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Sought for MGM v. Grokster: Non-Infringing P2P Use
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Dec 20, 2004 10:05 AM
from the that-lessig-fellow-might-have-some-words dept.
from the that-lessig-fellow-might-have-some-words dept.
linuxizer writes "Since my last Slashdot entry, I've been discussing various copyright issues with the ever-interesting Peter Fader. Out of those conversations came sniu.info, an attempt to document the various forms of substantial, non-infringing use over peer-to-peer networks before MGM v Grokster goes to the Supreme Court. So far I have about 50 entries, but more suggestions would be much appreciated.
Some fellow /. readers might also be interested in my fairly regular posts on copyright/IP issues, which are mostly links to interesting articles with occasional commentary."
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My non-infringing use (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My non-infringing use (Score:3, Funny)
BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:4, Informative)
It was a great idea in theory, but in practice, it meant beta testers were still trying to download the 2.5GB client at a piddling 10k/s days or even a week after a new beta client went live, and downloading the client via BitTorrent in the middle of a particular push was next to impossible. Personally, I found it so slow, I wound up pulling the client down off newsgroups, instead, at a much higher speed.
Blizzard's BitTorrent distribution was a cool idea, and I'm sure it saved them a few bucks worth of bandwidth, but it was a far cry from a success.
Parent
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:5, Insightful)
Say a politician wants to ban cars because they can be used to cause so much death and destruction. Someone wants a list of safe, legal applications for cars. Well, there's driving to work, driving to school, fetching groceries, etc.
Considering the abundance and usefulness of all the successful and purpose-built functionality cars have, would makes they make a damned fine counterweight for turning a cherry picker into a trebuchet really carry much weight? Probably not, and neither should the failure of Blizzard's awful BitTorrent implimentation.
Sure, it can be used that way, but it's not particularly well-suited to it, and it sort of caught me off guard that considering what (legal) uses P2P technologies do use, one of the lamest implimentations yet was the first to be mentioned.
Parent
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're opening up a can of worms with that argument. You have to be above a certain age and licensed to drive a vehicle, and their use is HEAVILY regulated.
Same goes with the gun argument. People kill people, not guns; but that doesn't mean you want to compare it to P2P use.
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:3, Informative)
I know: mod self "-1 nitpick"
-nB
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:3, Informative)
When the "right to share files" is enshrined in a constitional amendment,
The Ninth Amendment [usconstitution.net].
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Also the First. Code is speech.
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:3, Insightful)
To enumerate a few:
1) Distributed source versioning (several open source projects working on this)
2) Collaborative work environments (ala MS Exchange, Lotus Notes (not saying good environments), etc etc ad nauseum)
3) Social networks ala Friendster that allow data exchange
4) peered IRC/IM networks
5) Distributed peered backup / data archival networks (a person
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:BT has a valid use, for example. (Score:3, Informative)
But it *is* a substantial noninfringing use.
Anarchy Online is also distributing it's client free via Bittorrent
http://www.anarchy-online.com/free/ad_campaigns / fr eecampaign/
Uses perfectly normal BT client to distribute free trial of a commercial game. And I think they have alread
Distro ISOs? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Distro ISOs? (Score:3, Informative)
There's an entry for "Linux Distributions" on his UPenn SNIU page [upenn.edu] under the "Other SNIU" section, roughly 2/3 of the way down. Currently lists Debian, Gentoo, and Others. Certainly the list could be extended, but there is an entry for torrents of Linux distros.
For me, this is my primary use of torrents/P2P. I've found it much easier to get first-day Linux release
Misleding (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you need a screenshot? (Score:3, Funny)
etree? (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting around Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Censored? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm. there were no video/picture that were "censored from the US".
Except for the more graphic images of US military personel torturing foreigners. And killing them during "questioning." And the bodies of US service men coming home. And who knows what else, because when stuff is being censored you don't necessarily know it.
Remember, this is the country that routinely dropped colour from video taken "behind the iron curtain", leaving the impression that everything there was black-and-white. The country that loudly objected to the development of biological weapons anywhere, by anyone, until some of our congress critters got mailed samples of weaponized anthrax we had made in our biological weapons labs. Oops.
Our legislators pass laws without reading them, in some cases without being allowed to read them and/or discuss them, and we pass laws which average citizens are not allowed to own a copy of.
If you think there are no images censored from the US, you are nuts.
--MarkusQ
Parent
Re:Censored? No. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, it would be worth noting, if it were true. The anthrax letters were mailed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, who voted for the Patriot Act, just like every other Senator except Russ Feingold.
Re:Censored? No. (Score:5, Informative)
Not my assertion, but how about John Gilmore's efforts to reveal the Show ID to Fly [papersplease.org] requirement that apparently is a law we're not allowed to see. Bearing in mind that it's quite easy for conspiracy theorists to purport nonexistant secret laws, this at least has the appearance of one that does.
As for barring reading of laws to be voted on, I cannot cite a blatent example of such. However, the Patriot Act was voted on several hours after a new version was printed (running several hundred pages). It is not clear that there was full understanding of the updated text prior to the vote (this is still a subject of debate).
Parent
Re:Censored? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
This happens all the time, especially with omnibus finance and transportation bills. The final version (all several thousand pages of it) often comes out of conference with only hours to spare before the vote.
Re:Getting around Censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
If the government detects that you are uploading or downloading part of a forbidden document, you are screwed. BitTorrent does not protect you against this.
You might be thinking about Freenet.
LegalTorrents.com (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LegalTorrents.com (Score:3, Interesting)
RIAA is not filing legal charges against bittorrent as a program. Perhaps they would like to shut down the sourceforge site, but it is much easier for them to attack the torrent providers.One of the qualities of bittorrent is that it is fairly visible whether a torrent provider links illegal
Uses ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Assault rifles, and guns in general, aren't "evil" or are built to serve nefarious purposes.
