The ripples of anxiety from last month's landmark Supreme Court ruling on peer-to-peer software haven't quite made it to Jonathan Nilson's home in Tallahassee, Fla.
Nilson, a programmer who has been working on peer-to-peer software called Shareaza for several years, says the loose band of developers who share responsibility for the open-source project haven't been dissuaded from their work by the court ruling, which is casting a dark legal cloud over the future of companies such as Grokster and LimeWire.
Nilson cautions that neither he nor anyone else can speak with authority on behalf of the project as a whole. For the most part, that's exactly why he and the others feel sheltered. As is the case with many loosely organized, open-source programming projects, there is no central entity, no "Shareaza" company or organization that issues paychecks or answers lawyers' telephone calls.
"We haven't really altered our direction as a result of the judgment," Nilson said. "We have a strict open-source goal now, and that really frees us up from a lot of responsibility. We're not trying to make revenue, so it's hard to try to sue us."
Indeed, as the dust settles over the post-Supreme Court landscape, a decided split is emerging in the peer-to-peer development community.
The legal threat facing many of the most popular file-swapping software companies may well radically change their operation and strategies. Yet open-source projects like Shareaza, which create software of similar function and popularity, are continuing unabated.
1) open source P2P projects keep innovating with anonymous routing, encrypted protocols, and other means of throwing off people looking for P2P users
2) P2P companies are only going to come from other coutries where US movie and music companies don't have legal recourse or where intellectual property law is more open
3) meanwhile, US and western European companies don't touch P2P with a ten foot pole
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The ripples of anxiety from last month's landmark Supreme Court ruling on peer-to-peer software haven't quite made it to Jonathan Nilson's home in Tallahassee, Fla.
Nilson, a programmer who has been working on peer-to-peer software called Shareaza for several years, says the loose band of developers who share responsibility for the open-source project haven't been dissuaded from their work by the court ruling, which is casting a dark legal cloud over the future of companies such as Grokster and LimeWire.
Nilson cautions that neither he nor anyone else can speak with authority on behalf of the project as a whole. For the most part, that's exactly why he and the others feel sheltered. As is the case with many loosely organized, open-source programming projects, there is no central entity, no "Shareaza" company or organization that issues paychecks or answers lawyers' telephone calls.
"We haven't really altered our direction as a result of the judgment," Nilson said. "We have a strict open-source goal now, and that really frees us up from a lot of responsibility. We're not trying to make revenue, so it's hard to try to sue us."
Indeed, as the dust settles over the post-Supreme Court landscape, a decided split is emerging in the peer-to-peer development community.
The legal threat facing many of the most popular file-swapping software companies may well radically change their operation and strategies. Yet open-source projects like Shareaza, which create software of similar function and popularity, are continuing unabated.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5789087.html?tag=zdfd.newsfeed
This is what is going to happen:
1) open source P2P projects keep innovating with anonymous routing, encrypted protocols, and other means of throwing off people looking for P2P users
2) P2P companies are only going to come from other coutries where US movie and music companies don't have legal recourse or where intellectual property law is more open
3) meanwhile, US and western European companies don't touch P2P with a ten foot pole