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Sauce for the Gander: Aimster Uses DMCA to Its Advantage
jij writes "Have you seen this? File-trading network Aimster is using an unusual shield to protect its users from snooping: copyright law sponsored by the recording industry. Wired has the story." This is a cute hack, but I really wonder how well it will stand up in court. One of the basic concepts in law is the idea of "unclean hands", where a party may not get relief when they too are breaking the law. In theory, this should prevent the music industry from being able to successfully sue Aimster. But in practice, judges are going to want to rule for the noble music industry against the evil music pirates.
Check them out, they're hilarious. As an added bonus, the past two weeks' editions have been refering to Napster.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
A counterargument:
Lets say I have computer A and computer B, both of which I legally own, and a nice mp3 collection I have made as legal backups of my CDs. For the sake of argument, all my mp3s are on computer A, and I want to transfer them over to computer B. Since they are hooked up to the university's network, I just move them over to a folder on the network and then move them to computer B. Now for awhile, the University had a "copy" of my files floating around their network. If possession was illegal, then the university would be in trouble.
Now this may be a contrived example, but information passes through dozens of servers daily, and occasionally that information is copied (as in a cache or for another purpose). Thus I'm going to have to believe that there is a strong argument for being able to possess files that you have no rights too.
There's always and argument that floats around. Is Symantic or Norton violating the DMCA when they reverse engineer viruses so they can prevent them?
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Free Mac Mini
As noble Slashdotters, we're supposed to hate AOL, and love Napster, so what are we supposed to do in this case?
:)
Tho, I do have to agree... Lovely hack...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
This is no different than warez and rom sites that state "You may only download this file for backup purposes only", or "You must delete the file after 24 hours".
I can't believe anyone would actually think this would stand up in court. This is basically Napster with a meaningless EULA. Ooooo, the RIAA is shaking in their boots!
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Here's what I was about to post: "It doesn't matter how judges want to rule, if the evidence was gathered in opposition to law (DMCA) than you can't even say that Aimster has unclean hands." But then it occurred to me, if it was the RIAA itself that gathered the evidence (instead of the police) does the Fourth Amendment apply? Or, for that matter, does DMCA apply to Fourth Amendment?
That is, does the fact that the DMCA makes "breaking protection schemes" illegal force the police into a position (via the Fourth Amendment) where they can't access, say, my hard drive? And if so, does it place the RIAA in the same position or are they exempt by not being a law enforcement agency?
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
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it's the Sony Betamax case!
Consider - the idea with Aimster is to share files *with people
you already know*. This is fundamentally different than
Napster. It is legal for me to lend a CD to a friend and let
him make a copy for his own use. However, it is not legal
for me to make a copy and give it to him - he has to actively
create the copy for himself. Given this, Aimster is perfectly
legal - it is allowing a friend of yours (since you are using
buddy lists) to make a copy of your music for his own use.
Since your friend is using Aimster, he is the active copier
and so can legally do so.
Am I wrong? Anyone (lawyers) out there confirm this?
The Fourth Amendment only applies to governmental action. Any law must give way to the 4th or any othe rpart of the constitution.
However, when a private party acts illegally, it is likely to be "estopped" from using evidence gathered in this matter. However, estoppel is a doctrine from equity, not law, and the party seeking to use an equitable doctrine must come forwared with "clean hands"
So why am I skeptical? Very simply, the purported license terms apear to be a sham from the beginning. There appears to be not only no legitimate use, but no use at all for the service under its license terms. You are allowed to download a file, but not open it afterwards. In other words, its useless.
If it's true that David Boies was involved, there may be something that wasn't reported that would make a difference: he's too smart and too good an attorney to have been involved with this the way it was reported (OK, some of his arguments on behalf of the Gore campaign were silly at best, but he's still very good. And when your case is a lost cause from the start, a good attorney grabs for every glimmer of hope).
From what has been reported, it would seem to me that there's a good chance that the license is modified by the clear intent of the authors (as is the case where projects are accused of violating their own GPL license) so that opening the files *is* allowed. At that point, I don't see where aimster has gotten anywhere.
hawk, esq.
What you mean is that it's dubious that their system will be used for legal purposes - what they're doing is no more illegal than enabling a corporate network unless their model is dependent upon pirating music in the same way as Napster does.
This is really smart for quite a few reasons, I can think of 2 that are so cool they give me goosebumps.
The first thing is that they're making the point, implicitly, but quite clearly, that the DMCA was a law passed to serve a certain group of people rather than the people as a whole - and now that they've used its provisions to protect themselves, the law has to either take the bullet, accept that it's there to serve the interests of the RIAA and cohorts, or feign ignorance and let this happen.
Secondly, for this to be illegal, it has to be proven that it is being used to copy music/films/copyrighted information. This cannot be done without someone finding out about the content being transferred - and this cannot be broken without invalidating the case against DeCSS.
