Is P2P research inherently illegal? Can one conduct research on Kazaa or other P2P program without breaking the law? Greg
interesting question --> i guess it depends on what you are trying to do? if you download files of Kazaa etc then you may be violating your ethics committee rules...but if you are studying user behavior etc then I don't see what could be illegal about it. O'Reilly recently published a whole book on P2P. k Greg Elmer wrote:
Is P2P research inherently illegal? Can one conduct research on Kazaa or other P2P program without breaking the law?
Greg
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-- =============================================== Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan School of Management MIT Free/Open Source Software Research Project e-mail: lakhani@mit.edu voice: 617-851-1224 fax: 617-344-0403 http://opensource.mit.edu http://freesoftware.mit.edu http://mit.edu/lakhani/www
that's really a very tough question-- i'm also esperimenting with doing "research"on p2p, more specifically on the way filesharing communities are connected to the warez release scene (if they are at all). one of the problems now is whether it is legitimate to participate in the actual sharing process- to run a p2p programme, that is. in my experience, you get quite a clear picture of what's happening in the specific network just by browsing through the community sites. no need to run the actual software, and i believe Karim is right there- might get you into trouble. on the other hand, it could be helpful to run a client "just for the feel of it". yes, it *does* sound a bit odd, but in order to understand the situation people using p2p networks are in, participating as much as possible could be a real eye-opener. you suddenly don't feel as detached and cozy anymore. i wonder how many people would actually like to conduct "illegal" p2p research but are afraid of the possible consequences. when i was searching for literature on the above topic, i could hardly find anything online. well just a couple of thoughts at 4.30 am there, i'll try to be a bit more specific tomorrow. good night, max doelling
doh! i almost forgot. i have a paper coming out (with Georg von Krogh & Sebastian Spaeth, University of St. Gallen) which looks at how developers join open source communities. our focal case was Freenet - which is a p2p system. during the course of the research we did download the client and also connect it to the network to see what it could and could not do. we were carefull not to download obvious copyrighted materials. one way to protect yourself against these issues is to download materials that have no copyright or have been released willingly by artists and authors on to the system. again it really depends on what you are trying to accomplish... K noci wrote:
that's really a very tough question-- i'm also esperimenting with doing "research"on p2p, more specifically on the way filesharing communities are connected to the warez release scene (if they are at all).
one of the problems now is whether it is legitimate to participate in the actual sharing process- to run a p2p programme, that is.
in my experience, you get quite a clear picture of what's happening in the specific network just by browsing through the community sites. no need to run the actual software, and i believe Karim is right there- might get you into trouble.
on the other hand, it could be helpful to run a client "just for the feel of it". yes, it *does* sound a bit odd, but in order to understand the situation people using p2p networks are in, participating as much as possible could be a real eye-opener. you suddenly don't feel as detached and cozy anymore.
i wonder how many people would actually like to conduct "illegal" p2p research but are afraid of the possible consequences. when i was searching for literature on the above topic, i could hardly find anything online.
well just a couple of thoughts at 4.30 am there, i'll try to be a bit more specific tomorrow.
good night,
max doelling
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-- =============================================== Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan School of Management MIT Free/Open Source Software Research Project e-mail: lakhani@mit.edu voice: 617-851-1224 fax: 617-344-0403 http://opensource.mit.edu http://freesoftware.mit.edu http://mit.edu/lakhani/www
participants (3)
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Greg Elmer -
Karim R. Lakhani -
noci