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What is P2P ?

Generally, a peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network refers to any network that does not have fixed clients and servers, but a number of autonomous peer nodes that function as both clients and servers to the other nodes on the network. This model of network arrangement is contrasted with the client-server model as any node is able to initiate or complete any supported transaction. Peer nodes may differ in local configuration, processing speed, network bandwidth, and storage quantity.

Although the term has been applied to Usenet and IRC in all their incarnations and is even applicable to the network of IP hosts known as the Internet, it is most often used restricted to the networks of peers developed starting in the late 1990s characterized by transmission of data upon the receiver's request instead of the sender's. Such of the early networks included Gnutella, FastTrack, and the now-defunct Napster which all provide facilities for free (and somewhat anonymous) file transfer between personal computers connected in a dynamic and unreliable way to a network in order to work collectively towards a shared objective.

Even those early Networks did work around the same concept or implementation. In some Networks, such as Napster, OpenNap or IRC, the client-server structure is used for some tasks (e.g. searching) and a peer-to-peer structure for others, and even that is not consistent in each. Networks such as Gnutella or Freenet, use a peer-to-peer structure for all purposes and are sometimes referred to as true peer-to-peer networks, even though some of the last evolution are now making them into a hybrid approach were each peer is not equal in its functions.

When the term peer-to-peer was used to describe the Napster network, it implied that the peer protocol nature was important, but in reality the great achievement of Napster was the empowerment of the peers (ie, the fringes of the network). The peer protocol was just a common way to achieve this.

So the best approach will be to define peer-to-peer, not as a set of strict definitions but to extend it to a definition of a technical/social/cultural movement, that attempts to provide a decentralized, dynamic and self regulated structure (in direct opposition to the old model o central control or server-client model) with the objective of providing content and services. In this way a computer programs/protocol that attempts to escape the need to use a central servers/repository and aims to empower or provide a similar level of service/access to a collection of similar computers can be referred to as being a P2P implementation, and it will be in fact enabling everyone to be a creator/provider, not only a consumer.

From a Computer Science Perspective

Technically, a true peer-to-peer application must implement only peering protocols that do not recognize the concepts of "server" and "client". Such pure peer applications and networks are rare. Most networks and applications described as peer-to-peer actually contain or rely on some non-peer elements, such as DNS. Also, real world applications often use multiple protocols and act as client, server, and peer simultaneously, or over time.

P2P under a computer science perspective creates new interesting fields for research not on to the not so recent switch of roles on the networks components, but due to unforeseen benefits and resource optimizations it enables, on network efficiency and stability.

Peer-to-peer systems and applications have attracted a great deal of attention from computer science research; some prominent research projects include the Chord lookup service, the PAST storage utility, and the CoopNet content distribution system (see below for external links related to these projects).

Distributed Systems

Distributed systems are becoming key components of IT companies for data centric computing. A general example of these systems is the Google infrastructure or any similar system. Today most of the evolution of these systems if being focused on how to analyze and improve performance. A P2P system is also a distributed systems and share, depending on the implementation, the characteristics and problems of distributed systems (error/failure detection, aligning machine time, etc...).

Ganglia

Ganglia is a scalable distributed monitoring system for high-performance computing systems such as clusters and Grids. It is based on a hierarchical design targeted at federations of clusters. It leverages widely used technologies such as XML for data representation, XDR for compact, portable data transport, and RRDtool for data storage and visualization. It uses carefully engineered data structures and algorithms to achieve very low per-node overheads and high concurrency.
Ganglia has been ported to an extensive set of operating systems and processor architectures, and is currently in use on thousands of clusters around the world. It has been used to link clusters across university campuses and around the world and can scale to handle clusters with 2000 nodes. ( http://ganglia.info/ )

Distributed Computation

The basic premise behind distributed computation is to spread computational tasks between several machines distributed in space, most of the new projects focus on harnessing the idle processing power of "personal" distributed machines, the normal home user PC. This current trends is an exciting technology area that has to do with a sub set of distributed systems (client/server communication, protocols, server design, databases, and testing).

