P2P Filesharing vs. The Web

The Importance of writes "The recent RIAA lawsuits have raised many questions and issues, but the focus has been on P2P filesharing. Before there was P2P, though, there was filesharing via webservers. There doesn't seem to be much complaint about the RIAA shutting down people who upload MP3s to their homepage. Why do many people seem to treat http filesharing different than P2P filesharing? LawMeme has one answer."

People dont share much anymore

people dont file share anymore.. for the most part they just leach. Thats why if I use networks like direct connect that force people to share. People still try and get around that though.. its kinda sad.

Re:People dont share much anymore

Yeah, imagine that. People don't want to be prosecuted.

it's more than that: people, once they understand the whole client/server model, get really slaved to that idea. they use their p2p app as a client used to retreive stuff from servers.

this is why there hasn't been much outrage over the whole ftp/web sharing prosecution. joe average looks at the servers as being different, more dedicated. the servers as the "pushers and pimps" the clients are just "casual users and johns".

at least that's how they see it.

Re:People dont share much anymore

People don't share because of the enormous constrains on upload bandwidth that broadband providers have made. My DSL line only has 256kbps up, with it only realistically transferring about 200kbps. Quite a bit better than dialup, but still pathetic when you're trying to transfer hundreds of megs of data.

As a prior post mentioned, prosecution is another problem. The RIAA is attempting to quench the problem at the source, which is definitely the easier way to go.

I'm not a big fan of neo-modus/direct connect, mainly because of DC++. It's made the sharing requirements for Direct Connect irrelevant. People get on as many networks as they want, and share 2-3 slots with about 15KB of upload between them all between about 10 different networks, making them effectively just leeches.

Plus the requirements for DC servers have gotten so bloated that they basically require some amount of spoofing to even get on. I haven't used DC in more than a year, and the last time I did, most servers were requiring you to share 30-50 gigs of media, bigger than many casual file sharers actual hard drive.

Re:People dont share much anymore

Also, restricting access to those with 50 gig share limits(I use hubs with 80 gig and higher limits) provides some sense of security to the major sharers. The people sharing on those hubs are the ones the RIAA wants to get, but they'll have a harder time if they need to have 50 gigs of share to connect to the server.

Right. Where would the RIAA come up with over 50 gigs of media content? It's not like they own all the music in the world right?

Re:People dont share much anymore

People don't share because of the RIAA/MPAA threats. Not legal threats - those are too new - but cease and decist letters.

Most major universities (mine is in that crowd) turn a blind eye to P2P traffic... until they get a C&D complaint. The policy here: the networking people immediately cut off the connection. They will not turn it back on until a student says the offending file has been removed (honor code is involved - very serious honor code). And, if it really was the student's fault - that is, the student can't prove the letter was a mistake - it's a $80 reconnect fee.

The university I'm at has ~15,000 students. They get several C&D letters a week - many are repeat offenders. Just about everyone I know (or rather, who understands how) cuts off their upload and leeches in order to avoid C&D-type problems.

Get a single C&D letter, be out $80... whoops, there went the month's beer money. College students ain't stupid, not when it comes to getting that beer...

Maybe.

Maybe because they got the ISP's to take down the servers, because they were hosted by the ISP's. P2P OTH isn't exactly an ISP hosted server, it's something differen't.

Are you kidding?

Of course they are going after websites that are distributing their music. Just exactly how many sites have you found recently that contain working links to copyrighted MP3s? RIAA's recent lawsuits have nothing to do with P2P applications in particular. They are going after people who are distributing their music. Distributing music with today's P2P music applications is not much different than creating a webpage and registering it with a search engine.

Re:Are you kidding?

