes much longer to build up an act. Without millions of dollars of focused advertising and *questionable* (to say the least) tactics used to get on radio, it becomes quite difficult for records companies to make the kinds of profits that keep shareholders happy. Without the ability to strictly control access to music, the industry has no business model. That control used to be inherent in the system. Now it isn't. The business model needs to change.

    You want this scheme to work, make it work: set up a record label that gives the music away free. Go on, do it. Get artists to sign up, come up with a business plan that gets people paid somehow for this, and I'll be the first one, really, the VERY FIRST ONE to sign up and help out.

    Why do you think I spend so much time talking about this? ;) If you've got the VC I'm ready to go. The most important thing is creating the license. For it to work I think we need to change copyright law to reflect the fact that sharing digital music is not a crime. However, profiting directly from another's work, without permission should be. There do need to be protections, but not the strangling ones of today. So I need a license that says "you are free to distrubute this content unchanged for non-commercial use" while withholding both ultimate ownership and right to profit for the copyright holder (I'd say artist, but that's not the reality). Which is where copyright law comes in.

    And scrambling to justify it with a lot of what-ifs and if-only's

    I don't recall scrambling, or what if's and if only's. I'm quite confortable with my opinion, and the logic behind it. I see a problem that is causing other problems, and I see a solution to the original disease. I'm working toward that solution.

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  • again, it's not the money, but the value. The same value that you are trading to the record companies in exchange for distrubution and promotion.

    Given free promotion, while retaining the rights to your music (which VERY few artists have under our current system), $9 of that $15 CD would now go to the artists. And I don't think it'd be a couple extra tickets at gigs, but a couple extra gigs per city. This is given a good band, with rabid fans, and free distribution.

    It's not like I can open-source my music and then go make money doing consulting on my songs?


    Actually it is, if you replace "doing consulting" with "playing in front of a live audience". And that's a live audience who are all familar with your music. And it would have to be different than a regular OSS licence, you have to protect the right to sell.

    I've posted way too much to this thread, g'night.


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  • I think they are justified in wanting some compensation for their work, considering it's people's method of earning a living.

    Well dangit, I want some compensation for my work of posting to /. This is my method of earning a living. I'm justified, it's copyrighted, where's my damn check!

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  • Certainly in the case of Freenet (and as I understand it, Gnutella too) the law is somewhat helpless since there isn't any central organisation to sue as is the case with Napster which has had legal problems. The hope with Freenet is that it will not be possible to sue every Freenet node operator a) Because there will be too many and B) because it is difficult to prove any given node is storing any given data.

    --

  • Well, Freenet won't cause as serious a problem due to its dynamic caching - in fact, if more and more information is stored on Freenet, you may find your internet connection speeding up since it is more efficient than the WWW!

    --

  • "Information wants to be free" and it wants somebody else to pay for the bandwidth.
    __
  • Well... an informed and concerned population is the best defense against larval tyranny. If you oppose would-be dictators, and reveal them for what they are to people who care, you'll nip it in the bud.

    But having a second line of defense is not a bad plan. Should tyrants assume enough power that morals and laws can't stop them, a greater price must be paid to set things right.

    I think that we'd be best off if we'd prepare for what has to be done if we fail, and then do our damnest not to fail. For when we do, we'll no longer get to prepare.
  • Performance would be utterly dreadful, but it'd be quite cool to have an encrypted VPN on top of the normal internet, with loads of redundant connections which dropped in and out of existence. Ok, this isn't workable.
  • Music companies do not have a "right" to my money, they simply exist in an artificially created situation,

    Recognition of any "property" is an "artificially created situation". Look, the idea that you "own" your computer is artificial, but that in itself hardly gives me the right to steal it.

    At the end of the day though, IMO what it comes down to is this -- at the very least, it's rude and disrespectful to ignore the wishes of the artist who has released under a non-free license.

    On the other hand, I really wouldn't hold it against a college student who temporarily freeloads until they can afford the CD. I used to do it (-;

  • If you have a distribution model that enables you to better compensate the artist and at the same time offer lower prices, then go ahead and form your own non-greedy non-evil record company, and put the rest of the record company out of business. The artists aren't forced to sign up with anyone, they can always form their own labels ( and sometimes they do. ) If you can't do this, you're just blowing smoke.

    Seriously, the reason why prices are what they are is that money is intercepted by several layers of middlemen, each who marks it up a percentage ( so the cost rises exponentially with the number of middlemen ). The record company is just one such layer.

    As for paying money for music whose authors are dead, I believe usually such music costs less, but also there's the issue that copyright law is imperfect.

  • You do not really seem to under stand what I'm saing. I do not care about the specifics of the "tit for tat" between universities/RIAA and students. I'm arguing that the "threat model" favors the students, i.e. it coses the school a lot of money and the school reacts slow, but it costs the students very little (a few kids getting in trouble) and the students react very fast (just look at how old Gnutella is realitive to the collages attacking Napster).

    It does not cost schools all that much money to change firewall rules and the like. With my previously mentioned perl script, which logs into the "distribution network" (whatever it may happen to be at the time), and reports the students at each offending institution, for any action the school wishes (e.g., automated network disconnect/firewall for offending student for a day), the costs are negligible. I could write it once for every instutition in a few minutes, and there is no forseeable way students can avoid this.

    This is an importent consideration, but as the arms race progresses the reaction time of students will decrease. Also, it did not take Napster long to get it's current network.

    To get to the point where more than just geeks and a handfull of others used this, was atleast a couple weeks. Furthermore, they've had the advantage of being the first and being highly centralized, whereas programs such as GNUtella lack this.

    Example: I could write a Gnutella clone whose network engin was Java driven, thus allowing students to *automatically* upgrade their stealth and participate in new networks with fundamentally better topologies. These Java modules could do all sorts of crazy thing. Now no one will write this system unless the RIAA makes us, but once writen it would kill the RIAA's chances of a technological prevention like you have been discussing.

