IS Gnotella Going To End Up The Same Way Napster is Going?
 

Can Gnotella get into lawsuits like Napster? What exactly do you have to free yourselves from the same thing that made Naspter be about to be shut down?

Probably not. But who knows when they have many $s for lawyers to use the law to remove or block these services.

Your client uses the gnutella protocol to access files. Because this network is distributed its much harder for the RIAA to drag your client into the courts. Your software allow you to share files for any reason. It should never be against the law to share a file.

It is currently illegal to share copyright material, so if this can be shown to have occured, you may be arrested for "criminal" activity.

A large group of software developers would like to see a fully open and free information system distrubuted across the net with pseudynoumity and permanancy. This software is in development and promises to deliver much for the individual. Trust others to develop software that does provide true freedom of information.

CORRECTION: FWIW, copyright infringement IS NOT a "criminal activity", but a tort which subjects one to civil penalties such as fines, injunctions, etc.

Large copyright infringements become criminal.

Re: IS Gnotella Going To End Up The Same Way Napster is Going?
 

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The RIAA may decide to "order" ISPs to block the most popular Gnutella port, 6346. The RIAA, without legal permission, can not do this. If your ISP submitted to RIAA, I'd trash it and get another one. If this blocking is widespread, we may have move to another port, preferably one that is in use by another program, so blocking it would PO the users of the program, without too much non-Gnutella traffic. A good one would be the one that Aim uses, I think 2938, I'm not sure.

Kirby

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nope, they can't
 

i don't think they can block p2p activities - at least not on the long run. if they get isps to block the port: so what? the next client versions will be tunneling through port 80 then. take a look at groove http://www.groove.net (it's the new tool from the creator of lotus). it's usually using xml-transfers on some ports but auto-determins if these are blocked and goes down to http-tunneling if needed. same technology could surely be used also for gnutella. also take a look at the freenet project where you don't even know the files you are sharing on your machine.

there will always be a way. besides, most of us use files got from here to preview music or whatever. using gnutella doesn't mean you don't buy anything anymore, right?

about laws: in america they got through with the trial. in europe things look different. according to current laws it is not illegal to share copyrighted material for personal use. you are e.g. allowed to copy a tape to a friend. they are still on the way to position to this topic, but one cannot say this is necessarily an illegal activity.

and: if they are going to start trials, they need to start them against single users. it is unlikely that they will get providers to restrict services in general (and it wouldn't help). this also means they need a looooot of $s to investigate the different laws in different countries and then start trials with unknown outcome.

on the long-term they do not see a chance.