I point everyone to NameProtect [nameprotect.com]. Their NPBot [nameprotect.com] hit my page a couple of times before I told it not to. Basically, it scours your website and looks for songs. It then collects the links (not the music) and tries to get a bounty from the artist (?) by showing you that someone is sharing their music. It's other business model is that it can be contracted to find your music on websites.

from robots.txt [robotstxt.org]:

User-agent: NPBot
Disallow: /

hmmm

P2P is more popular than web-based sharing, so the RIAA can find more targets.

Old Fight

There has been outcry over sites being shutdown for mp3 serving, it's was just a small shortlived outcry that was solved by Napster. If p2p is ever succesfully shutdown they will be an instant rush back to http mp3 trading.

We need to use P2P

We need to use P2P as the official file distribution system for Linux. I think we should replace the whole ftp web based style with a clicknrun gui style P2P system for file distribution.

Um

Because the majority of people use P2P software, so therefore that is what the RIAA targets.

Simple. It's easier.

The Novice user does not understand how or what "an FTP" is and does NOT know how to "send/upload" files to his "website" let alone create a page to link them.

As far as the person getting them. some may not even know how to get it to "stop playing in the browser" and actually save it to the desktop using right click (option+click if 1 button)

Not to mention the fact that when you type in "Britney Spears MP3's" in google you get anything BUT Britney MP3's... let's be reasonable here.

Even the most basic user can figure out how to install a program (in windows everything is "I agree" - "Next" - "Finish" - "Done") and type in a song name and grab it or share it.

Re:Simple. It's easier.

USENET a) isn't free b) has a crapy signal to noise ratio, except maybe if you are looking for porn.

Well.. a) actually it is. but because of b) you pretty much have to pay for it to actually get anything more complex downloaded. At the current volume it is pretty much impossible for anyone to capture the whole feed without substantial investments and that costs money. There are lots of free servers and even as close as 5-6 years ago most of them were carrying the binary groups too but it just doesn't make sense anymore.

Re:Simple. It's easier.

>> (in windows everything is "I agree" - "Next" - "Finish" - "Done")

Windows: "We have the right to stick it to you anytime we feel like it. You will, in fact, take this lying down."

User: "I agree"

Windows: "By continuing this install routine, you agree to forefit all rights to your computer, worldly assets, and your wife."

User: "Next"

Windows: "Remember, Thou Shalt Not Worship Any OS But I. Are you still trying to fight this, or are you finished?"

User: "Finish"

Windows: "Thank you for installing. Your computer now has 5 new pieces of spyware. Your privacy is....

User: "Done".

Its easier

To share files via P2P programs like Kazaa than it is to say build a webpage, upload it and maintain it.

Also Webpage sharing is also harder to do say anonymously or at least with that feeling. Given you need a credit card and least some sort of contact info it appears to many that Kazaa is safer.

and The final reason is ...... Its trendy to do it P2P style after all HTTP isnt nearly as sued as say Napster was.

OT- Does anyone know of a good Open Source Windows 32 Platform Firwall?

Err...

The reason is pretty simple.

People uploading stuff to webservers: takes a semi-technically inclined person to do it, webspace costs money, webspace is a lot more finite than hard drive space, doesn't get much traffic, doesn't get spread "virally".

P2P: Any Joe Schmoe can do it, it gets a LOT of traffic (millions of people on P2P networks, it's free, you can share as much as your HD can hold, due to the easy searches in P2P you get more traffic, files spread "virally" - one person can rip something and the next day hundreds can have it.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

No-one really defends the sharers

"There doesn't seem to be much complaint about the RIAA shutting down people who upload MP3s to their homepage." - these people are the sharers,the copyright violators. The outcry over P2P prosecutions are related to the loss of files to leech. Grabbing the files is not the problem, making them available is.

If all the leeches were using websites to grab their music then there would be an outcry, but they don't - they use P2P so that is where the focus is.

http

Of course running your own server has its advantages. However, most of the folks with their own servers are not the people that use the PTP services. The folks relying on PTP are often fairly unsophisticated computer users who are looking for the latest song for free and are unknowingly relying on a infrastructure to find their songs. They don't know how it works, they just click and the song comes through for free. Hosting your own server requires a little more work which the vast majority of people are not capable of performing. (Although Apple is lowering the requirements for hosting your own Apache server significantly. One click and you are live.)

