Quote:
Originally posted by assorted
Even something that barely centralized feels to me like it would be open for legal attack (because then usernames could be theoretically "banned" from the system for trading copyrighted materials).
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all they'd be doing is pointing a domain to a dynamic ip.. if they could ban that then it's the end of the net as we know it, really.
"we've banned your username for linking it to an ip which runs an im service on one of its ports which could theoretically also be used to transfer files, some of which might be music files, and we may own the copyright to them...".. hmm. this is about as likely as isps shutting down people with specific ip addresses, as they are hosting large numbers of files using a gnutella servent (it could happen, sure, but it probably won't).
there are a million other non-infringing uses for such a system (more than gnutella currently has). plus, there are enough free ddns services that getting a new username would be easy (you could find your friends again using the secure email 'insurance' mentioned earlier).
remember that opennap servers have been using this system for ages, and although threats have been sent to people's isps i don't think many ddns services would shut down the domains of their (potentially paying) customers.
if the ddns was run by the same people as the im/p2p (ie. offering subdomains of their own site), then i could see a legal vulnerability, but as things stand i don't think it's much of an issue.