    And that java code must come from somewhere, each popular java code server could be firewalled or shutdown before students begin to use it. (e.g., you may get it on AOL, but AOL likely won't allow it for long). Also, none of this prevents my perl script from reporting you...I think it is unwise to underestimate the persuasive powers of INSTANT punishment. It is far more effective than only catching 1 in 100 (or even 10) warez pups, and punishing them after 2 years of trading, for rather serious penalties. If virtually every time a student connects to a GNUtella network he losses his network privilages almost instantly for another 2 days, he is probably not going to keep it up. [Especially since those who use napster and company tend to use the internet heaviest otherwise too]

    BTW> The schools are not necissarily exposing themselves to legal action by ignoring piracy. The IANAL's here seems to think that the school get common carrier protection when they do nothing, but might loose common carrier protection when they "proactivly" remove the information. I think they are stil lrequired to remove any illegal information people point out, but activly looking for copyright infringment may mean they are also required to look for child porn, defimation, national security information, etc.

    Internet service provider operations DO NOT enjoy common carrier protection. Because they're not required to provide anyone access (internet is viewed is a privilege still, and further, the law hardly recognizes internet privacy), they are not in the same boat as phone companies. Period. If anything they're closer to a distributor (e.g., Cubby vs Compuserve), because they do exercise some control in other areas (the existence of an AUP speaks volumes). But nothing is cut and dry here. The phone companies enjoy a long and well established legal precedent, ISPs enjoy no such protection.

    The university's position is precarious, and because of that the liability risks cannot be ignored. The remaining portions of the CDA (USC 230(b))hold that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information by another information content provider". This is, in fact, what many people confuse with common carrier protection. Yet this law has primarily only been applied to libel cases, and really can't hold up here. Especially if they profit from each abuse by charging for b/w usage (e.g., vicarious liability)...

    Furthermore, RIAA could actively inform these schools on a real time basis of who is offending what. Which would allow RIAA to say they institutions were not ignorant (completely knocking out the possibility of proving ignorance---which is necessary for a vicarious liability defense).

    Regardless, common carrier protection would probable prevent the RIAA from forcing schools to spend money looking for Gnutella.. just as it prevents the RIAA from suing the phone companies over mp3s on DSL machines.

    Again, they're not common carriers. Further, who says RIAA needs to "force" them? The schools are having their lines saturated because students pay a flat rate. So unless ALL students are either willing to pay more (or if they can find alternative sources of financing), they need to charge in a per byte basis. None of these options are all that appealing in the short run. Thus, this leaves them with cutting down on the warez/mp3 trade--which is why they'd cooperate with RIAA. In addition, who says RIAA can't incentivize the schools to enforce, or simply pay for their additional "enforcement" costs above and beyond what the schools would do to protect their bandwidth?

    In closing, I think GNUtella is overhyped anyways. I was skeptical when I first heard of it, its design is quite impractical for anything sizable. Even the original creator at nullsoft thought it couldn't scale past 250 (approx.) users. Having used it, I can tell you empirically that the way it is implimented and/or "networked" now, it aint much better. One might be able to see, say, 2000 hosts on a good day, but the message propogation and the searches are poor. It's generally a pain in the ass to use, and I think less technical users are going to find it very difficult. Add to adaptive firewalls, decent enforcement, logging, and other such issues to the mix, and there is plenty of reason to doubt this being a significant threat to RIAA's interests. In other words, a small group of people may still spend a lot of time at this, but the vast majority of people will find it easier and more economical to get go out to the store and buy whatever they're looking for. 0 piracy isn't necessarily the objective. So long as RIAA (and other interests in line with them) can raise the bar high enough, they're quite safe.

  • This argument is getting academic, but I do have a couple points before I bolt.

    a) GNUtella is overrated. Have you actually USED it yourself to acquire things you are looking for? I have, it's more trouble than it's worth for me. While my standards may be higher than most, I can tell you it's not going to hold up for most college kids.

    b) It sucks now, and it has yet to face any real barriers.

    c) My script would absolutely work against GNUtella.

    d) Your idea is just theoretical. At the very least it is one extra level of complexity to something which hardly works now. So long as trading is point to point, I doubt its resistance to "attacks" operating within the system, like mine. You fail to remember that this is RIAA, they represent the IP owners, they own the damn music. They can trade as many mp3s as they damn well please to gain "trust."

    e) There is a world of difference between building networks and punching holes in them. Ironically, the situations are reversed this time. The hax0rs are trying to create a network which can't be broken, and the admins are trying to break it. The difference is that the admins (and RIAA and company) hold all the keys, they are on the side of the law, and dare I say it on this forum, they are on the side of right.

    In any case, you're too entrenched in this to listen to reason. Although I may not have hard "proof", I'm not the one claiming the walls are about to fall. There is simply too much at stake here. There resistance you have seen to napster and company thus far is NOTHING, RIAA has yet to feel a significant pinch from this kind of piracy, but when and if they do, you can be sure heads will start rolling. In any case, time will tell.

  • Glad to see we agree on something. ;) I still disagree with you to some degree though, in that there are significant technical barriers. Although the distinction between the "technical" and the "psychological" lines do blur, they are still dependant on technical problems to some degree. For example, it may be technically possible to create a highly secure network, but that highly secure network is nothing if it throws up too many obstacles for its would-be users. You can encrypt, cloak, alter, etc. the decentralized "network" all you want, but as long as it is a sufficiently open decentralized/serverless network (e.g., beyond just a group of close knit friends, or jaurez pups), it will be possible to identify who is on the network.

    Allow me to rephrase this problem briefly. Almost anyone who knows computers well, knows it is very very difficult (if not impossible) to create a secure, yet accessible, network. Thus, when the threat of hackers emerges, they'll generally place their bets on the hackers (in terms of being able to penetrate it that is, not necessarily not get bent over by Bubba). Yet in this situation, the slashdot community fails to see the parallel.

