P2P Manifesto:Peer To Peer Study/Project 204
Marco Montemagno writes "
P2P Manifesto
is a P2P study that I've done and also a project, released under CC license.
This study (30 pages, available on a dedicated blog, in pdf format or in .torrent/blogtorrent) explain why:
- P2P is unstoppable
- P2P is positive for Companies
- P2P is positive for the market
- P2P is good for users
All the readers can create their own P2P Manifesto, free to edit this original P2P manifesto.
The idea is to then collect on the blog all the different P2P Manifesto's releases, to create a good knowledge base point about P2P issues."
Hmm (Score:1)
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
To those with existing business models on selling contents, yes. Read the manifesto. There's also a more coherent summary [masternewmedia.org]. It's only a problem if you believe the current (or rather recent past) model is the right way to distribute content and sharing is wrong.
There are excellent points in this manifesto. As far as the sharing is concerned, the point is that the days of media companies making money from selling content are just about over. There's a new market in town and if
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
P2P is the antithesis of a company maintaining a degree of control.
P2P does not exist so companies can exploit it.
P2P is what the Internet is all about.
P2P is UUCP on steroids.
Dr. Bronner's Magic P2P Manifesto? (Score:5, Funny)
Dilute! Dilute! OK! [drbronner.com]
This "paper" is a mess (Score:5, Interesting)
With such obviously lacking intellectual rigor, why should we have any confidence in your conclusions on the overall issue, which is far more complicated than many of the trivial things which escaped you?
P2P should be about people freely choosing to share their creations with the world, not about consumers choosing to violate the license on commercial goods that they'd rather not pay for. You do a disservice to the future of P2P and information exchange when you perpetuate the myth that the two are the same thing.
The goal should be making free-distribution licenses mainstream, not making it easier to violate licenses.
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:1)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:5, Insightful)
This paper is full of errors, uses language that only someone with no concept of business communication would use, and, if widely propagated, could do more damage to the PR side of P2P than anything the RIAA or MPAA could hope to accomplish.
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:1)
Could that be the intention? Hell, it could be an RIAA paper. Remember, the idea here is to get rid of P2P in any way possible. The whole piracy thing is used to get more public opinion on their side, and it's gotten people here just as riled up about it, and it's gotten us off track of what the real issue is. These people don't want you to share or upload anything. They want you to read what's on cnn or
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Hidden Agenda? (Score:2)
Not to mention the lack of English skills (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:3, Funny)
To go about this licensing scheme I proprose a new manifesto, a Communist Manifesto where the people own everything! oh...forgot..
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:3, Insightful)
Property has physical existence as its primary characteristic. A book may be physical property. But the stream of words and images within are is not.
Secondary characteristic: if you take a property away from the owner, the owner no longer has access to it. Take a book away from me, and you have stolen my property. Take an image of the book, and I still have the book; nothing has been stolen.
No memetic hijacking of the words "property" and "stealing", p
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
What do you say to someone who sinks $1 million dollars into the production of a feature film that you just copied without permission? That is the person you are stealing from, not your next door neighbor who bought a legitimate copy.
In the world you describe, a film that cost $1 million dollars to make could be bought once for $20 by one person. That one person then owns the film and allows infinite copies to be made. What do you say to film producer who produced a world wide smash hit but
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Who wants to encourage the production of expensive, bad movies anyway?
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
People just like to make their $$$ worthwhile. The movie and music industry does nothing after selling you a lemon. It just ends up another bad CD/DVD on the shelf.
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
The question at hand is should copyright owners have the rights they do now? You assume they should, Catbeller does not.
Take for example some other person. She spends one million dollars developing a mathematical proof that (pi + e) is irrational. But, gosh dangit, no one is paying when they reproduce the proof! But there's no law to
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
This all misses on another, larger level as well, as I'm not an advocate of copyright law revision in the first place.
Again, you seem to be arguing the same thing but instead of pointing out the consequences that
Oh here it goes again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh here it goes again (Score:2)
Re:Oh here it goes again (Score:2)
Exactly.
Yes it does.
No.
