This article is more than 1 year old

Space, Segways and biostratification

And alternatives to Donkeys

Letters eDonkey got its, er, ass kicked in the New York courts last week. And the RIAA owns its front page. And any visitor's IP addresses, it reckons. So, what to do, for the determined downloader?

> For instance, offer PC lessons to an elderly neighbour, preferably very old and very deaf in return for some internet time.

Or use his wifi from the comfort of your own living room.

John


Hey, you forgot to mention eMule in your eDonkey article !

No sign of people stopping Bittorrent use either while PirateBay and it's like still exist.

Oddly enough if file sharing does go underground (techie only) then we will be back where we were in the 80s and early 90s. Guys on market stalls flogging cheap ripped goods, and kids actually socialising at school in order to 'swap' stuff.

Andy


"If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law." Well, yes. But copyright infringement ISN'T stealing music. Weasel, thy name is RIAA. "Courts around the world -- including the United States Supreme Court -- have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal downloading." If it wasn't illegal, then the courts wouldn't give a monkey's. Another tautological statement. Now, can we get them for "own now on CD" and the MPAA for "Buy now on DVD" when they then turn round and say "this is licensed, not sold"? Maybe tell them: "Fraudulent misrepresentation is illegal. Courts around the world have ruled that businesses and associations can be prosecuted for defrauding customers".

Mark


Edonkey is dead, long live Emule. Er, the Edonkey network will only die when the free open source adaptation of its protocol, Emule, dies, in other words.

thanks joe


This is a mockery of the legal system - showing big businesses can bully smaller businesses into doing what they please.

I was a moderator on the eDonkey (or eD2k) forums, I donated my free time to aiding users with issues they had with their PC's and enforcing the strict rules of the forum - they were only three but they were followed to the letter.

The first and foremost of these rules is to not promote or condone copyright infringement in any form. If the website was allowed to stay up you'd be able to check this for yourself - but then there's always wayback machine.

eD2k was not designed for the infringements of copyrighted material but a platform for people to share their own made copy free material with one another - due to the discriminatory actions of law enforcers assuming guilt until proven innocence we had to follow the rules for the forum so religiously as to not to appear to condone the activity in the slightest, posts and topics made about anything even slightly copyright protected were locked, edited or deleted immediately - living in fear that this day would eventually come.

Yes it's true people have utilised this applications to share copyrighted materials for free but there's very little that could be done about that - are we now to ban kitchen knives as well? Some people say that phrase is an extremist example but MetaMachine (MM) have no control over the content of the network and the way the system works (and has to work that way) would never be able to implement content control - just like the manufacturers of knives can control whether someone uses it to dice chicken or their ex-husband.

MetaMachine were also a champion of the small business - many artists that weren't signed to major record labels had their work promoted via the network - non more so then those who made it onto the clients welcome page. This was not only for music but movies games and software - all able to reach their target demographic and make a small return for their considerable efforts.

This ruling is a re-actionary measure taken by someone who evidentially doesn't understand the subject matter and the small start-up businessman has taken the blow of their short-sighted decisions.

The American dream of starting up your own business and living through your pleasures is now only for those who have the money in the bank and can afford to step on the people they view as below them.

Closing down MM will not close down the eDonkey network and most certainly will not stop any of the copyright infringement - primarily because the network has been invaded by "clone" clients such as eMule (www.emule-project.net) and Shareaza - the former of which is an open source application that is created by a community of people all adding their own code from around the globe - a political and logistical nightmare to close down.

So those wanting to continue their nefarious deeds will be doing so without much set-back from the RIAA's latest "success" in the "War on Piracy" - all they managed to do is closedown a small tax paying company and destroy a close nit community of friends who wanted nothing more than to help people across the globe with their numerous PC problems.

Murrian


Break out the birthday candles, the hard drive turned 50 this year.

"Besides some home appliances, there are few products on the market today that still employ much the same theory of operation, if not simply miniaturized versions of same implementation, as they did five decades ago."

I would like to submit the following items gleaned from the headlines that employ the same theory of operation as they did 50 years ago:

the four cycle internal combustion engine, the jet engine, the helium balloon the AK-47, accepted in 1947, the M1911-A1 - developed by John M Browning before 1905,

I guess you never used a pencil, a hammer, pliers, scissors, an automobile jack, the list goes on and on.

I would wager that the common Number 2 lead pencil has made more of an impact on the whole of humanity than the hard Drive

You may not recognise a world before digital electronics, but a trip to a real museum can be an educational experience

Nosmo


Your article prompted me to switch on the calculator that I've had for almost 30 years, still working with the original battery, and do a calculation.

If the bandwidth of the optic nerves are around 10 megabits per second, and the rest of the nervous system something similar, then a human lifetime could be recorded in around 10^17 bits.

A cheap hard disk today can hold, say, 10^10 bits and that's increasing by ten every five years.

So well before your son will be 59, he can record his entire life, no doubt using some sub-atomic quark thingy entirely unrelated to a hard-disk. But then who could have predicted that the size of the space shuttle's rocket boosters would be limited by the size of roman horses.

John


Arms manufacturers are working to make the world a better place. Not by gunning down all the unsavoury people, but by making lead-free bullets:

Ahh lovely, oh how I chortled so.. Even though it is mid-September I did consciously check to see whether twas April first.

What a joy to get a story like this - no need for clever editing, making witty comments and so on, its just perfect as it is...

'I know what would make the world a better place... quieter bombs! Now if only we could get those darn people to stop screaming when we blow them up, i could finally get a good night's rest"

Luke


Of course the anti-arms lobby would deride anything they conceivably can. To me that just proves they are as stuck in their own rhetoric as the treehuggers.

You see, this really is the way of the future. We actually have the means as in the technology and the hardware to wage global war. We don't need nuclear bombs to render entire earth uninhabitable, if we try hard enough. But we can spend the earth only once.

So the only way forward, as disarmament is not an option in the current political climate --nevermind we did that to ourselves--, is to make the weaponry more accurate. This includes reducing the environmental impact. This also means it can be used to good effect against dissenters of the upcoming big brother nanny state, of course. Derision seems to me to be entirely the wrong answer.

Anon


Quote: The anti-arms lobby has reacted with predictable derision. Symon Hill of Campaign Against Arms Trade slammed the propsals as "ridiculous", adding: "BAE is determined to try to make itself look ethical, but they make weapons to kill people and it's utterly ridiculous to suggest they are environmentally friendly."

Unfortunately he's a moron, and these lead-free bullets are safer for the environment and people in general. The issue is not what they do to a person who gets shot with them.

Obviously, that's detrimental to health no matter what they're made of, unless it's cotton balls.

The issue is what lead bullets do to people who handle them. Lead has a well documented toxicity. Many more people handle bullets than get shot by them. Therefore, people who don't get shot by bullets, which outnumber the people who do, are at risk for lead poisoning by handling lead bullets.

I'm not a gun nut, but it seems to be a pretty clear benefit to me.

Michael

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like