It's an interesting cross-over of the DeCSS case with the Napster case, and it uses the law very intelligently to say that if these provisions can protect one party, they can protect all parties.
But let's not lose sight of the ball here - although the DMCA is bad and the case against DeCSS should rot and die, the case against Napster still provides a conundrum - sales of singles are down something like 10% in a strengthening economy, which begs the question, "was it Napster?" (my personal opinion : Yes it was). If there is a problem there, and sales are being reduced because people are pirating records - then there's still something illegal going on, and just because it's illegal to get around our obfuscation because we've been smart doesn't make us any better than the MPAA using the DMCA to crush DeCSS.
All we've really done is said: "Look, the DMCA allows us to prevent you from proving that people are breaking the law", and that's a really good point proving that the DMCA goes much too far. It doesn't make obtaining songs without paying for them any more legal than before, and that's got nothing to do with the DMCA.
Salocin.com
After reading the Wired story, I still had some confusion, so I went to aimster's site and read the new TOS.
:). But I don't see how this is different than:
Basically, the new TOS has two big clauses:
1. The network is encrypted and private, and by the DCMA you can't break that encryption.
2. The whole goal of AIMSTER is to distribute to yourself files you already own, or to collaborate with a known group of individuals on files you own and can legally share with them (i.e. a text document you are editing together).
You also agree not to copy files out of your aimster folders into other folders, unless those folders are also shared on aimster. And (here's the key) you agree not to open a file in any aimster folder unless you know for sure it's legally yours to open.
I think what they've effectively done is say "Look, there's a legit market for distributed storage of files. We've done our best to make sure it's used legally. If you think someone is using this service illegally, pursue them, don't pursue us." They've also made it non-trivial to gather evidence to show the service is being used illegally.
I think it's fairly clever. I'm trying to find a way in which they're breaking a law, and I can't. Of, course, IANAL
- Using an encryption program to encrypt some files
- Placing those files on your machine in a shared folder, which is password protected
- Using a service like AIM/ICQ to tell your buddies about the password-protected share, including the password and directions on how to decrypt.
Who can you sue in the above scenario? Only the end user is breaking the law, if any law is being broken. I think aimster is just wrapping all 3 of those things into one convenient package.
Good job, guys.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Just because _Erin Brokovitch_ got made into a movie doesn't mean that the legal system works as well for the poor as it does for the rich.
Even without the the direct influence of money (e.g. not necessarily bribes, but better and more lawyers and far more "staying power") judges are human beings and are as subject to marketing as anyone else and if "evil music pirates" gets repeated often enough they are going to be influenced. The RIAA can afford to have a PR Bunny stationed 24/7 at every major TV network and newspaper. I think that was the original poster's point: "the RIAA (or any large corp) gets to choose the terms under which the battle is fought." If the terms are "noble muscician" versus "evil pirate", the battle is already lost: DCMA will never be overturned.
Of course there are many fair judges, but they get labled as "liberal activist" by the same corporate shills that are paying congress to write (and rewrite) legislation.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
But in practice, judges are going to want to rule for the noble music industry against the evil music pirates.
Oh come on, how biased of a statement can this be? If you agree with the Napster decision or not, all judges don't automatically side with big companies.
Slashdot needs to be more careful in its blanket statements and stay away from blatantly biased statements such as this one.
What if you copied a cd from a friend using your CD Writer but never actually listened to it? Are you still breaking copyright law? Yes.
No, you're not, unless it is known that the copied CD does indeed infringe copyright. Until you know what is on the CD, it's a legal Schroedinger's Cat.
What would be the case if I offered you CDs marked 'Britney Spears hits', and you copied them, only to discover they contained nothing but Richard Stallman's 'Free Software' song? You have not broken copyright law. However, if they did contain Britney's finest, you would have willfully infringed copyright law, which would be tougher penalties than if you could show you did not know you had infringed copyrights by copying them. (IANAL)
Does my bum look big in this?
I think I'm getting the idea of this, with the encryption and all, but one thing isn't quite clear to me. Is the reason the DMCA defense seems plausible is because each Aimster account is essentially a closed system? Would this work on a file system where you can see everybody's computers, like on napster? Or does it need to run on a closed system because then you can't just do a search and find someone's files, you'd have to actually target their transfers and try to break the encryption?
True, there may be "unclean hands", but if the activity is hidden by encryption that can't be legally broken, then there is no way to determine if the activity is actually taking place. Certainly, if probable cause is available to justify a warrant to break the encryption, its possible, but as long as the service has some non infringing uses, there is no way that simply using the service can be considered probable cause.
What is needed is some type of alarm system. Somehow force anyone attempting to monitor the data to engage in some type of handshake which will be able to capture IP addresses. If any of these IP addresses come from an unauthorized source, the "attacker" can be traced and prosecuted.
-Restil
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