xml-dev - RE: what Napster means for XML

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 10:20 AM 4/26/00 -0400, Kohn, Joav wrote:
>the problem with the peer-to-peer model is that it doesn't
>really fit with the majority of corporate security policies.

I think you may give corporations more credit for their security than they
deserve, but see below.

>most of the information stored in the world is held in corporate
repositories,
>and those repositories lie behind those damn corporate firewalls,
>which won't be allowing peer-to-peer communication
>to occur willy-nilly any time soon.

Actually, it seems like most of the information stored in the world is sent
around as emails these days, and the corporate repositories only contain
certain categories of information.  Firewalls may block some kinds of
peer-to-peer communication, but there's still plenty of room inside the
firewall for peer-to-peer to make sense within an organization rather than
across organizations.

>given that,
>it's hard to see how a peer-to-peer system
>could be shaped any differently than
>the way the web works now.....

It's pretty easy, actually, given how simple it is to get information
across a firewall within the bounds allowed for existing email and Web
traffic.  Those infrastructures aren't hard to repurpose for 'rogue'
peer-to-peer operations.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
http://www.simonstl.com

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