OneThetan (onethetanNOonSPAM@hotmail.com.invalid) wrote:
>Copyrights dead?  I must have missed the begining of this.  What
>was the thing that will make this so?

     There are three software suites now available that make copyright
unenforcable, as the copyright pirates can not be traced nor stopped.

     The first is Napster, a freeware program that anyone can download
and put on their computer.  Their machine communicates with one or
more central database servers that have listings of where mp3 files
can be found on private machines.  If you have mp3 files you want to
give to the world, you tell one central server, which tells the other.
When someone wants what you got, they query the server, the server
tells them your IP, and they connect to you to get it.  You also have
to be running a napster client.

     Its a very intelligent system, if you ask for reggae, it will
figure you might like other artists than the one you asked for and
push them to you with out you having to ask for them etc.

     The problem is that although it is very hard to track down the
*MILLIONS* of people offering mp3's for trade from their private
computers, the central servers can come under legal attack, even
though they are not engaging in any kind of illegal copying.  Even the
developers of napster itself is under legal attack.

     Thus napster is in a great deal of trouble, and those that run
the central servers are in legal trouble, and some clients have gotten
busted also.

     The other two are freenet and Gnutella (Newtella), which do not
use central servers in their model, but a completly distributed system
of programs that each individually acts as both server and client,
call 'servents' a combo of server and client.

     The software is freeware, many are working on it and thus there
is no central software provider to attack, there are no single servers
to attack and find out who the offerers are, and there is no way to
know that two servents are talking to each other unless their packets
happen to go through your system, but they are encrypted, so give it
up.

     freenet and gnutella are both designed for any kind of
information at all, mp3's, software, books, anything.

     The model is different in that when a client wishes to get a copy
of something, rather than put out a request to a central server that
knows where everything is, it sends out a query to a small number of
seed servents that it has to know about.  This comes with the
distribution.

     The seed servents do not know where any copyright violations are
stored unlike the napster model, the seed servents only know where
other servents are, as they learn about others evey time someone
communicates with them.  Its sort of a self learning web.

     The seed servents have been busy learning where other servents
are, and immediately download a huge list of available servents to the
requesting client.

     The requesting client then sends query packets to these servents
also.  If a servent happens to have what the query is looking for, it
responds with a "I have it, do you want it?" message.  The requesting
servent chooses among the many replies that it is bound to get, and
tells the one its chooses to go ahead and send it.

     This way no single servent knows where any particular copyright
is except the ones it is offering itself.  There is no way to attack
it legally because if it isn't offering stuff itself, it can still be
part of the chain of servents knowing where other servents are.
 
     With millions and millions of servents on every personal home
computer on the planet, the problem becomes impossible to police.

     Copyright is dead by virtue of complete and utter
unenforcability.

     Copyright was based on the difficulty of publishing, it was
designed originally to protect the publishers first, the authors
second.

     The constitution tried to make it look like it was protecting the
artists, but the publishers pushed it through.

     Now the internet allows everyone be a publisher for no cost and
no consequences.  For good or for bad, that changes everything.

     *EVERYTHING*

     It may be there won't be as much money enticement any more to
write a good song, because there will be no way to track or collect
royalties, but people don't write songs because they want to be rich,
and it will make artists normal people now with normal incomes rather
than these super rich super stars.

     Homer