One group tried get out ahead of the lobbyists and demonstrate the usefulness of P2P in areas not usually covered by the mainstream media, and they"ve used SP2 to do it.
Downhill Battle, a site which attempts to promote independent music and stop the RIAA, was told by Microsoft this week to stop distributing their torrent file of the recently released Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Its creators had noble intentions, a demonstration of how P2P filesharing technology can help distribute files that are too large for centralized distribution to handle. Since Microsoft limited the amount of downloads users could make from their downloads server to 2.5 million a day, Downhill felt their could help ease the load. Microsoft didn"t see it this way.
Microsoft sent multiple DMCA warnings to Downhill and while they have stood up to such threats before, the group has decided to simply remove the torrents as Microsoft requested. It seems they have decided that the effort was a big enough of a success, that they could to do as Microsoft asked, and turn their efforts back to their primary focus, the fight against the RIAA.
One would assume reasoning for the request is understandable, yet the exact reason is unknown. Does Microsoft want to control the distribution of their latest creation? Does Microsoft dislike torrents? Or is it simply the fact Microsoft doesn"t want people installing bad versions of their package and messing up their computer? (Downhill Battle provided the MD5 checksum.)