Can anyone tell me what the legal differences are between the original Napster [hand over heart] and the Limewire/Gnutella system? It all seems so familar--yes?

Note to self--"What can be seen can be hit, and what can be hit can be killed."

The napster network could be controlled by controlling the servers, gnutella can not be controlled since it's pure p2p without any need for central authorities (at least in theory).

the decentralised nature of p2p systems makes legal pursuit of gnutella difficult (if not impossable) but thats not to say that law enforcement authorities of one sort or another can't make life difficult and ISPs can work hand in hand to limit use of the network - here in Australia 'Telstra' has a monopoly on connections and their predatory charging policies make using p2p expensive - I'm forced to use a dialup service through a smaller provider because by doing that I can get unlimited time/unlimited downloads - if I convert to a cable connection with telstra I pay for every single data transfer (i.e. every single ping/pong is counted, costed and charged so that it just becomes unviable) - in terms of law enforcement threats, its not difficult to imagine the argument being advanced that p2p systems are deeply implicated in the distribution of child pornography and copyright offences and so ISPs should be required to monitor heavy gnutella users and disconnect them if they want to retain the rights to operate - if you then combine predatory pricing, ISP monitoring with legalised spoofing/spamming by RIAA etc you end up with a gnutella that will only serve a client base prepared to put in the time to work out how to circumvent the various impediments placed in the way of p2p - 'casual' users will be discouraged in droves and this might well be enough for those primarily interested in preserving the profit margins of 'old' business

Cheers, bad_vlad

bad ... what are the international business laws like in Australia ... I'd like to invest in a startup there now that you've posted that 411 .... start my own damn cable company.

yeah... thought about that myself on accasion - its complicated though - Telstra own all the cables and then sell access to other cable companies in competition with them like 'Primus' - (who incidently alerted me on their home page to LW when I signed up with them) - anywayz - the end result is its very difficult to set up a service independent of getting into bed (at a cost of course) with Telstra

Telstra is 51 percent owned by the govt - the argument being that without public ownership the company wouldn't service folks outside the major cities (remember Australia is roughly the same size as the US but 80 percent of the population is on the eastern coastal strip - like having most americans crammed into the californian coastline)

this argument is powerful - providing satelite connections in the outback is never ever going to be cost effective if you're compelled by law to charge users the same 40 cents per call you charge city users (as you should) - so - on the one hand I support public ownership but on the other hand some genuine competition would mean that they'd have to start offering services people actually want rather than their current policy of begrudgingly offering half arsed services at prohibitive costs that nevertheless generate massive profits for themselves because of their monopoly

Now - just at the moment there's a huge debate happening here about selling off the govts 51 percent of Telstra in the interest of stimulating real competition - if - the sale goes ahead, and if as part of the sale there's a partial break-up of Telstra - then - whoever gets in first in offering competitive broadband connections could make a killing (Australians love their internet and almost universally loath Telstra)

The cable coverage in Australia is very good and there's massive amounts of totally unused bandwidth available so if the Telstra stranglehold is removed it should prove possible for someone to offer connections that would be cheap and so popular - also need to remember Australians just love the underdog so anyone who positioned themselves as taking on Telstra in a sort of David/Goliath struggle would be everyones favourite from day one

ah - sweet dreams - sigh

bad_vlad