Shades of grey...

Because an http server with files to download is more black and white. Either offering those files is illegal or not.

With a p2p network its much more shades of gray. Some people offer the latest Britney, some offer all stuff from IUMA, but most are in between.

Two reasons

Two reasons as to why more folks are hunting for MP3s on filesharing (and why these reasons have made it mainstream), hence RIAA's attention:

1. Easier to find files- download one app and do a search as opposed to having to hunt down different webpages for different files and all of the hassles included with that approach (dead links, 401s, etc).

2. More files available on filesharing (generally speaking).

Riaa doesn;t need to shut down webservers...

I post my MP3s on my personal webserver in a streaming Jukebox so I can listen to my rightfully licensed music at work. but Google got ahold of my collection and returns my site with certain searches. I then ended up on a few H4x0r5 WAREZ-MP3 lists. Needless to say, within a week of this "publicity" my bandwidth was shot to hell. The RIAA doesn't need to shut down those that put MP3s on servers. Other leeches will take care of that for them.

On a side not, I still get occasional mails from people that find a google listing and ask for access to a certain song. I can deal with that.

Re:Riaa doesn;t need to shut down webservers...

It's fairly easy to put a robots.txt file in your top level server tree to tell google to mind its own business. You could also password protect stuff.

hmmm... I wonder...

This is such a mystery, hmmmm... let me think about this for a while....

I think I got it!
I think it might have something to do with p2p being about 500 times more widespread as a way for mainstream folks to download music.
I'm a genius I know.

I don't think many non-geeks use anything but kaaza and the like.

The personal touch

I think Mr. Miller at Lawmeme has it right: filesharing is more personal. A user can watch people upload the files, and enjoy the feeling that others enjoy the same music as he does; he can see what other people are searching for (primarily pr0n from my own experience); he can add, modify, delete files on the fly - in short it's a much more personal experience to share files from your PC using P2P than it is to offer them up on a website. Particularly if the website, like most, is hosted by a computer that you don't directly control. Further P2P is new. It still has that "new car smell" about it. It's also easier for the average user to install some software, fire it up, and click-and-share away. Most users are probably intimidated by HTML - even if they don't have to generate any, the idea of it will drive people away. They have the feeling that creating websites is hard, and that it's something they cannot do. They can, however, share files. Pierre

Is this news?? And if you must do opinion, then

surely the real question is: How do we build a model so that new and established artists are funded by their fans _directly_, as opposed to through the middlemen/leeches/cartel operators that are the RIAA. Someone write an article on that please!

Re:Is this news?? And if you must do opinion, then

That model already exists: mp3.com allows artists to publish their works on their site and there are a number of payment models to choose from. Another model is for an artist to sign up with a smaller label and try to get sold on Apple's Music Store. When the Windows version hits the streets next month, there will be plenty of potential buyers.

more users

i think the "learning curve" for using apps like kazaa and naptser is much lower (and much more highly publicized) than regular downloads via http. and with more publicity comes (naturally) a larger number of users, and subsequently, a larger number of files being downloaded. the RIAA was probably able to deal with a small amount of "piracy" the same way a software company would be (since it's just the nature of the business). but once P2P gained international notoriety and everybody and their 12-year-old cousin got broadband, a cd burner, and kazaa, the number of files and instances of filesharing shot right past the "acceptable" level

mp3.com

The RIAA doesn't care about HTTP mp3 sharing?! Tell that to mp3.com!

Not practical unless you run the webserver

Unless you host your own webserver, initially uploading enough of your files to make your site useful to downloaders would take far too long and be far too costly in terms of bandwidth.

With a P2P application you make your entire library of files available to the network with practially no setup.

