Peer-to-peer is Just a Tool

by on March 11, 2008 · 6 comments

Ars has a good article reminding us of an important fact about peer-to-peer tools like BitTorrent: while they certainly can be used for illegal and unethical purposes, they’re ultimately just tools. They also have indisputably legal and legitimate uses—in this case, rapidly deploying software updates on a campus network. One of the reasons that stopping piracy is only going to get harder over time is that as peer-to-peer tools mature, it will become more and more difficult to distinguish “good” and “bad” peer-to-peer tools. The tools will be increasingly ubiquitous and powerful, and there won’t be any easy way for the authorities to restrict their use to legal purposes.

I think this is one reason that the Grokster decision (in which I reluctantly concluded that the plaintiffs had the better argument) is likely to be a pyrrhic victory for the copyright industry. The Supreme Court said that if there’s clear evidence that a company’s product is designed to facilitate file-sharing, then that company can be held liable for contributory infringement. But that test makes it pretty easy to avoid liability. BitTorrent appears to be navigating it successfully, and others will doubtless do the same.

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About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

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  • http://www.techliberation.com/contributors/ryan_radia.php Ryan Radia

    Well said. Placing blanket restrictions on P2P apps might make sense at the moment for ISPs like Comcast, but as things like Vuze and WoW become more mainstream, targeting specific protocols will end up doing more harm than good for ISPs as customers become more attached to legitimate uses of file sharing programs.

    Tim, you make a good point about the Grokster ruling as well. It essentially gives future networks a blueprint for evading suit, because as long as a network does not knowingly advertise or advance copyright infringment and offers some legitimate uses, that network cannot be shut down.

    For example, take the usenet.com lawsuit. Of all the newshosting providers, the media companies are targeting the one that openly advertises its service as a method for acquiring digital media files. Other bigger fish like Giganews are a lot smarter, making no mention of anything related to infringement. So unless a landmark ruling emerges, services which profit from illegally transferred intellectual property seem immune from liability as they keep complying with DMCA takedown requests properly.

  • Ryan Radia

    Well said. Placing blanket restrictions on P2P apps might make sense at the moment for ISPs like Comcast, but as things like Vuze and WoW become more mainstream, targeting specific protocols will end up doing more harm than good for ISPs as customers become more attached to legitimate uses of file sharing programs.

    Tim, you make a good point about the Grokster ruling as well. It essentially gives future networks a blueprint for evading suit, because as long as a network does not knowingly advertise or advance copyright infringment and offers some legitimate uses, that network cannot be shut down.

    For example, take the <a href=”http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9798715-38.html” rel=”nofollow”>usenet.com lawsuit. Of all the newshosting providers, the media companies are targeting the one that openly advertises its service as a method for acquiring digital media files. Other bigger fish like Giganews are a lot smarter, making no mention of anything related to infringement. So unless a landmark ruling emerges, services which profit from illegally transferred intellectual property seem immune from liability as they keep complying with DMCA takedown requests properly.

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/ enigma_foundry

    Exactly.

    In fact many of the smaller linux distros are only available via bit-torrent.

    Even the larger ones–for example SuSE–have certain editions–for example the DVD of an alpha or beta version–only availabe via bit Torrent.

    One of the reasons why I liked the Sony decision is that it’s substantial noninfringing use test was so reasonable, and carried over into so many technologies (mp3 players, P2P) in a non-freedom destroying way.

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com eee_eff

    Exactly.

    In fact many of the smaller linux distros are only available via bit-torrent.

    Even the larger ones–for example SuSE–have certain editions–for example the DVD of an alpha or beta version–only availabe via bit Torrent.

    One of the reasons why I liked the Sony decision is that it’s substantial noninfringing use test was so reasonable, and carried over into so many technologies (mp3 players, P2P) in a non-freedom destroying way.

  • http://bennett.com/blog Richard Bennett

    The Ars article is a nice series of red herrings. When a university uses BitTorrent to distribute legal content over their own pipes, nobody’s going to complain. But when a pirate uses BitTorrent to distribute illegal content over bandwidth they hijacked from an ISP, that’s rather a different story, isn’t it?

    The latter is a criminal act in two different ways, arguably, but neither has anything to do with the tool by which it’s done.

    Crime is crime, no matter how you do it.

  • http://bennett.com/blog Richard Bennett

    The Ars article is a nice series of red herrings. When a university uses BitTorrent to distribute legal content over their own pipes, nobody’s going to complain. But when a pirate uses BitTorrent to distribute illegal content over bandwidth they hijacked from an ISP, that’s rather a different story, isn’t it?

    The latter is a criminal act in two different ways, arguably, but neither has anything to do with the tool by which it’s done.

    Crime is crime, no matter how you do it.

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