This new implementation of an old concept has it's roots in the realization that there is now a staggering number of computers in our homes that are vastly underutilized, not only home computers but there are few businesses that utilizes their computers the full 24 hours of any day. In fact seemingly active computers can be using only a small part of it processing power. Using a word processing, email, and web browsing, require very few CPU resources. So the "new" concept is to tap on this underutilized resource (CPU cycles) that can surpass several supercomputers at substantially lower costs since machines that individually owned and operated by the general public.

SETI@Home

One of the most famous distributed computation project, , hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. SETI@home was released to the public on May 17, 1999.

In average it used hundreds of thousands of home Internet-connected computers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The whole point of the programs is to run your free CPU cycles when it would be otherwise idle, the original project is now deprecated to be included into BOIC.

BOINC

BOINC has been developed by a team based at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson, who also leads SETI@home.

Boinc stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, a non-commercial (free/w:open source software), released under the LGPL, middleware system for volunteer computing, originally developed to support the SETI@home project and still hosted at ( http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ ), but intended to be useful for other applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. an open-source software platform for computing using volunteered resources that extends the original concept and lets you donate computing power to other scientific research projects such as:

• Climateprediction.net: study climate change.
• Einstein@home: search for gravitational signals emitted by pulsars.
• LHC@home: improve the design of the CERN LHC particle accelerator.
• Predictor@home: investigate protein-related diseases.
• Rosetta@home: help researchers develop cures for human diseases.
• SETI@home: Look for radio evidence of extraterrestrial life.
• Folding@Home ( http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/ ): to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.
• Cell Computing biomedical research. (Japanese; requires nonstandard client software)
• World Community Grid: advance our knowledge of human disease. (Requires 5.2.1 or greater)

As a "quasi-supercomputing" platform, BOINC has over 435,000 active computers (hosts) worldwide. BOINC is funded by the National Science Foundation through awards SCI/0221529, SCI/0438443, and SCI/0506411.

It is also used for commercial usages, as there are some private companies that are beginning to use the platform to assist in their own research. The framework is supported by various operating systems: Windows (XP/2K/2003/NT/98/ME), Unix (GNU/Linux, FreeBSD) and Mac OS X.

World Community Grid (WCG)

Created by IBM, World Community Grid ( http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ ) is similar to the above systems. Fourteen IBM servers serve as "command central" for WCG. When they receive a research assignment from an organization, they will scour it for security bugs, parse it into data units, encrypt them, run them through a scheduler and dispatch them out in triplicate to the army of volunteer PCs.

To be a volunteer one only needs to download a free, small software agent (similar to a screensaver).

Projects get selected based on the potential to benefit from WCG technology and address humanitarian concerns, and chosen by an independent, external board of philanthropists, scientists and officials.

The software is OpenSource (LGPL), C/C++ and wxWidgets and is available for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Grid Networks

Grids first emerged in the use of supercomputers in the U.S. , as scientists and engineers sought access to scarce high-performance computing resources that were concentrated at a few sites.

Open Science Grid

The Open Science Grid ( http://www.opensciencegrid.org/ ) was built and is operated by the OSG Consortium, it is a U.S. grid computing infrastructure that supports scientific computing via an open collaboration of science researchers and software developers from universities and national laboratories, storage and network providers.

Globus Alliance

The Globus Alliance ( http://www.globus.org/ ) is a community of organizations and individuals developing fundamental technologies behind the "Grid," which lets people share computing power, databases, instruments, and other on-line tools securely across corporate, institutional, and geographic boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy.

The Globus Alliance also provides the Globus Toolkit, an open source software toolkit used for building robust, secure, grid systems (peer-to-peer distributed computing on supercomputers, clusters, and other high-performance systems) and applications. A Wiki is available to the Globus developer community ( http://dev.globus.org/wiki/Welcome ).

High Throughput Computing (HTC)

As some scientists try extract more floating point operation per second (FLOPS) or minute from their computing environment, others concentrate on the same goal for larger time scales, like months or years, we refer these environments as High Performance Computing (HPC) environments.

The term HTC was coined in a seminar at the NASA Goddard Flight Center in July of 1996 as a distinction between High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Throughput Computing (HTC).

HTC focus is on the processing power and not on the network, but the systems can also be created over a network and so be seen as a Grid network optimized for processing power.

