Should Gnutella developers work on measures to achieve anonymity on Gnutella?

[Sam the Man]

It may be a difficult thing to code for but unless Gnutella changes so that the sharers ip address is not know to the receiver then Gunutella will slowly die out. I too like Joakim have had to stop sharing and will only be able to start again when my anonymity is guaranteed. I am sure we are not the only two that have had to stop sharing and the RIAA will be picking us off, at a thousand at a time now that Verizon have been forced to hand over the names of the sharers. The ISPs will only be too pleased to get rid of us, as want users but no traffic. Just blocking known RIAA ip addresses will not work as they can use any ISP and we cannot block the whole of AOL for instance. It may be tricky and will cut down the bandwidth but without it Gunutella is dead.

[kiro c]

Freenet may be anonymous (the original publisher of copyrighted material remains anonymous) but it's trivial to find out the IPs of users sharing copyrighted content later on. - And just because you are sharing automatically and Freenet doesn't allow you to look at what you are sharing, it doesn't mean that you can't be sued for whatever material you are sharing. I wouldn't feel too safe using Freenet if I were you.

[purplepassionhll]

This is absolute priority. Wake up everybody that thinks it isn't!

[highperactive]

I think it's not a priority nor do I think it's feasible.

[Monica]

How can you prove that a certain IP was actually sharing the content and not just proxying forward the request from someone else?

EDIT: Even if it can be proven, Freenet is so far ahead of the rest of the p2p community with anonymity that the RIAA would never think of trying to sue people using it. Not until all the other p2p programs are as hard to crack as Freenet is.

[pink88]

And you still say it is not a priority. I don't agree with what they are doing but I am not going to risk

[Smokinbiker]

With FreeNet, Yes, you could search for a file and then accuse your proxies of 'distributing' it. But I don't think you'd be able to hold them liable for any legal responsibilities, not unless there's a sea change in the law. And it's certainly more defensible than traditional P2P, where you must manually select what files to share/re-distribute.

True, one judge has ruled that Aimster is liable for contributory copyright-infringement despite it's use of encrypted communications to shield it from knowledge of the contents. But, by that logic, phone companies would be liable for contributory damages anytime a criminal used their phone to plan a crime.

What's unique here (aside from the 'distributor' being a community of FreeNet/P2P users) is that the 'source' of a file can't be tracked beyond your immediate proxies. So, I wouldn't worry about legal liability when running a FreeNet node.

On the other hand, FreeNet is terrible at distributing large numbers of files, since they have to be cached/proxied by lots of Nodes (most of which will have limited disk-space allocated to caching).
____________________

Better might be the "UDPp2p" project, if they ever post any code...
http://udpp2p.sourceforge.net/

[JeeVee]

it's what the customers/consumers are going to demand - bet your money on it. i would and will conintue my limewire subscription but if something else comes out that gives me an anonymous connection for p2p i will move to that product even if i have to pay more. my reasons are NOT for what you are probably thinking but rather for the same reasons i don't need anyone snooping around in what library materials i checked out or what music i listen to in the car/elsewhere. i don't have a proble with the data if it's presented in AGGREGATE.

[Rebelled Devils]

The DMCA sees only few exceptions where you would not be liable for caching (not proxying, btw) illegal content and they are explicitly meant for online service providers.


Unlike other p2p you don't know what you will be sued for, - from secondary copyright infringement to distribution of childpornography.


Telephone companies can easily prove substantial noninfringing use. Once people start using Freenet primarily for filesharing that would be hard to claim - but this is a competely seperate issue from users caching copyrighted content.


Won't work. The broadcasts will kill it.

[jlb299]

I have a large library of music (over 2000 songs) and have stopped sharing it because I don't know exactly what I'm risking. I read that one person received an email telling him to stop sharing or else. If the first step is a warning, then is it safe to share until you get one? All the people out there that are turning off their sharing probably are as in the dark about this as I am, and if we knew that we don't have to worry until we get a warning then we'd all be able to share again. But does anyone really know what the tactics of the music industry are right now - and can they really successfully sue us - with no warning?