On 24/03/10 08:27, Phil Thompson wrote: > yes. For every open source enthusiast using P2P for software > distribution there are 99 pirates downloading movies and music in > breach of copyright.
I'd be interested to know the genuine stats, but all the same I think you can use the same argument elsewhere - eg 99% of blank CDs/DVDs are probably used for copying copyrighted material therefore they should be banned (or the CD-R manufacturer's should be made legally responsible for their use, or whatever). 99% of cars probably speed on the motorway - we should ban those too! The approach is wrong - tackle the illegitimate use not the technology. The illegitimate users will just find another technology and the legitimate users will be the only ones harmed. > if servers are available that can max out your bandwidth P2P adds > nothing, I prefer to download from identified servers so I know what > I'm getting and TBH there isn't anything I have needed that was legit > and only on P2P networks. If servers are available then it's because someone is paying for them to be available. Some are funded by advertising (eg sourceforge - it's becoming harder and harder to just download something there!), others have different business models. Even then, the direct model scales very badly; when a new distro gets released and the servers get hammered a P2P download is much faster. And you can (should) check the md5 checksum regardless of download source, but BitTorrent (for example) has a lot of checksumming built in and auto-corrects errors much better than FTP/HTTP do. However, the key point is that if I wanted to release my own Ubuntu variant, or for that matter my own movie, then I would be unlikely to be able to afford the bandwidth and P2P would give me an opportunity that wouldn't otherwise exist. > it is only the distribution without permission that should be tackled > and that's what the bill is seeking to do. Seeking to do and achieving are two different things. Putting encryption on a DVD seeks to limit the copying without affecting real users. In practice it stops Linux users viewing the discs and the fact we're having this conversation proves it hasn't managed to fix the problem of illegitimate copying. That said, it is now much harder to make a personal backup of a disc, which should be (and legally is) considered fair use. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list Peterboro@mailman.lug.org.uk https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
