 NormanS Premium,MVM join:2001-02-14 San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| reply to Lumberjack Re: Feel bad?
said by Lumberjack :So I'm not good with analogies... my point is, trying to defend P2P as a viable protocol for non-pirated content is somewhat pointless (even though you're correct). P2P was created not to share linux distributions, WoW patches or whatever else... it was created to share mp3s ripped from CDs. That may be true for Napster, and its ilk, but that isn't the same as BitTorrent (AFAIK).
Oddly, I have only downloaded 46 mp3s that can be considered pirated, and I did not use any P2P for those, just HTTP. Pirated in the sense that the distributors were not authorized, that I know of. However, I know that the source albums are out of print, and I searched long and hard for used copies. I drew a blank. They are imports, and I'd probably have to haunt the used CD stores in Akihabara in hopes of finding them.
Technically though I still think it's a spammy protocol... Not by any accurate definition of "spammy". Of course, we always play fast and loose with words in English, and many words have taken on meanings far from the original. "Hacker", "Pro Life", "Saturday Night Special", and "Assault Weapon" come to mind. They currently have an evil aura, and are used as catch words for ideologically charged arguments.
...and direct transfers or even mirror'd transfers are better. One connection, one stream is less "messy" for a network than hundreds of connections. Hell, that's probably more of an issue to providers than bandwidth... a lot harder for the feds to spy on that  . If the "messiness" of distributed data transfer streams were a serious problem for the network, banning the protocol should be a top priority of the network managers. -- Norman ~Oh Lord, why have you come ~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |