I'm sure that the legal/ethical problems stem from the fact that people use kazaa/napster/gnutella/etc to trade pirated intellectual property... and the companies that create the software and maintain the infrastructure are seen as promoting said piracy...
Your stance on the DMCA is completely understandable. Russell McOrmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote : > On Thu, 19 Sep 2002, Ron Harwood wrote: > > > Limewire was suppose to present - they were sending a techie/coder - but > > they're getting cold feet. I think because they're afraid that the > > techie will get backed into a corner regarding ethics/legal, and make > > them look bad. > > This is very interesting. The Internet was designed to be P2P. The > first application for the IP networks was a P2P file sharing tool called > 'FTP'. FTP pre-dates SMTP, HTTP and every other protocol that now exists > on the Internet. > > > How can P2P be, at such a late date, be reconsidered to be unethical or > illegal? P2P is just a class of communications tools, and are not > themselves illegal or unethical -- only specific subsets of what can be > communicated with these tools can be questioned. > > I can't go - due to the DMCA and related laws, I do not travel to or > otherwise set foot on US soil. I'm also a "policy wonk" and not a > developer at this point (writing software isn't quite like riding a bike - > it does slowly fade away), which isn't likely what they are looking for. > > > Thanks, > > > > Ron > --- > Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: http://www.flora.ca/> > See http://weblog.flora.ca/ for announcements, activities, and > opinions > Submission to Innovation Strategy | No2Violence in Politics > http://www.flora.ca/innovation-2002.shtml | http://www.no-dot.ca/