    The hackers are trying to create an unbreakable network with software alone, and not only a "network" but also a user interface, support, you name it. They are trying to create a network within the network known as the internet. A decentralized one. One that is very difficult even if the underlying network (the admins, RIAA, and company) doesn't try to throw up barriers. Add to this equation hackers, the admins and RIAA are for all intents and purposes the hackers. But they own the networks. They own the content. They can reroute. They can firewall. They can packet sniff till their hearts content. They can sue the ever living day lights out of any central server. They can even turn off the network if need be. They even make the rules (well some of them). "Real" hackers do not have this benefit even. The "real" hackers even have to worry about issues such as "support". Even though many admins are complete idiots, there are more smart professional computer people than there are smart hackers. They can afford to put people on this task full time, and all these new admins/hackers need to do, is make things sufficiently difficult (social in a sense) for the average user, enough so that he or she would find it more economical to just go out and buy it.

    Small little subnetworks may pop up. In fact, they'll likely continue to remain (small little warez groups that just trade amongst themselves will likely find this the biggest boon). But you'll simply never have anything on napster's (I think they need to be even bigger to truely make RIAA scared) scale and convenience, it simply offers too large of a target.

    In any case, you needn't agree with me, but I certainly know who my money is on (that is, if this starts truely hurting RIAA). Nice talking to you.
  • I disagree.

    The mere fact that it gnutella downloads may utilize the HTTP protocol does not make them indecipherable from more legitimate connections. Furthermore, even if they can't decipher gnutella from "legitimate" connections, they can filter all incoming HTTP connections to student machines. Only a select few students run servers, fewer really "need" or desire to, and they could always ennumerate those few incoming connections. This would save their upstream connections at the very least. If every university were to do this (no uploads), this would have a dramatic effect on the number of available/operational file servers for download, thus reducing downloads too.

    There will *always* be a newer cooler Gnutella with avoids detection. It dose not matter what the students sign, once they start getting away with it the school will need to make examples out of a lot of people to stop it.


    Although there might always be a way to get around, that does not mean that most students will have an effective way to get around most of the time that is within their means. In other words, if the universities take a real interest in stemming the trade of mp3s and other elicit files, they could adapt (block) to these new variations faster than most students can or will employ them. Likewise, there are network effects here. The fewer student servers (e.g., no more newbie students, only geeks), the fewer available downloads, the less desirable the "network"/software is, the smaller it gets. This is especially true with gnutella where that initial connection, for each respective client/server, is important.

    Furthermore, although I have yet to read the entire protocol, rather than trying to constantly find a signature of the latest and greatest software, I see no reason why the music industry, a university, or a coalition of them, can't write a script in perl (or whatever) to search WITHIN the entire database all day long, and just create a list every day of hosts (read: students) who serve files. [I would think most universities will have a plenty sufficient reason if the pipes are saturated strictly as the result of piracy] Any offending hosts within the defined network(s) would simply get their network connections "cut" or firewalled out for a day or two, or worse... For a less draconian measure, they could attempt to do it in "real time" (really just shorter intervals). I could easily write such a script in perl to scan, find offending hosts, telnet into router (scripted), add firewall rule for offending host, logout. It would curb the "velocity" of student expectations of pirating quite effectively without having to resort to scare tactic.

  • This hurts the schools CS program.. and runs countrary to the academic mission of the school


    I simply disagree with this. This kind of network access is a luxary, and if properly controlled need not restrict legimate usage. I've yet to see an academic mission which indicates anything to this effect, and I do know of many schools which do already impliment filters.

    The whole point is that most students do not need to get arround the protections. It only takes one guy to write a user friendly interface like Gnutella.. and this one student has the open source Gnutella clones as a starting point. Hell, you could even write a user friendly interface to downloading the latest user friendly solutions to the blocking.


    It may only take one guy (or a couple) to write such a program. But in order for any of these programs to offer a realistic alternative to napster, they require more than just software. Remember that napster is more than just software and a server, it is good because the barriers to entry (for newbies) are low and because it already has a certain "velocity". In other words, napster reached a certain threshhold awhile ago where it had enough to offer that it became highly attractive. But this process is not overnight. Thus, if the administrators are constantly breaking a functional distribution "network", it can squash that gestational period, thus killing the repopulation of another network.

    For example, if I were to find a way to make gnutella impossible to access (and this is not entirely theoretical mind you) today. How would Joe Schmoe at my university know what to use? Even if someone else writes software to circumvent my "patch" instantly (which is doubtable), that lower users still need a way to find out (or rather become convinced as to its ease of use) about it. Not only that but they'll likely need to re-educate themselves in its use. In addition, the early people who try it may become discouraged at its lack of selection. Add to this bugs and various DoS attacks coming about...and the view of organized anarchy becomes that much harder to swallow.

    The current systems are vulnerable to this attack, but the legal effort to stop the students is currently prohibitive. Also, the PR results for schools are very serious.


    Actually, legally this is one area where schools are almost entirely insulated. They are, in fact, at more risk by knowingly allowing and facilating the illicit acts. [Particularly if they attempt to "profit" from it as you mentioned. Can you say Vicarious liability?]. Schools have no obligation to provide you with network access. It is a privilege quite simply, which I can tell you from experience most schools treat accordingly. They can revoke it any time they please, for essentially any reason they want [particularly if you're violating their terms of use, which napster and company violate hardcore]

    In regards to PR, I think it is overblown. The network "community" of college kids is not yet significant enough to really bring any pressure to bear, especially when the schools means to end piracy is done in an incrimental and direct fashion (such as I alluded to).

    Plus, It is probable possible to design a "localized" network which requires the music industry to have a O(network size) connections to the network for serious monitoring. This would make monitoring the network prohibitivly expencive.

    Actually, automated (user friendly) authentication system ("Yeah, I got good shit from this guy") would do a btter job at preventing network monitoring then localizing the network topology, but the network topology question is a sexy math problem.


    No clue what you're referring to here.

    Why would a school commit to this arms race when they can just bill the kids for the extra network usage?

    Because they expose themselves liability in doing so, and because students are generally NOT paying for even a fraction of their usage. There would probably be more objections over a 10x increase in network fees, if they even exist (such as would be commensurate with the jumps these mp3 networks mean). Nothing gets college kids more rilled up than $$$$$$$$$$

    That being said, I do agree that schools would be ultimately better off in the long run just charging students incrimentally, but not for the same reason. If each additional megabyte [over say, however many megabytes a legitimate web surfer is apt to use] you download or upload costs you something, you're going to be a lot more conservative of the bandwidth. This, I believe, would have the effect of reducing warez servers and the like to negligible levels.
  • Protecting one's copyright may not be censorship, but banning software that could be used for protecting one's copyright is censorship.

