P2P the New Hardware Buzzword.

by Tom Koltai at 01:13AM (EST) on April 1, 2009

In years to come, we will see P2P “Enabled” hardware advertised by the Goodguys. For the moment, P2P users must get used to the idea that just like in the early eighties, prior to the Sony Betamax decision, everyone that owned a VCR was a criminal.
In 1984, after seven years of litigation, the Supreme Court largely upheld the lower court's initial ruling. In the most far-reaching portion of that decision, that court said flatly that a product is not liable for contributory infringement if it is also used for legitimate purposes. "Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial non-infringing uses," the court wrote.
The court also held that home recording, at least for the noncommercial use of "time shifting," was not infringement.

Those last two sentences become rather important when compared to P2P software. With the BBC’s iPlayer, TVUplayer (30,000 users to 400,000 users in 5 months) and number of smaller but legal implementations and uses of P2P software (e.g.: CNN news broadcasts), the numbers of P2P users are swelling. Consequently it is becoming difficult for statisticians to differentiate between legal file sharing and unapproved file sharing.

Which makes today’s anecdote rather exciting.

The other day I was talking about a Time Machine.

P2P is a constantly evolving technology/activity.

Users on the east coast (Philly) apparently are Time-shifting new episodes of House (MD) – removing the adverts with Video Redo and Posting it immediately on the Internet.

Users on the west coast (San Fran) have got used to being able to download the new episodes and watch half the program (advert free – TiVo proof)  before the scheduled timeslot arrives on the west coast.

Now half an hour may not seem like much of  a time machine – but when you add the fact that TiVo cant now sell “Guaranteed – Skip Button over-ride House MD advertising” to P2P enabled content watchers on the west coast any more, it starts to become a little more interesting.

Remember, the judge ruled that the technology, if capable of being used substantially for non-infringement uses was not liable as a contributor to the infringement AND that time shifting was legal.

I don’t think he meant forwards in time – but what the heck….. I’m sure the US Judiciary likes to watch House and Judge Judy adfree as well.



Keywords:  iPlayer, time shifting, judge judy, House MD, TVU, tivo, time machine, P2P