peer to peer

The Sharing Economy Fights Back Against Regulators

"What started with a few enterprising individuals willing to let complete strangers sleep in their homes and use their possessions has now developed into a formidable economic force that threatens to upend several different industries. Along the way, it has posed some major legal challenges. The companies that are pushing it forward have continually undermined local ordinances, consumer safeguards, and protectionist regulations alike. As a result, governments around the country are trying to rein them in. That’s where Silicon Valley’s newest advocacy group comes in. Peers is a self-described 'grassroots organization' that launched to 'mainstream, protect, and grow the sharing economy.'" Continue reading →

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Richard’s $2 Billion Dollar (Severed) Hand

"Richard Van As, a South African carpenter, lost four of his fingers to a circular saw, reports The Associated Press. An artificial limb — one that could detect the muscles’ electrical impulses and move — would have cost him tens of thousands of dollars. Sadly, he was unable to afford that. Soon after, Van As teamed with an Ivan Owen from Seattle. 10,000 miles separated Van As in Johannesburg from Owen. But with the help of two 3-D printers donated by MakerBot, the two created their own “Robohand” prosthetic. They were able to cut the prototyping time from a week to just 20 minutes. And the cost? Just $500… more than a 95% discount." Continue reading →

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California becomes first state in nation to regulate ride-sharing

"Under the proposal, the PUC would have jurisdiction over ride-sharing under a new category of businesses called transportation network companies. The agency would also issue licenses to the services. The decision is expected to preempt efforts by California cities to oversee or even ban ride-sharing under their authority to license taxi cab firms. Regulators would require drivers to undergo criminal background checks, receive driver training, follow a zero-tolerance policy on drugs and alcohol and carry insurance policies with a minimum of $1 million in liability coverage." Continue reading →

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Craigslist has cost U.S. newspapers $5 billion

"The study, to be published in the journal Management Science covering the period 2000 to 2007, found Craigslist has had a huge impact on local US newspapers, which have in the past relied heavily on classifieds. Over that period the researchers noted a 20.7 percent drop in classified ad rates, a 3.3 percent increase in subscription prices and a 4.4 percent decrease in circulation, according to a summary of the research released this week by New York University. 'We ascribe this impact to Craigslist,' Seamans told AFP. 'When Craigslist enters a market, the effect on a newspaper’s classified ads is almost immediate,' he added." Continue reading →

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New York’s Crony Motivated Swipe Against the Sharing Economy

"Nigel Warren, an East Village resident, was fined $2,400 for running an illegal hotel because he rented his bedroom out to a visitor for three days. He wasn’t operating a sleazy flophouse, and the entire transaction was markedly casual, but he was prosecuted nonetheless. Warren’s offending transaction took place through Airbnb, an online hostelling website. Airbnb works on a peer-to-peer structure, connecting people with extra space to people who can’t (or don’t want to) shell out for a regular hotel. One can’t help but suspect big hotel powers might be lurking behind a law that forbids short stays anywhere but in hotels." Continue reading →

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On 10th anniversary, Pirate Bay launches PirateBrowser to evade filesharing blocks

"The PirateBrowser website explains that the application combines Tor client Vidalia – which anonymises data connections – with the FireFox Portable Edition browser, the FoxyProxy add-on and 'some custom configs'. The site also claims that the browser is an anti-censorship tool rather than purely for piracy, citing countries including Iran and North Korea alongside the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland as places it expects PirateBrowser to be particularly useful." Continue reading →

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Treating Surveillance as Damage and Routing Around It

"Even as the U.S. security state becomes more closed, centralized and brittle in the face of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, civil society and the public are responding to the post-Snowden repression by becoming more dispersed and resilient. That’s how networks always respond to censorship and surveillance. Each new attempt at a file-sharing service, after Napster was shut down — Kazaa, Kazaa lite, eDonkey, eMule, The Pirate Bay — was less dependent on central servers and other vulnerable nodes than the one before it. Wikileaks responded the same way to U.S. government attempts to shut it down." Continue reading →

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Bitmessage: Choice Of A Rightly Paranoid Generation

"Bitmessage is an open-source communications protocol for keeping your email private. Unlike PGP and similar programs that hide just the content of messages, Bitmessage also hides metadata like the sender and receiver of messages. And unlike PGP, Bitmessage doesn't require that users manage public or private keys to use the system; Bitmessage uses strong authentication so that the sender of a message cannot be spoofed. Bitmessage is also decentralized and trustless, which means that you don't need to trust root certificate authorities or any third parties who, under legal duress from a government, might give up your data." Continue reading →

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The Security State’s Reaction to Snowden Shows Why It’s Doomed

"Networks, when attacked, become even more decentralized and resilient. A good example is Napster and its successors, each of which has more closely approached an ideal peer-to-peer model, and further freed itself from reliance on infrastructure that can be shut down by central authority, than its predecessors. Hierarchies, on the other hand, respond to attack by becoming even more ossified, brittle and closed. Hierarchies respond to leaks by becoming internally opaque and closed even to themselves, so that their information is compartmentalized and they are less able to make effective use of the knowledge dispersed among their members." Continue reading →

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