    Gnutella may be primarily used for copyright infringement, but where do you draw the line? IRC isn't all that different from Gnutella and it also makes it easy to exchange copyrighted data. What about FTP and web servers? Web browsers?

    Another problem with your argument is that it leads to limitations on fair use. It is perfectly legitimate for me to convert my CDs into MP3s, carry them on my laptop or with a portable player. But the new legislation along the lines you propose already in place have restricted the utility of devices and stifled innovation. For example, many MP3 players would make nifty portable, USB-attached drives. But because of recently enacted laws, thsoe devices need to be hobbled so that they can only play back MP3s and not be used for data storage.

    Software and software-based devices are very malleable. I think if you start banning software that, right now, looks like it might be used primarily for infringement, you end up infringing on the rights of legitimate licensees and you severly restrict innovation. And that is a David-vs.-Goliath issue, because the big, established companies dislike the new technologies, not because of copyright infringement, but because they break their long-standing business models. And that should be of concern to everybody.

  • I think information wants to be bundled up and sold to the highest bidder.
  • The most important paradigm shift of the digital age is the transition from an information-scarce system to a services-scarce system. Gnutella and Freenet are the next step in that revolution.

    What traditional media companies realize all too well is that once any piece of information is transferred to a digital format, it becomes impossible to limit its availablity. The best way to make money is to provide a service on top of it, so that people pay you for adding value. The information is abundant, its the collection, interpretation, and presentation that are limited.

    Gnutella is another step toward free information. Companies like IBM will be winners, while the RIAA and the MPAA will be losers unless they start to justify their skimming off the top.
  • What would that difference be, exactly? Its all information, the only difference is that some of it has had arbitrary restrictions placed on it in an attempt make information creation more profitable. Both for individuals, and later corporations (copyrights now last 90 years after the creators death).

    But, that doesn't change the fact that Human beings still have a natural inclination to share information with each other (witch is what 'information wants to be free' really means)

    It's a bit like some Paris intellectual saying "All people are free," and then Thomas Jefferson saying "Yeh," and then still owning slaves.

    Lets take the slavery analogy a bit farther. It was just as illegal to smuggle a slave up to the north, or Canada as it is to pirate an MP3, or some Microsoft software (well, the penalties were probably higher). And it was still stealing. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't have been done.

    Just for the record, I do think piracy of Software and music and movies and such is 'wrong' just not 'wrong enough' for me to care. And certainly not wrong enough for me to loose civil rights.
  • The way you'd like to have it distributed won't work at all

    yes, after 2 months and more lawsuits to stop it than I care to count, it's obvious this method is doomed to failure. I mean, why even try, after all The current model SUCKS at that; the artists get cheated and gypped.

    You're missing a point somewhere, I made it a while back in a different thread. There is value in having attention paid to you. When that value is gained without any effort (on the part of the music artist in this case) then the excess value created through freely sharing digital music is left to be recouped by the artist. THIS is the right we need to protect, the ability to capitalize on the value. NOT the ability to control an infinite product.

    --
  • And what makes you think there won't be a grillion folks out there saying "some rules NEED to be smashed" and breaking your license right and left for their own profit, just like you're doing to the existing schemes?

    Maybe you could explain how they could? Given freely distributable music, where is the profit for pirates? Who, since they know the artists are making a leap of faith, would knowingly go through some other source, pay some other source, when they know they can buy it straight from an artist? And if we keep the insanely high prices of CDs standard, 1 sale from the artist whould give them as much revenue as roughly 20 sold under the yoke of an RIAA member company.

    If what we're on about is getting paid from the end user directly to the artist in some strange math, what startup do we need?

    Remember they are getting paid with the same value they get from radio play, free exposure to create rabid fans. What startup do we need? Why can't you be doing this already out of wahcentral.net? Glad you asked. And I am. It's a section called "Digital Caffeine" [wahcentral.net] and hopes to use the /. style submission and comment method to generate content. It's not doing much right now, that's where the VC comes in. (Oh and if you "steal" my idea, let me know, and you can hire me to tell you how to do it right). Here's another one that's come to my attention from these discussions. Someone DOING something. Try here if you want to help with a cool project. [sourceforge.net] ('sup numb :-) Locally is the best way to start revolutions.

    --
  • Your posts are misinformed and full of bullshit. They have no value. Compare this to a beautiful work of music.

    You mean like this one. [canoe.ca]

    You did not expect compensation when you posted

    Yes, I did, I just said so. Does that matter? No. Is that my point? Yes.

    No one will pay you to explain why you're too incompetent to understand capitalism, but bands can make millions of off their music.

    No one's paying you either, so give me the freebies, eh? And then I'll explain to you how capitalism destroyed the free press and, unchecked, how it will destroy free speech. Capitalsim works great, given normal patterns of supply and demand. Take those away, and enforce price support with the pointy end of a gun, and that's not the kind of capitalism I want around.

    --
  • Joe's friends come over to his house. They all listen to his music.

    Friend1: "Joe, that's a cool band, where'd you find 'em"
    Joe: "Napster, then I (outlines the hour(s) long process of making his own CD)"
    Friend2: "Hey, Friend1, I'll save you the trouble, go to their site and order it for $5. Saves time , frustration. Plus you get real CD quality music, cover art, and a cute jewel case"
    Friend1:"Thanks guys, I can't wait to see them live. When are they coming to town?"

    'cause the world ain't full of geeks.

    --
  • Basic copyright laws? Are you aware how our economic system works wrt IP?

    I think they need to be rewritten to some degree. They are not all bad, just like patents aren't all bad, but as I hope that links demonstrates, they are being taken too far. The rules as they are written today are NOT promoting the arts and sciences as well as they might. Too much selfishness has created an imbalance of rights. It's time to take the power back.

