quote:Originally posted by M$sucks55:Microsoft has its own "plans" for p2p technoligy... i say ..imagine a microsoft subscription p2p.... for upgradeing...etc etc..
quote:Could Hollywood hack your PC?By Declan McCullaghStaff WriterJuly 23, 2002, 4:45 PM PTupdate WASHINGTON--Congress is about to consider an entertainment industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders to disable PCs used for illicit file trading.A draft bill seen by CNET News.com marks the boldest political effort to date by record labels and movie studios to disrupt peer-to-peer networks that they view as an increasingly dire threat to their bottom line.Sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., the measure would permit copyright holders to perform nearly unchecked electronic hacking if they have a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is taking place. Berman and Coble plan to introduce the 10-page bill this week.
quote:Geeks in government: A good idea?By Declan McCullaghAugust 12, 2002, 4:00 AM PTWASHINGTON--There's a lot for a politically aware geek to be alarmed about nowadays.Big companies are wielding copyright threats to stifle legitimate security research. Hollywood is itching to hack your PC. Your privacy is vanishing as fast as Al Gore's 2004 presidential hopes. And the merry band of technophobes in Congress is just getting started.Too often, though, programmers, system administrators and other IT pros become understandably outraged by the latest attempts to restrict technology--and react by doing precisely the wrong thing. They set up irate Web sites, launch online petition drives and tell all their friends to write to their congressional representatives.Here's the bitter truth: These efforts are mostly a waste of time. Sure, they may make you feel better, but they're not the way to win.Take the widely reviled Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Even though Slashdotters have spent years buzzing around in circles over DMCA lawsuits brought by the Justice Department against Dmitry Sklyarov, and the big movie studios against 2600 magazine, Congress simply doesn't care.Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on intellectual property, says the law is "performing the way we hoped." No bill has been introduced in Congress to rescind the DMCA for one simple reason: Official Washington loves the law precisely as much as hackers and programmers despise it. Some of Washington's most powerful insiders even gathered in May to toast the DMCA with glasses of champagne.Things aren't getting better. The House of Representatives voted 385-3 last month to approve life prison sentences for malicious computer hackers. The Senate approved the USA Patriot Act, which expanded police ability to perform Internet surveillance without a court order, by a 98-1 vote last fall.Trust me, a few--even a few thousand--peeved e-mail messages won't change vote totals that lopsided. (Did you know the Senate approved the DMCA unanimously?) Washington's political class is used to ignoring frenzied yowls from far more organized and well-funded groups than "geektivists" can hope to emulate anytime soon.Instead, technologists should be doing what comes naturally: inventing technology that outpaces the law and could even make new laws irrelevant."They're much better off doing what they do best, writing code," says Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank in San Francisco. "That's where their competitive advantage lies."Put another way, who made a bigger difference: Yet another letter-scribbling activist or Phil Zimmermann, who wrote the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption software? How about Shawn Fanning, the man who created Napster? Or the veterans of the Internet Engineering Task Force, which oversees the fundamental protocols of the Internet?It's true that such an approach isn't for everyone. Tech companies, of course, need to take a defensive stance. "There's a difference between geeks and the technology industry," Arrison says. "I wouldn't say it's wise for the technology industry to ignore government. But individual tech people are probably better off spending their energy writing code than being part of the political process."Adam Back, an encryption researcher living in Canada, says that he tries to ignore day-to-day developments in the news. "What's the point?" Back asks. "You know whatever they are working on will be pretty much exclusively damaging to Net freedoms and personal liberty. New laws are almost exclusively damaging to personal freedoms these days.""By participating in the lobby process, you're effectively giving money to the political system," Back says. "It's effectively a favor-trading system where the politician wins and the geek loses...You're better of spending time writing code and influencing Internet protocols to work towards making the politicians irrelevant in the future."That's the motto of the Cypherpunks, a group of programmers-turned-activists who first met in Silicon Valley a decade ago and graced the second cover of Wired magazine. They recognized that technology is a more effective tool than the political process to stop governments from overreaching. (An example: Unlike Supreme Court justices who may change their views on privacy, the algorithms embedded in encryption software won't stop working because of political pressure.)Lance Cottrell is a former Cypherpunk who founded Anonymizer.com, a San Diego company that announced an improved fee-based anonymous browsing service last week."I'm of two minds," Cottrell says. "On one hand, I think it's important that the (technologist) perspective be aired. But I think that rather few geeks are temperamentally suited for lobbying. I think there's a cultural tendency toward bluntness and directness, which is not the bread and butter of politics."Before starting his company, Cottrell wrote the free mixmaster software that allows people to send e-mail anonymously." People can sit around saying, 'Is it a good idea to have anonymity or not?'" Cottrell said. "But if you actually implement it, you can say, 'How do you want to deal with this reality?' It's not that my writing the code created the reality. The possibility was always there. But my writing the code made it impossible to ignore."
quote:Like many times before, Microsoft is re-inventing the wheel and opting for something other than round.
-t.
quote:A draft bill seen by CNET News.com marks the boldest political effort to date by record labels and movie studios to disrupt peer-to-peer networks that they view as an increasingly dire threat to their bottom line.
quote:Originally posted by DC:Apart from the obvious absurdity of this proposal, a little side-note: isn't the internet *itself* a peer-to-peer network?
quote: Ok so do you think Canada will be safe from the BS stuff that happens in the US for a very long time? Maybe Canadians need to take action soon to protect our future against such idiocy?I've pretty much lose faith in the US, and am fanatically anti-US. Of course I always think of the goverments and the corps, not the citizens... although they are always a popular joke.
quote:Originally posted by void main:Nope, generally it's client/server.
quote: Canada has extradition (sp?) laws; the US can request the Canadian government to hand you over.... at least as best as I can remember.
quote:Switzerland Anyone?
quote:Maybe the area referred to as Russia (what are they called, anyway?).
quote:Originally posted by Zombie9920:MS will never be able to kill P2P. Even if they managed to take out some of the popular P2P networks(like WinMX, Kazaa, E-Donkey, etc.) they will never be able to take out Gnutella(yes, I know that Gnutella was created by the Open Source community, so don't even mention that ;P). If we ever did lose the popular networks the Gnutella network will grow tremendously(which will benefit you Open Source users) because all of the Windows P2P users will migrate to it. How could MS possibly kill a network that is not owned by a company?[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: Zombie9920 ]
quote:Originally posted by Calum:however according to my history of the internet book, Bob Taylor originally set up ARPANet to be peer to peer, since timesharing (client/server) already existed at several universities and institutions. He knew this but wanted a way for two computers (not one computer and a terminal) to 'talk' to each other, even usin different languages and operating systems.You know this all already void main, i just quoted you because it reminded me of this and i felt i had to mention the internet's p2p beginnings.I haven't got to the bit in my book yet where they all make it work and decide on a set of protocols, I'm only up to about 1966...
quote:Originally posted by Zombie9920:MS will never be able to kill P2P. Even if they managed to take out some of the popular P2P networks(like WinMX, Kazaa, E-Donkey, etc.) they will never be able to take out Gnutella(yes, I know that Gnutella was created by the Open Source community, so don't even mention that ;P). If we ever did lose the popular networks the Gnutella network will grow tremendously(which will benefit you Open Source users) because all of the Windows P2P users will migrate to it. How could MS possibly kill a network that is not owned by a company?
Gosh, I love Linux Quake.
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Topic: Microsoft finds marketing outlet in Kazaa (Read 796 times)
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