Condor Project

The goal of the Condor Project ( http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/ ) is to develop, implement, deploy, and evaluate mechanisms and policies that support High Throughput Computing (HTC) on large collections of distributively owned computing resources. Guided by both the technological and sociological challenges of such a computing environment, the Condor Team has been building software tools that enable scientists and engineers to increase their computing throughput.

IBM Grid Computing

IBM among other big fishes in the IT pond, spends some resources investigating Grid Computing. Their attempts around grid computing are listed in on the projects portal page ( http://www.ibm.com/grid ). All seem to attempt to leverage the enterprise position on server machines to provide grid services to costumers. The most active project is Grid Medical Archive Solution a scalable virtual storage solution for healthcare, research and pharmaceutical clients.

Content distribution/Hosting

The traditional method of distributing large files is to put them on a central server. The server and the client can then share the content across the network using agreed upon protocols (from HTTP, FTP to an infinite number of variations) when using IP connections the data can be sent over TCP or UDP connection or a mix of the two, this all depends mostly on the requirements on the service, machines, network and many security considerations.

P2P evolved in it time to solve a simple problem, central servers don't scale well (bandwidth, space and CPU) and they constitute a point of failure, that can bring the function of the system to an end (as any centralization of services).

TODO Complete

From a Economics Perspective

For a P2P system to be viable there must be a one to one share of work between peers, the goal should be a balance between consumption and production of resources and maintaining a singe class of participant on the network. Since most P2P systems have an hard time creating incentives for users to produce, most P2P system have a pyramidal scheme as users interact with it and do depend on the network effect it creates, the more users the system has the more attractive it (and the more value it has) as any system that depends on the network effect, it's success is based on compatibility and conformity issues.

In 2008, Michael Heller, an academic at Columbia University in New York, in an interview to technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio ( Listen to: Are patents and copyrights making innovation impossible? OUT-LAW Radio, 28/08/2008 ) presented his theory, saying:
- "I discovered a paradox in the free market and it is this: usually private ownership creates wealth, but too much ownership has the opposite effect - it creates gridlock,". "When too many owners control a single resource – it can be a patent, a copyright, land – when too many people control a single resource, co-operation breaks down and wealth disappears. Everybody ends up losing.".
- "Imagine a drug developer walking into an auditorium and seeing 50 or 100 or several hundred patent owners, each with their essential patent on their lap, and the drug developer knows that unless he's able to negotiate successfully with every single one of those patent owners, his drug can't come to market,".
- "A standard, when it works, can solve the problem of gridlock. But to create the standard you need to get, in the context of a DVD, seven or eight hundred separate patents pooled together into a single patent pool; but there are many areas that we don't have because entrepreneurs can't get the pools together or can't get the standard negotiated.".
Heller has also published a book, The Gridlock Economy in it he expanded on his theory how too much ownership wrecks markets, stops innovation and costs lives.

Content for money

The privatization of the production and distribution of Cultural goods.

Content is virtual, made only of information. This information can be any type of non material object that is made from ideas (text, multimedia). In this way content is also the myriad ways those ideas can be expressed. It may consist of music, movies, books or any one single aspect of each.

Music

In todays interconnected world the distribution channels are so diversified that creating artificial control schemes will only degrade the level of satisfaction of consumers without increasing product value but incrementing the costs to the sanctioned distributors. If costumers are faced with a product with DRM, unauthorized copies if made publicly available, will create a competing product without limitations, thus creating a better product with a better price tag. In fact the use of DRM promotes the creation of a parallel market (if one can call it that because most offerings are gratis), this results from the consumers wishes are not being satisfied by the primary offer.

Video

Movies

TV

Recently some television networks are rethinking their approach to audiences, this has resulted from the level acceptance and interest that DVD show collections were having and several online attempts to improve distribution. Since now anyone can easily illegally download their favorite shows, a problem similar to the fragmentation of the distribution channels as seen in the music recording industry with the rise of alternative delivery technologies will have a similar result if television industry fails adapt and fill the audiences expectations of quick and easy accessibility to new fresh content.

