apcmiller Posted September 29, 2005 Share Posted September 29, 2005 An anonymous reader writes "Sam Yagen, President of eDonkey, testified at the Judiciary committee's hearing 'Protecting Copyright and Innovation in a Post-Grokster World'. It was there he told the committee that he is throwing in the towel. 'The Grokster standard requires divining a company's intent, the decision was essentially a call to litigate. This is critical because most startup companies just don't have very much money. Whereas I could have managed to pay for a summary judgment hearing under Betamax, I simply couldn't afford the protracted litigation needed to prove my case in court under Grokster. Without that financial ability, exiting the business was our only option despite my confidence that we never induced infringement and that we would have prevailed under the Grokster standard. -Slashdot RSS"apcmiller - I added a source so others can actually view the whole article. When posting news in any of the news forums, it is courtesy to post a link to where you got said information. Seeing as you failed to do this, in not one, but several posts, I added source links myself. Please do not remove these. If you are unhappy with your posts being edited, then please remember to post news correctly.Slyck.com News Article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samurai Posted September 29, 2005 Share Posted September 29, 2005 His testimony...Chairman Specter, Ranking Member Leahy, Senators, and staff: thank you for inviting me to testify this morning on this issue that will undoubtedly have broad and lasting ramifications for both the content and technology industries. For the last three years, I have served as president of MetaMachine, the developer and distributor of the peer-to-peer file-sharing application eDonkey. From my vantage point I have witnessed and participated on the front lines of the confrontation between technology and content. I hope my experience on this cutting edge will be valuable to the Committee. You might be curious about what kind of person would run a peer-to-peer company, so I'd like to tell you a little about my background. Prior to joining MetaMachine I co-founded and served as CEO of an educational publishing company called SparkNotes. In that role, I was a rights owner and my job was to sell physical content - not so different from the goals of the record labels and movie studios. I share this background with you to give you comfort that I am not an anarchist and I have no ax to grind with owners of intellectual property. I hold a bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard and an MBA from Stanford. Before I get to the core of my opening statement, I'd like to make it clear to the Committee that we have replied to the RIAA's cease-and-desist letter and I have personally committed to Mr. Sherman - which I reiterate today - that we are in the process of complying with their request. Therefore I am not here as an active participant in the future of P2P, but rather as one who has thrown in his towel and with no interest in replaying past issues. I hope that as a result of my pending etirement from the P2P industry, I can speak with more candor and that you will accept my testimony not as pushing any self-serving agenda but merely as sharing with you my views on this Post-Grokster world. I'd like to comment on three elements of the Grokster case that I find most important. First: Because the Grokster standard requires divining a company's "intent," the decision was essentially a call to litigate. This is critical because most startup companies just don't have very much money. Whereas I could have managed to pay for a summary judgment hearing under Betamax, I simply couldn't afford the protracted litigation needed to prove my case in court under Grokster. Without that financial ability, exiting the business was our only option despite my confidence that we never induced infringement and that we would have prevailed under the Grokster standard. Second: The court specifically cites that Grokster's marketing to "former Napster users indicates a principal, if not exclusive intent to bring about infringement." Is this really proof of intent to induce infringement? Does this mean that every advertiser that has advertised in the eDonkey software also has a similar intent? I should hope not, because last summer the campaigns of both President Bush and Senator Kerry ran advertisements on eDonkey. Were they really both courting the "swing infringement vote" or could they have had some other "intent?" My final point on Grokster is that its inducement standard cannot serve as a long-term equilibrium. Imagine if since eDonkey's inception not only had we not made any statements inducing infringement - but also that we made no statements at all - and instead simply put up a website that read "eDonkey is a peer-to-peer file-sharing application." It seems to me that would not qualify as "affirmatively and actively inducing infringement." If we had never made any other statements would we be in the clear now? If so, new P2P applications will inevitably spring up and easily satisfy Grokster in this way. If we would not be in the clear than the effect of Grokster will go far beyond merely chilling innovation - it will almost certainly freeze it in its tracks. I'd like to wrap-up by humbly stepping beyond my area of expertise and making four observations that may be beneficial as you continue your oversight: First, encourage a market solution. I don't think anyone knows which specific outcome would be best to mandate, but I have limitless trust in our free market system to generate numerous new business models to take advantage of the tens of millions of Americans who use P2P to quench their thirst for content and other data. Imagine if for the last ten years we had been able to convert just 1% of the estimated tens of billions of shared files into paid downloads. There is a market solution to be found - it may well be one that fits in to the business model of the incumbent entertainment industry, but it also may not. It's not for anyone in this room to decide; only the market can. Second, on this issue be especially aware of unintended consequences. With many P2P applications offshore or simply open sourced, the entities that will end up being most devastated by Grokster will be those - like us - that set up shop in the US, abided by American laws, paid taxes, and, at least in eDonkey's case, tried to license content from the entertainment industry. I fear that the winners in Grokster will not be the labels and the studios, but rather the offshore, underground, rogue P2P developers who will have just lost half a dozen of their biggest competitors. Third, clarify the Court's decision in Grokster. As it is, many companies and would-be entrepreneurs simply cannot be sure of where they will stand with respect to the law. As you know, eBay recently acquired the P2P company Skype for more than two billion dollars. Note that Skype was founded offshore; it would be a real tragedy and a blow to our economy should all technology entrepreneurs take their innovations offshore. And finally, I've started a