    When you download songs off of Napster, the artist gets no money. No matter how much you pay for diskspace, bandwith, etc. When you buy a CD or legal mp3s, the artist gets money. How hard is that to understand?

    It's not money, per se, but value. How much did it cost 20, 10, hell, even 2 years ago to give 100,000,000 million people access to your music? How much can it cost today? We need to protect the right to capitalize on that value, but to equate it anacronistically directly to money is flawed. That's why we need to rewrite the crufty copyright laws that we are now subject to.

    --
  • However, illegally copying/stealing music is not the way to do it. That will simply encourage the government to pass stricter laws to stop you.

    Exactly, and when our laws require that 25% of the 18-25 year-olds in this country go to jail for copyright infringement, it will be obvious to everyone (and not just the gifted souls who can pick points out an idiot's rantings) that our current IP laws are a pile of shit.

    MP3.com is not bad. I prefer streaming music, since I have my own pipe and limited disk space. Try here [shoutcast.com] and here [live365.com] for starters.
    --
  • Blame the sys-admins, or better hug them now they fixed it.

    Dont blame an innocent victim-of-its-success application. Seems stupid to me.

    Greetz SlashDread
  • Yes. Not only does information want to be free, it wants to peaceably assemble.
    ----------------------------------------------
  • People want information to be free, and that's the crux of the problem. As soon as capitalism returns to its roots and begins giving people what they want (in order to make more money, of course), then we'll see a resolution to this problem.


    This is untrue. We need to demand free information. All revolutions start some where. People need to "Think Globally, Act Locally."

    All revolutions start somewhere; all revolutions start small.

    Open access to information will not come overnight.


  • The new software isn't likely to erode all copyright protections immediately or provide unrestricted cover for smut. Counteroffensives will surely be launched, and there are smart programmers on all sides in this.

    This is totally the best part of the whole piece.
    It promises us that we will always have a job.
    We just need to choose which side of the border we stand on.
    Hopefully we can stand firmly on the side that assures us freedom of information.

    Knowledge, it is a very powerful tool!


  • Yippee, yet another article that says "cool... umm yeah! We'll just have to see what happens, the rules are changin.." blah blah blah! No different from anything else, just explaining the situation, tying in a few bad analogies, and throwing an advertisement on the bottom.

    I sometimes question the quality of online journalism... seems that some of them like nandotimes could be dime-a-dozen.

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

  • You know, despite your total idiocy, you may have a point. Our current copywrite laws can't last much longer. In a few years, information will simply not be marketable. At that point, we will have to re-work capitolism such that it is compatible with an information economy.

    However, illegally copying/stealing music is not the way to do it. That will simply encourage the government to pass stricter laws to stop you. Instead, you should be supporting legally free music. That way, the free music scene will grow and possibly overtake the RIAA. You can start with mp3.com. They have some really good stuff there. It is pretty much all I listen to these days.

    ------

  • My school (U of MN) is a major internet hub with an incredible amount of badwidth. Several T3's at least. Napster was taking 58% of our bandwidth before it was banned.

    ------

  • OK so the article says that there is no way to bring down a distributed system but there is.

    First, catch one of the pirates (preferably an 18+ YO pirate) by tracking his IP address through the IP service provider and then sue him for all he's got, make a poster child of the poor sap. Keep doing this and sue everyone you can. Sure you can't completely shut the thing down but you can knock the breath out of it.

    Another approach would be to send that e-mail visur that causes your system to explode to every server you can find.

    I think the former solution is the one that the media companies will do but they'd probably attempt the latter if they thought it would work.

    I'm surprised that I havent heard of lawsuits against people running gnutella and napster yet. Why is that? Is there a legal loophole here?

  • I would put up thousands of computers running Napster 24/7, and every mp3 file on them would have some really annoying error right in the middle of the song, and then cut off five seconds before the end. Oooooh I hate that!

  • Yeah, I believe there is a difference. Some software is utilitarian, like word processors. Some is for recreation, like games.

    Recreational software has diminished marginal utility. (except Quake. Ecconomists should do a study.)

    But utilitarian software never loses it's value, as long as it maintains its relevance, it is supported by the authors and if other people use it.

    Game makers don't benefit from opening their source, because people play the game for a while and then move on. (Except Quake.) It may help them write their next game, if people are willing to send in source patches.

    Game companies can make money from game sales or selling advertising space within the game, or by doing contract work for multimedia projects and giving away games as a type of advertisement/demonstration of their abilities.

  • One wonders why it is that illegal stuff is the "primary" purpose of these systems (which I agree, it is). My theory: the demand for legal stuff is higher than anything else.

    I mean, in a perfect world, I think it would be great if the latest patches for X software, or the latest Y documents were easily accessible, but for the most part, it's not necessary. You don't NEED gnutella to get the latest distro of you favorite flavor of OS. FTP searching generally will suffice, and odds are FTP's aren't going to be highly over-crowded. You don't NEED gnutella to get the latest issue of Info Weekly, it's easy enough to get it from their webserver.

    Really, gnutella and napster arose out of the need to get illegal stuff. This is stuff that probably isn't going to live long if it had a well known central distribution center. This is stuff that is therefore hosted on smaller, overcrowded, hard to access FTP or HTTP sites. Work is still required. So then this new distributed idea is formed, it's basically the idea of the 'underground' taken a little further.. people trading mp3's with whomever they want.

    You see, Napster and Gnutella and whatever else were made because it's still hard to get the illegal stuff. Like I said, getting the latest patches and magazines or what not has become amazingly easy lately. Yes, it should be hard to get the illegal stuff, but that's still not going to stop us from making it easier to get it (either warez people, or people who are interested in seeing how a distributed thing like this could work, which I respect)

    So, really, the reason you find mostly illegal stuff on these guys is because that's all they're good for. If you have other, easy ways of getting legal stuff, why bother putting it up here? I think it's a shame, cause the convenience could be great and could maybe even in the future help slashdot effect-type scenarios. However, I fear that because of the aforementioned arguement, it will either take a while, or get shut down.

    At least.. that's my take on it....

