Would You Support Non-Infringing use of P2P?


Although I must reluctantly agree with those in the industry on the fact that peer to peer technology is primarily used by music, movie and software pirates. I must however, disagree with them on the fact that

a) "They" cannot speak for what others may want to use peer to peer technology for.

b) With the Internet being as big as it is and growing everyday it's very difficult to reach people without paying a pay-per-search search engine to list your offerings for consumption by the masses

c) We have distributed over 3.7 million non-infringing files on various file sharing
networks. So there is some interest in non-infringing content. We push out about nine gigabytes of data per day to the Gnutella community. This is all non-infringing content.

d) Novice users have a difficult time finding free content on the network. How many times have you seen sites that promote the idea of "free downloads" for software that is really shareware which means limited use.

Personally, I've argued that the record, movie and software companies have a legal right to do what they are doing and if you're sharing content which infringes on someone's copyright you should not expect a peer to peer service to provide protection for you. (see:http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...gal+Aspects+of) In addition to this being virtually impossible, if anyone was able to achieve it that is a) A user base that reaches critical mass and b) some way of providing security and privacy to the user's that service would be in danger of being shut down due to the fact they (the creators of such system ) would probably have the ability to monitor or control what happens within the network.

The reason the public at large does not use peer to peer technology probably has more to due with the fact that basically the technology has receive such negative coverage in the media. Another thing that leads to this gross misconception is the idea that the concept of file sharing in and of itself is illegal, which has been ruled in a court of law to not be true. I personally got involved with the filesharing community when this it was the prevailing strategy.

The record companies have finally come to their senses and started doing what they should have done in the first place and that is, go after the individual users who are infringing on the copyrights of others. this will have two primary effects on the file sharing community at large and they are:

a) a serious reduction in the amount of infringing content- this will unfortunately lead to a decrease in user population because those who use the service to pirate software and music will not be able to do so any more.

b) cleared the way for content publishers to use the networks as they were intended to be used and that is as a distribution platform for non-infringing media.

So the question is to the average P2P user is would you support non-infringing use?

If so, how? If not why?

I'm interested in all opinions.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com