EFF Releases Copyright Guide for P2P Developers

An anonymous reader writes "Now that the courts have ruled that P2P services are legal, the EFF has released a legal guide for those wishing to start such a service, but are unfamiliar with the parameters that will keep the copyright cartel off their back."

Offshore hosting.

[scowling]

It strikes me that they may have missed what I think may be the most important bit of advice: keep your assets offshore, and if your system needs web presence or indexing servers, keep them offshore in countries where the laws are not likely to change.

Sure, the courts have been ruling that P2P software is legal, but there's a good chance that will change before the end of the decade. There's just too much money in the hands of Big Entertainment for it not to.

Alternative link...

[stinkfoot]

from EFF's website:

http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/p2p_copyright_wp.php [eff.org]

Useful Non-infringing Use

[sybert]

VCR, DVR, MP3 Players all had substantial new useful non-infringing uses. They had uses that could not be done with other technology at the time. I have yet to see any useful uses for p2p file sharing. The web, email, IM, and online music stores all provide a better way to distribute content than p2p. The best reason that has been given to distribute legitimate content on p2p networks is specifically to demonstrate non-infringing use for the purpose of Betamax. P2P has yet to have any legitimate use that is definitively substantial.

Re:Useful Non-infringing Use

[seinman]

I run a website where I produce lots of video and audio clips. I can't afford the bandwidth to have them all downloaded from my server. So I use DirectConnect (and soon, Bit Torrent) to distribute the higher quality, and therefore larger file size, content. At worst, the visitor downloads the file at the speed of my connection. And when other people are around sharing, things speed up. Completely legal and very inexpensive. Please explain to me how this is not a legitimate use.

Obviously, I understand that the majority of P2P traffic is illegal in nature. But by saying "has yet to have any legitimate use" (emphasis mine) implies that all of it is illegal. Which is not the case.

Re:Useful Non-infringing Use

[sybert]

If your content is worth anything you can use free services, purchase web service, or find someone to mirror your content. There is a huge market for hosting multimedia content on the web. The web allows you to better control, promote, and monitor your content.

I said there has not been any substantial useful use. I imply that p2p is either infringing or useless, not illegal.

Re:Useful Non-infringing Use

[OWJones]

I said there has not been any substantial useful use. I imply that p2p is either infringing or useless, not illegal.

If you really want, I can get you the bittorrent statistics from Duke's Red Hat mirror. I'd argue that its use is substantial, and has been for nearly two years now.

Re:Useful Non-infringing Use

[sybert]

Bit Torrent is substantially useful because it is not p2p. It uses central content, like the web, so that it can be an authoritative distribution medium. And it uses central management of connections so that it can provide better service than central download. BT user nodes are mirrors not peers. It gets called p2p because people want there to be substantial non-infringing uses of p2p.

Re:Useful Non-infringing Use

[OWJones]

BitTorrent is p2p is a way similar to the original Napster. It's similar but not identical, since the indexes are not centralized for the entire BT network, merely centralized per file. So if the original Napster was p2p -- which is generally accepted -- then BT is also p2p.

Re:Useful Non-infringing Use

[freeproperty]

Regardless of what you believe are alternatives to p2p services, the fact remains that p2p service can, are, and will be used to distribute files that 1) are in the public domain, 2) are not copyrighted by their authors and 3) are there with the author(s)' permission.

That means that there are substantial, non-infringing uses. Alternatives or not.

Re:Useful Non-infringing Use

[scowling]

Being a Canadian and downloading commercial music for free, legally. The online music stores can't give it to me for free. Hence, a significant and useful non-infringing use.

Political advertising comes to mind. Already on the big Torrent trackers we're seeing campaign commercials being distributed at a cost much lower than buying television airtime.

Distributing first-run TV shows is as legal in some jurisdictions as it is to "tape tree" (passing around tapes person-to-person to build collections). And fas

Re:Useful Non-infringing Use

[Lando]

I get all my linux distributions through bit torrent. Which accounts for at least 80% of my downloads. Other downloads include papers, video where permissions have been granted etc.

Just because there are people that abuse the system does not mean that everyone does.

old news

[nusratt]

This info has been there for quite a while.
It's merely been recently revised/updated.