  • Re:censorship-resistant? You mean copyright-resist (Score:3)

    by emerson ( 419 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @08:54PM (#1153374)
    >Please explain to me how having 600,000 songs at my fingertips is wrong when I'm paying for
    >bandwidth, diskspace, and promotion. (equivelent to reproduction, distrubution, and promotion in
    >the old world)

    Because that doesn't at all take into account paying the people that created the music, the artists, the engineers, the producers, the graphic design folk that make the album covers and so forth.

    The current model SUCKS at that; the artists get cheated and gypped. I'm the first to say it. But your model sucks even more -- the artists don't see ANYTHING -- not a red cent.

    You can pay for all the bandwidth, disk space, and promotion you want, but you're still just being a warez d00d, collecting other peoples' work without paying anyone, and there's no way do dance around it.

    >How bright is this?

    Brighter than a future where no art gets produced because y'all take away the sole source of artists income without offering anything in return or coming up with any alternatives... But, hey, information wants to be free, gimme gimme gimme.

    The way music is distribted now doesn't work well.

    The way you'd like to have it distributed won't work at all.


    --

  • Re:censorship-resistant? You mean copyright-resist (Score:3)

    by emerson ( 419 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @09:16PM (#1153375)
    (Turning off my +1 because this looks like a long night....)

    You're starting to get somewhere, but you're changing the subject. I'm just answering your question "if I have all the diskspace in the world, and I fill it up with stuff that I got free that's actually being charged for by the author, what's wrong with that?"

    And it's rather self-evident. The authors and the artists and so forth have released this product with certain terms. You may or may not agree with them, but to violate them is to disrespect the artist's wishes. You're free to do that, but don't expect later arguments about supporting artists to hold any water. If the artists want to give it away free, they will. If their labels won't let them, they'll ditch the labels and do it their own way. If they don't do that, well, then, obviously the money is more important to them than the freedom, and therefore IT'S NOT YOURS TO TAKE FOR FREE.

    Now, I like your scenario of everyone doing music for the love of it, and popular artists somehow getting paid just for being popular (although the math is kind of vague in there). I really do. But until and unless such a scheme exists, it's vaporware, and you're pointing to it and saying "SEEEEE, it COULD work!!!" and taking and taking and taking, and not giving back anything to these popular artists that are supposed to be getting paid for being popular.

    You want this scheme to work, make it work: set up a record label that gives the music away free. Go on, do it. Get artists to sign up, come up with a business plan that gets people paid somehow for this, and I'll be the first one, really, the VERY FIRST ONE to sign up and help out. C'mon, let's do it, lets figure out free (in the GNU sense) music.

    But until it's there, and it ain't there now, you're still just taking free (in the beer sense) music away from people who are trying to make a living selling it on a per-unit basis. And scrambling to justify it with a lot of what-ifs and if-only's.


    --

  • Got it all wrong (Score:3)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @06:53PM (#1153376) Homepage
    Information does not want to be free. Information is a non-breathing, non-living entity with no feelings and no desires.

    People want information to be free, and that's the crux of the problem. As soon as capitalism returns to its roots and begins giving people what they want (in order to make more money, of course), then we'll see a resolution to this problem.

    I want my information free. Don't you?

  • Know your disk (Score:3)

    by Pseudonymus Bosch ( 3479 ) on Tuesday April 04, 2000 @04:48AM (#1153377) Homepage
    Suppose that your disk is happily sharing with the rest of the world that your DNA has a gene that your employer thinks makes you unsuitable for your work, or anything else you don't want to be known about yourself.
    __

  • Damn straight! (Score:3)

    by Stradivarius ( 7490 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @09:03PM (#1153378)
    Glad to see someone else has kept some perspective on this whole issue! The great thing about these tools isn't what they're being used for right now (largely "piracy"), but the potential they have to change the way things are done in the future. The legitimate uses far outweight the illegitimate here.

    This is much more important than whether John Doe can get his mp3s easier. The distributed nature of things like Gnutella allows for a Net where the individual is *really* empowered, not just nominally so. With traditional avenues like the Web, you're still under the control of a large corporation, governments, etc. This inevitably leads to easy censorship by such groups. Now, however, one can distribute information much more freely.

    It could be used by people in countries such as China, where incoming information is strictly censored, to get the information being denied to them by an oppressive regime, as just one example.

    The distributed nature of these systems also helps contribute in a way to the robustness of the whole. If one source goes down, there are likely others to fill in. This is good regardless of the type of information being transferred.

    And who knows what uses will be found for this in the coming years? When VCRs first came out, it was lobbied against furiously by those in power in the movie industry, fearing it would be just a piracy tool. Yet, while undoubtedly some use VCRs so, the VCR has become an important, legitimate tool for people. And it's created businesses unforeseen when it came out (such as video rental stores).

    I think too many people have been looking merely at the first uses to which the technology has been put, rather than considering the potential it has to benefit us all. Criminals have often been the first to use new technology, this doesn't mean the technology is in any way less legitimate. Trying to ban the technology is not going to solve anything. The criminals will still use it, and the public will lose a useful tool.

  • Re:Free! (Score:3)

    by Wah ( 30840 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @07:24PM (#1153379) Homepage Journal
    I don't want the information about my last Doctor visit to be free. I don't want the information about where I live or my favoutite porno movie to be free for every John Q. Nobody to claim rights to and play with until his hearts content.

    Of course not, but it wants to be, so you have to fight against it. The problem we have here (if you consider Napster a problem) is that it's not only the information that wants to be free, but an overwhelming number of people who also want it to be free. So while it might be easy for a bank to fight against the natural inclination of information to propogate, after all only an few try to steal money digitally (and it's easier with a gun anyway), it becomes quite a bit more difficult for the RIAA. Especially with information that already is everywhere (CDs), but now it can get everywhere else (Internet).

    So it does want to be free. It just is, and just being is quite a good way to be free, if you can follow a sentence with three tenses of the same verb describing a word with multiple correct translations.

