Uggg you people are so dense it's mind bolloging. Freenet isn't illegal! How many times do I have to say this for it to sink in. Just like a pen and paper isn't illegal. But they are if you draw up plans to kill the president.
I don't have much to say about common carriers. Because like I've said many many times. You aren't a common carrier. Running freenet doesn't make you one. And you aren't entitled to the same protections as they are. The actions by the RIAA are based in law and they have lost very few cases so far. The few they have lost are ones where they tried to exceed the law, so they lost. The napster case revolved more around the fact that Napster provided material support to copyright infringement by running services on their computers. Also the fact they received money (though indirectly) from the infringement also was an important fact. It won't be as easy to kill kazaa because the creators of the program don't run the network like napster. The network is created by the users automatically. Yes everything is basically legal unless prohibited by law. And transmitting illegal materials is prohibited by law. I would wager that freenet has nothing to worry about from a country prosecutor in Alabama. Freenet is still a very safe system and it would take the resources of an organization like the NSA to gain any useful evidence from it. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 2:43 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [freenet-chat] Re: [freenet-support] Showdown at the Freenode Coral Importance: Low Matthew Findley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > I'm being forced to loop because no one is saying anything new. They're > just presenting arguments that don't have a basis in law. And examples that > don't apply. Maybe if someone could present a new point we could move on. > > I was originally going to major in law, but while in collage the more I > found out about it the more I decided it wasn't for me. That's why I'm not > a prosecutor, nor would I want to be. > Would that be Swedish law or American law? Maybe with your knowledge of the > law you can present a reason why this is not a crime with some real facts to > back it up. > I have followed this arguement more or less torpidly concluding mostly that points you present and type of criminal law you cite is a form of fud. One could just as easily conclude from them that as pen and paper may be used to draw dirty pictures that having them makes one a pornographer which is the kind of ridiculous argument made in the the proposed Incite Act. Selling spray paint incites grafitti. The examples you cite have nothing to do with common carrier, isp's or the internet and cases that have happened or decisions rendered so far. Even the much publicized actions of the MPAA and RIAA are not based on law but their own theory of what they want to achieve and when faught by thier targets have been thrown out. For example demanding log from isp's to harvest address of downloaders. Even in the Napster case the issus revolved around whether it was designed solely to commit criminal acts versus could have other uses and Napster lost because it had no other use. It won't be as easy to kill Kazaa as it has multiple uses. The freenet you have the creation of a public resource, with each users giving over a portion of their disk to this resource into this pool. It may be more analogous to throwing out garbage and then having some piece of your garbage possibly used in a manner you don't condone or control. The questions involved are not essentially legal but political and philosphical, a form of everythings illegal except when specificaly permited versus everything is legal except when specifically prohibited and western law in general favors the later. On the other hand it may be prudent for Freenet to talk to and get opinion and support from relevant organizations such as EFF and lay some ground work so as not to be taken by suprise from some county presecutor in Alabama out to make a name for himself because he's behind in the polls for november. Also fyi, redirection to chat means this has been deemed troll bait and fud. _______________________________________________ chat mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general _______________________________________________ chat mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general
