[jdev] P2P v's CS

[Michael Brown]

> it has nothing to with paranoia...
[snip]
> and we should keep in mind microsoft's action when they closed
> chatrooms due to porn.

Call me cynical, but I always assumed that Microsofts motivations for
closing down the MSN chatrooms was to move more people to MSN Messenger. 
A larger userbase allows them to compete better with AOL because MSN has
two things that AOL can't legally put into their software - P2P voice and
video chat.

> i don't want to be a law enforcer, but i want to give administrators a
> chance to keep their server clean - in case of relaying - internet
> service providers, which owners of jabber servers are, are (at least in
> germany and propably in other 1st world countries) responsible for the
> content (ISP regulations) flowing through or from their server.

Obviously we are not going to solve this debate here, but I am tired of
P2P software being classified as "Evil".  It's a method of connecting
machines.  It saves bandwidth most of the time, and reduces peoples
reliance on large companies running large servers.  This is generally a
good thing for the users involved.  If someone needs to be big brother to
help you sleep better, push that job out to the ISP's - the P2P packets
have to travel though their routers at some stage.

> i know from many of the public flirt servers that logging of all
> conversations is very usual. Not only to protect kids, but to stay
> secure against political radical communication as well. of course
> secure, ciphered communications do out-leverage logging, but at least in
> one case i know of IRC administrators forbidding crypted communication
> on their (very big) server. you know, if a party secures their
> communication then it's ment to stay private, which is ok, since
> securing a communication is going along with less handsome tools, at
> least in most cases.

I don't even follow this.  Are you saying that encryption is ok because
the server admins can ban you from using it, and software with encryption
is too hard to use for most people anyway?

Michael.