You're might disagree, but ideas (including images, movies, and writings) are culture, and as such belong to the people (collectively). How could it be ethical to tax culture itself? Mo
Re:Oh here it goes again (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2, Insightful)
You present a particular definition of property. What exactly `property' is is not the point of the conversation. The piracy / file-sharing debate is about the extent to which we should be carrying over the rules associated with property to information. On one hand, it is important to reward people for creating information. Without a positive expected value,
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
"No memetic hijacking of the words "property" and "stealing", please."
You appear to be unaware -- or at the least, hopeful that the reader is unaware -- that the term "intellectual property" has been in existence since before you and I were born. Perhaps it is a new concept to you, but frankly, that's not good enough.
"Your point about "communism"? Jefferson and his allies wanted no copyrights in the constitution. Damned commie."
Jefferson, that bulwark of freedom, owned slaves. Cherry-picking his
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh that's not what you meant.
So you meant that anybody who expends work creating something that isn't primarily a physical object, has no rights over the fruits of their labours?
Well, apparently that might be what you mean, but I disagree,
I'm perfectly happy to stop using the words 'theft' and 'property' when someone suggests alternative words that adequatel
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:5, Interesting)
"I'm perfectly happy to stop using the words 'theft' and 'property' when someone suggests alternative words that adequately express the loss that the creator of a work suffers when control of that work is ripped from their hands without their say so."
I'd say that the response to this by many people reading this would be fuck them. If they're greedy enough to subscribe to this silly notion of expecting to be paid for their creative output, then they deserve what they can get.
Putting all concepts of right and wrong aside for a moment, I think many reading this will agree that said greedy content creators are a bit like the American Indians in the 18th and 19th century with their similar notions of "we were here first." Again, right/wrong aside, you simply can't win against a much larger group of people who have technology on their side, whether they're a bunch of settlers with guns who want your land, or a bunch of teenagers with P2P apps who want your song. This is how it has always worked. Obviously, there's an insurmountable gulf between a songwriter missing a few rent payments and an entire tribe being massacred, but the fundamentals of group behavior are the same.
Propaganda can be a useful tool here. Eradicating the Indian problem was made easier for our ancestors when they were fed the notion of Indians being diseased, drunken savages who raped our women. Likewise, today, although smart people know that the lifestyle of the typical artist is not a glamorous one, note how often it is that "artists are greedy, yadda yadda, limousines, yadda yadda, cocaine habits, yadda yadda they should just shut up and learn that P2P helps them" posts are modded +5, Insightful.
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Your indignation is indeed righteous, but entirely misplaced. I agree 100% with you. My post is summarizing what I think is the feeling of many Slashdotters. If you don't agree with me that the attitude I've describe is prevalent, stick around here a while. You'd be amazed at what lengths people will go to to justify violating others' intellectual property rights.
"And trying to use the American Indian situation as support for your arguments shows that you don't have a grasp of either situation."
Do
bad comparison (Score:2)
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
The doctor works for a year, and expects to get paid for that year at his salary or from his practice.
The author is the same, works for a year, and expects to get paid for the year from his publisher or whatever.
What I don't get is what happens the second year.
The doctor expects to see new patients, or have return visits from the same patients, and get paid for his work that y
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
"If you tell me that I can only be creative for my own enjoyment, and can't make money off it, then I'll tell you this: Nobody is going to create music, movies, etc anymore."
Agreed. I applaud those people who do take the effort to create and release artistic works purely for the public good and for their own enjoyment, and if that little community thrives, then God bless them.
However, I don't think too highly of people who embrace the "info wants to be free" belief only as a means to provide moral ab
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
"Shakespeare had to contend with pretty heavy piracy of his work as in England at the time actors were considered scum, so there was no legal protection offered to plays. Yet, amazingly Shakespeare and company routinely performed to sold-out houses. Why? Because that's all the entertainment there was."
Shakespeare's family was pretty well off. His troupe called themselves the "King's Men," and they were in pretty good with the Queen. There was legal protection afforded to plays, and Shakespeare and his
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Look kids, see the straw person!
No one has suggested that creative works have no value, or that there ought not be some rights attached to creations.
The words you're looking for are "copyright", "trademark" and "patent". None of them are property rights. Property rights were invented to internalize negative externalities. Copyright, trademark and patent rights were invented to internalize positive externalities.
--Tom
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
"Secondary characteristic: if you take a property away from the owner, the owner no longer has access to it. Take a book away from me, and you have stolen my property. Take an image of the book, and I still have the book; nothing has been stolen."
