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Protecting Clients: Legal Impact of Filesharing Network Design
Cryogenes writes "InfoAnarchy has posted an excellent piece on legal issues faced by participants in a P2P network. The article is written by Fred von Lohmann who was previously noted on /. for the white paper IAAL*: Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Copyright Law after Napster
(which you can find on the EFF site here)."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I really never expected this to be worthy of Slashdot's attention.
(note: I started the email dialogue with Fred von Lohmann back on August 3rd -- I wrote the indented text in the InfoAnarchy article. Fred replied on the 8th, and I posted it on InfoAnarchy on the 9th.)
I think there are a lot of interesting ideas out there -- we have some very powerful technologies to use, but each one satisfies a different need. Someday someone much smarter than myself will find enough connections between enough individual ideas to find a way to connect them all. I think the perfect filesharing network must use lots of cool technologies -- the combined technologies of several current projects.
Fred von Lohmann wrote an excellent paper that addressed the potential legal liabilities of *developers*. In open source applications and serverless peer-to-peer networks, the developer can be invisible or anonymous. If there are no servers, the only thing left to consider is the users -- the peer nodes.
My first question to him was basically rephrasing the kind of caching and forwarding that programs like Freenet and Blocks do.
The second question was based on an idea that an InfoAnarchy user started in an article's comments. I had always assumed that index servers will be a filesharing network's weak point -- the point where index data is being traded is the point where an attacker can best censor the network.
This idea would really suck to implement. Your clients wouldn't even get to see the filenames of their search results -- they would have to trust that the hash system worked properly and that all of their search results are valid. I don't know about you, but I'd hate that. I'd be uninstalling that program in a heartbeat.
But what if that was all there was? What if every other filesharing system with an index server was whitelisted, media company controlled, or was otherwise restricting access to certain information? If a user's alternatives are either a mangled no-filename service or a whitelisted service...or no service at all...perhaps they would choose to use this idea.
Or in other words...it's technology. It's a tool. It doesn't work in all scenarios, but there may be a situation where this idea works better than any others. It's not a good Napster replacement, not by a long shot, but we should file this idea away and use it later instead of dismissing it because it isn't a magic solution.
In my experience, information security is a tradeoff: security for convenience. To gain security you usually have to lose some measure of convenience. Really smart and well-designed security solutions can give you a lot of security for very little sacrificed convenience. Some other security solutions can give you a very small increase in security for a great loss in convenience. (For example, if a bad system administrator sets his NT servers to require frequent password changes with excessively complex passwords, in an environment where users are known to write their passwords down on post-it notes anyway, you're taking a lot of convenience away from users without giving them much extra security. They'll just use more post-it notes than before.)
I have a few more ideas that may present interesting legal situations if they ever get implemented. I'll keep InfoAnarchy.org updated if Fred von Lohmann and I have any more interesting discussions.
As a parting shot: Don't blame the hackers for all of this widespread copying of copyrighted media. We aren't the ones who sold millions of *general purpose* PCs to millions of consumers. They already have the tools -- we're just helping them use their tools to maximize the rights they already have.
--Michael Spencer
blocks@mspencer.net
How many systems have native disk encryption? Two? Perhaps, Three?
That type of sharing isnt what "they" are afraid of unless its the largest pirates on the planet doing it...
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Of course a business is a legal entity. That is why a business, such as Napster, has a failing point. It can be sued.
Freenet is not a business. It is not even an organization; only individuals who work on the project.
The only thing there that can be sued is any individual developer of Freenet. That can never stop the network, it will only slow down development.
Judging by his words, I would not immediatly discount the possibility of a large number of toes.
One of the reasons software piracy is so rampant is that in order to prosecute someone, you have to take them to court where a representative of the software company in question will testify that yes, it is indeed their software.
It is a major expense for software companies to fly in an 'expert' and for law enforcement agencies to prosecute someone so they avoid prosecuting the small fry users who pirate software. It is simply not worth their time even they it would be ridiculously easy to find some with pirated software.
No matter what the legislation on P2P, I think it will be comaprable to jaywalking. Although it is illegal, nobody ever gets busted unless they are dumb enough to jaywalk in front of a police car.
Interesting side note on file sharing:
When cassette tapes came out, the recording industry tried to block it fearing that once people could record songs for free off the radio, record sales would drop.
When video cassettes first came out, the movie industry tried to block that for the same reasons as above....
Maybe the whole thing is much ado about nothing.
go to so much trouble to hide illegal activity that you believe is right? Instead of thinking of new ways to circumvent copy protection and sharing, how about lobbying your congressman to get the laws changed? They are after all servants to the people they represent.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A correction to the above: http://www.ipgpp.com/ is the correct URL for Imad's PGP Page, where the CKT builds of PGP may be found.
Doesn't have to be whole disk encryption. Something like PGPDisk will do. Usually when that sort of thing matters to you, you spend the $20 to get it if it isn't native. Screw what they consider important right now...eventually they'll get around to me.
