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Surveillance on Peer-to-Peer Networks
n7lyg writes "Salon has an article by Janelle Brown that asks (and answers) the question 'Who is spying on your downloads?' It discusses the use of various P2P tracking tools by RIAA and IFPI and others to monitor file trading on both Napster and Gnutella networks. Freenet seems to be more or less immune to this sort of monitoring at the present time, due to the distributing the files throughout the network. More big brother tactics..."
Firstly, I'm pro-freedom. But everyone should be using Linux! Secondly, I am pro-American-way, even though I don't understand to whom the constitution applies.. oh, did I mention I support a Leftist system for licensing.. when I'm not making my 100 grand a year writing boilerplate perl for some company.
I am a nerd. Or at least, I *act* like a nerd. I am great at reading short snippets from some populist website and using them to form a complete and authoritative opinion. I have been known to stick to my guns even when it's clear I fire blanks.
I dislike commercialism and banner advertising. But I like Slashdot. I believe Slashdot's operation is far more than browsing other news sites and copy-pasting a few notes.
One day, I'm going to leave my parents' place, or my little student dig, and drive topless cars and spend time with topless chicks (without paying!).
I abhor hypocrisy, and believe in equality for minorities. But I _am_ better than everyone else!
What really surprises me is that if I discover a government agengy spiying me without a warrant, I could sue the hell out of them, however, if a company does the same I can't do anything.
Only in America...
--
Because, with a court order, the RIAA can get Napster's encryption protocol, and build a packet analyzer that de-encrypts the relevant fields, and automates the whole process for the voyeur.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've been thinking about this for a while now.. gnutella search results currently contain the IP of the person with a match for the search request. But wouldn't it be great if there was a way to get the file back to the end user without revealing the posessor's IP address?
If one or more hosts between the file posessor and the requester supported a special extension whereby the search results were rewritten to traverse a HTTP proxy chain created on the fly, privacy would be improved. Furthermore, if those HTTP proxy chains supported caching, performance might be improved too.
Here's how it works:
Host X joins the network, connecting to host Y, which is connected to host Z. Host Y supports the new anonymous downloading feature. Host Z does not support the anonymous downloading feature.
Host A, which may or may not support anonymous downloading, connects to the gnutella network and searches for a document. The search request is broadcast to attached hosts B and C. Host C happens to be connected to host Z, which is connected to Y, and thus Z. Host X sees that it has received a search request for a document it has from host Y, and sends a routed message back through Y to the gnutellanet network. Host Y rewrites the search result to include its own IP address. It also makes an entry in a time-expired table and agrees to proxy the request to host X for anyone that asks. If for some reason Y can not agree to proxy the request (perhaps it is over its bandwidth cap) it will pass the search result unmodified to Z. When a request comes for that document, Y it will fetch it from X. Host Y hands off the rewritten packet to Z, which goes to C, B, and A. From host A's perspective, Y had the file, not Z. At Y's discression, Y will enter the file it got from X in its cache and also answer search requests matching it affirmatively.
Now the response is passed up the chain, eventually to host A. Host A requests the document from host Y, which proxies it to host X, which has the document. Who did the user get the document from? They think they got it from Y, but did they? No. They got it from X. Even if host Y leaves host X's IP in the response, how can we be sure host Y isn't just forwarding the request for someone else? Even when responding to requests that can be fulfilled locally, servers should insert a random delay. In fact, if such a system is in use, there is no reliable way to prove who you got a document from unless you can monitor the Internet connections between every site involved in the transaction.
Further complicating the matter might be the use of encryption and connection multiplexing between involved hosts. Hosts X and Y, for example, might communicate all information including proxied requests over a single encrypted channel. They might pass fodder on that channel when no transactions were in progress to reduce the effectiveness of traffic analysis.
One other great advantage is that caching could be employed to much improve download rates for popular files. Host Y, for example, could agree to keep around a few hundred megs of recently downloaded files. It then could respond to search requests for those files.
Somehow you installed this software. It may have been attached to something else you installed, such as a free preview copy of some program.
But software doesn't just automatically install on Windows desktops. Even with ActiveX controls you have to specifically authorize the download, and even then they are limited in where the files can be installed to. (hint: C:\Program Files is not one such location)
Steve Gibson at grc.com has warned about this in the past, along with others.