The implication in 'nothing being stolen' being that we have some kind of victimless crime, or indeed no crime.
There are many ways of using 'steal' in the English l
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Well, in fact - they do. They make it possible to gain remuneration from intellectual work.
>You want control of an idea? Simple, keep it to yourself
Which sadly precludes the possibility of gaining remuneration from intellectual work.
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:4, Insightful)
While such language is common on Creative Commons-licensed stuff, in this case it's almost like the author is saying "Here is my first cut of a document I'd like to see produced, everyone else please edit it, fill in the ( huge ) gaps, give it some actual content and substance. Thanks."
It's the literary equivalent of setting up an open source software project with a not-really-functional 'prototype' codebase and hoping someone makes it actually work.
I know the topic of P2P ( and more generally, 'file sharing' ) has been studied by tons of smart folks at universities [caida.org] and corporations [hp.com] alike, what about some links to some of those? Oddly enough, the 'study' just has links to ( mostly ) opinion pieces and blogs ( including, of all things, a slashdot article ).
To speak to the parent posts' points of
well, that's an interesting topic all by itself.Frankly, copyright-protected files are the most common files found on P2P networks. Rather than hiding from reality, we should seek to understand what reality means. In this case, I think reality means that copyright is a generally unenforcable law - like many other laws on the books, it's an example of bad law which in the long run wastes taxpayer money for the ( dubious ) benefit of a small segment of the population.
Copyright infringment is an old, old problem, vastly pre-dating the internet. Even without filesharing, there'd be lots of "piracy", as it's now labeled. As long as there is copyright protection for easily copied items, there will be piracy. It's a law which is extremely difficult to enforce- at best.
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
"Even without filesharing, there'd be lots of "piracy", as it's now labeled."
Been labelled that for more than a century. Hit your school library's OED if it has one.
Otherwise, great post. I would mod it up if I could.
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
" The OED says that piracy (as in the theft of intellectual property) predates the American revolution. Damn."
Excellent, thank you for the cite. I did not know that it went back as early as 1771.
Unfortunately this will be lost on the "words should not be allowed to have multiple meanings" crowd around here.
Re:This "paper" is a mess (Score:2)
Dubious? (Score:2)
Well, if by that you mean the small part of the population that at least tries to make a living by creating things with their brains, then yes - protecting those people from theft is what those tax dollars are being spent on.
But I'm questioning whether or not those are the only people who would benefit. Why are people ripping off the creative output of that minority? Because they value the content. They want it. What the minority does is
Re:Dubious? (Score:2)
You've missed my point entirely. Or, at least if you think laws regardin
Re:Dubious? (Score:2)
No, I must not have made my own point clearly enough. I cite those other things as having been routinely considered, by a lot of people, as beyond any hope of meaningful enforcement. Not because they were logisitcally impossible to enforce, but because the political will was absent, and had been (in New York, anyway) for years before it was put on the front burner and d
Re:Dubious? (Score:2)
Re:Dubious? (Score:2)
I understand. I'm thinking more about what other (idiotic) people think when they hear anything even remotely along the line of your (reasonable) arguments. Everything that even remotely adds up to throwing up our hands, or expressing gloom about the subject at all, normalizes the larger conceits of the "infomation wants to be free" crowd, and especially when that information is a freshly burned Matrix DVD, etc. I guess I chafe at g
Bleh (Score:1)
Try again. And try doing something real, instead of writing silly manifestoes devoid of any content.
Re:Bleh (Score:1)
No offense but since sharing music over networks is still rampant DESPITE all the lawsuits YEARS after the lawsuits started.... Wouldn't it be logical to assume that maybe, just maybe, P2P will stick around also?
I'll agree the original article wasn't that well articulated. I know third graders that write better.
But to say that P2P is 'soon to be past' is shortsighted and lacking any exploration of history. Hist
Re:Bleh (Score:2)
Either way, no matter whether p2p will be dealt a mortal blow by anti-piracy laws or not, i doubt that this guy's "manifesto" (and its derivatives, if there will ever be any) will affect the future of p2p in any way. He's just a poser.
Re:Bleh (Score:2)
Fools (Score:2, Insightful)
No sane person denies that P2P is useful for certain purposes. The problem is about the bad side of P2P which is that it is unrestricted playground for IPR violations.