Do it only with a very few people you know and do it over an encrypted pipe, storing into an encrypted filesystem.
With the sig.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Does no one see the irony?
They want the pipes because they know that's how content will be delivered 5-10 years from now, and they sure do want to control that pipe.
go buy a CD, DVD, and a new piece of software once a month!
Let's see...hm, give money to RIAA and MPAA so that they can in turn use it to corrupt government officials with their bribery (aka lobbying) influence to infringe on our rights? I THINK NOT! If they want to act like a menace to society, I will treat them like a menace to society, I will do what is in my power to weaken and destroy them.
I can't help but to wonder if whoever modded your post as flamebait has it right.
It's not your right to steal someone else's product, regardless of what you think of the price. If you don't want to pay, don't buy it.
Do you think that by misusing a word such as "steal" it adds some kind of validity to your argument? I don't.
If your argument is that I'm legally obligated to compensate a corporation for their so-called "Intellectual Property", well, when laws are made by those that can hire the most expensive lobbyists and make the biggest bribes or "campaign contributions", well, then the law can just kiss my ass.
If your argument is that I'm morally obligated to do so, morals are entirely subjective, and that's something each person has to decide for themselves.
When I was a poor student, I'd copy something if I wanted or needed it. What would it have accomplished to refrain from copying material I couldn't afford anyhow? But since I've started working, I've tried to buy the copyrighted software I needed when I could afford it (which was most of the time), because I WANTED to support the people who made it. And I think that system worked out very well. But ever since I began to understand how thoroughly evil and corrupt the MPAA and RIAA are, I've actively avoided purchasing anything that would support them in any way. Not that I've downloaded MP3s or copied DVDs myself (not much interest in the entertainment industry), but I fully support those who do.
But by letting business buzzword it to death, it makes peer encrypted filesharing legit. Napsterists can just ride those coattails. Then again, it could go the way of push content.
I think the corporate pedophiles just like saying Pee-to-Pee out loud :)
-Billco, Fnarg.com
No, you cannot ignore the legal implications, because:
1. It will eventually made illegal to even run the P2P client;
2. ISPs (already have) will start cutting you off for even running Napster, AudioGalaxy, Freenet, etc, bowing to pressure from megacorps.
What good is an encrypted P2P client if you've got no internet connection?
no one is really into ... encrypting their band's music (since being noticed is what they *do* want)
If an independent band inserts .ogg files into Freenet and then publishes the KSK (or whatever Freenet retrieval keys are called) on its web site, bam! Instant legitimate use, and no more need for the Fraunhofer patent license required to get your work onto MP3.com. (LAME doesn't work for bands in countries that recognize Fraunhofer's patent on "coding an audio stream by doing a spectral transform on each block then allocating bits per frequency based on fixed sub-bands".)
Will I retire or break 10K?
That if he doesn't protect his information they will 0wN him and master his ass in jail?
There is nothing inherently evil or illegal about peer-to-peer networking. "P2P" is a bullshit buzzword, and it's sexiness only proves how little anyone (including those in the industry) cares about staying true to defined tech terms.
Well, I think the problem lies not in the fact that P2P is bad, but that the naysayers and lawmakers don't understand the fundamental concepts of P2P and the Internet.
:P
The Internet is inherently P2P. It allows any 2 people to give each other information directly. You can't outlaw a specific program that does that, but allow the actual act to continue.
That would be like making murder _legal_, but making it illegal to shoot people (because that is a common, high-media-profile way of murdering people).
The lawmakers and corporations opposed to P2P don't understand that the Internet is essentially P2P, and that to make P2P illegal is retarded if the Internet still exists at all.
Is your "business friendly e-commerce buy-it-direct-now connection" to Dealer37362 not a P2P connection?
I agree about the net being inherently p2p.
The difference between napster and apache is one of degree.
I can run an http client on the same machine as an http server. (and I do: wget) But the client/server paradigm is valid. There are many machines whose primary purpose is providing a resource. And there are many machines whose primary purpose is accessing a resource.
It seems p2p just means client and server services reside on a single machine.
Of course, you could also create a separate napster client and napster server.
If that's the case, the entire Internet is *dead*. If every node from here to outer Nowhere is liable for all information passing through it with regards to any and all laws and regulations in the place it exists in (and which may be legal at both endpoints btw), noone would dare operate a node.
It doesn't make any real-world sense either. If I tell you the locked steel crate I'm shipping contains pillows, and I got papers to prove it's reasonably so, UPS won't get sued for attempted drug smuggling no matter what.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Although you're ultimately correct, your example is a little deceptive. In fact, for all pratical purposes, an anonymous P2P network can be built.
