On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 05:35:35PM -0800, Troy B Klyber wrote: > On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 04:04:41PM -0800, hal at finney.org wrote: > > > > The writing's on the wall here, folks. Ultimately I am afraid that > > Freenet will not be legally runnable in the U.S. without a blocking > > mechanism. I wouldn't rush to put it in unless or until people start > > getting legal notices, but eventually the issue will have to be dealt > > with. Either Freenet accepts that the U.S. market is off limits, or it > > provides a means to block certain data. Neither is an attractive choice. > > > > You are probably right, but the Ninth Circuit's Napster decision suggests > that if the Freenet design does not allow for simple blocking and removal, > that that may be enough to limit the liability. So in short, if Freenet > were to be designed in a way so that identifying material is difficult, it > may reduce the liability. Of course, no one would ever do that ON PURPOSE > in order to reduce liability. But, if the technical goals of anonymity > require it, then... Interesting... > > Practically, Freenet might lead to a reworking of the DMCA safe harbor if > Congress does not like how the Courts treat it. Then the outcome of > the DeCSS case becomes highly relevant (depending on how the Court decides > the First Amendment issues) and everything is just a mess... > If freenet is legal under the DMCA and is a serious threat to TPTB, they will just buy some more legislation to make it clearly illegal. Incidentally Europe is in the middle of adopting similar legislation; I'd be very interested in an analysis of those proposals. > A lot of these issues sort of came up back with the whole Media Enforcer > scare. They will not go away. > > Troy > No they will not. And freenet will eventually be banned in nearly every country, "free" or not. Money talks. But if we have enough usage it won't matter, except that widespread unresolved but arrestible civil disobedience is a form of police state. In a democracy, this should lead to reversal of the relevant legislation; it remains to be seen if there is that much democracy left in the various countries, especially with the obvious tendancy to associate Bad Teenagers and Evil Perverts with filesharing. Hence the democratic duty to pirate as much popular stuff as possible onto freenet :) The only real problem is if they get the core developers before the network really works... -- The road to Tycho is paved with good intentions...
_______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl at freenetproject.org http://www.uprizer.com/mailman/listinfo/devl
