[lug] peer-to-peer

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Thursday 19 February 2004 03:57 pm, Gary Hodges wrote:
> I guess this is somewhat off topic, but I've been dying to ask for a
> while.  Now an article on slashdot has prompted me to post.  Back when
> P2P was first discussed (or at least when I was first aware) I remember
> reading many dire warnings from police, copyright people, etc. about how
> outlaw computer users would soon be able to hide in complete anonymity
> downloading kiddie porn, software, etc.  It has been ages since I have
> read articles about anonymous computing/downloading and I'm wondering
> what happened.  At the time I think it was gnutella that was feared by
> so many.

It's still happening.  It's just that terrorist is the current evil buzzword 
instead of child pornographer.

You are probably aware of the current lawsuits by the RIAA against file 
swappers.  They are somewhat stymied right now by not being able to find the 
users' names from their IP addresses.  So there is a limited amount of 
anonymity.

If you use Freenet, you are even more anonymous.  It's not as popular right 
now, but if the RIAA makes headway it may become much more so.

Michael