This makes HTTP sharing pretty useless to anyone who can't/won't run their own webserver (which, I imagine, covers a large proportion of current P2P users).

Hitting the target

P2P really helps narrow down responsibility for shareing. With http, you've got:

• The ISP
• The webhoster (customer of ISP)
• The sharer

ISPs have rights, and navigating through their rights [bitlaw.com] to find some wrongs isn't worth the fight. Go for the source and if you can't snuff it, try to limit it (like using scare tactics/lawsuits)...

Not the same attck at all.

"Why is there no outraged defense of http filesharing?"

As for why there hasn't been as much defense of HTTP filesharing, HTTP itself isn't under attack. The RIAA has been steadfast in trying to kill P2P networks altogether and haven't gone after Apache, Netscape or MS because there are big players involved with the server architecture who have extensive legal and market battles under their belts (MS especially). Napster was an easy target (small and inexperienced) and a great example to publicize the fight against piracy since it was starting to get media attention, much as the web itself did just a short couple of years before. This is in fact one of the arguments against the RIAA's actions mentioned over and over by P2P defenders.

I'm kind of amazed that the article's author missed this if he did any background research at all.

http is not as good of a filesharing medium

Most webhosting services expressly forbid you posting copyrighted work on your website in the tos. Plus the people with enough bandwidth to set up a server at home(dsl and cable users) are unable to do so because they still have dynamic ips and are often forbidden from creating a server by their isp. you could set up a home t1 line but that would be prohibitably expensive for the average person who operates a warez site and it would be easily traceable. That leaves only hosting services operating in areas unaffected by us copyright law and offshore data havens.

Cat and mouse

The protocol is beside the point. The evolution of file sharing has been largely a game of cat and mouse since its inception. The cat has not changed, but the mice have adapted and will likely continue to do so. If the cat suddenly gave up on mice and chased birds instead, HTTP would not be the technology of choice for file sharing, at least not for free. P2P with a central directory service is more efficient.

Watch out for legislation

One big problem is that as the RIAA and its Cthulonic brethren attempt to craft legislation to kill P2P, they are very like to come up with definitions of functionality that also encompass HTTP, FTP and other protocols.

After all, there's really very little functional difference between P2P and HTTP - it's a negotiation between two machines to provide data to each other. P2P is really just a client/server pair per machine.

My Mac is running both Apache and Safari - what would distinguish it functionally from a P2P client?

P2P & HTTP Replaced By B2P?

While P2P and HTTP may be excellent ways of file sharing, for better or for worse, the RIAA _will_ stop them. Right now they have attacked legally, which is leading P2P developers to make some advancements in the way of encryption, anonymity, etc. The RIAA seems to realize, now, that there really is no way to stop technology. We have already won.

Now they are taking the overused advice of "adopt a new business model", which seems to be services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store [apple.com] (Soon for Windows) [macrumors.com], BuyMusic.com [buymusic.com], Rhapsody [listen.com], and soon Roxio Napster 2.0 [napster.com].

The new RIAA attack plan is to offer B2P services. The problem? DRM. If I buy a CD from iTMS, for example, it may be $9.99. I would buy the same CD in store for $14.99. No, I'm NOT paying five bucks for the album art, professionally burned CD, etc. I'm paying for the right to do with it what I want. There's something about having "SOMETHING" in your hands. They can't take that away from you, like they can with digital music.

P2P for me is a way of sampling music before buying the CD. This will never be replaced by a $0.99 deal, since I like to download it, and listen to the song throughout the day. At work I listen to different music than at home. At night, different music from the day. Walking music is different from sittin' or driving music. Rhapsody fails here, so does iTMS... you can only sample certain portions, while in front of your computer. It's not the same.

Why P2P is better than HTTP? It's easier. More people use it, than HTTP was used for MP3 trading. Does it matter? No, B2P will overtake them both. There IS a large number of people who ONLY want digital music, that's why they turn to P2P. These people will turn to B2P once it becomes "mainstream."

