I don't think file sharing should be regulated because of the infinite replicator argument (if people can easily make infinite copies of any object they want, should you really stop them?). However, most governments hold a different position on the matter. This leads to a situation where the legality of a system matters nearly as much as its function.
As I understand it, people are primarily sued for sharing files, not downloading them.
If I may ask, do you think that companies would find it as easy to sue someone if they just had a 1 kb piece of a copyrighted file? Would the person's position be any stronger if they didn't even know that they had it?
I have an idea for a peer to peer file sharing system design that would make it so that all files are split evenly among all peers. Once a file has been submitted, no one person stores it. Files would be retrieved by looking up the hash of the name and using the hash chain to find the rest of the chunks. All you would need to retrieve a file is its name. There would be no central servers (that said, you would probably eventually get lists that people maintained of file names that they know are findable). Participants could be considered guilty of storing all files, or none.
Do you think it would be worth building such as system? Or would it not be any more defensible than the current setup? (Or has it been done before?)
Thanks.
Bookmarks