TODO extend, address the rise of independent productions, compare the p2p meme of decentralization with the static settings of the industry, we are all producers now, real time interaction

ISPs

ISPs have been shaping/throttling P2P traffic, especially the more popular networks for years, resulting on an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and P2P developers. In the US the network neutrality discussion and recently the evidence of this actions by ISPs against P2P traffic has turned this matter into a political issue.

In November 2007, Vuze, creators of Azureus (a Bittorrent application), petitioned the FCC, resulting in a FCC hearing held in December 2007. One of the issues raised there, was the level of data available on BitTorrent throttling. This lead to a statement by the General Counsel at Vuze, Jay Monahan; “We created a simple software “plug-in” that works with your Vuze application to gather information about potential interference with your Internet traffic.”

This plugin has been gathering more hard data on the actions of ISPs, resulting in a growing list of ISPs that interfere with P2P protocols is maintained on the Azureus WIKI ( http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs ).

From a Sociological Perspective

From person to person or user to user, a new world is being born in that all are at the same time producers and consumers. The information will be free since the costs of distribution will continue to fall and the power for creative participation is at anyones hands.

Is it morally wrong?

As discussed previously there is no common ground to answer this question, views differ wildly, even states degrees with the interpretation or legality of restricting/implementing intellectual property rights.

TODO todonote

For every action there is a reaction

It is today an evidence that there is a social movement against what is generally perceived as the corruption of copyright over public goods, that is, legally a minority is attempting to impose extensions and reductions of liberties to defend economical interests of mostly sizable international corporations that in it's vast majority aren't even the direct creators of the goods. In this particular case virtual goods, mostly digital that have a approaching 0 cost of replication and aren't eroded by time or use.

DRM (Digital Rights Management)

In late 2005, market-based rationales influenced Sony BMG's deployment of DRM systems on millions of Compact Discs that threatened the security of its customers computers and compromised the integrity of the information infrastructure more broadly. This became known as the Sony BMG Rootkit debacle (see the paper Mulligan, Deirdre and Perzanowski, Aaron K., "The Magnificence of the Disaster: Reconstructing the Sony BMG Rootkit, for detailed information).

In February 6, 2007, Steve Jobs, wrote an open letter addressing DRM since it was impacting Apples business on the iTunes/iPod store ( http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ ).

On a presentation made by David Hughes of the RIAA at Arizona State University (2007), David Hughes, senior vice president of technology for the RIAA, dubbed the spiritual leader of Apple Steve Jobs as a "hypocrite" over his attitude to DRM on iTunes. "While Steve has been banging on about the music companies dropping DRM he has been unwilling to sell his Pixar movies through iTunes without DRM and DVDs without CSS encryption."

a danger for historical records

TODO todonote

P2P United

A now disbanded organization formed by six of the biggest P2P groups (those behind eDonkey, Grokster, Morpheus, Blubster, Limewire and BearShare), with Adam Eisgrau as executive director. It was started in mid-July 2003 to provide a way to lobby for the P2P on U.S. Congress and WIPO, the UN organization that administers intellectual property treaties since the file-sharing industry (as an industry) had no identifiable name and face in Washington or in the media.

This attempt was a bust and since then most of the members of the group has lost court cases or have settled and closed operations.

TODO Complete

Peer-to-Peer working group

The Peer-to-Peer WG (P2Pwg).

A great article about problems with the creation of the working group is available at (www.openp2p.com) by Tim O'Reilly 10/13/2000 is available (http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/10/13/working_grp.html).

P2P in non technological fields

There are also several movements attempting to establish how to apply the concept of P2P to non technological fields like politics, economics, ecology etc...
One of such attempts is the The Foundation for P2P Alternatives ( http://p2pfoundation.net ), that function as a clearinghouse for such open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives and aims to be a pluralist network to document, research, and promote peer to peer alternatives.

From a Legal Perspective

The most commonly shared files on such networks are mp3 files of popular music and DivX movie files. This has led many observers, including most media companies and some peer-to-peer advocates, to conclude that these networks pose grave threats to the business models of established media companies. Consequently, peer-to-peer networks have been targeted by industry trade organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA as a potential threat. The Napster service was shut down by an RIAA lawsuit; both groups the RIAA and MPAA spend large amounts of money attempting to lobby lawmakers for legal restrictions. The most extreme manifestation of these efforts to date (as of January, 2003) has been a bill introduced by California Representative Berman, which would grant copyright holders the legal right to break into computer systems believed to be illegally distributing copyrighted material, and to subvert the operation of peer-to-peer networks. The bill was defeated in committee in 2002, but Rep. Berman has indicated that he will reintroduce it during the 2003 sessions.