They would be better off by
a) creating PR campaign against P2P abuse (quite useless as well, but still...)
b) working with interested parties to include anti-piracy code in P2P clients (of course, they don't want to do that)
So, the effect of their action will be naught - those who use P2P
Re:Fools (Score:2)
Also, I should have to pay with time, money, and effort to have anti-stolen-cash technology installed in my wallet.
Infringement "solutions" (Score:2, Insightful)
What sort of "anti-piracy code" sdo you think will work?
Filters? Nope, there have been past stories here about the borkups caused by content owners not checking the results filters gave them.
Tie the software into a big content comparison DB? Let's see that one s
Re:Infringement "solutions" (Score:2)
They can also attack the P2P systems themselves through technological means, such as trying to flood the networks with bogus offerings (corrupted files, servers that drastically slow down during the download, etc) and per
Connotation (Score:1)
The problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Connotation (Score:1)
In other words, a manifesto has nothing to do with facts or thruths, only agendas and propaganda.
This "oh poor me I shouldnt have to pay for Britney Spears because I don't like her" crap is aptly titled.
Re:Connotation (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you see a correlation?
Re:Connotation (Score:2)
Oh, and one more thing (Score:4, Funny)
Interesting (Score:4, Funny)
Nothing new... (Score:3, Interesting)
..."Study"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Page 13:
"Take back technology of let's say 20 years"... yet 30 years ago, peer-to-peer protocols were dominant in the Internet. Hmm.
Further, for a study, I'd expect some references. With interesting things such as, you know, FACTS and FIGURES. He seems to present an argument, with no data to back it up. This is like a high school report.
He seems to write.
In such a manner that William Shatner.
Would be proud of.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of this story is. Can someone please enlighten me?
Re:..."Study"? (Score:2, Funny)
Mu.
Re:..."Study"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:..."Study"? (Score:2)
"High School" here in the UK refers to secondary education which starts at around the age of 11 (varying slightly certainly between Scotland and England).
danger (Score:3, Informative)
For this to be useful both sides must be presented well and P2P still win...if that doesn't happen then it's not worth much of anything.
Re:danger (Score:3, Insightful)
No one can sue you, if they can't figure out who you are.
They should also have been working on deniability. Freenet may offer anonymity, but when freenet is outlawed, it will be pretty obvious what IP addresses
formatting is everything! (Score:2)
This is the worst formatting ever - It could be so much improved - By using commas instead of dashes - So people could actually read and understand - The summary a little bit - And this reeks of buzzwords - P2P this and P2P is positive - P2P is a scalable enterprise solution - With high ROI r
Re:formatting is everything! (Score:2)
...explain why:
- P2P is unstoppable
- P2P is positive for Companies
- P2P is positive for the market
- P2P is good for users
and it just got all bunched up because our editors aren't editing, just modifying.
Resistance is futile (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Resistance is futile (Score:2)
And again... (Score:2)
jesus h. (Score:3, Funny)
Max
Re:jesus h. (Score:2)
----
I don't know the guy, this is on the webpage mentioned int he article. He certainly doesn't seem intelligent enough to be a professor of anything. Even if I let him slide a bit for being a non-native english speaker, the paper is still *awful.*
It hurts (Score:2)
Wikipedia (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wikipedia (Score:5, Funny)
PEDANT PARTY! (Score:1)
It makes "All your base" read like Shakespeare!
I dedicate this thread to shredding this raging bozo, and hereby retaliate in the name of the King's English.
I'll kick things off with my favorite.
In this case in order to put it on Winmx it will be not even necessary to convert it from analogical to digit
Re:PEDANT PARTY! (Score:1)
It should be the Kings English again, that way we'd need royal approval before adding made up nonsense words like "blog" or "spam" to the lexicon, when perfectly cromulent words already exist.
