
Perhaps The Copyright Industry Deserves Some Credit - llambda
http://torrentfreak.com/perhaps-the-copyright-industry-deserves-some-credit-for-pointing-out-our-single-points-of-failure-111113/
======
blahedo
> _Graphics Interchange Format... was dropped from every usage all over the
> net in the blink of an eye and replaced by a fresh-new format named Portable
> Network Graphics._

If by "in the blink of an eye" they mean "over the course of about a decade,
gradually, and with hanging-on remnants even today"....

~~~
bad_user
The LZW patent has expired in 2003. GIF usage is now free.

Also, you can probably blame the slow adoption of PNG on Internet Explorer,
which dictated what became a standard on the web and what not.

------
sounds
SOPA is bad news. Worse than Unisys claiming GIF. Worse than UMinn claiming
gopher. Yes, we can replace the DNS system. But we can't escape the financial
world:

Quick review in case you missed where BitCoins went: dollars will always have
intrinsic value because the US Government demands payment in dollars. Tax
payments are only accepted as an electronic transfer - from the institutions
SOPA controls.

So SOPA is bad news because:

1\. You can't escape the bank-controlled economy, so you will always need US
dollars or whichever currency is accepted in your country.

2\. You can't prevent large organizations (those with hefty legal departments)
from issuing at-will takedowns on competitors.

3\. Takedowns won't be just for The Pirate Bay. Good luck winning your court
case.

~~~
JoshTriplett
You seem to have a key unquestioned assumption, namely that alternative
currencies and their associated economies will never reach a sufficiently
large breadth of services to make it possible to do without existing national
currencies entirely. I'd question that assumption. I don't think we've gotten
close to that yet, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of it occurring in
the future.

~~~
sounds
Good point. Any alternative currency must first achieve a level of legitimacy
on par with FDIC-insured institutions and governments. By the time they do
achieve that, I assume their board of directors will include enough ties to
existing economies to make them no more an alternative (as in, capable of
defying SOPA) than any existing institutions or governments.

I simply believe this is the only chance to retain freedom of speech. SOPA
must be defeated.

------
meow
As much credit as we owe to thieves, for pointing out weaknesses in security
of a house.

------
rasur
So, when this bill is passed, presumably people will point the finger at
MPAA/RIAA companies, and start taking them off the net?

~~~
redxaxder
This power is reserved for those secure enough against legal backlash to
perjure themselves. Just like DMCA takedown notices.

Copyright holders with lots of resources can issue as many bogus DMCA notices
as they like, safe in the knowledge that they can fight out or settle the
(unlikely) lawsuit if it comes. Most people issuing fake takedown requests
would expose themselves to a lot more risk.

~~~
rasur
I think you are correct here.

EDIT: However it has been shown that some of the content companies have been
less than diligent in their issuing of takedown notices. This could easily
backfire on them..

------
derleth
The P2P world is just full of unintended consequences:

How litigation only spurred on P2P file sharing:
[http://www.itnews.com.au/News/279763,how-litigation-only-
spu...](http://www.itnews.com.au/News/279763,how-litigation-only-spurred-
on-p2p-file-sharing.aspx)

Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3227844>

In summary, as the penalties for filesharing increased, filesharing was pushed
further into the underground, and filesharers adopted protocols like
Bittorrent that are more difficult to kill with a court order than Napster
was.

~~~
JoshTriplett
BitTorrent seems quite awful from that perspective. For quite a while,
torrents required a centralized tracker to coordinate operation, which
provided a single point of failure. Even now, with trackerless operation,
BitTorrent has no directory or search protocols, no privacy protection or
built-in anonymity, and otherwise makes it trivial for anyone to obtain a full
list of IP addresses downloading any given torrent.

I wouldn't call BitTorrent "underground" or "difficult to kill" at all. For
that, you'd probably want something like Freenet or GNUnet.

