Gnutella Forums - View Single Post - The Legal Aspect Of File-Sharing

LeeWare · #62 (**permalink**) February 25th, 2004

Of course it is important to argue the decentralized aspect of technology.
However those argument over look a fundamental fact which is increasing becoming the issue and that is. If you create a product then you have influence over the design. The industry is requesting that mechanisms be built into the technology to protect content from blatant piracy. Although every industry could argue that they are not responsible for the uses of their products. Everyday more and more industries are showing a good-faith effort to build into their product features which protect or in some way twart blatant piracy.

Since you mentioned Adobe -- you also realize that their products support and honor security restrictions placed on the document at creation time. Therefore if the author says user cannot alter document the product supports this. It has other restrictions. Some computers and operating systems won't copy some medi and at a bare minimum will display a message that must e acknowledged by the user.

The fact that a network is decentralized doesn't change the fact that the providers of the technology have the ability to influence the basic functionality of their products. Therefore the legal question is .. whether they can be made to do it? Personally i think not. Can they make a good-faith effort to do something absolutely.

The real question is would it be in the P2P operators best interest to do something like this?

Yes - in that they [P2P operators] could reach an agreement with the RIAA and MPAA that states we will and can do A B & C If you will do X Y & Z.Indemification

No - in that anyone closely connected to the P2P community knows that doing this can lead to backlash form all of those opportunistic pirates.

We also know that staying alive in the P2P world is about maintaining a sizable user community you do something like this and you are likely to lose a significant portion of your userbase and this would make your efforts in P2P futile.

Finally, I think that this puts P2P operators in a difficult position in which non of their options look good.