    --
  • People use Napster to break the laws.
    People also use photocopiers, tape recorders, cigarette lighters, firearms, screwdrivers, automobiles, ball-point pens, and telephones to break the law. You'll pardon me if I don't find that a compelling reason to outlaw any of these things.
    We have bans on certain types of guns which are used to break the law (eg, assault rifles, which have *no* legitimate purpose)
    No legitimate purpose? Why do soldiers and police use M-16s then? (Of course, one might argue that soldiering and policing aren't legitimate action, but I don't think that was your point.) The purpose of an assult rifle (that is, a rifle that can be selected for automatic fire and uses a small-caliber bullet) is to throw a lot of lead very fast. The purpose of that flying lead is a function of the weapon wielder, not the weapon itself; it may be shooting targets for sport, it may be defending one's self or community from attack, it may be attacking someone else.
    likewise, Napster could be legally banned.
    Not here in the US - there's no legitimate constitutional authority for the feds to ban a computer program. Doesn't mean they won't do it anyway, of course; since they command the soldiers and police - who have the assult rifles - they pretty much do what they want.
    but let's not paint to bright a picture of copyright violations, eh emmett?
    Copyright is dead. I wish we could recognize that and move on, but I suspect it's going to be a very painful transition.

  • Who's information wants to be free? (Score:3)

    by Duxup ( 72775 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @09:22PM (#1153381) Homepage
    "Information wants to be free."

    I disagree in some cases.
    At my workplace we're about to begin the ever tedious job of an ISO 9000 audit. I have much information that I thought wished to be free that is sitting on my desk. Sadly, it has not yet made that wish apparent by filling out the appropriate paperwork to become free. Of course I can not violate and ISO standards and just give such information to those who need it. After filling out the paper work it must be approved, dated, given some bizarre version number and distributed on the website.

    Since it has yet to make it's wishes clear to me I believe that my information in fact does not wish to be free, regardless of it's usefulness to those who might appreciate it. I plan to soon impose my wishes on the information and fill out the paperwork on it's behalf during a midnight run to the copier. May God keep me save from the ISO storm troopers!

    Come to think of it, my information has yet to make any requests to me. Has anyone else been able to communicate with their information? If so, what did it say?

  • censorship-resistant? You mean copyright-resistant (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03, 2000 @06:50PM (#1153382)
    Please. Why do people feel the need to gloss over the purpose of programs like Napster and Gnutella. I'm an Open Source Programmer, and I know damn well that Napster is used to download illegal mp3s more than anything else. Same with Gnutella.

    Implying that it is "censorship" to protect one's copyrights is absurd. I know that this is an "advocacy" site, but keep in mind that this sort of doubletalk makes you guys look like the small children who, when caught with their hands in the cookie jar, protest their innocence to the last. The fact that Slashdot implicitly condones such action reflects poorly on the Free Software Community. Not all Free Software Users wish to violate copyrights; for many uf us, that's the reason we switched to Free Software.

    Sorry, I don't buy that this is the Linux-using David vs. the big, bad, coporate censor Goliath. People use Napster to break the laws. We have bans on certain types of guns which are used to break the law (eg, assault rifles, which have *no* legitimate purpose), likewise, Napster could be legally banned. Sure, maybe 1/100,000th of Napster users download only legit mp3s, but let's not paint to bright a picture of copyright violations, eh emmett?

  • Free? (Score:4)

    by Woodblock ( 22276 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @07:01PM (#1153383) Homepage
    Information does not want to be free. People want other people's information to be free. How can any reasonable /.er get up in arms about doubleclick.net gathering surfing information, and then claim that information wants to be free.
    I certainly don't want the contents of swiss bank accounts to be free. I don't want the information about my last Doctor visit to be free. I don't want the information about where I live or my favoutite porno movie to be free for every John Q. Nobody to claim rights to and play with until his hearts content.

  • Reiterating the main gripe. (Score:4)

    by matman ( 71405 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @06:45PM (#1153384)
    Napster/Gnutella was designed to facilitate the distribution of private mp3 collections. These will generally consist of copyrighted material. I think that its important that people not forget that, while the music companies are big and evil, they have rights too. That means that they have a legitimate gripe with the free distribution of material that they've paid to protect and that they want to sell. I know that napster can be used to distribute other non-copyrighted material, and that's great, but lets not forget the tainted ground on which the thing started. I'm a big free speech advocate, and I download mp3s too, but lets not be totally ignorant as to why napster was created.
  • The Hacker Manifesto [iit.edu] was written back in the ancient eighties by a hacker named Mentor. Read it.......it may be about you.

    Also of interest may be the Hacker's Ethic [cyberpunkproject.org]. Something of a code that should be lived by, particularly by those reading these pages. It's where the, "Informationwants/should be free", quote comes from.

  • Re:Freenet is NOT a piracy mechanism (Score:4)

    by laborit ( 90558 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @09:25PM (#1153386) Homepage
    The people here who are defending copyright don't seem to get the point. Freenet isn't about violating copyright -- it's about giving people the power to share information anonymously and inviolably. Freenet can be used to trade MP3s the same way that a 1 GHz Pentium III box can be used to bash someone's brains out.

    It's tempting to try to stamp out IP violations (not to mention terrorism and kidd1e pr0n) by regulating probable channels of distribution, but history shows that when the government has that kind of power, it's never used as it was intended. I'd rather have an internet with Freenet and illegally distributed music than an internet where copyright is sacrosanct but everyone who downloaded DeCSS or visited Peacefire.org or looked for harm-reduction information on ecstasy could be traced and have the law loosed against them.

    Fantasy? You know the corporations and the government would do this if they could. We need hardcore privacy protection not to permit immoral acts but to preserve our freedom to act morally.

    note: if you prefer, "unreasonable/reasonable," "unsustainable/sustainable," and "antisocial/prosocial," among others, can all be substituted into the above paragraph for the controversial m-word...
    ****

  • Re:Got it all wrong (Score:5)

    by Frater 219 ( 1455 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @07:35PM (#1153387) Journal
    Information does not want to be free. Information is a non-breathing, non-living entity with no feelings and no desires.

    When people have access to easy means of duplicating and transmitting large quantities of information, they will tend to behave in such a way that any particular piece of information, if it is interesting to even a tiny minority, will tend to spread among people to the extent that it is interesting.