For the most part the RIAA doesn't have to do legal battles any more (though it is a nice source of income), they can attack it by offering new online services, just as EVERYONE has been saying for years. Me, I'll stick to brick and mortar, and P2P though.

Where are those websites with illegal MP3?

The article suggest that there are many websites infringing on copyright by providing illegal music down. And the magnitude is at least comparable to P2P file sharing. The author is surprised that RIAA would tolerate such websites.

Where are those websites? I find a lot of site with MIDI clip. But I hardly come across any with illegal MP3 download. If they exist they must be in such small number or is really obscure. Seems like the author is commenting on something of false premises.

Lawmeme article is just plain wrong.

There's really no difference between running straight HTTP servers and running P2P programs, many of which rely on HTTP as their transport protocol. The issue of not having somebody online at any given time applies equally well to people hosting HTTP servers on their own machines. The only advantage that straight HTTP has over file sharing systems is that ISPs run their own and often give space to subscribers. That's really the only advantage over filesharing systems, and it's offset by the fact that ISPs are quick to remove copyright-infringing material.

How many friends do you have?

The last article talks about p2p as a private transaction vs. http as a public transaction, and uses the analogy of handing out cdr's on a street corner vs. giving a cdr to a friend. This analogy is flawed though. Most p2p transfers occur between strangers, so you're not giving a copy to someone you know. A better analogy is that p2p is more like having a person shout "who has a copy of the latest White Stripes cd" on the sidewalk, and having some stranger hand him that cdr. It's not a private transaction. Just a different search mechanism.

Obscure works

The article makes a good point about "obscure" (I'm guessing they mean from the perspective of a American teen/young adult) works being shared, and I for one, would like to see more of that, whether via P2P or IRC or HTTP, or any other protocol.

The media seems to be focusing on, and the RIAA seems to be only going after those who share the mass-market crap like Britney, Eminem, etc. I for one, am more interested in Asian pop, anime, classical recordings, game soundtracks, indie stuff, (indie) Christian music, etc. that are simply unavailable for sale in the US, whether you want to pay for it or not.

The Internet provides a unique medium to distribute works such as the aforementioned categories, whose owners can't/don't want to bother marketing in the US because the demand is so small in absolute numbers. In the absence of official marketing, it allows a building of a fan following for non mass-market type works, possibly paving the way in several years for more organized marketing efforts. Witness the growth of anime from underground fansubs to small marketers in the US, to recent feature theatrical releases (eg, Spirited Away). Without the initial underground sharing, you wouldn't have the word-of-mouth hype.

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day

I confess I'm a pirate. So are my friends.
We download, we vet the downloads. We upload songs to private FTP servers with the bandwidth we're not using when we're at work.

We have a trust based, friend based, non peer to peer, but distributed, quality controlled file sharing experience.

It's great. It doesn't get flooded with crap, it doesn't get flooded with music we don't like. Anyone with an account on the machines is known to everyone else.

Gosh it sounds just like some warez servers back when I used to have an interest in warez, or hacker BBS's when I had an interest in that.

The web? That's all a bit new fangled for us..

short answers:

1) people filesharing via webservers are easy to stop (I've shut down at least a dozen sites of people stupid enough to share my software without my permission).
2) filesharing via webservers is slower (limited bandwidth).
3) filesharing via webservers is easy to spot. Either they make the site public and you can find it easy or they don't tell anybody and it doesn't really matter (if nobody knows where to download the files who cares?).
4) setting up a webserver takes some effort

P2P allows any idiot to share anything on their hard-drive. They can look at all the files all the other idiots are sharing. Bandwidth can be shared. Once a file is shared it is almost imposible to stop (you can bust 100 idiots but 100,000 more are still sharing the file).

Text of Article in case it gets overloaded :P

Features: Compulsory Licensing - Where Are the Defenders of HTTP?