few companies in my career and if I have one overriding passion it is for entrepreneurship - the driving force of our economy. I urge you to try to empathize with entrepreneurs trying to innovate in nascent industries. I hope you will do all that you can to nurture and encourage entrepreneurs and provide them with a legal environment in which they can face the myriad challenges that startups do without the additional burden of having to wonder how a judge many years in the future will construe their every email, every phone call, and indeed every thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nsane Posted September 29, 2005 Share Posted September 29, 2005 that sucks, atleast their's emule tho :)ludacris has a verse in one of his songs that goes perfectly with this. "Rules were made to be broken, but you can't make broken rules." now think on that one for a little bit. i mean, the P2P avalanche has already started and their's no way to stop it (even with some communist law) :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vargas Posted September 29, 2005 Share Posted September 29, 2005 that sucks, atleast their's emule tho :)and Lugdunum :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myidisbb Posted September 30, 2005 Share Posted September 30, 2005 and Lugdunum :Dwouldnt edonkey software still work? just later on when its not updated that people would move to a updated safer version of emule? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oxygenuk Posted September 30, 2005 Share Posted September 30, 2005 edonkey was as bad as emule, shit download speeds and poor results.i wonder whats next, either kazaa or emule. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nsane Posted September 30, 2005 Share Posted September 30, 2005 emule is open source, there's no point in suing the devs. it'll just piss someone else off, who's just as smart, and the project will be back in full swing again (you can't stop it) :Dbtw, it's not the top-rated network for no reason, so it must be something on your in :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oxygenuk Posted September 30, 2005 Share Posted September 30, 2005 well i most of the time connect to razorback.why do i always get shitty speeds, iv heard of addon hacks but cant find them :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Lite Posted September 30, 2005 Administrator Share Posted September 30, 2005 Its because you don't share or wait a few minutes... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oxygenuk Posted September 30, 2005 Share Posted September 30, 2005 how am i suppose to be sharing files when i can never even download anything from emule lol :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Lite Posted September 30, 2005 Administrator Share Posted September 30, 2005 You can put files in your downloads folder? :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myidisbb Posted September 30, 2005 Share Posted September 30, 2005 how am i suppose to be sharing files when i can never even download anything from emule lol :Dwith emule software you dont need any files to share. you find some files to download. as you are downloading you are sharing with the others that are downloading. emule download speed starts slow but will max out at what ever speed you set it to with regards to your actually speed of up and down. i use emule morph which is a pick of this website by nsane. you install emule and then copy/paste morph over it. at the start you have very few emule servers. you will have no kad friends. you find someone sharing with you either way and add them. then click on them and kad and you now have a shit load of kad connections. you click on a emule server and it will load many others. if you are using a router you have to allow those 3 ports to go through. and 2 of those port for your firewall. (this is if you are doing this at home) if col/uni school you have to play with settings to bypass their network stuff to stop bandwith eatting)if not using winxp firewall but another make sure you disable winxp firewall. use a ipblocker like newest pg2 for extra protection. emule morph has 3 file syou need to click to update every so often in their options somewhere.when ssearching make sure you get the ones with more shared. (note that may mean its a fake too. read the comments and other file names of it)ifyou set uplaod speed to under 15 then it will nerf your download speed. they say 25 uploading is fine one. at 1.5 dsl i set d/ling about 150. notice if you are doing other stuff online it will eat your bandwith. 512 mb ram and prefer p4. good luck. you might want to look into newsgroups if you want to maz your download speed. at 1.5 dsl i can get 10 gbs in 3/4 a day easy.editohmost forgot. did you fix your sp2 connections for tcp? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samurai Posted September 30, 2005 Share Posted September 30, 2005 http://ed2k.2x4u.de/index.htmlDownload your server list from here...*CAUTION* 1 porn ad in centre of the page, so there's your warning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oxygenuk Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 sp2 connections...?as for waiting for downloads to max out, i was download a movie for about 3 days ages ago and the max it ever reached was about 6kbs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myidisbb Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 sp2 connections...?as for waiting for downloads to max out, i was download a movie for about 3 days ages ago and the max it ever reached was about 6kbs!win xp sp2 nerf tcp connections to 10. you get this one file that lets you change it to anything but is preset at 50. one of the guys in here should have the link or google for it. look for the one by a guy with "lord" in his name i believe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samurai Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 LvlLord I believe :Dhttp://www.lvllord.de/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Lite Posted October 1, 2005 Administrator Share Posted October 1, 2005 http://ed2k.2x4u.de/index.htmlDownload your server list from here...*CAUTION* 1 porn ad in centre of the page, so there's your warning.Doesn't that list still include fake servers still (Ie Sonnyboy?)as for waiting for downloads to max out, i was download a movie for about 3 days ages ago and the max it ever reached was about 6kbs!Rare file perhaps? :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samurai Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 Possibly. I haven't used eMule for months now, but they're pretty quick to sort out servers so maybe it's been rectified? :DI'll leave that for someone else to play with :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vargas Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 Possibly. I haven't used eMule for months now, but they're pretty quick to sort out servers so maybe it's been rectified? :ph34r:I'll leave that for someone else to play with ;)http://www.gruk.org/server.met.gz (client must support gzip, like morphXT, otherwise use http://www.gruk.org/server.met ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.