Especially with Napster, the whole process of spying on users seems rather simple.
Napster provides a index mechanism which makes it very easy for some entity to watch what users make available for download.
On top of that, by making downloads available yourself, you could easily monitor what people actually download.
I don't see how you can realistically get around this, at least not with Napster. Your either offering stuff for download, or you are downloading information yourself.
I suppose if you know who the trojan sites are offering Napster content, you can avoid downloading from them... But how could anyone know?
Here are some screenshots of one of the 'spy' progams.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Who needs Best Buy/Tower Records/RIAA?
I nominate "anybody who doesn't have a computer but likes music anyway".
Right now, the RIAA is a devil the artists know. They might not LIKE the RIAA, but they know how it works and how to deal with it. Is replacing the RIAA wholesale, which is what you and most other advocates are talking about, really the best thing to do?
"I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth." - Charlie Chaplin
Don't forget, musicians would like to make money. I'm sure most of them would perform for free if they could eat and live and have all the other amenities most people want, but that just doesn't happen without money in our society, so they're going to want to get paid. Some of them will want to get paid a lot. Does any musician deserve to get paid a lot? Why not? If people are willing to fork out money such that an individual or a group get paid a lot (see professional sports for another example) then of course they deserve the money.
Ok now what happens when you start providing substantial disincentives or risk? Much much less people will be willing to "contribute". For instance, if RIAA simply starts making a few well placed calls to the largest ISPs, causing the user to lose his connection in short order. Even if it's only for a few days, or even an hour or two, most users would find this absolutely unacceptable. Those that are most likely to setup a site like that, also tend to be the most attached to their "fast" connections. When the pirate is presented with a choice between providing goods to hundreds of people he doesn't even know and incurring risk in the process or merely leaching like everyone else, the choice is simple. Add to this mix permanent bans, public embarassement, potential legal action, etc etc, and you have even less reason to take the chance. Remember, they need not bust EVERY pirate that is out there, just enough to provide a credible threat. Also, remember that this approach wouldn't take much in the way of resources or money.
Now sure, there will still be SOME nuts out there that will persist for whatever reason, but those will be so small in comparison to the downloading public that their effect will be nominal. The point is that greed works against the pirates as much as it does against the industry. I fully believe the industry is capable of doing this and that it would be highly effective. Against just about any known P2P-like system (e.g., Napster, GNUTella, Scour, CuteMX, or whatever.)
This is a seperate subject, but I think you're completely underestimating the absolute importance in promotion and marketing on the part of the record labels. While marketing and promotion do not necessarily have to come from the industry, a simple website will not suffice. The odds are that the artist(s) will be competing for scarce eyeballs no matter what medium they're on. Scarcity, in turn, means it'll cost lots of moola. Who has lots of capital and is willing to risk it on music investments? The industry. One way or another, capital must be risked to gain a sufficiently large following. The backers will probably be the same industry that we know today, but, even if not, it doesn't really matter. The internet isn't some kind of magical pill to make all these concerns go away.
They aren't monitoring your traffic, that would probably be illegal without a court order, and would require a hugh amount of cooperation from ISPs. All they are doing is watching which songs people make available. By seeing new songs appear in your shared directory, they can guess that you just downloaded that song. I can't really see any legitimate complaints about them monitoring in this way. After all, you are making the songs available to anybody who asks, with no authentication or authorization at all. Can you really complain if the copyright holders stop by to see what you are sharing? It's like claiming that you can setup a sidewalk stand giving pirated cassettes away to the public, but RIAA employees should avert their eyes as they pass.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the RIAA. But all they are doing is looking for people who are illegally making copyrighted works available to the public. If you want to create "junk" info for them, you could share a whole bunch of files with junk contents and suggestive names. But, if you do this, it not only confuses their software but other Napster users, which is a bit like burning the villiage in order to save it. In fact, I'm suprised that the RIAA hasn't hired consultants to start polluting the Napster and Gnutella services with junk files, broken links, and anything else they can think of to make the systems unreliable and hard to use. Anyway, my point is it's foolish to expect that you can offer an illegal service (not Napster in general, but the specific act of distributing copyrighted works without authorization) to an anonymous public and not have the "authorities" check up on you.
