> 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'm not a lawyer either, but yes freenet was designed to give the node minimal (no) liablity for the content it's routing/hosting. I think it's been called something like "plausible deniablity". Nobody knows "who done it". I know a lawyer I've been bugging about these kinds of things maybe I can ask her and post.
You might be getting onto shakier ground though if it can be argued that an entire network is owned and run by the university for the purposes of copywrite enfringment. The key is to make it clear that the university makes these nodes available for student freesites no matter thier content. You have to push the legal liablity on that "unknown student" that nobody can find. An arguement about the system's merits as an experiment and free speach zone, will cover your ass well. > 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. "Fair Use", it's been well defined. > 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. No, the fair use does not extend to your right to download music off your webserver and accidentally make it avaible to others that haven't bought it. Though if you bought it you may download it. Websites used to say "don't download if it's illegal." Those sites are gone now. > 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). It maybe hard but not imposible. They might bribe a cop and a student to document how easy it is to get music. > 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? Make an index to student pages. The students can then link to a nym's page. Some hero, who'll not go by his real identity will then set up a good links page. Gosh I wish I was at your university. This sounds like a whole lot of fun. __________________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Logos und Klingelt�ne f�rs Handy bei http://sms.yahoo.de _______________________________________________ devl mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hawk.freenetproject.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
