Juan, To the best of my understanding, directing users to the source of the distribution of the copyrighted material is the thing that is considered as copyright infringement.
In contrary to the above, using caching systems, especially in the service provider (SP) environment, to the best of my understanding (again) of the US Copyright Law, are exempt of any copyright infringement as they (caching devices) are considered as "intermediate and temporary storage of material on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider". The legality of caching has been for a long time a hot subject until the US has included in their Copyright Law exemptions with the special regard to the system caching and SPs. You might want to check the following: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512 (check subsection (b)) Now, I think it would be a good point to make that it is not just that RIAA, MPAA etc. are being affected by the evolution of the P2P applications. They are just the loudest. SPs are being affected very much as well. In the good old days, an average user would use so much less bandwidth than today. It is because of the advent of the broadband and virtualy permanent connections to the Internet and the evolution of the P2P that bandwidth/user ratio has been so dramatically decreased. All of these copyright related associations are doing something to cut their losses. I believe SPs _must_ be allowed to do the same. Best regards, Ranko PS: I'm using US Copyright Law as an example since it is being a model for many other. These issues may be differently covered (or not covered at all) in different countries. You should check your local law. PPS: Comments/flames welcome. > -----Original Message----- > From: Juan Manuel Acosta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 3:53 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [isp-caching] Re: introduction + peer 2 peer traffic > > > I understand there are issues about copyright and feasibility of a > traditional cache for p2p traffic, but how about using our customers as > a cache? > I mean, if we can skew the traffic to be mostly between our customers we > will achieve both customer satisfaction and external bandwidth savings. > How about trapping the peer cache calls and return mostly local > addresses in order to keep the p2p traffic mostly local? > > -- > Juan Manuel Acosta > Gerente de Operaciones de Acceso > Tel: 58 212 273-7532/7511 > Cel: 58 416 608-7695 > Fax: 58 212 273-7684 > e-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > ____________ The ISP-CACHING Discussion List ___________ > To Join: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > To Remove: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Archives: http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/isp-caching/archives/ > ____________ The ISP-CACHING Discussion List ___________ To Join: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To Remove: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives: http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/isp-caching/archives/