From the article: I know that your IP address is 28.294.22.1, your ISP is Earthlink, and you logged in last at 2:26 a.m
Whew... Don't worry about their spies... they don't even know the addresses can't go above 255... 8^)
Jethro
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
A corporation or other organization looking at data freely available to them from all those gnutella clients is not a violation of your rights.
They are only finding out what your computer willingly offers them (and every other gnutella client)
Perhaps this is why we need security features in peer-to-peer clients.
m sp encer.net/piratestuff/bigfile.iso
Blocks was an example of a filesharing client with too much security. It was well-designed and cross-platform, but required too many resources and too much security for...well, anybody except the most advanced users. It would be very difficult to find the IP number of someone sharing certain content on the Blocks network. It's also almost impossible to even find a file on the Blocks network.
Perhaps what we need is optional security. Some users are going to want to form a mixnet, and only directly communicate with trusted peers. Some people want encrypted disk caches, so if their computers are seized, it'll be impossible to tell exactly what they're sharing. Conversely, some people would like an easy way to tell whether content is copyright-protected and shouldn't be traded, without directly notifying anyone that they've come into contact with the content.
I've outlined some security concepts in a quick page I've put together: http://mspencer.net/fs. It's a work in progress, and is very long (22 KB and growing) with almost no index or table of contents. But if peer-to-peer filesharing is a topic you are enthusiastic and excited about, you'll find the page very interesting. (There are no ad banners at all on that page -- just text, except for my email address. I put my email address in a graphic, to spam-proof it.)
From the page:
Does all of this seem seedy? Do you think people will assume that anyone who participates in any of this extra security or identity protection is automatically a criminal? Remember that this is what computers do -- they take complicated things, and take the manual labor out of them. Sure, some of these methods may seem like seedy criminal behavior turned digital -- but this behavior is usually criminal in real life because it's so costly! It takes time and effort to route anonymous messages around -- take a 'layered' envelope out of the mailbox, unwrap only one envelope leaving (an envelope still inside, possibly with more envelopes inside that), and mail it out again. Pass things around by word-of-mouth only. Use aliases. In real life, these things are difficult to do and take time and effort...so it can be concluded that the people doing them probably need the extra security or protection. That is, they're probably doing something illegal, so the extra 'cost' is worth it. But this is digital -- these are computers we're talking about. It's very easy to let the computer stand out on the streetcorner for us. We're not peddling high-value illegal material -- many of us merely don't want certain advertising companies using our personal information to enhance their seedy business. This 'shifty behavior' becomes worthwhile at the half-penny-per-transaction level, because computers do all the work. Were it the real world, this same kind of 'shifty behavior' would only be justified at the tens-of-dollars-per-transaction level.
Such a system is possible, if enough motivated and excited people get together: adapt and borrow concepts from other projects. The other projects out there (MojoNation, Freenet, Blocks, ELF, and many more) have wonderful concepts and design, and they do a very good job of solving a particular problem with filesharing. But they don't solve all of the problems.
Perhaps if enough p2p project developers are inspired to bring their concepts together into one system, we'll finally rid our gift culture of these pesky intellectual property lawyers.
On a related note...I just thought of this really evil way to abuse three existing services (WWW, DNS, and Akamai proxying) to provide a kinda-anonymous web site:
1) Use an existing DNS zone to point an NS record for a subdomain to a special kind of DNS server. (Perhaps *.anon.mspencer.net)
2) Create a special DNS server (special software, or just firewalled) that is only allowed to hand out DNS query replies to Akamai servers.
3) Publish a URL:
http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/lmnop1.anon.
It would be impossible to get the true location of lmnop1.anon.mspencer.net unless Akamai servers were cooperating with you.
--Michael Spencer
(remove the first three letters from the email address above.)
And even worse, here's something I just read about recently. The NET Act (No Electronic Theft) :
"The No Electronic Theft law (the NET Act) is significant because now sound recording infringements (including by digital means) can be criminally prosecuted even where no monetary profit or commercial gain is derived from the infringing activity. Punishment in such instances includes up to 3 years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. The NET Act also extends the criminal statute of limitations for copyright infringement from 3 to 5 years.
