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The best way to do this is to legally stream people's personal libraries. The software would be a legal version of Napster. How, you may ask? File locking. Im

The best way to do this is to legally stream people's personal libraries. The software would be a legal version of Napster. How, you may ask? File locking. Imagine a system that allows you to see a list of music available from your peers. If you stream a song from your peer, a file lock engages on their copy. That peer is unable to play the song. If they need to get to song, they could end the stream. Such a system exactly mirrors sharing physical media. You are bereft of the item. You don't get the item back until the person to whom you lent the item returns it. Return occurs hen the file lock is relinquished. As such it should be perfectly legal to share. The difficulty with such a system is that there is little place for profit. The software does provide a serivce: indexing and suggestions and playlists. You could do ads. People might not join because of it. You could charge a low flat fee. Just hard to monetize it.

ktRolster 10y ago
That's kind of a cool idea. If it's p2p, it doesn't even need to turn a profit, it can be open source.
pessimizer 10y ago
This file lock cannot exist outside of some intensely locked down binary blob which will be cracked in minutes. Your idea might make sense legally, but it doesn't make sense physically.
- virmundi 10y ago
  Actually Java NIO locks the file at the OS level, if the OS provides that feature. Windows does. I played with the idea a bit at IUPUI during a distributed systems class. You're correct that having to do the locking in userspace would be difficult. Some one could crack it. That doesn't mean much legally. Look at DRM: it's crackable. The industry still uses it.
blue_dinner 10y ago
Unless it's proprietary hardware, it will be circumvented pretty quickly.
PeterisP 10y ago
"As such it should be perfectly legal to share." is not really how the current copyright system works. With your scheme, it "should" be ok according to fairness and such, but it would actually be legal only if the copyright owners would accept such a scheme. Which they won't, as it would only hurt their revenue.

ktRolster 10y ago

That's kind of a cool idea. If it's p2p, it doesn't even need to turn a profit, it can be open source.

pessimizer 10y ago

This file lock cannot exist outside of some intensely locked down binary blob which will be cracked in minutes. Your idea might make sense legally, but it doesn't make sense physically.

virmundi 10y ago
Actually Java NIO locks the file at the OS level, if the OS provides that feature. Windows does. I played with the idea a bit at IUPUI during a distributed systems class. You're correct that having to do the locking in userspace would be difficult. Some one could crack it. That doesn't mean much legally. Look at DRM: it's crackable. The industry still uses it.

blue_dinner 10y ago

Unless it's proprietary hardware, it will be circumvented pretty quickly.

PeterisP 10y ago

"As such it should be perfectly legal to share." is not really how the current copyright system works. With your scheme, it "should" be ok according to fairness and such, but it would actually be legal only if the copyright owners would accept such a scheme. Which they won't, as it would only hurt their revenue.