Similarly, P2P networks can solve a host of distribution issues.
It's the idiots that use them for illegal purposes (assault rifles, guns, or P2P networks) that cause the problems. Since the world is made up mostly of idiots, well... there you go.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
And though we'll never have conclusive, accurate metrics on leval vs. illegal use of P2P, common sense tells me that the majority of users aren't downloading the latest version of Gentoo.
Parent
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
I love this myth that "Assualt rifles" were specifically to kill human beings. The Geneva Conventions actually have made them be developed for entirely a different purpose and it is most definitely and amazingly not to kill human beings. Assault rifles were built to WOUND people.
You see in combat if you wound a soldier it takes out of action 2 or 3 buddies as well. Killing him usually just gets his buddies mad! It is much more effective to wound. This is also why land mines are most often calculated
FreeAudio.org .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Knoppix. (Score:4, Informative)
Ask this: Why does it exist? (Score:3, Interesting)
A better case, perhaps, could be made for bittorent.
Well... (Score:5, Informative)
A distinction may be drawn (Score:4, Insightful)
Legal uses of BitTorrent have been shown, but legit uses of Kazaa and Grokster are slim from what I've seen.
You might argue that you could distribute public domain works, or GPL works, over Kazaa/Grokster but for things like Linux ISOs, BT works better and for low priority things HTTP and FTP work quite well.
And please, people, don't bring up the "we should make all X illegal" analogy.
BBC (Score:5, Interesting)
slackware (Score:3, Informative)
Eve patch download (Score:3, Informative)
Ringtone sharing (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the legal uses of P2P networking listed is ringtone sharing, but ringtones are the same as any other form of music: the owner of the copyright dictates whether anyone is allowed to copy them or not. This means that ringtones based on chart music or TV theme tunes, for example, cannot legally be copied.
It's not uncommon these days for a record company to make more money from a ringtone of a single than the actual CD sales, so I wouldn't be surprised if they got upset about them being shared freely.
Free music you can copy [bytenoise.co.uk]
Knoppix (Score:5, Informative)
Knoppix has been using BitTorrent for distribution for a while. I think it's an excellent example for other distributions.
Debian tried to use a distributed system where the packages for the
Bob-
Local Distributed Storage Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
The point here is that by going the P2P route rather than a fixed central server model, you both balance the network bandwith, particularly for "distant" nodes, and you allow the redundancy that the internet is so hyped over (you can nuke any node and the rest will compensate) but in practice is far from the truth. In theory you can still lose some data, but with a well built P2P network of this nature that could be minimized, and only seldom accessed data would be the most vunerable.
Another big plus of this is that not only does this type of storage system work well for limited bandwidth, you can also install more modest "almost thin terminals" into such a network that keeps only frequently accessed data locally, and other nodes can compensate with data storage elsewhere.
Unfortunately, I havn't seen any really good examples of this. Freenet comes close in theory, but even that has some ways to go to do this effectively.
Mod me -1: Religious Nut, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
A Bit Offtopic: But Slashdot provided much of the info required for designing and building the recording device [esims.org] and to my knowledge there is none like it elsewhere.
3 uses, personal expirence. (Score:3, Interesting)
2 - time-shifting of broadcast TV shows that i have a legal right to record, but missed due to any number of reasons.
3 - Sharing your own produced content ( such as music ) in order to broaden your listener base without the cost of 'main stream' advertising.
new protocol for heavily loaded websites? (Score:3, Interesting)
<img src="bittorrent://http://mywebsite/myimage.torren
Just a thought.
Had the same idea, think it makes a lot of sense (Score:3, Interesting)
For a server that got slammed with something like a slashdotting, even just that short time sharing would take a huge load off the server.
It seems like this is a case where you could build a custom Apache module to automatically enable this feature for all content above a certain size, and in conjuction add support in Mozilla and derived programs.
YouServ (Score:3)
I think.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Should such a religious change to our laws (basically the "Am I not my brother's keeper?" question) should never be allowed into our laws or court system. If you think about it, our whole basis for our life here is the statement that everyone is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No where does the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, or the Bill of Rights say that we are all responsible for what everyone else does. All of it just states that we are responsible for our own actions. Which is why a murderer is put on trial and not his friends, enemies, family, and the like (so long as they did not participate of course). It is the same with these companies. Just because they make a piece of software which could be used in a harmful way against companies such as MGM is no excuse to hold them responsible for another party's usage of their software. Just like it is no excuse to hold a VCR production company responsible for how a VCR is used. Or Radio Shack for carrying the parts necessary to build a cable box which circumvents the cable company's security measures. Or Intel because its CPU chips were used to create a new virus. The allusions are ridiculous. The entire country can not function if such a law were passed. George Bush's "We are a litigious society," will be absolutely true. For no company will be able to function under such a law.
I believe that, as Americans, we should all go out and file lawsuits against every major company for psychological damage to our brains for being asked to function under laws which contradict the very basis of the manner in which this country was not only founded (ie: Freedom to do as you please) but to even work in this country (ie: If you get a job then you have denied someone else that very job).
Think about it. You really can't even respond to this message because you will have broken the copyright laws as they now stand. Why? Because you have to first get my permission to even reference this message. We ignore that here and respond anyway but this is just another example of common sense versus stupidity when it comes to crafting laws.
E-mail (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Legal Use? Workaround... (Score:3, Informative)
And on top of that, even if somehow weird dimension where you live where that might even be true, Civil Lawsuits require you to to prove your innocence. You would still have to go to court, pay out the nose, to prove you innocence. And based on some crap you heard on the internet. Which isn't true, btw.