Additionally, the NET Act amended the definition of "commercial advantage or private financial gain" to include the receipt (or expectation of receipt) of anything of value, including receipt of other copyrighted works (as in MP3 trading). Punishment in such instances includes up to 5 years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. Individuals may also be civilly liable, regardless of whether the activity is for profit, for actual damages or lost profits, or for statutory damages up to $150,000 per work infringed."
Rader
Rader
That kind of makes me scared to get stuff off a decentralized network.
Yes, the internet has made it easier for folks to get their music. Does this really help artists? I see how it could be a lot easier for an unknown band to get noticed, but how does it help them make money?
Here is an excellent essay/letter form sam Rosenthal, the owner of Projekt records (an independent label) on how napster helps unknown bands.
GPG or PGP
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
They are using a modified version of the standard client so any grief you cause them with traffic increases you will cause your own users as well.
I guess the only defense would be lots of metallica.mp3 files that are not mp3 files... but again you will be confusing normal gnutella users too.
Freenet is probably the best defense.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
I know that WinACE also installs WebHancer, actually it won't run until you install WebHancer. Although after it's installed you can remove it via Add/Remove.... as far as I know it doesn't leave bits behind to still spy.
A wasteland of porn sounds good to me...
one mans junk
Sigs are awesome huh?
I think the RIAA would use the same argument they used against Napster - you may not be directly violating the law, but you're deliberately trying to help people break it. And we all know how successful Napster was at defending itself.
Actually, with all the talk about the relative advantages & disadvantages of Freenet & the other P2P services, how 'bout a combo?
The way I understand Freenet, you can request files based on some calculated key values (hopefully unique for a given file's contents) and it will be sent to you through the Freenet network in some fashion which makes it anonymous to all of the nodes inbetween.
The current main difficulty with Freenet was associating search requests with those key values.
So how about a combo solution? Use normal P2P techniques (and normal search engines for that matter) to return key values based on search criteria. Then use the key value to download the file from Freenet.
By decoupling the searching mechanism from the download mechanism, then you can have all kinds of ways of searching without compromising the robustness & security of the download network.
Here's another idea for distributing search/key value pairs w/o compromising the identity of the people making those associations - use USENET (or a similar mass-distribution channel) with the anonymous mail-to-news gateways to distribute batches of search condition/key value pairs at a time.
Hotline and Carracho are two systems that would probably be most similar to Freenet.
I'm wondering - how much surveillance takes place on these networks? I would expect more takes place on Hotline than Carracho as it's mac-only.
Several admins put "spider traps" on sites to foil scans of the directory structure. Not sure how effective that strategy is, as they're usually just recursive folder loops.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
As another post pointed out, the RIAA is not monitoring which files are flowing through the various networks. The RIAA is simply monitoring what is being offered by the users of the networks. A user that shares a thousand songs but downloads few will get caught by this new scanning technology, while a user that downloads many songs but shares none will not be punished.
It's ironic that the "good Samaritans" of the P2P world are the ones who get punished, while those who only leach will remain unmolested.
Sig goes here
I recently submitted an article about how I found a piece of spyware that is installed by a number of music sharing systems including AudioGalaxy and iMesh on my machine. Of course, Slashdot rejected it. Since it is ontopic for this discussion here it is:
The SpyWare Invasion
While writing a proxy server for a class I noticed that for each URL I clicked, a number of POST requests were being sent to d2.webhancer.com and d3.webhancer.com. Wondering what was up I decided to go to the Web Hancer website where I found out that WebHancer is a company that claims to have an installed base of millions of WebHancer agents that report web browsing statistics to their corporate headquarters.
WebHancer currently charges businesses $12,000 a month to access these usage statistics. I found the webHancer agent on my Windows machine (after a quick 'ps -W | grep gent')in "C:\Program Files\webHancer\Programs\whAgent.exe" and deleted it. What I am wondering is how the Web Hancer agent got on my machine since I don't recall being asked whether I wanted to install any spyware. Also exactly how many of their millions of anonymous usage statistics are being generated by unsuspecting users?
Which program did I install that decided to place this Trojan on my machine and is there a blacklist of such programs? AudioGalaxy
Finally, while searching for info on Web Hancer I found Ad-Aware which claims to locate and uninstall such spyware.
Yes, as others have pointed out this is a fairly alarmist article, but nevertheless, Freenet is the one system designed for true security. Let's make sure this thing gets stable before the RIAA starts hunting down Gnutella IPs.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
He's not monitoring anything by reloading the Napster web page every 10 seconds.