hehe hoho haha (Score:2)
Re:hehe hoho haha (Score:2)
"P2P has a lot of potential for reducing costs and increasing bandiwdth for distributing data but the technology needs to be developed furthur to protect the rights of content creators. Current solutions are synonmous with illegal pirating of music, films and applications, this is a stigma that will be hard to shift if current P2P technologies continue to allow this illegal distribution."P2P has a lot of potential for redu
Re:Why don't you write your own? (Score:2)
Here, you want a paragraph which is more meaningful, better structured and readable:
"P2P has a lot of potential for reducing costs and increasing bandwidth for distributing data but the technology needs to be developed further to protect the rights of content creators. Current solutions are synonymous with illegal pirating of music, films and applications; this is a stigma that will be hard to shift if current P2P technologies continue to allow this illegal distribut
Re:Why don't you write your own? (Score:2)
"The author is Italian and would like an English speaking person to help translate his P2P manifest
O'Reilly disease (Score:1, Flamebait)
Incoherence != manifesto (Score:2)
I suggest you learn to write, then try again.
Because it's the p2p way (Score:2)
P2P is Awesome (Score:3, Funny)
Re:P2P is Awesome (Score:4, Funny)
1. P2P are softwareses.
2. P2P spews bits ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the P2P is to flip out and hurt Metallica's bottom line.
Testimonial:
P2P can kill any band's ability to make money! P2P can cut off the flow of money ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These programs are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this P2P program that was running on a computer in a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon it downloaded the whole britney spears collection in like 5 seconds. My friend Mark said that he saw a P2P program totally suck up all his bandwidth just because he tried to download anna kornikova naked.
And that's what I call REAL Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you don't believe that P2P has REAL Ultimate Power you better get a life right now or they will chop WASD fingers right off!!! It's an easy choice, if you ask me.
P2P is sooooooooooo sweet that I want to crap my pants. I can't believe it sometimes, but I feel it inside my heart. These programs are totally awesome and that's a fact. P2P is fast, smooth, cool, strong, powerful, and sweet. I love P2P with all of my body (including my pee pee).
Re:P2P is Awesome (Score:2)
my p2p manifesto (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, p2p right now is often thought of as a single file - an ISO, an mpg, an mp3, a zip file). I see nugget has posted in this thread - the peer-to-peer programs which he currently helps maintain use p2p to do operation distribution, not file distribution. As does Folding@Home [stanford.edu] (which studies protein/gene problems in a distributed manner) and SETI. GPU [sourceforge.net] is interesting in this respect as you are the one deciding what operations to perform - from adding 1 and 1, to calculating pi, to whatever. I really like Freenet - it is a very versatile protocol so that web pages, Usenet type forums, and even (small) file trading are all possible. I've even seen people play chess games over frost. And as a bonus, there is the option of (some degree of) anonymity on Freenet, so that is an added bonus.
I really would love to see someone with no money to host such thing create something as complex as Slashdot, with moderation system and all, and do it over p2p, maybe on something like Freenet, or maybe something else. The same with things like Wikipedia. Nowadays, the little guy is punished by high bandwidth costs if what he made is popular. With p2p this is not a problem any more.
Give this guy a break... (Score:5, Informative)
It appears from browsing the rest of his site that this guy is Italian and has a weak grasp of English. FWIW, he has apparently appeared on several different Italian television shows [typepad.com] whilst discussing P2P. And he's not too harsh on the eyes, either.
While I agree that this translation sucks, don't ride him so hard on his poor English skills.
Re:Give this guy a break... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give this guy a break... (Score:2)
Here's the quote from the web site:
http://montemagno.typepad.com/p2p_manifest
Marco is Assistant Professor at Cattolica University, Milan (Italy), of "Theories and techniques of online communication", faculty of Arts and Philosophy.
Why is this news? (Score:2)
If you think P2P is cool, wait until you hear about HTTP!
Man that's going to rock!
But really: Most discussion of P2P is moot -- its here to stay and not only that its been here for a while. Furthermore (and this is what the RIAA can't get their tiny brains around) there is no real way to get *rid* of P2P. There are a near infinite number of P2P permutations from encryption to closed networks to more advanced file storate/indexing, etc. etc. that make P2P a genie that no-way, no-how is getting back in it
Re:Obscene profits (Score:2)
"Money is power. The limits of individual power should be decided democratically. So yes you're right, I'm a socialist *because* I'm a democrat"
Fair enough. What is your personal opinion of the limit that should be set on an individual's annual earnings? It's just your opinion, so there's no right or wrong, of course. Would you apply that limit to everybody equally, or would you prefer a system where, say, doctors and other professionals have one limit, and musicians and other artists have another