Senator Diane Feinstein Wants to know about the Benefits of P2P

Mon Aug 30 22:30:14 UTC 2004

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 17:31:12 -0400, Jeff Wheeler <jwheeler at usip.org> writes:

> p2p is different due to its decentralization.  in other words, what
> once required a server to do can now be done by anyone sitting in
> front of their home computer.  it in a way revitalized the idea of
> every computer on the 'net being it's own host - capable of serving
> up whatever the user wishes to whomever wishes to view it.

P2P has other advantages. It allows a group of people to
collaboratively develop or deploy a service that would have been out
of reach before. (eg, an individual distributing their own knoppix
image.) Thats the active research topic and there are a quite a few
prototypes coming out.

Quoting Professor Druschel's P2P introduction: P2P is also ideally
decentralized, self-organizing, symmetric (nodes can perform any role)
no infrastrucure beyond connectivitity, self-scaling, and robust. P2P
allows incremental organic growth, and a very diverse distributed
system with a large resource diversity (architecture, location,
ownership, rule of law) increasing fault tolerance and robustness to
attacks.

[taken from http://www.cs.rice.edu/%7Edruschel/comp420/lectures/p2p.ppt]

<offtopic Followup-To="email">

> I hate to say it, but the *AA may need to look to Microsoft's
> Windows/Office activation scheme for guidance - while a bit of a
> nuisance, it actually allows customers to make fair use of their
> software while protecting MS from some of the piracy issues.  Not
> that I have any idea of MS's software activation can translate in to
> protection of CDs and DVDs and whatnot, but it's something to think

Any service requiring activation is held hostage to the financial
health and self-interest of the service provider. If the provider does
not or can not continue the remote activation service, then any media
becomes instantly unusable. Thus, what you buy isn't under your
control. As an example, if, vinyl LP's required 'activation' to play,
anyone want to take a bet whether the activation servers would still
be running this 50 years later, especially when they want you to
purchase new CD's?

Its not like this hasn't already happened. Anyone remember Circuit
City's DIVX format about 8 years ago? DIVX was a competing standard to
DVD. It failed 5 years ago and when the servers were taken down 3
years ago.[1] AFAIK, all of the disc's and players disabled themselves.[2]

</offtopic>

Scott

[1] http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-514913.html
    http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Studio/8884/divx2.htm

[2]
''Divx customers will be able to watch their discs until June 30, 2001 ''
   http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FXG/is_8_12/ai_55610557