That's not how you do it Lars
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
They hid it in "Program Files"? Bastards.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
I've seen articles about advertisers spying on downloads in order to send "targeted ads", usually in the form of instant messages, to users about other products/songs/whatever they may be intrerested in. These protocols are totally open, so basically anyone can see waht you trade.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
With a couple thousand hits an hours security through obscurity DOES work for minor things like this unless RIAA has enlisted the help of the NSA for number crunching for who downloaded what.
The other thing I wonder is why don't sites like napster et al use basic encryption techniques to keep WHAT is seen secret? It's not like there is a derth of encryption enabled software out there, much the opposite, recent browsers all can deal with port 443 and https. Start using it. Sniffers can only tell that a connection was made, they cannot tell what the contents of that connection did or is doing.
Come on people, time to stop whining and start using what is available to us to keep big brother from tracking everything.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Those are the statutory limits on a Class A federal felony. Yes, it is possible for a judge to impose that sentence, but if he did it would almost certainly be overturned.
Federal felonies are sentenced according to some fairly strict guidelines. There's a tidy little table with the offense level vs. the criminal history. You get the offense level from another table (dollar amount of the theft) here. There's also a table for fines. It's almost like playing a role-playing game, isn't it?
For a $40,000 to $70,000 theft, you get a base offense level of 11, which is 8-14 months and a $2,000 to $20,000 fine. If you take the usual plea deal, you drop two offense levels (4-10 months, $1,000-$10,000 fine) and should get the low end of the range. That's 4 months with probably no fine. You'd also pay restitution to the victim for the full amount of the theft. So you could be paying Metallica full price for every MP3 someone downloaded from you. People better hope Napster doesn't keep usage records.
--
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
And if you get in trouble for having those Limp Bizkit tunes in your public directory, well, that's your own problem too. You are allowing the general public to pirate copyrighted tunes off your hard drive -- no matter if your own MP3 copies are perfectly legal.
Could someone please explain to me why the hell it's illeagal to make something available to someone else? Isn't the crime in actually taking it?
If I were to leave the door to my house unlocked, and someone came in and recorded all of the videos in my VHS collection, and left without harming a single thing in my house, have I committed a crime? What if I told this person that the door would be unlocked? What if I gave the person a list of the movies in my collection and gave them a key to my house?
If that's not enough to make someone think twice about this file sharing thing, what about the case where I own or have developed or whatever, the technology to rip a couple of mp3's from my CD collection - all of which were obtained legally... Then, I send these mp3's to my best friend, who has also purchased the same CDs, but doesn't have a working CD drive in his machine (ok, this is highly unlikely, but still possible)... Was a crime committed?
As for the "monitoring software"...
If I were to post a sign on my door saying that it was unlocked and anyone who wanted to come in and copy my VHS collection should do so, I'd be a complete moron if I thought that there wouldn't be people there just to see what I had.
Personally, I really don't care if someone wants to monitor my downloads et.al.- anyone who wants to badly enough is going to get their way. Next time you're browsing in the local bookstore, are you going to be looking around frantically for someone watching to see what you're looking at?
Everyone seems to be overreacting to this "on-line privacy" thing - if you want privacy, you're going to have to work for it... Use a library computer, a co-worker's, your neighbor's - whatever. If you want privacy, the oness is on YOU and YOU ALONE. Don't start whining about how you're the powerless victim - TAKE YOUR BOX OFF THE WEB if you can't come up with a better way...
If you don't understand how to use PGP, stop whining about Carnivore, or whatever other "radical" privacy invasion tools the government is comming up with. The only way you're going to be able to keep your stuff private is if you do just as much work as the people interested in your private stuff.
Cordless phones allowed for the possibility of someone monitoring your phone conversations - now we've got 9 GHz phones - impossible to monitor? Probably not in the long run, but you'll just have to buy a better phone when it becomes possible...
Alternativly , you could just stop talking... Likewise, just stop using P2P systems if you're hung up on the fact that someone somewhere may be able to find out what you're essentially broadcasting to the entire f***ing planet...
-bs
That that is is not that that is not. That that is not is not that that is.
"It might be stored on that node after you requested it, but it would be silly to blame someone for having some data on their computer that you put there. That would be akin to planting drugs on someone before arresting them."
