I would like to point out the fact that if it is legal that a national agency or whatever blocks a file sharing program that is used worldwide.

Ivan
"In the dark we make a brighter light"

Hmm, the RIAA did now allready crack down Kazaa in the Netherlands (FastTrack clone)... and as a result the dutch coder crew of the Gnutella client Xolox did discontinue because of possible law suits. It doesn't matter if the RIAA's behaviour is legal... the fact is there is a big threat over the heads of developers.

Would you take the risk of taking it against RIAA/NMPA, a bunch of lawyers and lots of money behind? I would be interested what do the current developers think... do they feel threatened, did they allready contact their lawyers or setting up any countermeasures? PS: Sephiroth you still think Gnutella needs no protection?

Making up a disclaimer is kinda pointless since many programs hire lawyers to do that for them anyways.

Moak it depends on what you talk about "protection" if your talking about ideas like encryption and blocking countermeasures which would fuel a fire for a lawsuit against gnutella then yes im against it. If gnutella was as at risk as you think it is then why hasnt it allready been shut down.

Gnutella unlike every other P2P network is truly decentralized and an open network. Unlike other programs you cannot sue one or a few programs to get the network shut down. If the RIAA wants to attack gnutella they will have to go after indivdual users themselves like they go after web pages on the web. The RIAA behaviour does have to be legal because if it isnt then they will fail and become even more hated.

The "threat" of the RIAA, there money and there lawyers were allready well apparent to everyone well before when most of the programs now were released. Almost all the developers out there had to have known about them and were willing to take that risk or else they wouldnt have made their program.

moak the RIAA didnt "crackdown" on kazaa the IFPI did. Thats an different organization thats similar to the riaa but its not the riaa.

Here are some ideas I posted over at bearshare.net:

I think a blend of gnutella and (the idea behind) freenet would be best. Users would be able to share files on their harddrive, unlike freenet, and would also be required to have at least 100mb for encrypted files that would be shared. To any host searching/downloading they would be unable to tell if the file was one that was encypted and the user was unaware was even on the drive or one that the user was sharing. All network traffic should be encrypted. When encrypted/mirrored files are stored there would also be a separate file the user would have with the file name, meta data, and key. This would be searchable. So clients would also be creating lists of available files, meta data and keys for searches.

Some fraction of uploads should be rerouted. All of this would make it impossible for anyone to every say that a particular person was sharing a particular file.

Please see the following discussions for more:

http://bearshare.net/forum/showthread.php?threadid=4266

http://bearshare.net/forum/showthread.php?threadid=4938

Probably because it can't be 'shut down'.

Gnutella is not a product but an open protocol. If I remember correctly, FastTrack was a closed set of tightly written API's controlled by one company and licensed out to others - hence the ability for the enforcement community to zero in on it.

The fact that XoloX have announced that it has now effectively closed it's doors possibly means that they have been advised by their legal team that, being Danish, they may be targeted next, and so rather than avoid a very costly legal showdown which they probably can ill afford, they have decided to shut up shop and call it a day.

Who knows what the effect of this might be? Who knows if other companies with Gnutella clients will shrug their collective shoulders and say 'there by the grace of God go I' and carry on regardless, feeling that since they are based in the US that they don't have much to worry about. Equally though a move such as XoloX's has the potential to send shock waves throughout the community. If other clients decide to go away then the protocol will be weakened by a lack of supported software.

Rachel

Hi Sephiroth,
thanks for answering... I see we have a completly different point of view. I will try to show my point, which does not mean I want to convince you, really! I did spent some time to finish this posting (my english is still bad - thx Babelfish).

A disclaimer is not pointless in many countries, it will protect me from local lawsuits, for example if I live in sweden and a application has a disclaimer that forbids illegal use, but provides a legal use, you are not resposible for misuse. In some countries it might be necessary to add some best-use-reminder... e.g. you have to tell north american people not to dry a cat in the microwave or that fresh coffee is hot, if you don't you'll loose millions. So it might be tricky/difficult to find a good _local_ disclaimer and it might be necesarry to remind users to share only legal files... plz ask a local lawyer.

Ideas like encryption would fuel a fire for a lawsuit? How did you come to this conclusion? It makes no difference if your program is less or more secure. In my humble opinion RIAA (or whoever is the executive) will attack the weakest system and the most "attractive" threat in their eyes. We had a similar discussion about adding metadata to Gnutella... it could attract RIAA, in both cases I see no connection or a higher threat. My Counterthesis: If a p2p system is very strong it will be harder to attack... take a look on Freenet: strong encryption + totaly anonymous content + highly decentral, I see no lawsuits against them yet. Freenet might be the last pawn standing.... or FreeTella?

You ask why Gnutella hasn't shutdown? It wasn't the weakest and it wasn't the most attractive one. They take the centralized first (Napster), take the partly centralized next (FastTrack, eDonkey?), then the unprotected decentralized (Gnutella, Swarmcast, MojoNation), then who's left (Guerillia, Freenet). I think Gnutella is in risk now.

