2005/07/13 Rodi p2p file sharing

Rodi is designed as a replacement for BitTorrent, though with important differences. First is that BitTorrent is for transferring specific files, while Rodi is supposed to let users search by content. The author explains:

 One can view the Rodi network as a group of loosely related or
 completely unrelated search engines.
 

That's fine, but then we get to the concept of "bouncers", which are Rodi systems isolating publishers from consumers. In other words, A gets the content from B which got it from C, and neither A nor C know about each other. While the author promotes this as a solution to security issues, specifically DDOS attacks, when anonymity is combined with content search, this is plainly something that would be used for copyright infringement.

I think the author recognizes that. At http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=303, he seems to admit that ISP's are likely to view it that way and says "I guess that Rodi will not survive 10 years".

Too bad. Distributed distribution software like BitTorrent has legitimate uses (I've used it for downloading Linux distros often). BitTorrent doesn't steal movies or music, but that's the reputation it's starting to accumulate. I don't think I've seen an article recently that referenced BitTorrent without mentioning theft.

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