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NetPD, Metallica's Mysterious Tracker
Akilesh Rajan writes: "An article at Forbes talks about the firm that supplied Metallica with the software it needed to capture 335,000 users. It 'works like 5,000 humans sitting in a room doing Web searches' to identify user names. Demand for their services is enormous, especially since they also plan to expand into the videogame and movie protection businesses."
This NetPD company is unrelated to the shareware program
NetPD,
which, ironically, helps protect user privacy.
Things like this will just force more expansion on the FreeNET front.
This is a losing battle - the only thing that RIAA can even remotely *hope* to gain is a public perception that they'll beat you if you try to usurp their members positions as owners and dominators of the media industry.
FreeNET will come along and fuck this up for them, big time. It'll also be a major headache for *legitimate* law enforcement, but I suspect the Discordians behind the various free net movements find that perfectly reasonable.
I just hope that *real* musicians, who *want* to share their works with others keep in mind that they *STILL CAN DO IT, IN SPITE OF WHAT THE RIAA/MPAA SAY ABOUT IT*.
Folks, there's an awful lot of good music out there, for free, available to download any time of day. You don't *have* to buy the force-fed 'product' that's being pushed in the frontlines - you can always have a more direct, personal relationship with other musicians whose art you prefer.
When was the last time you sent an email to Christina Aguilera or Metallica and got a *real* response, eh? That's the new rules of the game, and the majors know they can't play that.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You've oversimplified the question. You need to add a third choice:
Intellectual "Property" needs to be fundamentally redesigned.
Intellectual "Property" laws primarily revolve around establishing who gets to control making duplicates of the artist's artifacts. In practical terms, this underlying concept is now obsolete, since digital artifacts can be duplicated in any quantity at zero cost. Thus, all Intellectual "Property" law founded on this concept collapses.
We must therefore redesign IP laws such that they acknowledge infinite, zero-cost duplication by anyone, anywhere. What sorts of things would you still want to protect? What sorts of activities would you still wish to deter by criminal/civil sanctions? (Hint: It mostly revolves around an artist's reputation, rather than their artifacts.)
This is the discussion we should be having, not obscenely expensive flamefests by overpaid mercenar^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers. Arguing about whether it's ethical to copy another artist's music is rather like arguing about whether it's ethical for tornadoes to strike trailer parks. While we may lament when it happens to someone we like, the fact is, it's going to happen, so it's probably a good idea to start structuring your life around this reality.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Why not let the musicians decide how they'll make a living? Granted, a large number of them do take to the road, choose to be away from their families for weeks or months at a time. But to decide that those who choose not to should not make money by making music I thing is pretty presumtive.
I suspect this will also lead to less, not greater diversity in music. For one thing, the only people who will make money in the music biz are those acts that *can* travel. A lone composer in his basement whipping up symphonies on his bank of synthesizers is out of luck under your plan. "Sorry mate, not paying for your music, since you can't manage to play 5 keyboards at once. But hey, thanks for the tunes."
Also consider that the limited number of venues will act as a force to restict who will be able to make money. This is a limiting factor now to bands that are starting out, but if *every* band out there needs to play live gigs to make their money, things will just get that much more crowded.
Also, the focus on live performance will likely change music itself. Why spend all of the money to cut a studio album when you'll just be giving it away? Bands will just stick with what they can do in concert. If you told the Beatles they couldn't make money off of studio albums, would they have made Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band?
Perhaps some will say that this is a good thing. Well, that's your musical taste. Why enforce your taste on others?
You know, most geeks would throw a hissy fit if management dictated they had to work 9-5, had to wear ties, and the whole works. Why, then, this attitude regarding how others make their money?
I've been wondering about this for a while. Say say my name is on Metallica's list. I own every Metallica CD they have came out with (except re-load but thats another issue). I have the right to have copies of the songs in mp3 format, this has been proven in several court cases. Now, I have an older machine with a CD-ROM that cannot rip. So to get the songs I legally have a right to have in mp3 format I have to turn to the net. Fine, thats still not illegal. Metallica accuses me of being a pirate because some research agency pulled my name off the napster lists. They have no proof that I have done anything illegal, just that I have downloaded their songs. Isn't the burden of proof for these sorts of things on Metallica? If Metallica has me banned from Napster, could I take legal action against them for harrasment, defermation of character or other nasty things?
It's very likely you're overestimating the technology behind NetPD.
My guess is that they simply queried for the names "Metallica", parsed the search results, and queried each request to get the username holding the song. Rinse and repeat for each Napster server. It's not like you don't already know the username when you download an mp3.
There wouldn't be anything illegal about that, and they don't really have to resort to methods like packet-sniffing and eavesdropping, which would probably be pretty controversial.