Yeah man, that's what I'm telling.... Gnutella told to be safe against a bunch of lawyers (Gnutelliums). Now things might have changed?! RIAA does not need to attack every single user... they can try to knock out the developers. I think it's threat to every Gnutella developer or P2P company. XoloX would have been the first target because it is the most famous Gnutella client + the dutch court has allready shown it has no technical understanding (they didn't care if Kazaa is decentral/central or proprietary/open protocoll). I can understand that the dutch XoloX team discontinued XoloX.
Sure we have many different clients still, a highly decentralized network and a open protocoll... I wouldn't feel safe as developer of a gnutella client these days.
Damn I hope you're right and Gnutella community is strong! My intention is to help Gnutella and analyze what's going on.

Right, actually it was Buma/Stemra. An association that represents Dutch composers, songwriters and music publishers. The IFPI (The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) is a organisation representing the international recording industry... and brought up the case... which is just another friend/synonym for NMPA or RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America) = the "pushing force behind".

Greets and good night, Moak

PS: I like the ideas of "FreeTella" (2 postings above) very much! Cool ideas, thx for the links, Unregistered!

I didnt say a disclaimer idea itself was pointless i said making one up was since the indivdual programs do it allready for their program. . Its not really a new idea and its allready in place. Many of the disclaimers posted here had alot of effort in them which is nice to people taking an interest in improving gnutella but its allready in place.

Metadata can be added to gnutella without the problem of a lawsuit if it provides metadata on everything and not on just mp3 or just movie files and etc. Again lets look at fasttrack they had a "secure" network and in the end did that help them ward off the riaa and others like it? No.

What security plan can be added to gnutella which the riaa wont just go get the source of an open-source program which has it, modified it and go on their way? There isnt one. The best plan for gnutella like i said before would be to developer alternative uses other than just file sharing and to improve the network to be able to handle that and support millions of users.

Moak i dont think you really understand gnutella from other networks. Even if the RIAA shuts down a gnutella program all that really does is stop development that program will still be on the network and people will still continue to use it. What if the source was released then that program would mutate into new programs/verisons. In the end it wouldnt accomplish anything. People would still be trading music files, the riaa would be hated more, and there will more programs popping up.

And whats this freenet. Freenet is really before its time and it has its weaknesses also. Take for instance to download off freenet you have to search a key index. These key indexes are targets they can be filtered, they can be shut down. Freenet isnt invincible as many people believe. I get their idea which was that there will be too many file indexes to shut them all down but right now there arent that many.

The RIAA has always gone after the largest, most popular program not the weakest. If they went after the weakest ones then all the very little programs with very little user bases would have been sued and shut down.

True! That's what I ment with they take the weakest and most attractive. So this will deny your thesis, that any kind of protection will endanger Gnutella.
I wonder that you do not believe in Freenet ideas. However the "Freetella" ideas describe more guerillia countermeassures like rerouting of small parts of traffic (would be possible with swarming, okay I repeat my self, sorry) and more ideas could be envolved.... think positive/constructive.

Nice and friendly today? But you brought up a not so far mentioned point! Mutated Gnutella programs/verisons, be honest: This means Gnutella must not only be a open protocoll, the client must be open source too and the main developers must be strongly protected agains lawsuits. So this also means a new kind of thinking inside Gnutella... open source and more cooperative behaviour... awesome!!!.... since months I'm looking forward to that day (what about Vinnie?).
In open source servants I see indeed one of the _best_ strength of Gnutella (bye bye proprietary clients)... thx for mentioning it!
In that context I hope the developers community finds an agreement about anti freeloading - or together with more upcoming multisegmented download servants Gnutella will kill itself IMHO.

When a file can be downloaded, it is imho not illegal to have data somewhere where it can be downloaded from. It is illegal to download when you do not have the right.

When You have music available, that you bought, and you use the net to download it somewhere else, to listen to, I do expect that to be fair use.

When somebody is charged with illegal actions, it must be proven to be illegal. Listening to your music on a different location can hardly be called illegal. The proof of illegality is in your own mouth and/or for organisations to prove..

Not every program on gnutella has to be open source. The protocol has to but not the programs. Commerical program are a major part of gnutella, provide the best programs, the best improvments and most importantly competition between the programs.

With open source programs your not going to get the best people working on gnutella for nothing. And the people who do arent going to work on gnutella full time. There wont be any real competition because theres no incentive to be the best program. No competition means that the user will have less options and less features.

Plus a open-scource network wouldnt be able to compete with other comerical networks for the same reasons. The 100% open source program idea is a pipedream. Having some open source programs are important but all of them dont have to be. If all of the programs on gnutella went open source then i think gnutella will either die or fall so far back in competition with other networks that it will lose a ton of users that it wouldnt be worth using anymore.