Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella

Antonomasia ant at notatla.demon.co.uk
Fri Aug 9 15:55:32 EDT 2002


From: AARG!Anonymous <remailer at aarg.net>

> An article on Salon this morning (also being discussed on slashdot),
> http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/08/gnutella_developers/print.html,
> discusses how 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:

> They intend to do this using digital signatures, and there is precedent
> for this in past situations where there have been problems:

> > Alan Cox, .... "Years and years ago this came up with a game

> If only there were a technology in which clients could verify and yes,

> Be sure and send a note to the Gnutella people reminding them of all
> you're doing for them, okay, Lucky?

Now that is resorting to silly accusation.

My copy of "Peer to Peer" (Oram, O'Reilly) is out on loan but I think Freenet
and Mojo use protocols that require new users to be contributors before they
become consumers.  (Leaving aside that Gnutella seems doomed on scalability
grounds.)

Likewise the WAN shooter games have (partially) defended against cheats by
making the client hold no authoritative data and by disqualifying those
that send impossible traffic.  (Excluding wireframe graphics cards is another
matter.)  If I were a serious gamer I'd want 2 communities - one for plain
clients to match gaming skills and another for "cheat all you like" contests
to match both gaming and programming skills.

If the Gnuts need to rework the protocol they should do so.

My objection to this TCPA/palladium thing is that it looks aimed at ending
ordinary computing.  If the legal scene were radically different this wouldn't
be causing nearly so much fuss.  Imagine:
- a DoJ that can enforce monopoly law
- copyright that expires in reasonable time
     (5 years for s/w ? 15 years for books,films,music... ?)
- fair use and first sale are retained
- no concept of indirect infringement (e.g. selling marker pens)
- criminal and civil liability for incorrectly barring access in DRM
- hacking is equally illegal for everybody
- no restriction on making and distributing/selling any h/w,s/w

If Anonymous presents Gnutella for serious comparison with the above issues
I say he's looking in the wrong end of his telescope.

--
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# Antonomasia   ant notatla.demon.co.uk                      #
# See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/                        #
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