The October From the Editor in Linux Journal exhorts us to start making P2P better by moving away from Kazaa.
P2P systems have enormous potential to free independent artists and Web sites from big ISP bills, sneak political information past censors and, perhaps most importantly for our readers, provide a challenging new platform to develop software ideas. But, Kazaa is proprietary, mostly unencrypted and, with a little work, can be filtered out....
However, there's another, more important reason to block Kazaa. The gap between what P2P needs to do in order to be a useful free and anonymous speech system and what Kazaa bothers to do, is shocking. If you can detect Kazaa traffic, repressive regimes certainly can. Help encourage the development of strong P2P by blocking inadequate P2P.
I think this exhortation comes at a very important time. With the RIAA suing and settling with 12-year-old's and now bringing child pornography into the equation, it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a concerted effort to try and ban P2P networks and applications.