Posted by Ernest Miller on Friday, September 19 @ 13:10:10 EDT

Boston.com has published an AP wirestory on the Berkman Center Summit Digital Media in Cyberspace: The Legislation and Business Effects (Harvard symposium debates future of online file-sharing). A very interesting gathering (why doesn't anyone ever invite me to these things?) of lawyers, lobbyists, artists, economists, academics and etc., discussing the future of digital media (see, Wither Digital Media?).

I found the following quote by Charles Nesson rather interesting, "There was a time that to make a copy, you needed a monk, and a desk, and months, and then Sean Fanning hit the scene." Now, clearly, Nesson was exaggerating his statement for effect. However, his statement does point to a common misconception about filesharing - many people believe that it started with Napster. It didn't. The MP3 format itself was causing concern to the record industry at least since 1997 and Napster was not founded until 1999. So how was music filesharing taking place before Napster? Many of the usual suspects that are routinely ignored in the press even today: Usenet, FTP, IRC ... and one suspect that is no longer a major concern: HTTP.

The Era of OF - Original Filesharing

Remember the MP3 search engines? Before Napster, college students and dotcommers were filesharing by putting MP3s on their webpages for download through good ol' http. However, webpages are relatively easy to find and, more importantly, easier to shut down for a number of reasons: primarily, because of contributory and even direct liability for the organization hosting the site. Consequently, such organizations (like ISPs) had (and have) an interest in shutting down copyright infringing websites relatively quickly (even absent the poorly designed notice and takedown "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA).

Yet there hasn't been much outcry over the fact that the RIAA has and continues to shut down hundreds of noncommercial websites offering copyrighted MP3s for download without authorization. The RIAA has even threatened lawsuits and gotten college students expelled over their refusal to remove MP3s from college websites. There has been concern (often expressed on LawMeme) about abuse of the DMCA's notice and takedown procedures, but not much outcry when direct copyright infringement has been shown. Why is there no outraged defense of http filesharing?

Legally Equivalent, but HTTP has Advantages

P2P and http uploading and downloading of copyrighted MP3s are, essentially, functionally equivalent from a copyright point of view. From a technical point of view, however, there are significant differences. If anything, http has some serious advantages over P2P filesharing in many cases. Although P2P would still be useful in a world where http filesharing were allowed, http could easily and more effectively handle the vast majority of filesharing. For example, http:

* Is better at providing access to the obscure stuff. Everytime you log onto a P2P network to download, you are relying on someone else being online at the same time with the materials you desire. For popular stuff, it is a virtual certainty you will find it. However, for more obscure works, or particular versions of works, you may or may not be successful at finding it right away. Having a work available on a website 24/7 generally solves this problem. If it exists, it can be found.
* Is better at sharing 24/7. If you really believe in sharing, wouldn't you want to share 24/7? Why deny people the bounty of your largess when you aren't online? Or, if you are online, but don't want to slow your own surfing experience, wouldn't it be better to move your filesharing to another server rather than turn it off altogether?
* Means security issues may be ameliorated. Many people don't really take security seriously enough. They don't keep their virus files updated, they don't patch vuln

I know several people...

people who got cease and desist letters for hosting things on websites that people claim they own....

Just how GameSpot send me a nasty cease and desist letter for posting screenshots with their logo, they wanted them down and that was their goal. To get them down and they did so as efficiently as possible. Suing individuals over a website would have caused a huge stink.

Difference?

As far as I know, both Gnutella and Kazaa use http for the actual file transfers, thus transforming every p2p filesharing computer into a webserver. Since both sides are so similar, I'm pretty sure that the **AAs will just shoot p2p filesharing down as easily as they did with mp3 webservers. Yeah, it's like 50 million of them, but if they get 2 grand from each, it's a nice business :-(

Positive feedback cycle in file sharing

I think this all really has more to do with the popularity of the media over which file sharing happens. This was mentioned a few days ago, but I can't find the article.