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
Does anyone want to bet that this firm get's hired to go start looking for DeCSS on the internet should the court battle go the way of the DVDCAA/MPAA?
From the Article,
"We've set up with the intention of offering copyright protection services to not just the music industry, but the videogame and movie businesses," says Ward, who worked at "a few unknown software companies" before starting NetPD last year."
This sounds pretty much an offer to help the MPAA/DVDCAA to me - even though I wonder how the actual program would identify and make sure that the so labeled software actually is CSS code.
Which brings me to my next point. If I was trading non-copyrighted music through Napster (after having renamed it to Metallica music) and may have got my name on the list - does that mean that I can be prosecuted for violating the law?
At the moment, I dunno. Still I do not think programs like this will ever be effective. Hotline (ftp client program like Wrapster) has an infamous bot - known as the Sadwyw Spider - that searches HL servers for warez. It was news when it came out, but people quickly figured that by simply requiring an l/p to view items on the server the bot would be defeated - or by renaming the items and listing the actual name as part of the info tag.
Couldn't Napster do - something of the like, to defeat bot searches? For Instance - require that a specific always changing login that is displayed at several different locations on the screen be entered for the Bot to search - that would at the very least require a human there to punch in the login, which should make the popularity of programs like this go down alot.
Overall, I don't think this is something to worry about - more scary would be if Metallica put a bot user on Napster with thier songs and displayed the IP's of anyone that dl'ed their songs (Like the webpage that does Gnutella porn) Anyhow - what if I download a song that I legally own, the bot cannot check that either so I'm not that worried...
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
So I'm wondering if anyone has any idea of where they could have gotten such a high number. Perhaps there were 335,000 songs, but I just can't believe that there were 335,000 individual users.
My guess is that they used the song count, rather than the user count so that it would have more press impact, and that we'll find out later that it really was something more like 20,000 users (even that is high). Come to think of it, 335,000 songs is too high. They must be double counting.
Like if NetPD person A and NetPD person B were logged on to the same Napster server, they probably counted the songs they saw twice. And with "5000" NetPD people banging on it... Hmm, that would require only 67 Metallica (TM, Reg. US Pat. Off., Reg. Penna Dept. Agr) songs to be on Napster to get a count of 335,000, which is about how many I'd estimate are available on a server at any given time.
495000 seconds to download all those pirated MP3's.
Your calculations also assumed that every user could match their full download speed. That just ain't so. So, multiply that time by about 10 and you have the actual time, then add 10% for the actual search time on that many files.
So our new total is About 1800 days. That's 5 years.... Hrrmmm.... Hasn't napster only been around for about 8 months?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Here in Europe, I'd buy a pre-paid GSM mobile phone anonymously (from a store that has no surveillance cameras running) on a busy saturday afternoon, get a free internet provider or just use one of the 30 hours free accounts. Used just once and thrown away, from a city you don't live in, and the agency that can trace that deserves to be in world power anyway..
I agree that it seems hard to prove who is who on napster and if they could even block all the people on that list (possibly the people with static ips, but then they'll just get another).
My question, and I feel it's something that should certainly be investigated before napster instigates any actions, is just HOW were they collecting information? Sure, they say they've got some "AI Program" doing the search of 5,000 individuals, but that doesn't mean their searches were successful. Are they looking for every mp3 that has metallica in the title? Or has some reference to a Metallica song title? How are they even sure that these mp3s are even Metallica mp3s without downloading and listening to them (Can't you see it, NetPD sued as largest pirate of illegal mp3s *grin*)? Then, the question is, is it illegal to have an mp3 with Metallica in the title, but the actual music isn't Metallica?
I think NetPD needs to be saying a lot more about it's "AI Program" before anybody (slashdotters, lawyers, napster, etc) take their results seriously. In the meantime, I vote we (as in slashdotters), make a rather annoying song about how Metallica sucks and flood napster with tons of these with Metallica titles. How about it? Of course, we'll want to change spellings, titles, file size, etc to throw their "AI Program" off.
Note: I have heard of a company that is developing software that can identify/pattern match music based on properties within the file. So maybe NetPD is using something like this, but they should certainly be able to prove their results are accurate.
He has not provided details beyond the fact that NetPD's software "works like 5,000 humans sitting in a room doing Web searches" to identify thousands of user names very quickly. He insists that to say more would enable Napster and other MP3 programs to block the software.
Oh my God he is using software to brain wash people into doing web searches, any army of mindless droids, he must be stopped. We already know he has 5000 mindless slaves, how many more before before we step in? He must be stoped know.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Since you were technically a juvenile in 7th grade, you might get off with a warning unless Metallica chooses to prosecute you as an adult, in which case you'll probably go down for "intent to redistribute illegally" and "racketeering" in addition to the usual "habitual violator" stuff... tough break.
