Yeah, there is some legal risk connected to everything you do. Thats life. The “in court everything is possible and nothing 100% sure” effect is known in every law system. Thats not special in internet though. Dont invite trouble but also dont panick over nothing.
What one should keep pragmatically in mind is how big a risk is statistically. Theres a lot of media distortion (also a RDF – reality distorting field hehe, thats not unique to Apples boss) going on when it comes to internet and filesharing.
Theres a lot the music industry tries and there are some hundreds filesharers with legal trouble now. Hmm, given that millions and millions of people do it however the statistics dont paint a very troubling image. Only the media does. You may guess why. De facto any well informed netizen knows that filesharing is booming still. Much to the anger of the music industry.
Could that be because the risk to be run over by a truck is larger than getting trouble with the music industries lawyers? Well yes, the number of serious car accidents in america is in the 10ks. Yet people still use cars. Ouch. Terrorists are harmless compared to that. Another RDF. But thats offtopic.
Now lets look at this remote access to ones OWN music:
1. Whoever wants to make you trouble first has to find it. And no this is not what the lawyers of the music industry search for. There are millions of people participating in unsecured systems like bittorrent, emule etc where a lot of copyright abuse happens. This RSP is not meant to be used for illegal means and would be very inconvenient for that end. So why would one target something thats neither meant nor used for these means when other thngs are way easier to find?
2. It is secured by a password. Maybe not the most rock solid implementation but its a burden. You need to write a script and run it and hope my password is weak which you dont know. Or hack Rons implementation of the password challenge.
3. You need to break laws massively to create a scenario where you can legally attack me for this.
So put this together and ask yourself what the statistic risk is really. Ron is taking a way bigger risk by simply running these forums and writing this firefly server. He’s way more legally exposed here. So why is he still doing it?
In the end it comes down to my pragmatic point of view: I dont see whats wrong with listening to my music from a place other than my own castle called home. I dont share the thing to everyone. I password protect it and dont announce it publically. I keep an eye on my NSLU continuously so that it doesnt become spambot #2zillion. etc. pp.
So in the end the remaining risk I simply take with a shrug, despite beeing aware of it. And should I be extremely unlucky and your scenario comes through then I will swear and take it as a challenge to defend myself. 😎