Whichever medium for file sharing (p2p, ftp, http, etc) has the most people sharing on it, will draw the most attention and user base. Likewise, the more attention a medium gets, the more people will use that medium. Snowball effect. If somehow p2p specific programs were outlawed and everyone started using http again, we would see that method grow in popularity, drawing more leechers and sharers alike.

To that end we might even see "webserver/search/media center" programs evolve to the point that they were no different than an modern day p2p clients (just acting as web servers too).

The point is, a positive feedback cycle builds one medium or protocol over another, and the RIAA is going to attack whichever target is biggest at any given moment.

I don't remember using HTTP to download MP3'S

Remember the MP3 search engines? Before Napster, college students and dotcommers were filesharing by putting MP3s on their webpages for download through good ol' http.

I remember back in the day, late '98 and early '99, when I was a college freshman, before Napster and it's P2P bretheren were invented. I didn't get my pirated music from HTTP websites. I got it from 2 sources. The first was a site called Scour.net, which searched in an HTTP page, but downloaded from FTP sites and Windows shares, mostly windows shares. It had a little application, the Scour dowloader or something, that helped you download stuff linked from the page. The other way I obtained illegal music was FTP sites. In fact, I ran one off of my college dorm connection, and the funny thing is back then nobody at the school really cared.

Reasons I don't think http will be big

- Bandwidth... Which ISP would like to pay for the rush to someone who upload a bunch of popular mp3's?
- PR... Which ISP wish to get known for hosting users' mp3 files?

You'd probably need to get your own web server. But the bandwidth problem would remain even then. Decentralized networks are much easier to spread files on since there aren't thousands of users trying to access your web site.

Web servers seems much less efficient to me and more like a last desperate way to distribute copyright infringing mp3's on.

At least in my crowd p2p is more popular because:

You can do it with a station wagon. This is simple, secure and completely anonymous. It's also a good strategy against leeching.

Oh yeah, the beer is also better.

While the throughput is a bit slow at any given moment if your peers are more likely to have Tom Waits, Miles Davis and The Strawbs than Ms. Spears the signal to noise ratio is fantastic and you can get anything you want. . . at Alice's Restaraunt (excepting Alice). You can get anything you want. . .

Oh, sorry. Flashback to yesterday's post. It's that damned brown acid again.

KFG

Web pages are not legally equivalent to P2P

When you put a file onto a Web page you generally have some idea where that file came from. That is, you generally know if the file is someone's free speech or it is someone's intellectual property. When you pick up and share a file via P2P you generally have no idea where that file came from, and don't know whether it is free speech or intellectual property.

Since when is P2P the target

This is a little bogus...

P2P was never a target of the RIAA. It was the distribution of copyrighted material.

IIRC they sued several large ISP's a few years back over music being shared on websites. IIRC the MPAA also did the same.

These are easier cases, since you signup for hosting with a credit card. It's one person, and one ISP to deal with... it's pretty much an open shut case.

P2P has the twist of offshore servers, IP masking through proxy servers (and some speculate viruses will be used to proxy though other unkowing peoples computers and avoid lawsuits).

P2P is high profile because of the new technology.

To Defeat the Undefeatable Foe

The first thing I'd suggest is that the RIAA and its members are not concerned with selling more units per se, they want to sell more units of their hit recordings. These recordings have paid back their costs and each new unit, minus its notably small manufacturing costs, is pure profit.

As for the speculation about why the sturm and drang over p2p and not so much noise about http, I would note that, as LawMeme states, http sites are easier to take down. And so, let me propose that the point is to go after the unsolvable problem, p2p. After all, they can claim "we killed Napster, we subponeaed isp's, we even sued the 12 year olds and millions are still 'stealing' from us -- we cannot kill the beast. So, Congress, let's just tax hard drives, blank cd's, isp accounts, etc., and let the government, as proxy for the thieves, reimburse us for our losses." Because revenues from taxes are really pure profit. And would they split the reimbursements with their artists? Well, of course, I can't imagine why I would even ask the question!

