Everyone has heard/read/been told about all the trouble that Napster got in with the business of free music filesharing. Then the industry went after other sites, like kazaa and others. This effectively shut down the mass P2P filesharing that had become the bane of the record industry’s existence.
It occurs to me that while sites like that have been shut down, I can still get all the free music I could ever want, provided I know the right AOL buddy. AOL and other IM services have a feature where you can send files to each other directly, and you can just pluck anything out of a friend’s shared folder, provided they are online.
It strikes me that this is no different. I am not going to complain, because I will admit I have taken advantage of this service, and I augmented my music collection (on my computer at least) three times over by raiding my dorm neighbor’s shared folder. These features, and I am sure there ar other methods out there that are similar, seem no different to me than the Napster or Kazaa, just on a more personal level.
I am not saying that I am against file sharing, because I use it and I see no substance to the “artist’s rights” arguments, or at least not enough to discourage me. I would just like to hear other dopers’ thoughts on why these are better, or why they should be taken down, or why the industry hasn’t seen this yet.
Feasibility. It would be virtually impossible for musc lables…I mean the RIAA…the prevent people from spreading files via IM and other means. First off, it’s just too prevalent. And secondly, this isn’t some kid working out of his room, AIM is owned by AOL. If the RIAA wanted to prevent people from sharing copyrighted material through AIM, the ‘easiest’ course of action would be to get AIM to block people from being able to do it.
Napster is ancient history, but Kazaa is thriving to this day. I’m not sure where you got the impression that it has been shut down.
FWIW, mass sharing of media within university and college networks–similar to what you’re talking about–HAS in the past been targeted by copyright owners.
blind networks that have no actual search function,
centralized database networks that route all content listings and searches to a central location to conduct searches,
distributed database networks that use some of the members’ computers to store smaller indexes of area contents, and
distributed database and content networks that not only use members’ computers to store indexes, but that also uses disk space of members’ computers to store content.
Instant-messaging clients are #1 types–they have no actual “search” function available aside from you IM’ing your pal and asking him if he’s got the new duet by Ozzy Osbourne and Tammy Wynnette.
Originally, Kazaa was a combination of #2 and #3, and this made it very, very easy to find things on it. All the files were thrown into a common pool of accessibility and they were all indexed (and searchable) together–all at once.
The only “working” example of #4 I know of is FreeNet, and I use the term “working” loosely here. FreeNet’s claim to fame is that it is essentially a totally-anonymous method of distribution, because when you download a file, you can find out what computer you are downloading it from, but because of the distributed-content nature of the network, you have no way of knowing if that computer was where the file originated. To operate the program you set aside disk space on your computer, and the FreeNet client uses that to store temporary files as it sees fit. You have no control over what it puts there or any way of knowing what is on there, and that is the point–the legal argument is that if you had no control over that content, and did not have any way to view what those files actually were (you don’t, it stores everything in its own format) then you cannot be held responsible for whatever it is.
I haven’t heard of any legal tests of this assumption yet, but that’s not surprising.
—>Very few people currently use FreeNet, for the simple reason that it loads very, very slowly–the “home page” for example can easily take fifteen minutes to appear, because the “home page” is not based at any IP address, it is itself a distributed file, floating out on the network. FreeNet is considered by its originator to be an academic experiment; you can download and install it in Windows and it works, but as a general-use P2P system it has several major theoretical problems with regards to removing material from the network (there is no way to do this) and spamming with fake files (there is no way to prevent this either). The slow speed it provides could be related to the lack of users.
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The speed of a Freenet node depends on how long it’s been connected. If you leave your node running for several days, it’ll learn to find content a lot faster because it’ll know where to start looking. (It’s still very slow, though.)
You can prevent spamming with fake files, by using a trusted source to find the links. Public key encryption ensures that a “freesite” can only be updated by the same person who created it–even though he’s anonymous–so the index sites can link to sites whose authors verify their links, and avoid linking to sites with fake files. Since there is no search on Freenet, the index sites are the main way to find content.