Sorry but I couldn't let this pass.

Here you are, advocating a program which enables the copying (yes copying - not sharing, you are keeping your own copy) of copyrighted material, original purchased by someone else.. and you're calling others freeloaders!!

WAKE UP!! Despite this supposed religion of uneducated morons who believe that all musicians / software makers / movie makers are evil, money hungry, we rule the world, warlords and don't deserve to be protected by copyright laws.. YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW.. end of story!! The reason Napster has failed is because IT IS BREAKING THE LAW!!

And please don't state that you are not copying any 'copyright' material. Why are you all so keen to push for a completely decentralised, anonymous client.. BECAUSE YOU KNOW YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW!!

Look, I use it as well and admit to the fact, but I'm not overcome by some stupid dillusional belief that we all deserve to have this music / movies / software for free.. I admit it.. I am breaking the law!!

GET WITH IT BUD - YOU'RE A HYPOCRITE!

Its kind of strange, after those articles came out and I tried gnutella, there were very few people downloading from me (it was shocking, what happened to the freeloaders!!?!?!), by now people probably came back but as downloaders rather then uploaders. It almost seemed like the network was slow for a moment there.

Decentralized and anonymous? Things wont get better until we no longer have to be anonymous, or hide our identity. Hopefully the future will be about reputation, because that is something that is more important to artists musicians programmers writers and others in the creative arts. This way artists can sell their work through gnutella and gain a reputation and then have redistributors (in the form of gnutella clients) bidding to redistribute and sell their work because of its popularity or need.

No one here in my honest opinion is arguing that by distributing copyright material that they are not breaking the law, no reason to call people names. No one said laws are perfect either, or are not corrupted, so lets not leave that to assumption.

Copyright law as used to control the distribution of information is wrong, no matter what that information be, it is no better then preventing someone from giving a speech about corrupt politicians, or about problems in politics. Look at where this law has landed people like Dimitry whom to this day is still sitting in jail, for being an owner of a software company in russia and having written the software that decrypts Adobes format. What happens he comes to the USA gives a speech about their encryption and he gets arrested by the FBI, all in the name of copyright. The australian government had someone remove their book about government corruption from the book shelves that showed evidence in the form of government documents that were copyright by the government, and the government had those books removed because he violated their copyrights. Their laws in that reguard are more strict then ours, but ours is heading that direction.

We know that bearshare has the largest users base, and limewire arguebly a close second. If freeloaders are evenly distributed amongst the clients, then of course BearShare would have the most freeloaders, is that bearshares fault? No, you cant blame bearshare so much for that. Its possible for bearshare to contribute to freeloaders, but its possible for any client to do this, in what way would bearshare do to facilitate freeloaders more so then other clients?

Caused,

I completely agree that copyright law shouldn't be used to restrict the distibution of valid and useable INFORMATION. Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with what we are discussing.

Copyright Law is primarily aimed at prohibiting the illegal copying and reproduction of PRODUCTS AND SERVICES. Nothing to do with information. Music, Videos, Films, Software etc are all products - created, developed, and distirbuted by certain entities who have every right to defend their product or service.

If it weren't for trademark, copyright, or patent laws, what incentive would there be to produce them? If entities couldn't profit from them, why produce them??

Sure some musicians may not care about making money from their releases, but lets be honest, 99% of them do. They do it for a living for crying out loud. What right so we have to reduce their income.. NONE!

As much as software companies are seen to be 'evil, profit making, animals' theres no way we would have the technology produced by them today if these laws didnt exist. There would be no incentive to produce them.

The point I was trying to make that comments such as this 'freeloaders' nonsense is incredibly hypocritical as almost everyone using this software are obtaining copyrighted material, making them FREELOADERS!!

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt!!! WRONG!

Say it's 2010 and every song is distributed via gnutella V30.5

Distribution is free. Now every punk band out there is making music and spewing it everywhere hoping to become famous.

No problem, you filter the crap and only get the elevator music that you like so much.

Now you find out your favorite elevator band is in town, so you go pay $2,500 for scalped tickets and the song writers get big bucks. They have to work for their money, darn it all!

Record corporations no longer exist and thus the black hole that sucks all the artists money are no more.

Its a nice world in 2010.

Oh, did I mention the IRS is gone and you no longer need a inventory number (SS#) to live your life?

umm, yeah... right.

great argument there.

really valid point

Not quite. First off, its not illegal to reproduce or copy products and services. Its illegal to redistribute copies or reproductions. As a matter of a fact the "fair use" is a big part of copyright law, that is we are allowed to make copies and reproductions of copyright material that we own, but we are just not allowed to redistribute them.

Next software programs are instructions, the same as if I wrote a cook book with instructions in how to make food, or a book on instructions on how to do mathematics to solve problems, the diffrence is that the computer is the one who following these instructions. Instructions are information on how to do things.

Music Videos and Film (herein after entertainment), are indirect ways of communicating ways of thinking (instructions in how to think about things). Final Fantasy the movie for example, conveys many ideas, one of the main ones was that of not over reacting, because the general of that movie had lost his family and was so angry he wanted to destroy the invaders and not listening to reason that his actions would result in the destruction of the earth. Many movies try to express these things. Music also is used to express things like emotions and messages, like anger or depression (rock, alternative), or not to screw with people (rap), classic music is most notible for the emotion it portrays.

There is one part of copyrights that holds stronger then the rest and that of visual uniqueness, like the copyright of Mickey Mouse for example. But then again, visual appearance is also an expression, you can make a character look cute and innocent, or you can make them look ugly and mean, in that way they are indirectly controlling these expressions via copyright, the reality of the matter is a mouse is a mouse, there is diffrent ways to draw/distort a mouse but eventually they look similar or dont look like a mouse at all.

