I'm a computer geek, not a lawyer, so I certainly can't be certain, but it seems to me that some liability can be avoided by the very nature of Freenet. Though material under the copyright of others may be present on the LAN Freenet, because there are no records of who uploaded and who downloaded the material (from what I understand it would be possible to determine both with appropriately placed packet sniffers, but those are not currently in place on the internal switched LAN), there is no evidence that copyrights have been violated.
I think that it's fairly straightforward -- or at least well within a reasonable doubt -- that users are allowed to make copies of a CD that they own, whether it is for a backup in case the original gets damage, or just one to have in your car, and another in your house, as long as you own a copy of the disc, there's an at least marginal legal right to listen to the songs on it from copied media, etc. In that way, using Freenet, the University might know that material under copyright exists, but there is no evidence that the material under copyright is in volation of any laws. Because the content is only available on the LAN there isn't really any way that the downloads for particular files can be tracked and recorded -- particularly by outside parties (the isn't an exceptionally tech-savy school, and I don't believe that anyone would punch a hole through the university firewall and make them publically accessible). Any thoughts? I've got 10 machines set up to play with different installation procedures, code hacks, and search interfaces tonight. I'm certainly open to any suggestions :) Best Regards, Drew http://www.drewbradford.com/ > > If there was an easily-accessible index, would not the University > lose > the plausible deniability which is the whole point of using > Freenet in > the first place? > > > _______________________________________________ devl mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hawk.freenetproject.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
