RE: Re: queryHitMessage

Susheel Daswani wrote:
> Your e-mail brings up an important issue.  Gnutella client developers
> generally frown upon what you are trying to accomplish (i.e.,
> "respond to certain keywords and offer files.").  Even after you
> figure out how to accomplish this (hint: check out the LimeWire core
> package), you are at the their mercy - if one of the developers get
> bored (too much poker or foosball ;) ), they will block your client.

There's some new danger that Gnutella will face soon, and that you may not
know:

The media groups are now campaigning at ISPs to force them to implement
protocol filtering. They are targeting not only Gnutella but also eMule and
BitTorrent. Their argument is financial: they will refuse to negociate
prices for the media distribution/selling platforms of the ISPs if they
don't implement it.

For now they propose an experimentation, but they are ready to add other
pressure on the legal field by making ISPs directly responsible of the fraud
that occur on their network if they have not taken "preventive" measures
like the proposed protocol filters.

They do recognize that P2P protocols have legal use, but their argument is
that P2P networking is not needed, because ISPs provide standard download
platforms through (cheap or free) FTP/HTTP hosting. However at the same time
they have campaigned against one ISP (Free.fr) to force it stopping a free
HTTP/FTP download server usable by anyone (used in France, when one wants to
send very large files that don't fit well within emails, because the hosting
is temporary and limited to one month of storage, but is usable by anyone).

This was publicly announced in France by a group joining large media
producers and defenders. That's the same group that promoted the adoption of
the DADVSI law (that they want to extend). They are ready to restart the
legal suites against users, but will now act against ISPs too if they don't
implement filters (similar in fact to those used in China...)