A Moral Dilemma: Open letter to Gnutella community

[Ahri]

I guess I have to congratulate you on removing the propagation blocking, well done.

In an eirther post I siad, "Your filter has one major problem, and this is why you are getting no support from the Gnutella community." That is not entirely true. There are still at least two kinds of people who will still hate you for the filter.

1) People who think this technology will eventualy lead to total blockage of porn, music, programs and anything else copyrighted from being downloaded over Gnutella. I don't see how this is possible and no one has to worry about it. However, ignorance exists.

2) People who use Gnutella at the office or at school. This people have a valid complaint, but I do believe computer owners have the right to ban Gnutella on their computers if they want to. Offices and schools will probably use the filter to to completly block all downloads. I know schools like mine will do this for sure cause they're pricks. I can't even use FTP at school. They make it impossible to do anything other than HTTP, even though there are plenty of free computers and and we have nothing else to do. We aren't even allowed to chat or get e-mail on school computers anymore. Never the less, you can't argue with an office' or school's right to control their own computers. But people still aren't going to like it.

Whether or not this is enough for Gnutella companies to oppose this filter and not help, I guess we have to wait and see.

[podonne]

I should like to point out, although I'm sure the point has already been raised, any attempt to filter content can only be applied on a per client basis, not on a network wide basis. Gnutella being a protocol, could only be stopped by filtering the packets as they pass through a router or other device, which is unlikly. If one has a client that does not feature filtering, filters are useless. This is an issue that MUST, by definition, be self regulated. And although it is my personal view, i do not see any push for this to happen.

Although I do believe that the original post was an advertisment.

[innoval]

Originally posted by podonne
I should like to point out, although I'm sure the point has already been raised, any attempt to filter content can only be applied on a per client basis, not on a network wide basis. Gnutella being a protocol, could only be stopped by filtering the packets as they pass through a router or other device, which is unlikly. If one has a client that does not feature filtering, filters are useless.

Gosh, it is working very well on our test machines. It does in fact filter out query responses that I choose to filter out and works nicely with BearShare, LimeWire, Gnucleus, Gnotella, etc. It in no way impacts the network since we opted to not block propagation.

In fact, I'm not using it so much to filter out pornography as to get rid of a lot of lengthy garbage file names (descriptions) loaded with spam keywords. I like that.

Although I do believe that the original post was an advertisment.

I would be very stupid to advertise here unless my purpose was to advertise for an angry mob to throw bricks at me. What did happen is that we received a significant amount information, suggestions, etc. that showed up weaknesses in our own thinking. In a sense, yes, we advertised for expert opinion and got it.

Dan

[podonne]

silly person.

My point was never that your silly filter wouldn't work, frankly I dont care. I know you can filter a single machine. My point was that you cannot filter the network itself. Your original post stated that some government official was wanting to stop gnutella and they were calling you about it. My point was that in order to filter the network, you have to install filters on EVERY server(servant, servlet, whatever). Which a government agency cannot do.

On another of your silly points, It is unreasonable to expect that a government agency will pass legislation providing penalties for what ISPs allow through their networks. How could this possibly happen? How could an ISP know what a jpeg named 1.jpg was a picture of? How about 1.mpg? A text search you say? what if it blocked ANTI-CHILD-PORN.mpg.

In conclusion, let me congratulate you on developing a fine product. I'm sure it works beautifully and you must be very proud. I would recomend that every parent who doesn't want their children exposed to pornography go out and download it right away. But to think that a government agency would adopt your product to somehow shut down the network, well, that is silly.

[innoval]

I hope I never suggested that the "government" wanted to filter the network. If you get that impression then I did not make myself clear. There is a congressional report that raises serious concerns about pornography in the world of P2P. There will be some investigation. They will look for places to target including the Gnutella companies and the ISPs. I agree that at a technology level it is difficult if not impossible. But legislative bodies and prosecutorial agencies can still muck up the water and apply a lot of pressure.

What I suggested was that the availability of filter tools and a proper industry attitude/posture could help stave off action. I'm not arguing that new laws would work or even be enacted. But the "heat" could send some running for cover.

Dan

[podonne]

Dan,

I apologize for my reaction, I can be venehment at times.

Allow me to consider a few points overnight.

I still stand by my statment that the ISPs could never be held accountable.

By the way, how does your filter work? is it a text-keyword matcher? if it was looking for the phrase "child porn" would it catch "c-h-i-l-d-p-o-r-n.jpg" or "norpdlihc.jpg" (backwards)?

just curious.
-Phil

[HydroPhonic]

Innoval has posted to other forums (notably BearShare's as "rifilter") with the same initial post... It is in that forum some of the heaviest brick were thrown at him (not to mention my pumpkin launcher! regarding propagation filtering). As such, I've so far refrained from posting here, as no man deserved having MY pumkins launched at him in more than one place! Many of the changes in Innoval's approach to filtering were probably strongly affected by posts in that forum that you guys haven't read...

I'm interjecting here now to object to some of the silly ideas I see bouncing around here.

Innoval as a buisness seeking profit. He cetainly wouldn't have to do this and show up to these forums to make money; Innoval makes whatever progras buisnesses want. However, there is a unique opportunity for Innoval to gain a good image and a position on the forefront of P2P tolerance and filtering that is a good idea to take advantage of. (Now that I believe he will do this without harming GnutellaNet, I don't think this is a bad idea at all )

Originally posted by Ahri
There are still at least two kinds of people who will still hate you for the filter.

1) People who think this technology will eventualy lead to total blockage of porn, music, programs and anything else copyrighted from being downloaded over Gnutella. I don't see how this is possible and no one has to worry about it. However, ignorance exists.

2) People who use Gnutella at the office or at school. This people have a valid complaint, but I do believe computer owners have the right to ban Gnutella on their computers if they want to.

Neither of these groups has any reason to hate the latest incarnation of RIfilter. Group (1) is typically contains no ignoramuses, and if it did, said bozos would have no efficacy. Group (2), reserving the option to block Gnutella completely at their leisure, would have no objection to this filter either.

Originally posted by podonne
I still stand by my statment that the ISPs could never be held accountable.

By the way, how does your filter work? is it a text-keyword matcher? if it was looking for the phrase "child porn" would it catch "c-h-i-l-d-p-o-r-n.jpg" or "norpdlihc.jpg" (backwards)?

Firstly, I agree (and have ranted elsewhere) that ISP can/will not be made liable...

As for the filter, assume it is effective. Be assured that if it needs something added to it, Innoval will update that part of the program immediately. No need to worry about the effectiveness of the filtering algotrithm chosen, I simply assume that it will eventually be made near-perfect. That leaves me free to concern myself with its interjection into P2P networks.

[RaaF]

Originally posted by innoval
InnoVal Systems Solutions, Inc. will modify its original filter design so that it does not block the propagation of queries or query responses that are being passed through the computer on their way to other computers on the Gnutella network.

Now I have no problems with your filter ........

Yeah, both of those groups i talked about do exist, but like i said, people have the right to deciede what goes on their computer.

I still don't see what the big deal is with dirty words in the monitor list. But if you guys still want to go through all that trouble, then by all means go ahead, just make sure the descriptors still get routed.

[Ahri]

that unregisted post is mine, i forgot to login