p2p, anonymity and security

[mark at buttery.org (Mark J. Dulcey)]

Greg Rundlett wrote:
> 
> I am not advertising any intention to violate any law.  My intention is 
> explicitly stated and legal (and this is a wholely public forum).  I 
> think it's a good idea to discuss anything.  Who gets to discuss illegal 
> things?  Only lawyers?
> 
> To the legal eagles ready to take my rights away, there are much bigger 
> fish to catch: http://www.archive.org/audio/etree.php

Indeed. For those unfamiliar with it, the etree collection on 
archive.org has a large collection of live concerts by hundreds of 
"taper-friendly" artists, available for free download. They offer HTTP 
and FTP downloads.

Another site, digitalpanic.org, offers BitTorrent downloads of 
Widespread Panic and other taper-friendly groups. I think they're closer 
to the future of music downloading, because they are harnessing the 
power of p2p networking. Digital Panic doesn't actually host any music 
files, so they don't need the massive resources that a site like 
archive.org has to have.

At least two Linux companies, Red Hat and Lindows, have been using 
BitTorrent to distribute recent versions of their products. Red Hat 
offered RH9 by BitTorrent, and BT is the primary means of distribution 
of Fedora Core.

The Lindows move is particularly interesting in that they are using it 
as one way to offer a COMMERCIAL product - you can buy Lindows 4.5 by 
BitTorrent download, and you get a 50% discount on the price. This 
appears to be a honor-system deal, as their software does not use any 
type of activation code; the Lindows site itself won't give you the 
.torrent file unless you pay, but if you were to obtain it elsewhere, 
they couldn't stop you from downloading and using the software. I think 
their revenue model is to get most of their money from subscriptions to 
the Click-And-Run Warehouse, not from sales of the OS itself, so they 
probably don't much care if people steal the OS itself.