Re: Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella
Anonymous wrote: As far as Freenet and MojoNation, we all know that the latter shut down, probably in part because the attempted traffic-control mechanisms made the whole network so unwieldy that it never worked. Right, so let's solve this problem. Palladium/TCPA solves the problem in one sense, but in a very inconvenient way. First of all, they stop you running a client which has been modified in any way -- not just a client which has been modified to be selfish. Secondly, they facilitate the other bad things which have been raised on this list. Right, as if my normal style has been so effective. Not one person has given me the least support in my efforts to explain the truth about TCPA and Palladium. The reason for that is that we all disagree with you. I'm interested to read your opinions, but I will argue against you. I'm not interested in reading flames at all. -- Pete
Re: Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella
Anonymous wrote: ... the file-trading network Gnutella is being threatened by misbehaving clients. In response, the developers are looking at limiting the network to only authorized clients: This is the wrong solution. One of the important factors in the Internet's growth was that the IETF exercised enough control, but not too much. So HTTP is standardised, which allows (theoretically) any browser to talk to any web server. At the same time the higher levels are not standardised, so someone who has an idea for a better browser or web server is free to implement it. If you build a protocol which allows selfish behaviour, you have done your job badly. Preventing selfish behaviour in distributed systems is not easy, but that is the problem we need to solve. It would be a good discussion for this list. Not discussed in the article is the technical question of how this can possibly work. If you issue a digital certificate on some Gnutella client, what stops a different client, an unauthorized client, from pretending to be the legitimate one? Exactly. This has already happened with unauthorised AIM clients. My freedom to lie allows me to use GAIM rather than AOL's client. In this case, IMO, the ethics are the other way round. AOL seeks to use its (partial) monopoly to keep a grip on the IM market. The freedom to lie mitigates this monopoly to an extent. -- Pete
Re: Ross's TCPA paper
Peter D. Junger wrote: That isn't the reason why a click-through agreement isn't enforceable---the agreement could, were it enforceable, validlly forbid reverse engineering for any reason and that clause would in most cases be upheld. Not in Europe though. EU directive 91/250/EEC on the legal protection of computer programs makes provision for reverse engineering for interoperability. In Britain this was incorporated into domestic law by the Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations 1992: http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1992/Uksi_19923233_en_1.htm See in particular s.50B(4) which the regulations added to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. (And in the actual case involving Linux and DVD players there was no agreement not to circumvent the technological control measures in DVD's; the case was based on the theory that the circumvention violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.) The American cases were, but the European case of course wasn't. The DMCA doesn't apply over here, though we have something similar in the works. I think lawyers will hate this. I don't see why we should. We don't hate the law of gravity or the law of large numbers. You should hate it. :-) It is appropriate for the legislature to decide which acts are restricted by copyright and which are not. The DMCA and similar legislation hands that right to private organisations. To some extent anti-trust law guards against the worst abuses, but it is more appropriate for the boundaries of copyright to be set by our elected representatives. BTW, I have been thinking for a while about putting together a UK competition complaint about DVD region coding. No promises that anything will happen quickly. On the other hand, if people offer help (or just tell me that they think it is a worthwhile thing to do) it will probably move faster. -- Pete
Re: Ross's TCPA paper
Anonymous wrote: Furthermore, inherent to the TCPA concept is that the chip can in effect be turned off. No one proposes to forbid you from booting a non-compliant OS or including non-compliant drivers. Good point. At least I hope they don't. :-) There is not even social opprobrium; look at how eager everyone was to look the other way on the question of whether the DeCSS reverse engineering violated the click-through agreement. Perhaps it did, but the licence agreement was unenforceable. It's clearly reverse engineering for interoperability (between Linux and DVD players) so the legal exemption applies. You can't escape the exemption by contract. Now, you might say that morally he should obey the agreement he made. My view is that there is a reason why this type of contract is unenforceable; you might as well take advantage of the exemption. The prosecution was on some nonsense charge that amounted to him burgling his own house. A statute that was meant to penalise computer break-ins was used against someone who owned the computer that he broke into. The TCPA allows you to do something that you can't do today: run your system in a way which convinces the other guy that you will honor your promises, that you will guard his content as he requires in exchange for his providing it to you. Right, but it has an odd effect too. No legal system gives people complete freedom to contract. Suppose you really, really want to exempt a shop from liability if your new toaster explodes. You can't do it; the legal system does not give you the freedom to contract in that way. DRM, however, gives people complete freedom to make contracts about how they will deal with digital content. Under EU single market rules, a contract term to the effect that you could pass on your content to someone in the UK but not the rest of the EU is unenforceable. No problem for DRM though... I think lawyers will hate this. -- Pete