As attacks from Media companies expand the networks have seemed to adapt at a quick pace and have become technologically more difficult to dismantle. This has caused the users of such systems to become targets . Some have predicted that open networks may give way to closed, encrypted ones where the identity of the sharing party is not known by the requesting party. Other trends towards immunity from media companies seem to be in wireless adhoc networks where each device is connected in a true peer-to-peer sense to those in the immediate vicinity.

While historically P2P file sharing has been used to illegally distribute copyrighted materials (like music, movies, and software), future P2P technologies will certainly evolve and be used to improve the legal distribution of materials.

TODO todonote

As it should be obvious by now the problem P2P technologies create to the owner of the content, to the control of the distribution channels and to the limitation of users (consumers) rights is huge, the technology is making holes in the standard ideology that controls the relations between producers and consumers some new models have been proposed (see for example Towards solutions to “the p2p problem” - http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/pam-p2p/ ).

In 2007 a handful of the wealthiest countries (United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico) started secretive negotiations toward a treaty-making process to create a new global standard for intellectual property rights enforcement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) due to be adopted at the 34th G8 summit in July 2008.

It has been argued that the main purpose of the treaty is to provide safe harbor for service providers so that they may not hesitate to provide information about infringers; this may be used, for instance, to quickly identify and stop infringers once their identities are confirmed by their providers.

Similarly, it provides for criminalization of copyright infringement, granting law enforcement the powers to perform criminal investigation, arrests and pursue criminal citations or prosecution of suspects who may have infringed on copyright.

More pressingly, being an international treaty, it allows for these provisions—usually administered through public legislation and subject to judiciary oversight—to be pushed through via closed negotiations among members of the executive bodies of the signatories, and once it is ratified, using trade incentives and the like to persuade other nations to adopt its terms without much scope for negotiation.

Is it Illegal?

Peer-to-Peer in itself in nothing particularly new. We can say that an FTP transfer or any other one on one transfer is P2P, like an IRC user sending a DCC file to another, or even eMail, the only thing that can be illegal is the use one can give to a particular tool.

Legal uses of P2P include distributing open or public content, like movies, software distributions (Linux, updates) and even Wikipedia DVDs are found on P2P Networks. It can also be used to bypass censorship, like for instance the way Michael Moore's new film 'Sicko' leaked via P2P or as publicity machine to promote products and ideas or even used as a market annalists tool.

However trading copyrighted information without permission is illegal in most countries. You are free to distribute your favorite Linux distribution, videos or pictures you have taken yourself, MP3 files of a local band that gave you permission to post their songs online, maybe even a copy an open source software or book. The view of legality lies foremost on cultural and moral ground and in a globally networked world there is no fixed line you should avoid crossing, one thing is certain most people don't produce restricted content, most view their creations as giving to the global community, so it's mathematically evident that a minority is "protected" by the restrictions imposed on the use and free flow of ideas, concepts and culture in general.

P2P as we will see is not only about files sharing, it is more generally about content/services distribution.

Sharing contents that you have no right to is not theft. It has never been theft any were in the world. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong. Sharing content that you don't own or have the rights to is copyright infringement. Duplicating digital good doesn't reduce the value of the original good nor does it signify subtraction of the same to the owner and making that same digital good available to others without a license has a well understood effect of augmenting the visibility of said product and increase the demand for it, this has been validated in tests done with digital books, music and video releases.

The legal battles we are now accustomed to hear about deals mostly on control and also on lesser degree in rights preservation. Control over the way distribution is archived (who gets what in what way), this deals with money, as there is added value to controlling and restricting access by format, time and space.

TODO todonote

WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization)

The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations. WIPO was created in 1967 with the stated purpose "to encourage creative activity, [and] to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world". The convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, was signed at Stockholm on July 14, 1967.