"The Internet is made of cats."
wouldnt this program violate napster's 'no bots clause' that you get when you log on? wouldnt this be considerd a bot and hence the ip should be banned??? oh well... just a thought.
Someone will need to add on the fly encryption keys to Gnutella.
What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about? -- Anonymous
I suppose there was probably more than just the name, possibly a listing of songs downloaded or other info (IP Address, etc), but it still seems pretty wasteful use of paper.
Isn't there some kind of law against wanton waste of natural resources? (Nah, guess not or all the junksnalmailers and those postcards that fall out of magazines would be illegal too...) Maybe there should be! :)
"We've got 5000 users, each with a computer, locked in a room. They want to talk to you about this script to Hamlet they've worked out."
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Here's what I don't get. So they have user ID's or whatever of 330,000 people who are trading Metallica mp3's.
OR, is it people who have a file with the name Metallica in it, or one of their song title's. How about I put out a copy of the dictionary, out there titled "Metallica - Holier than Thou.mp3"?
Did they download 330,000 mp3's and play them to see that the are copyrighted material.
I have a file called "Metallica Sucks My Dick.mp3", on Napster. Am I on their list?
- I like pudding.
Since you asked..
/.) is still illegal.
TOS or no TOS, breaking the law (however unjust it may be to
The law says you must agree to the TOS to use the service. The law says you must also enter the agreement in good faith. By entering into the TOS with previous deliberate intent to violate it you have broken the law.
I don't care if you are a pedophiliac, a drug dealer, or a jaywalker; If the someone has to break the law to catch you, they should be the ones going to jail. No if's, and's, or but's.
For the rest of your argument: NetPD is not the police. They are a private company, with no right to search or seizure whatsoever. Napster, Inc., is not a pedophile. They are accused of the offense of copyright infringement, a victimless crime, in a civil suit. This is nothing more that a corporate dicksize war.
.sig: Now legally binding!
How can I mask my IP number when going online (through IRC, web, napster, etc.)? And I mean really anonymous--no logs to be revealed under court order.
I sometimes use a socks{4|5} anonymous server. They are really hard to find, but they do mask your IP under anything you can find a client for (irc,telnet,ftp,etc.), a lot of the anonymous socks servers get abused alot so they don't stay around for an extended period of time, ussually have to find a new one every week or so.
They do mask your IP well (it appears to be coming from the socks server), but under a court order they might be able to get your IP from the "anonymous" socks server. It isn't full proof, but it can help you in some sisuations.
there is huge listing out there of anonymous and free socks avaiable on the Internet, also there is free shell accounts. These both appear to "mask" your IP, but the server that you are bouncing from can grab your IP if they really wanted to (some have a no-log-ip policy, some don't), also make sure the shell/socks proxy you are "bouncing" off allows this, some sites "forget" to secure them probably and they get posted on this list, then 100 script kiddies start trading p0rn though them and it ends up in a big mess...
The only other thing I know of would be FreeNet
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
This is another step in the arms race between those who wish to remain anonymous and those who want to know who is doing what.
It's just a matter of time before the RIAA goes after those operating servers on IRC. NetPD is a company that will likely help in this. (In most cases, they could probably get those running servers booted from their ISPs--very painful when high-speed options are limited.)
So what are the next step for those who want to be anonymous? How can I mask my IP number when going online (through IRC, web, napster, etc.)? And I mean really anonymous--no logs to be revealed under court order.
NetPD hails itself as a "force for good", but where's the accountability? If the Christian Coalition approached NetPC asking for the names of everyone emailing to abortion clinics, how do we know they won't turn their 10 employees (5000 monkeys) on that job to make their next dime?
Also, without revealing their methods, it seems like there is a real possibility that they're doing packet sniffing, which would be a violation of the law, constituting illegal search, or they're posing as napster clients, letting people download which, while not entrapment, as they're not a law enforcement agency (among other reasons) is just as illegal as the person downloading them.
If they're only supplying dummy files with authentic-looking names, then the people downloading the files aren't breaking the law.
Of course, there are other major problems, such as the fact that they're using Napster-registered names, which are often fake to begin with, and that they have no way of showing that someone doesn't own the CD in the first place, and thus a license to make or obtain a copy.
None of this will have an effect in the long term, as NetPC admits they can't discuss their information gathering methods, because if they were public Napster would be able to block it. Sorry, but such evidence won't hold up in court without demonstrating exactly how it was obtained (for resons of determining authenticity, accuracy, and legality). Once this is done, Napster can block it.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Anonymous attacks are becoming more and more effective in the U.S.,
:) In the case Florida v. JL, handed down 28 March 2000, the Supreme Court ruled *unanimously* that "an anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is not, without more, sufficient to justify a police officer's stop and frisk of that person." The argument is that anonymous tips which are *predictive of behavior* can be trusted *when the predicted behavior manifests*, but tips which are merely *descriptive* cannot be --- otherwise you could call the police and accuse the otherwise innocent-looking black man standing at the bus stop of carrying a gun, and the police would be justified in searching him.