Please note, the above analysis in no way endorses the RIAA viewpoint that the primary cause of their troubles is from filesharing. In fact, didn't we see that filesharing has decreased and, looking at their album sales, they are still selling fewer units.

Why we see http sharing as wrong, but p2p as okay

I think that this article brings up a very interesting point. I don't think that it is the technical "difficulty" of putting songs on a website that stops people from sharing songs.

There is a difference between sharing a song and downloading a song. People want to download songs. We directly benefit from being able to listen to a song. It's a selfish desire, although we can justify it in many ways (convience, cost, evilness of RIAA).

I don't think that ANYONE wants to share songs. We don't get any benefit from giving our songs to strangers, and we put ourselves at risk for lawsuits. On top of this is the effort that it takes to host a website and the cost. The only upside I can see is the possible ego boost or the chance that other people will allow you to download their songs.

So most of us feel no incentive to host mp3s on a website, and when people are prosecuted for it we feel no sympathy, after all we wouldn't have done it.

But p2p wouldn't work without people sharing songs, and so sharing your music directory is turned on by default in most p2p clients. How many Kazaa users do you think change the defaults? I'd be willing to bet that a good portion of people don't know that they are sharing their own songs, and wouldn't know how to prevent it. Other people who do know feel guilty if they download songs without sharing their own. Back in the Napster days I remember people would cut off a connection if you weren't sharing any songs.

When a p2p sharer is sued, we can sympathize, and we're afraid that it could be us next. But it's our desire to download and not our desire to share that causes our sympathy. P2P seems okay because we only see our end - we get to listen to a song that we wouldn't have bought anyway - no one gets hurt. We don't even think about the other half - that we are distributing all the songs that we paid good money for to any shmo with an internet connection.

Sheer Numbers

Hey look how much is being shared on kazaa.. about 4-7million gigs. Now look at your HTTP site. Not even a hundredth of that. Back in the days of Audiogalaxy and Lycos you couldnt get as much stuff as fast and as easy

The best way to share is netnews

From a technical perspective, the best way to share music would be via netnews, in "alt.music.*". Netnews data traverses each link no more than once, and often much less. Requests are serviced from local servers. Transfers occur during off-peak periods. There isn't that much new music; the RIAA probably generates only a few tens of megabytes a day of content. The additional traffic would be small.

By comparison, the P2P "sharing" networks are horrendously inefficient. It's embarassing how crappy the technology is.

I've been thinking about a whole new approach, where what's passed around are random bitstreams. You have to get several bitstreams from different sources and XOR them together to get content. Different combinations of different bitstreams produce different content. No single bitstream contains copyrighted content, and every bitstream can be XORed with something which will provide legitimate content. The bitstreams are passed around via netnews. But I'm not going to implement this; it's not something I'm really interested in.

It already happened...

The article on Lawmeme conveniently forgets the fact that the last [slashdot.org] round [slashdot.org] of lawsuits [slashdot.org] effectively [taipeitimes.com] stopped [taipeitimes.com] web based file trading.

While this is only a number of articles on a couple of incidents, there is no question that web based file trading was effectively crushed by record industry litigation just a few years ago. With P2P, people thought they were anonymous.

However, the RIAA has consistently misrepresented the "safe harbour" clause. The intent of the "safe harbour" clause was to prevent ISPs from hosting copyrighted material on the ISPs' own servers. The identity part also had to with information hosted on the ISPs' own servers, but it appears that most judges are buying the RIAA's BS.

Welcome back to the Dark Ages.

Re:New P2P Program

I would like to be able to say "yea that will be nice, they cant track you, share all you want", but unfortunately this is not the case. Nothing against your post, I just dont want people having a false sense of security.