Freenet may be anonymous (the original publisher of copyrighted material remains anonymous) but it's trivial to find out the IPs of users sharing copyrighted content later on. - And just because you are sharing automatically and Freenet doesn't allow you to look at what you are sharing, it doesn't mean that you can't be sued for whatever material you are sharing. I wouldn't feel too safe using Freenet if I were you.

How can you prove that a certain IP was actually sharing the content and not just proxying forward the request from someone else?

EDIT: Even if it can be proven, Freenet is so far ahead of the rest of the p2p community with anonymity that the RIAA would never think of trying to sue people using it. Not until all the other p2p programs are as hard to crack as Freenet is.

With FreeNet, Yes, you could search for a file and then accuse your proxies of 'distributing' it. But I don't think you'd be able to hold them liable for any legal responsibilities, not unless there's a sea change in the law. And it's certainly more defensible than traditional P2P, where you must manually select what files to share/re-distribute.

True, one judge has ruled that Aimster is liable for contributory copyright-infringement despite it's use of encrypted communications to shield it from knowledge of the contents. But, by that logic, phone companies would be liable for contributory damages anytime a criminal used their phone to plan a crime.

What's unique here (aside from the 'distributor' being a community of FreeNet/P2P users) is that the 'source' of a file can't be tracked beyond your immediate proxies. So, I wouldn't worry about legal liability when running a FreeNet node.

On the other hand, FreeNet is terrible at distributing large numbers of files, since they have to be cached/proxied by lots of Nodes (most of which will have limited disk-space allocated to caching).
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Better might be the "UDPp2p" project, if they ever post any code...
http://udpp2p.sourceforge.net/

The DMCA sees only few exceptions where you would not be liable for caching (not proxying, btw) illegal content and they are explicitly meant for online service providers.

Unlike other p2p you don't know what you will be sued for, - from secondary copyright infringement to distribution of childpornography.

Telephone companies can easily prove substantial noninfringing use. Once people start using Freenet primarily for filesharing that would be hard to claim - but this is a competely seperate issue from users caching copyrighted content.

Won't work. The broadcasts will kill it.

I have a large library of music (over 2000 songs) and have stopped sharing it because I don't know exactly what I'm risking. I read that one person received an email telling him to stop sharing or else. If the first step is a warning, then is it safe to share until you get one? All the people out there that are turning off their sharing probably are as in the dark about this as I am, and if we knew that we don't have to worry until we get a warning then we'd all be able to share again. But does anyone really know what the tactics of the music industry are right now - and can they really successfully sue us - with no warning?

You need a lawyer, get one
Maybe you can use Hotline, there the downloader has to agree
a 'license' before he can download. Then you can be sure that
you dont brake the law.

An example:
By entering you promise dont to download anything

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Never touch a running system.
www.guox.de

I use both a Gnutella client (Shareaza) and Kazaa Lite K++, KLK++ has the feature you mentioned above. But, when I shut down KLK++ to run Shareaza, I start up PeerGuardian, to do exactly what you say above. You can download it from following the following URL:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.leo...1981_setup.zip


I am surprised no one suggested this program before me.

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I'm not. Actually I hoped nobody would suggest it because it doesn't work. BayTSP et al could easily be using proxies or a simple dynamic IP they rented from AOL to mask their identity.

PeerGuardian will NOT protect you. You may feel secure but you really aren't.

Not that it really matters anyway, since I am in Canada and cannot get subpenoa (sp?) from the various **AA, we don't have a lot of the stupid laws that they have in the US, although CIRA is trying...and at one point they -- Canadian government -- wanted to make their own version of the DMCA, there was a big outcry about that!!!


But, I will still use PG for other stuff as well, proxies or no proxies....

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