Cop this.

flooding the network may cause a new set of problems for authorities. Imagine if your business was suffering because there were these excess packets flooding the network from these 'authorities'. Would you be able to sue them for loss of business? I think some companies would have a shot at it.
Big business would surely not support this internet flooding machanism if their business might suffer

fight the power

schofiel: always the bringer of good news are you. Haha.

This is nuts. Does this remind anyone of that one copy protex scheme that "the industry" spent millions to implement and it was hacked in seconds. Was that Divx, DVD protection, or what... I forget.

Anyway, my work depends on p2p collaboration software. If the government decides to make Denial of Service attacks legal, what if they hit the p2p network I use for my totally legal software? Not good.

And won't the Gnutella community just change the protocols to become immune to the DoS attacks? I mean, the computer security community does that on a regular basis; what's to stop the Gnutella community? Oh, maybe the fact that Gnutella has become bloated, entrenched, and dependant on spyware-laden greedy software companies to produce their software. Yeah, looks like p2p may be doing downhill. Hey, maybe they got too big for their own good.

There's always FTP! :^)

Won't flooding the p2p servers simply encourage the use of smaller and therefore more numerous file sharing groups. I mean right now at least the music industry has someone to sue. If they make it impossible for a company to exist they'll have to chase down thousands of individuals....

I'm not sure you're understanding P2P...there are no central company servers. Everyone on the network is both a server and a client. Although targeting the supernodes (users with higher bandwidth) might essentially shut things down.

I know what I mean I'm just having trouble saying it... If the music industry shuts down kazaa, won't small personal p2p groups like Chris Mayden's just spring up...

Kazaa only provides a client. The network to which it attaches exists outside the scope of the company. That is, the network is created solely by the clients attaching to each other. Nothing in the program connects back to Kazaa. It's likely that it actually does connect back initially to an index that's hosted somewhere well-known, but it just uses that to find the first peer or two.

Think of it like this: If the government were to shut down Chrysler, then the highways and the vacation destinations would still be there. (Poor analogy, but it's close.)

Nothing in the program connects back to Kazaa

You're right. Nothing in the program connects back to Kazaa, but they have built in this little thingie.

I was quite shocked when I found out about this, and have since then used KazaaLite to get rid of that excess bagage.

You're right. Nothing in the program connects back to Kazaa, but they have built in this little thingie.

By John Borland
Staff Writer
April 1, 2002, 5:35 PM PT

I suspect that it is not just coincidence that this article was posted on April Fools day.

tanstaafl.

I don't think that's a joke, though I do see the date. I heard a bit of noise about this issue back when it was announced. Well, maybe we are all suckers...

Anyway, Gnutella 0.56 is the only way to go. Too bad the network doesn't accept it anymore. I mean, come on, 0.56 has no spyware, is fast, actually works, and is really clean. Such a shame it's gone.

I don't think that one's a joke. There are links to related articles (specifically one on how to uninstall the mentioned software), websites, etc., which are all valid. And some of which aren't hosted by CNET.

It wasn't a joke, is wish it were.

Three day later cnet posted a guide to how to uninstall the "extra" software.

A big problem is that you could be attacked because of being suspect ...

Suspect is not Guilty