TODO Add more info on the WIPO and relevant treaties.

European Union

In August 2007, the Music industry was rebuffed in Europe on file-sharing identifications, as a court in Offenburg, Germany refused to order ISPs to identify subscribers when asked to by Music Industry who suspected specified accounts were being used for copyright-infringing file-sharing, the refusal was based in the courts understanding that ordering the ISPs to handover the details would be "disproportionate", since the Music Industry representatives had not adequately explained how the actions of the subscribers would constitute "criminally relevant damage" that could be a basis to request access to the data.

This was not an insulate incident in Germany, as also in 2007, Celle chief prosecutor's office used the justification that substantial damage had not been shown to refuse the data request, and does follows the opinion of a European Court of Justice (ECJ) Advocate-General, Juliane Kokott who had published an advice two weeks earlier, backing this stance, as it states that countries whose law restricted the handing over of identifying data to criminal cases were compliant with EU Directives. The produced advice was directed to a Spanish case in which a copyright holders' group wanted subscriber details from ISP Telefonica. The ECJ isn't obliged to follow an Advocate-General's advice, but does so in over three-quarters of cases.

In most European countries, copyright infringement is only a criminal offense when conducted on a commercial scale (for profit).

TODO todonote

France

On June 12 2007 the Société des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF - http://www.sppf.com/ ), an entity that represents the legal interests and collects copyright revenue in behalf of independent French audio creations, have publicly announced that they had launched a civil action on the Paris Court of First Instance requesting a court order to terminate the distribution and function of Morpheus (published by Streamcast), Azureus and demanding compensation for monetary losses. In 18 September 2007 a similar action was made against Shareaza and in 20 December 2007 the SPPF announced a new action this time against Limewire. All of this legal actions seem to have as a base an amendment done to the national copyright law that stipulates that civil action can taken against software creators/publishers that do not take steps in preventing users from accessing illegal content.

TODO Also mention ALPA (Association against audiovisual piracy)

Spain

In July 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. Judge Raul N. García Orejudo declared that “P2P networks, as a mere transmission of data between Internet users, do not violate, in principle, any right protected by Intellectual Property Law,” when dismissing the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE) legal action for the closing of the eD2K link site elrincondejesus.com..

Norway

The Norway’s Personal Data Act (PDA) makes it mandatory for ISPs in the country to delete all IP address logs on their customers more than three weeks old as it is considered personal information. This is a huge step forward in personal data protection laws but it also will make the work of "pirate-hunters" more dificult. The Simonsen law firm, is an example since it is known by the lawyer Espen Tøndel, figure head on this matters, and for having since 2006 (now terminated), a temporary license from Norway’s data protection office to monitor suspected IP addresses without legal supervision.

USA

Under US law "the Betamax decision" (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.), case holds that copying "technologies" are not inherently illegal, if substantial non-infringing use can be made of them. This decision, predating the widespread use of the Internet applies to most data networks, including peer-to-peer networks, since legal distribution of some files can be performed. These non-infringing uses include sending open source software, creative commons works and works in the public domain. Other jurisdictions tend to view the situation in somewhat similar ways.

The US is also a signatory of the WIPO treaties, treaties that were partially responsible for the creation and adoption of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

As stated in US Copyright Law, one must be keep in mind the provisions for fair use, licensing, copyright misuses and the statute of limitations.

MGM v. Grokster

TODO todonote

RIAA

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) ( http://www.riaa.com/ ) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. The RIAA receives funding from the four of the major music groups EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and Universal and hundreds of small independent labels.

Motion Picture Association of America

TODO todonote

Canada

Canada has a levy on blank audio recording media, created on March 19, 1998, by the adoption of the new federal copyright legislation. Canada introduced this levy regarding the private copying of sound recordings, other states that share a similar copyright regime include most of the G-7 and European Union members. In depth information regarding the levy may be found in the Canadian copyright levy on blank audio recording media FAQ ( http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml ).

With borders and close ties to it neighbor, Canada as historically been less prone to serve corporations interests and has a policy that contrasts in its social aspects with any other country in the American Continent. The reality is that Canada has been highly influenced and even pressured (economically and politically) by its strongest neighbor, the USA, to comply with its legal, social and economic evolution. In recent time (November 2007) the government of Canada has attempted to push for the adoption of a DMCA-modeled copyright law, so to to comply with the WIPO treaties the country signed in 1997 in a similar move to the USA, this has resulted in a popular outcry against the legislation and will probably result in it's alteration. The visibility of this last attempt was due to efforts of Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa considered an expert in copyright and the Internet, that was afraid that law would copy the worst aspects of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Darknets vs Brightnets

Due the refusal to legislate in accordance with the public needs and wants. By adding extensions of copyrights (US, UK) and by actively promoting the promulgating laws similar to the DMCA in other countries a monoculture is created where a virtual monopoly on cultural goods is created, generating something of a cultural imperialism.

This reality promotes the population to move its support for transparent distribution systems (brightnets) to more closed system (darknets), that will increasingly depend on social connections to get into, like the hold speakeasy bars that popped up during the prohibition, legislating against the people once more will prove to be a failure.

A P2P brightnet for content distribution,where no one breaks the law, so no one need hide in the dark, can only be feasible if built around owner-free media/system or by being as heavily controlled, owned media/system, as the old centralized system. This probably around a centralized entity that should guarantee control and manage the content, maybe even requiring the use of some DRM sheme, an overall failed system.

This types of networks were already tested and failed, since content is also information, the need for privacy or lack of it on an open system will always create generate a more layered system that will ultimately degenerate in a darknet to survive legal actions.

Shadow Play

Some actions are not intended to see the light of day, this section is dedicated to bring out some of the subjects/actions in an attempt to help the reader to fully appreciate some of the less publicized information that has some kind of baring on the evolution of P2P.

OS

Since P2P (and P2P related technologies) started to pop up, the security of the user OS started to be placed above user freedom, probably due to most people being, technologically challenged, some organization (or groups with invested interest) are still free to think for the masses in place of just try to push the information out. There is an organized attempt to hide this fact from the public, it is funny to see that after this security enhancements are done they tend to be hidden so not to cause any brain damage or confusion (read foment rebellion) into users.

Well not all is lost, some people can't seem to be made to comply with this state of things and some information can be found and actions reversed.

about MS Windows

• TCPIP.SYS - [fix],[info] for Windows XP.

• CrackTcpip.sys - [similar solution for Vista SP1]

• BadVista.org - An information campaign run by FSF/GNU aiming to stopping Microsoft Windows Vista adoption by promoting free software. What's wrong with Microsoft Windows Vista? ( http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista ) gives an extensive list of problems in the OS related to user loss of freedom and DRM.

ISPs

TODO Add missing information about ISPs interactions with P2P technologies.

Internet providers (ISPs) aren't very pleased with P2P technologies due to the load the bring into to their networks, although they sell their Internet connections as unlimited usage, if people actually take on their offer, ISPs will eventually be unable to cope with the demand at the same price/profit level. This has made clients increasingly worried over some ISPs actions, from traffic shaping (protocol/packet prioritization) to traffic tampering.

San Francisco-based branch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) a digital rights group have successfully verified that this type of efforts by Internet providers to disrupt some uses of their services and evidences seem to indicate that it is an increasing trend other as reports have reached the EFF and verified by an investigation by The Associated Press.

EFF Releases Report Interference with Internet Traffic on ComCast ( http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair ), other information is available about this subject on the EFF site.

Traffic shaping

TODO Add missing information.

Traffic tampering

Traffic tampering is more worrying then Traffic shaping and harder to be noticed or verified. It can also be defined as spoofing, consisting in the injection of adulterated/fake information into communication by gaming a given protocol. It like the post office taking the identity of one of your friends and sending mail to you in it's name.

Pcapdiff ( http://www.eff.org/testyourisp/pcapdiff/ ) is a free Python tool developed by the EFF to compare two packet captures and identify potentially forged, dropped, or mangled packets.

Localization/Acceleration (Cache)

Network neutrality

Network Neutrality deals with the need to prevent ISPs from double dipping on charges/fees for both the clients paying for their broadband connections and WEB sites/Organizations having also to pay for prioritization of traffic according to origination and destination or protocol used.