Advances in Decentralized Peer Networks 140
PureFiction writes "Peer networks are gaining some
attention these
days given advances in much more
decentralized
search
architectures and
swarming
distribution
networks.
Research has indicated that these decentralized networks are resistant to
legal and
technological attacks.
The continued proliferation of
broadband
and wireless networking
will ensure
pervasive deployment
of distributed
peer networking infrastructure
that will drive significant innovations in
personal and
community
digital communications services."
Damn Peer To Peer networks (Score:5, Interesting)
As a security person, I hate these peer to peer applications: there are so many worm strategies which can exploit these, creating fast and stealthy attacks.
As such, if I was in charge of corporate security administration, I'd ban them completely. At the universities, I'd packet-shape-them into a much lower priority.
Unfortunatly, they are growing considerably more stealthy as a result of these legal attacks and the effects of packet-shapers. This may be a good thing for those who want their 1337 WAR3Z, D00D!!, but is rather unfortunate for those who want to create secure systems.
Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am that pot calling the kettle black. I am your average joe user. I have kazaa and routinely use it for downloading music. Yes I am a criminal. As are %99.9999 of all other P2P users.
I understand the benifits of P2P, each client acting as a server and bonding the collective bandwidth of all the clients together. Yes I know it can be used for free speech, and I know for legitimate file distribution it can't be beat. That's just it though, it's never going to be legitimate without some type of DRM.
I downloaded doom3 alpha (Sorry Carmack, it kicks ass though
Here is my slashdottish geek comment. P2P creators need to start focusing on making their clients good for legitimate uses. For example, I think it would kick ass if the distro's started using P2P for their distro's, or a P2P based web server/browser. Anything to turn it from a black to a white sheep.
*Note to mods
Sorry I don't mean to be Mr. Obvious here, but I just feel any future P2P doesn't stand a chance if it doesn't have a legitimate foundation to stand on. The RIAA & MPAA has already proven what a great team of legal sharks they have and can overcome any technological advancements made in P2P
my 2 cents
Re:Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! (Score:5, Interesting)
For a limited picture of what future decentralized peer networks can accomplish [cubicmetercrystal.com] you need only use your imagination.
This is still relatively new technology with a lot of room for growth and extensible uses.
Re:Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! (Score:2, Interesting)
Most people think of Gnutella, Kazaa and their similiar P2P application as the ONLY kind of P2P applications.
There are many other kind of P2P applications in existence, Instant Messenging is one of them. Most use of instant messenging are legitimate.
Re:Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! (Score:1, Interesting)
There are "freesites", which are websites within Freenet that anyone can publish, allowing your "P2P web". There are anonymous messaging and file-sharing systems as well. Additionally, I believe there was once work for apt-get over Freenet, but I don't know the status of that...
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again, I have that problem anyways. Blimey!
But if you are searching for legal/obscure files, it doesn't matter, because they won't be targeted by the companies.
On a side note, can't these large companies be held responsible for all the bandwidth that they cause to be wasted? Or do we run into the same problem we have prosecuting spammers for bandwidth waste?
Re:Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! (Score:3, Interesting)
Piracy defined... (Score:5, Interesting)
Piracy would be buying a CD, making copies of it, and selling those copies to people for a profit. In this case, you entered into an agreement with the copyright holder of the CD, and are violating applicable laws.
When you download something off the Internet, you are under no obligation to be aware of its source, or the license agreements associated with it.
Even posting copyrighted material on the Internet is not illegal if you have not been explicitely notified that you are in violation of the copyright agreement. The notice on your CD case counts, I believe, if you own the CD.
So if you download something off the 'Net, you're well within the bounds of legality, and you can retransmit that until the copyright holder asks you to stop.
American laws are so strange...
That is sort of correct, but not quite... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the legal work we did early on when designing the system only prevented people from suing us (the code creators) and it did so by pushing liability off on to the users. That was the closest that one could really get to safety given the structure of the DMCA. Contrary to the widely held fantasy among decentralized p2p systems, "willful blindness" is not a valid defense against DMCA attacks -- something that I think the upcoming Kazaa et al. trial is eventually going to reveal after all of the appeals and other legal wrangling is worked out.
BTW, the only app that mnet provides is a publish-retrieve shared data system identical to the old mojonation (sans distributed resource management), file sharing is not "one of" the apps for the API, it is the only app.
Taking the Karma hit to address this. By Velmont (Score:2, Interesting)
This submission has no less than 15 links in it! I'm still not sure where the real content is. Worse, what appears to be the main link points to another few line discussion that references yet another article.
Posters, and especially editors, Please don't post/allow submissions that are filled with nothing but links, and links to links. You may think you're providing more information, but most of those links are just noise. This seems to be an emerging trend on slashdot, and I think it's a very bad one.
Taking a slight tangent for just a moment, sadly, the biggest problem with slashdot is there's never any real discussion (mostly that would involve the editors) about slashdot itself. There's constantly re-posts of material, and poor quality submissions. This needs to be fixed somehow, but can't happen unless the slashdot editors start talking about this problems and not just remain silent.
AC REPLY ""sadly, the biggest problem with slashdot is there's never any real discussion (mostly that would involve the editors) about slashdot itself.""
the problem lies not just with the editors but with everyone on slashdot (especially whoever happens to be moderating). anytime people (like you) actually comment about slashdot (even when its not a troll and is a cogent point, like yours is), it is moderated down, offtopic, or just ignored (as your post was).
it's the built-in self-censorship that's the problem. not only does it limit the voices heard loudest on slashdot, but it prevents fixing of the very socially dysfunctional way slashdot works a lot of the time.
Re:Piracy defined... (Score:3, Interesting)
And any piece of copyrighted work can not be redistributed without explicit permission from the author in most cases.
Then again... pleading ignorance may still make a good defense.