S .html
Yes and no.
For more information, including the text of the decision, see http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-1993.Z
Their methodology will have to come out, eventually.
Imagine (this isn't going to happen now, but something similar will someday) that Napster refuses to block the names on the list. Metallica sues, and the conversation in court looks like:
Metallica: "Napster won't block these known copyright violaters."
Napster: "This is a random list of names; there is no proof they are copyright violators."
Metallica: "Sure there is; NetPD told us they are."
Napster: "How did they get the list?" What proof do we have they aren't just random names?"
NetPD: "Trade secret, we can't tell you that."
Either NetPD's comment holds up in court, and *anonymous attacks* become acceptable legal practice (in which case we all ought to run to the nearest country with reasonable laws, as ours will cease to mean anything), or NetPD is forced to disclose their methodology to the court, or the list is thrown out as being invalid evidence in a court hearing.
Start by attacking any ISP in the UK who offers internet service to this company. At this point, all it takes is threatening to file a law suit, and the ISP will yank their access. It is legitimate to use words such as 'libel', since they may in the near future try to claim someone a criminal, which could then be proven in court to be libelous. Words such as 'cracking attempts' and 'illegal probing' can also be tossed out truthfully. When netPD have exhausted all potential connections in the UK, they will be forced to move their entire operation to another country, and start over again. It will take some perseverence to take them down, but the community is large, and the number of ISPs willing to take a stand against baseless litigation is rapidly diminishing.
:-) Any takers?
Complain to their upstream provider, about the excessive use of bandwidth caused by netPD. It might not get them blocked, but they could get bumped to a higher cost guaranteed bandwidth service, taking another chunk out of their revenue.
Track the methods they use to search napster, gnutella, and web sites. They are using some kind of spyder to crawl around and log hits based on their customer's heuristics. These bots/spyders could then be blocked at various points, freeing small sections of the internet from their insidious probing.
Enlist university administrators to help block netPD. Students who are running distributed file systems and fear being libeled or falsely accused by netPD should send a written request to the university network administrators to block outside access to netPD. Again, use carefully selected panic words 'illegal probing attempts', 'crack attack', and 'allowing netPD access could open the university to a lawsuit'. Tell them cracking/scanning attempts are coming from the subnet 62.254.209.128/25, and ask them to block it.
Create a standard template to exclude netPD from networks you control. Someone should write a one paragraph disclaimer which could be customised for each locale telling netPD to stay away, and promising to follow up any violations with a vigorous prosecution.
Bruce Ward, 23-year-old chief technology officer of NetPD sounds like this is a small failed Y2K pre-IPO company jumping onto a wave of free publicity. Not to put down 23-year-olds, but a company with an abrasive CTO like Bruse may not survive riding a big and dangerous tsunami very long, no matter how good surfers they think they are. He already rode another company into bankruptcy and several lawsuits.
He's been so bold as to register the address www.mp3police.com.
"We fully expect to upset people and our site will probably get hacked," he says.
This sounds likes a challenge to leave to the script kiddies. That server is physically located in a webhosting service in Dallas, Tx, USA, running a static page of Bruse's failed Y2K fixit company. Bruse has also registered mp3police.co.uk, which has been recorded scanning many legitimate sites, none of which are running napster or warez boards. Complaints have been circulating for a while, go scan deja for some more info. NetPD has even hit some totally innoculous honeypots and scanned them completely.
At this moment, netpd.com and netpd.net are still available from futuresite.register.com for a price
The challenge for those who want to see a free net is to attack netPD where it counts, their access, their financial well being, their status as vigilantes, and their reputation with any potential customers.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I was under the impression that Metallica had hired some magical internet dectective firm to find the real names of those who had been trading mp3s illegally...am I mistaken? This article makes it sound like all that have is Napster user IDs. Yes? No?
If that's all they have, then why is there a problem? Anyone can use any name to sign up and use the service, it's not as if the 335,000 named folks can't use it anymore. Also, I don't remember giving any personal information when I signed up for Napster, so unless they're working with ISPs, they won't have any real names. If I'm wrong about this, please, someone enlighten me. But it just sounds to me like NetPD logged on, got user names, and killed some trees to make a show of the whole thing.
The Good Reverend
Asked of Weird Al: Hey Al!!!!! What do u think about Napster? I just want to know if you approve.
Al Answers: I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I'm concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!!!!!
Taken from Ask Al
BlackNova Traders