Gnutella scanning instead of service providers.

Gary Jeffers jeffersgary at hotmail.com
Sat Aug 25 14:06:32 PDT 2001


My fellow Cypherpunks,

   Ray Dillinger believes that scanning would assist oppressors as
much as regular users. Joseph Ashwood agrees with this and further
thinks that the Internet overhead of a scanner would be a serious
problem.

   I still think that scanners would be effective. Here's why:

   Gnutella still exists, Napster doesn't! Security does not have to be
bulletproof in all cases. Gnutella is a harder target than was Napster.
There may be other reasons why Gnutella is alive and Napster is dead.
I would think the ability to pin blame on the target might be another 
reason.

   A scan enabled Gnutella would be a much harder target than a central
service provided Gnutella. The scan enabled version would be much harder to 
shut down due to various kinds of expenses - legal, administ-
rative, politics, etc.. Not impossible to shut down - just harder,
slower, and with various expenses we would like the oppressors to pick
up :-)

   Also, with lack of centralization, it would be much harder to pin
legal blame on the servers(users). - Much harder, slower, and
politically expensive. This is generally a sort of economics problem
for oppressors.

   As far as Joseph Ashwood's claim that the Internet overhead would be
too much. Is his point exaggerated? Would it be possible to write low
overhead scanners? I do not have the "skill set" to say. Maybe he is
right, maybe not. Anybody got something definitive to say on this?

Yours Truly,
Gary Jeffers

BEAT STATE!!!



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