My 0.0149948 €: Data by itself is not covered by copyright (or droit d'autheur), but collections of data (e.g. databases) are. e.g. if someone shares a vCard with you, you can safely modify it in your own collection and/or redistribute it.
Concerning the P2P vs. server approach. I think it should work both ways. Personally, I'd prefer small servers or even personal servers like e.g. the aforementioned Guru/Sheeva Plug, but I see no problem running a daemon on either a dedicated server or a desktop/laptop enhanced with a P2P network. But in any case I think GPG could be used not only for encryption, but — IMO equally important — as a signature for assuring the data originated from the person who owns the GPG key. This way even if the data was distributed via P2P, you could make sure who it came from and whether it was modified (and by who). If GPG causes too much overhead, a slightly less nice solution would be to store hashes of peer data on (de)centralised servers. Cheers, Matija -- /\ Document Freedom Day - Liberate your documents! _\/` http://documentfreedom.org/ - 31. March 2010 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - gsm: +386 41 849 552 www: http://matija.suklje.name xmpp: [email protected]