    In fact, they will desire to behave in this way so much that it will not be possible to stop the spread of any particular piece of information without causing severe harm to the people interested in it -- as by depriving them of privacy, security, and the use of their personal effects.

    These people will resist such harm -- through political activism, boycotts, and technical workarounds. They may well also, when their ability to spread interesting information is threatened, react by spreading it more and more quickly. (See the case of Scientology's persecution of Internet-based critics [xenu.net], or the cases of Napster and Gnutella for that matter.) This is what is meant by "The Internet interprets censorship as system damage and routes around it" -- which is not a statement about the technical operations of the Internet (actual routers and hosts) but about the way people use it.

    Hence, if you look at the communications-system from the point of view of a piece of information, you will see that information spreading in such a way that it appears to "want to be free".

    (No, information does not have opinions. But then, neither does a plant, yet plants "want to" grow towards light sources, due to chemical reactions in their cells. Electricity doesn't have opinions either, but it "wants to" seek ground, and follow the path of lowest resistance. Anthropomorphism is our friend.)

  • am I the only one? (Score:5)

    by blaine ( 16929 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @06:54PM (#1153388)
    Am I the only person who hates Napster/Gnutella with a passion?

    The network at my university has been maxed out at 98% outgoing or so, 80% incoming for quite some time due to Napster. How do I know? Because last Wednesday, they banned it, and this dropped to about 30% outgoing, 50% incoming.

    The network here has been mostly unusable for months, and it has been because of Napster.

    Now, admittedly, the biggest reason for the outgoing is most likely the fact that Napster doesn't close when you click the "X" in the upper right of the window. Instead, it backgrounds itself and goes into the system tray. This means that people who have no clue how to use a computer excepting to play mp3s and use a word processor get Napster on the advice of a more knowledgeable friend, and proceed to share out gigs of mp3s to the world 24/7. With Gnutella, this probably isn't as big of a problem.

    Anyways, I can't be happier that it is banned, and I can hardly feel bad for people whining that they can't steal music with ease anymore. If you can't even take the time to browse IRC or the web for your pirated music, you're pretty pathetic. You're getting it free to begin with, so I have no sympathy for you just because you might have to actually do the smallest bit of work to get it.

    My rant for now,
  • People use Napster to break the laws.

    Some laws need to broken. Some need to be smashed so hard their teeth rattle. And please spare me the little kiddy not wantin' to pay for CDs spiel, I've heard it, it doesn't apply here. Please explain to me how having 600,000 songs at my fingertips is wrong when I'm paying for bandwidth, diskspace, and promotion. (equivelent to reproduction, distrubution, and promotion in the old world)

    let's not paint to bright a picture of copyright violations, eh emmett?

    How bright is this? [livedaily.com]

    Keep the music flowing.

    --

  • Freenet is NOT a piracy mechanism (Score:5)

    by Phallus ( 54388 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @07:51PM (#1153390) Homepage
    It irratates me no end to see people writing these programs off as piracy tools. Piracy is only one use for them. Blank tapes are also a piracy tool, and probably used for piracy as much as Napster/Gnutella, but they are still sold because they have legitimate uses. So do these programs. Napster and Gnutella can easily be used to trade copyright-free files (I hope someone is trading my mp3s), and Freenet is "an information publication system similar to the World Wide Web". Look at the Freenet philosophy page [sourceforge.net] for an alternative perspective.

    This is perceived as a threat to traditional publishing and recording industries just as radio was, and the mimeograph, and television, and the photocopier, and magnetic tape, and the compact disc, and the videocassette recorder, and many other technologies that made sharing information easier. Freenet doesn't do anything different from what can already be done with those technologies, it just does it more efficiently.

    tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose

  • (Slightly OT) Street Performer Protocol (Score:5)

    by casret ( 64258 ) on Monday April 03, 2000 @09:14PM (#1153391)
    Just like to mention that an alternative to copyrights is the Street Performer Protocol [firstmonday.org] by Bruce Schneier. He predicted the advent of systems like this and offers up a partial solution.

    I haven't seen anyone really take a stab at setting it up yet though.

  • Debatable: 'Protecting one's copyrights' is censorship. It can be interpreted as warranted in the interest of promoting economic reward for creative endeavors (which is actually intended to encourage creative endeavors, not economic reward per se), but it is still the suppression of someone else's speech.

    Non-debatable: 'Protecting one's copyrights' has certainly been used by organizations, normally large businesses, to censor the speech of others in the case of satire, parody and so forth. The key point here is how far copyrights extend. Parodies of Mickey Mouse (including all kinds of offensive parodies that 'most people' wouldn't like) are actually legally protected but despite this are impossible to defend from armies of lawyers. There are many other examples.

    People tend to forget that copyright was created at a specific time with a specific purpose, and that as a legal creation is rather malleable (as has been shown by its constant extension...). /.ers should realize this, especially as it is being extended further and further by things like the DMCA.

    There are two basic problems. One, as it becomes more ingrained and gathers more powerful interests behind it, copyright begins to seem a natural moral concept (not an economic incentive). This means that the idea of banning devices which could facilitate copyright violations becomes more palatable. Two, as the technology changes, violating copyright law becomes easier and easier.

    All this really means is that it will be extremely difficult to maintain the status quo, and that's what we're seeing: large forces attempting to extend the reach of copyright so that it becomes totally ridiculous, and other forces (perhaps only intending to turn the tide a little, perhaps not) straining to render copyright utterly unenforceable.

    A simple "for/against" standpoint doesn't really work anymore, especially since copyright is a legal concept and certain players are able to change the laws in their favour. This is a point that many, including the AC to whom I am replying, appear to miss. Is it 'censorship' to say that you cannot reproduce my work now? In 5 years? In 10? 100? 1000? When does my work (which inevitably drew upon public domain ideas) become part of the public domain? Similarly, is it censorship to say that you can't parody my work? Cite my work? Say bad things about my work? Mention my work?

    It's a matter of degree. The key point is not really about copyright 'violations' but rather: what do we want copyright to be? What is the best middle ground between encouraging creativity and encouraging a free and open exchange of ideas? And how do we get there?

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