p2p, anonymity and security

[bob at sinister.com (Bob Keyes)]

>
> >>>certainly possible to exchange materials which do not have copyrights
> >>>to which you are not the owner via these file sharing networks;
> >>>however I don't think anyone here is naive enough to believe that is
> >>>(exclusively) what you intend...
> >>>

OK I got confused with who said what and the quotes are so deep now I felt
it was better to strip the headers rather than misquote somebody. So don't
sue me ;)

I believe (IANAL) that there was a change in copyright law a little while
ago, wherein that anything copyright (even not a registered copyright),
the author maintains exclusinve distribution rights by default. They can
give this right up via a license, or give up all rights by releasing the
work to the public domain.

Of course, there is still the doctrine of fair use.

Personally, I believe that the law has swung way to much to the favor of
the copyright holder. But we are straying very from from the topic of this
list. Let's just say that there is much legal abuse of intellectual
property rights by IP holders, and much law-breaking on p2p networks.
However these is much abuse on other networks as well, so it doesn't seem
that calling p2p use likely criminal activity is fair.

I caution ISPs not to use blanket filters against p2p and other services
when selling an 'Internet Connection'. In my opinion, an internet
connection has no ports filtered by the ISP, and has no restrictions on
the application layer protocols. The content delivered may be restricted
due to legal reasons. Filtering may happen at the customer's request, or
there may be a special type of 'restricted' internet connection sold. But
all such restrictive connections have to be explicitly labeled, and the
customer should understand this, at the time they sign up. If I were in a
DSL contract and my ISP suddenly decided to filter outbound port 25, or
block access to Kazaa servers, I would be outraged and would consider this
a breach of contract. I would find a new ISP, and if they told me I
couldn't leave the contract I'd wait for it to be settled in court.