The expresses of ideas, instructions, emotional state and many others, are all the expression of information. So copyright law may be limited to particular kinds of information but that does not mean it is not to do with information.

Admittedly words like "information" were not necesarily the basis of copyright law, but neither were words like products and services, you will find terminology like "good will" to be used often, which is to do with the fact that the author allowed their work to be "public" but to have their work protected from preditory printing presses that will reproduce and redistribute their work with out payment.

The idea is almost Darwinistic, in that the introduction of a foriegn animal (printing presses in the case of copyright) into an ecosystem will cause many species to die and the over all ecosystem will have to rebalance itself, except rather then let these new animals go wild and alter the ecosystem they decided to preserve the other animals by controling the foreign ones. But as the captilist say, the market will work itself out, that is if they let the problem alter the land scape eventually it will rebalance itself and a solution to the problems will arise. But again since copyright law only worked to surpress the problem (not get rid of it), its only coming to pass that eventually the land scape will change. Just because progress doesnt benefit you, doesnt mean its going to stop because you slap a few laws down, again surpression just means its going to happen in the back ground. Gnutella is just that, its the thing that was surpressed and now has become so easy to do and there is no feeling of guilt or remorse in copying and distributing something, definetly the feeling is not the same as breaking into someones house and stealing from them, and you will never see people treat it as such as some people would like.

That is just the thing, there is other ways in which to earn money (contrasted to the word "profit") for your work besides having to call out the national guard to control peoples distribution of information. The biggest advantage that individuals will have, will be first releases. If you are a reputable content creator, then people could bid to distribute your work. When they get your work they in turn sell it to others who will redistribute it, and on and on again until the work has been distributed to all who want it and the price they are willing to pay for it. The competition prevents corruption (like that from media giants), because if someone gets to greedy, they will find that no one wants to work with them, both the content creators and the consumers.

This can be done through networks like Gnutella, if you add a pay to download feature, mixed with bidding. A reputible writer could create a book, and before releasing the book, have his computer inform other computers via a gnutella like network, that he has a new book and looking for distributors. Many of these systems will know that he produces a great seller, that is if were one of the first to get a hold of his work, they could sell it to several people through the gnutella like network. There fore many of these systems will bid to be amongst the first wave to download his book, and willing to pay high prices. The author doesnt have to choose one system to redistribute his work, he can take the top bidders and based upon his bandwidth send it to them, after they download his work, they in turn start informing other systems that they now have his work for sale, those systems will also be able to inform consumer systems. Eventually what happens is that the people who are willing to pay the highest prices will be the first to get a hold of the book, the people who dont want to be a high price will be among the last to recieve his book, those who want it for free will probably be the ones waiting the longest and they may have to put up with advertisement getting it for free and all.

Yeah, but lets not leave it unsaid that they also dont have a right to control my mind, or extensions to my mind like my hard drive, or the right to control the conversations/exchanges of information I have with other people whether its through the computer or not.

The problem is, you dont know that. That is called speculation. Even Thomas Jefferson said that there is no evidence that copyrights would in fact help the advancements of the arts and sciences. There was no evidence then there is no evidence now. If you look at the past, there was no incentive for many of the things that people did, as a matter of a fact most incentives were direct by usage, not through public manipulation.

Yes but under that context, all human beings are FREELOADERS!! Think about it, what have we ever done for the sun? What have we ever done for the rain? What have we ever done for the oil and minerals we extract from the earth? We are getting these thigns for free from nature, and we dont do anything in return...

Oops, my mistake, I think the visual uniqueness part, is about trade mark not copyright.

YOU'RE A SHEEP!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT ARTISTS, PIRATE MP3S!!! 90% OF A CD GOES TO THE COMPANY THAT MADE IT!!! ONLY $1 OR SO ACTUALLY REACHES THE ARTIST

SHEEP? What the hell are you talking about, "Help artists, Pirate MP3s"??????

Are you a complete idiot? You say 1 dollar off of every album goes to the ar****... If everyone listens to you and pirates MP3s, THEY WILL HAVE NO MONEY AT ALL, because that 1$, you took it from them by pirating!

(The following uses completely random numbers)
Say that on the gnutella network (or any other sharing software), one song from an artist gets downloaded, say, 20 times a day.
If each person that downloaded the song bought the album instead, that would be $20 a day for that artist! Going along the same line, that's $140 a week, $600 a month! If you suppose that the artist has at least 5 popular songs that are downloaded to the same amount, you can easily calculate $100 a day, $700 a week, or $3000 a month!!!!!!!

Now, place yourself in the artist's mind. You have 3 albums out, of which 5 songs are popular. You go on BearShare or KaZaA or WinMX, and look for your songs. You notice that you get around 100 hits for each song, on each different network... Here's your choices. You:

a) Get very excited at the fact that there are thousands of instances of illegal reproductions of your work on the internet, meaning you are very popular (in the illegal world)

or

b) You get very ****ed off because EACH INSTANCE OF THAT SONG ON THE NET MEANS $1 LESS IN YOUR POCKET, thus you are LOOSING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!

So, which is it going to be, "sheep" (that's the unregistered poster just before me), are you seriousely going to be happy you are loosing thousands of dollars???? I don't think so.

I personnaly DO download mp3s, and share them also. But when I have the money, I don't go buying blank CD's and making copies of albums when I like them. I BUY THE REAL CD. I have NO album copies, except those of foreign albums, like japanese video game music.

That was just my 2 cents.
Best Regards,
Sir Lucas S Daniels
ericsl@softhome.net