The legacy content industry and other monopolies currently seek to control methods of distribution and funding of creativity. More “democratic” systems like BitTorrent are a massive threat to these monopolies. While the law doesn’t support their view that it is “illegal”, laws can and do change. If we don’t get involved, the law will only get worse.

We badly need to apply P2P principles to politics — the fact is that there are more of us than there are of them, but more of them are involved in politics and so they win.

If you are a Canadian, here are some suggestions:

Help distribute this email:

The Canadian email tax bill 602P is a hoax, but proposals to tax publicly accessible Internet documents are not a hoax.

http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/5784

Invite your Member of Parliament to an event on the hill next week:

http://www.flora.ca/documents/invite-mp-200510.html

Find out about other things to do about Bill C-60 in Canada
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/billc60/do_something.shtml

The client on a peer’s computer then takes the pieces collected, keeps track of them and assembles them in the correct order to reconstitute the file(s) comprising the download. Generally, there is another entity that is required called a ‘tracker’. The tracker merely keeps track of who (IP address) is in the torrent and which specific pieces they have already amassed. The tracker does NOT handle any of the object data in the download. (This is why the cartels have a difficult time trying to pull the plug on trackers located in many foreign countries. There is no legal basis for taking action against the tracker as it is not handling any of the allegedly infringing data.)

A practical example: Suppose a teacher has a class of 30 students and is going to distribute a 10 page handout that there was insufficient time to collate or staple. They are just 10 piles of 30 copies on the teacher’s desk. The teacher could pick up one pile and proceed to individually hand each student a sheet of paper, returning to the desk for the next pile when the first is completely distributed. This would be tedious for both the class and the teacher.

So, the teach takes each of the ten piles and hands a pile to one of ten different students and tells them to give one to each student, including themselves. Now there are 10 distributors. The handout gets distributed much more quickly.

A student now suggests that each student who is holding a pile of copies split their pile into thirds and give the other two third to students who were not given a pile of copies by the teacher to distribute. They now distribute their copies. Each student now has to check on each desk to see if that desk already contains a copy of the page they are distributing. If so, they go to the next desk, if not, they leave one of the copies on that desk. When they are empty handed, they return to their seat.

Mass confusion reigns in the classroom for a few minutes. Invariably, some pages have gotten stuck together or a few students have not gotten one or more pages for some reason. They raise their hands and the other students look through their copies for duplicates and get them to where they belong. This final phase is called the ‘end game’ where the algorithm goes out the window and the object becomes to get the last few pieces to a peer who is on the verge of completing the torrent. (At which point fireworks go off and one hears the strains of “Stars and Stripes Forever” being played in the distance. Well, it feels that way after being on a 9GB torrent for 2 weeks with one seed on four peers and it finally completes.)

In BT a peer who has a complete copy of the torrent is called a ’seed’. Since they do not need any pieces, they only distribute copies of the pieces. This is called ’seeding’. ‘Leechers’ are those peers without a complete copy of the torrent. They are still receiving (leeching) data, but are also sending copies of the pieces they do have to other peers who don’t.

The key feature of the BT ‘process’ is in the selection of which piece to send. Theoretically, a peer should send the piece for which the fewest copies exist in the torrent and are therefore considered ‘rare’. Each distribution of such a piece makes it less rare.

Using the school analogy again, think of it in terms of the cafeteria. In the normal client server mode, the students stand on line in a quiet and orderly fashion holding their lunch trays, inching forward to where the lunch lady in the ubiquitous hairnet shovels a large scoop of the day’s sludge onto the tray, the student moves to the next lunch lady, and so on, while the rest of the class is still waiting on line.

Bit Torrent is more akin to a huge food fight where you get pieces of everything being offered that day thrown at you at once by the other students, and there are no lunch ladies (servers). You just try not to get hit with the same piece of food twice.

–TurboGeek

It is true their algorithm cant decipher those reprinted with permission from those reprinted without permission. Google simply takes the safer route and does not publish them.

Why do I need to convey _anything_ to Google? It doesn’t decide what I, or anyone else, publishes.

Censorship by algorithm is just as bad as censorship by any other means.

But I’ve also had a couple of emails (one from a lawyer) on this and I’ll do a separate post when I get a moment : )

Cheers!

I pretty much just told you why. Ive often noticed that many p2pnet’s articles have one or two original paragraphs, then the original story (that’s a big “no-no” in Google’s book.) I suggest you convey to Google that you are reprinting with permission, otherwise they will continue to place you on the back burner.

Either that or place your reprinted articles in a seperate section that won’t be indexed by Google. Then perhaps you will find your articles on their front page again.

What’s google got to do with it?

This story is re-published with Dan Roth’s knowledge and permission. (He also had a couple of nice things to say about p2pnet, but modesty prevented me from posting them ; )

Anyway, Google has already relegated p2pnet to the rear ranks. We used to be a main news source with daily appearances on the front page. Now, it’s hit-and-miss with nary a showing in the main sections and despite numerous emails to various Google functionaries, we’ve never been able to find why that is.

Cheers!

bittorrent won’t be “outlawed”, especially since the cartels want to own and control it. even if it were to be outlawed, bittorrent will never go away.

and…

what the hell is sudoku - and why should i care?

I also wonder how many of the U.S.’s Founding Fathers were space cases. I know Einstein was one. It is in many cases the garage hacker that produces revolutionary technology. I wonder how much time Linus Torvalds spent in front of his machine before he made his first release of the Linux kernel. I have to respect space cases for their contributions to the well-being of mankind.