Re: Why I've stopped sharing music

Date: 15 Jul 2003 20:24:34 -0700
Newsgroups: rec.audio.pro
Size: 1,624 bytes

"Brothermark" <email-address-deleted> wrote in message news:<berlbp$8ei05$email-address-deleted>...
> the cops got this guy because he was a "dealer" as opposed to just a "user"
> has any "user" ever been fined for sharing files? I think not
No. That lawsuit was kind of dodgy. He was neither a "dealer" nor
"user" to use your terminology.
His program merely crawled the pre-existing windows network shares,
and returned a list of all shared mp3s. All those mp3s were already
shared using the peer-to-peer file and print sharing built right into
Microsoft Windows.
An analogy might be this: Let's say there are lots of HTTP pages
which have direct links to downloadable music. Already freely
accessible to anyone who wants them. Daniel Peng's software was a
search engine, like "Google" that went through and found the music you
wanted.
And, even this analogy makes the program more devious than it really
was. HTTP does not have a top-down hierarchical structure; it isn't
really possible to recursively and exhaustively search the entire
network. IE, you have to know the exact URL of the shared music.
Microsoft Windows shares are set up such that all shares are recursed
inside multiple subfolder(s), inside a single share, inside a single
machine, inside the cute little "My Network Places" icon. In other
words, all of the mp3's discovered by Daniel Peng's software were
already only 4 or 5 double clicks away from anyone's desktop.
In some ways, it would be more sensible for the RIAA to sue Microsoft
instead, for including file and print sharing capabilities with
Windows.
Truly,
Nicholas