And we all know that never happens...
"Truth is like a tragedy" -Coal Chamber
Freenet seems to be more or less immune to this sort of monitoring at the present time, due to the distributing the files throughout the network.
Good, so now the ten people who use Freenet can sleep easy.
--
--
#nohup cat
The copyright infringer in Napster use is person downloading music they do not have the right to download. So while the RIAA surveillance sounds threatening, they're really counting on no-one calling their bluff. Consider:
They must either show that I downloaded music (more difficult), and then show that I did not have the right to do this (more difficult again - especially if I own the CD, and for all their snooping, they don't know what music I own).
Merely showing that I have files available is not enough, but unlike Napster (the company), showing that I benefited from someone downloading a file from machine (and thus allowing me to be caught as a contributory infringer) will be quite difficult.
If I own the CD, do I have the right to download the music (space shift)? (I'm guessing the MP3 case suggests otherwise). If the case can be made that I do have the right, (perhaps via the betamax decision, which should still apply to individuals), can we launch a class-action against the RIAA for unjustified (or perjerous) complaints to our ISPs and intimidation tactics?
Napster users may be walking a fine line, but so is the RIAA - their threats are based on some very contentious and unresolved interpretations of the law, and I don't think the law gives them the green light to do these things.
The only 'evidence' excluded because it was obtained illicitly is 'evidence' obtained by the government or an agent thereof. This "exclusionary principle" does not apply when the obtainer is a private entity (person or company). Thus, even though a crime or misdemeanor may have been committed by such a private entity in obtaining information or property used as evidence, it is NOT excluded for this reason. (Indeed, if it were, then stolen property itself would be excluded as evidence of theft. D'oh!)
To think I actually trusted someone. BTW, AdAware is excellent.
Milo
I think it would be difficult to monitor downloads. Uploads, or rather, making files available on a P2P network, on the other hand, would be far more easy to moonitor, I'd think.
--
--hongpong.com
And there they are in the article, talking about how great Freenet would be as a Napster successor.
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGH!!
Why can't people leave this ALONE until the RIAA finishes destroying itself? It's still quite powerful enough to do away with Freenet, be certain of that. You're all going to snidely remind me of Freenet's intricate security features... Folks, that doesn't mean a damn if the physical machinery used to constitute it is put a stop to. The RIAA can and *will* destroy Freenet if it becomes the "new Napster".
Jeezus Christ!!
Salon.com pisses me off frequently, but Today Is Special. No amount of beautiful and inspiring speeches from Messrs. Boucher and Moglen can save us if something isn't done. The only thing I see at the moment that is do-able within the time frame we're talking about, is sitting back and pirating on GNUtella and letting the RIAA finish bringing about its own doom.
Instead, we have the whole jolly Napter crew giving a big hearty "nyuck nyuck" and charging off to Freenet. The RIAA's lawyer-guns merely require a slight adjustment in aim and declination, and the bombardment recommences. =/
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I can imagine what would happen if/when I get busted. I may pay a fine. Heck, I could see a few days in jail (doubt it for a non-violent crime, but this is the RIAA we're talking about here). More importantly, I would never, ever, ever buy another CD from that organization again. If it was the RIAA that was behind the persecution, then I'd boycott their member companies. What do they get? One less customer.
How long can record companies last that piss off and alienate their customers? It will be very interesting to see what happens when the contracts of well-known (and lesser well-known) artists come to an end.
That will leave them free to get with a good web host, a couple of programmers and voila - downloadable songs at a reasonable price. Who needs Best Buy/Tower Records/RIAA?
They can run, but they'll only die tired.
Yeah, right.
Imagine the amount of cash RIAA will have to sink into both manpower and hardware to do this snooping effectively. Janelle Brown (the Salon writer) is correct; the music industry's efforts would be much better spent on innovation rather than trying to defend an out-dated business model. Little more needs to be said.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
Get serious. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech, not freedom of speech subject to some definition of hatred, stupidity or indecency. Read the friggin' Constitution instead of telling us what you think about the ACLU. "The problem with freedom of speech is that it is disruptive. The problem with limiting free speech is that there is no limit. I'll take the disruption."
Cogito Tute (desiderata nostra eriximus, vestra nunc erigite)