In your examples (IP address, postal address), address were used to uniquely and permantely identify a person or other entity. This is fast and efficent for networks that are not required to function anonymouly. The router 'knows' which router it needs to send a packet to to get it closer to it's final destination, and a postal office knows which other piece of postal infrastructure to send a letter off to to get it closer to the person. However, this is not the only way to do addressing.
It is possible to do addressing on the basis of 'conversations'. Your computer sends a packet off to the P2P network with a unique(ish) idenitfying number. The other nodes of the P2P network broadcast your packet to each other, but each node remembers which node immediately before them sent them the packet. This builds sort of a 'temporary routing entry', which allows each router to appropriately route responses closer to where they have to be. However, each router only knows the identity of the router that came before it, so you would need to have control of all the routers in the route from the originating host to to your host to fully trace a packet.
Although it is still possible to find the identity of an originating host, it's entirely impractical in all but an extremely comprimised network, where the attacker controls a large number of nodes. Also, it's not only impratical to associate a packet with an originating internet host, it's also impratical to tell if two packets are originating from the same node, because the addressing scheme is conversation based instead of node based.
I have a strong feeling that this is exactly how Freenet operates, but I don't know, as I haven't done much research in to it. This is just how I would architect a P2P network.
-Bodnar42
Any legitimate use is a by-product of its illegitimate purpose, just like on Napster: if you're there to copy a dozen commercial songs, and you find one you think you might like which happens to be legally copyable, it only makes sense to grab it while you're there; that doesn't mean you'd sign on for that reason. With Freenet, it's more about porn and warez, but the same principle applies.
Freenet is inconvenient and, frankly, silly compared to the web. It's sole advantage is that it makes it hard to pin down copyright violators for legal action, because they pop up and disappear in a matter of hours.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
What Freenet needs is a legal "killer app" -- some feature available nowhere else that will entice millions of normal individuals to install the client on their computer. The "shared bandwidth" idea is a good start -- you just need to get enough useful content on there to make it worthwhile for people to install. But it's just important that the content be legal, so it doesn't end up getting all sorts of bad publicity. (Unfortunately, the media is quick to jump on the backs of anything that could potentially threaten them -- especially when you consider megacorporations like AOL Time Warner that own just about everything. For example, Warner Music hates Napster, so they could get CNN to run stories about how evil Napster is and how it hurts the poor defenceless little record labels. But I'm probably just paranoid.)
Actually i beleive that if they do find drugs in your car, the owner is ALWAYS responsible. The idea being that you should take care not to let people with drugs into your car in the first place...
Of course, given nifty things like Freenet, such decisions might be essentially unenforceable, which would finally force some sort of action to move the law into the 21st century. It's a hell of a gamble though: start a revolution and hope things work out ok. To some, it definitely might seem a better idea to make the law safe for modern technology, then put it to good use.
Really, some people here are so out of it...The reason that the companies are so irritated is that they have it in their heads that they are losing big money because of illegal replication of their products. You know what? They ARE!
I'll be the first one to say that CDs are overpriced, but companies only understand one thing and that is being profitable.
Corporations, as well as the legal system, are organized and used to things taking years to play out. The community at large is not. I don't think for a second that designing new ways to share files is going to "win" against a corporation that knows they are losing sales.
At best, more people share files illegally and get the media companies more upset. End result is they further increase prices for the majority of people worldwide who don't know how to download Metallica and burn it onto a CD for their Linux enabled car.
It's not your right to steal someone else's product, regardless of what you think of the price. If you don't want to pay, don't buy it.
People will be pretty upset in a few years when we lose more personal liberties because a small percentage of people insist they can pirate the latest Britney Spears type groups (which by the way the media companies you love to hate engineered from the ground up to be popular, yet you MUST have it!?)
Case
note: pgpdisk was at one time included with pgpfreeware. great idea. i really liked pgpdisk, and the level of integration was perfect (system tray icon, right click encrypt, done).
:)
however, they've moved pgpdisk out as a seperate product, for purchase. worst. episode. ever.
nai: please bring back pgpdisk to the freeware pgp! i promise not to tell your current pgpdisk customers!
If AOL or another big ISP decided to 'crack' down, I'd imagine that an event could be organized where massive amounts of users cancelled at the same time/same day.
Yeah, just assume that they'd pick the worst possible strategy for their own purposes, because it'd be the way to punish the greatest number of their paying customers. That makes sense.
More realistically they'd:
-announce loudly that P2P clients were banned
-loudly kick a few dozen of the most-connected nodes
-send scary warnings in the email of other P2P users
-continue making examples until the majority complied
This is the way ISPs enforce any new restriction on widespread abuse. It works.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
I think the concern here is overstated, there is no reason for the server to be anonymous. 1. You are talking about the individual customer, no customer then no revinue. 2. The problem with napster is bandwidth, a busy napster server sucks up bandwidth the costs the ISP money. If the account costs more than its revenue, the the ISP is likely to shut it down. If that is not the case, the ISP has a real financial reason to leave it open. 3. You are not in business (receiving compensation for the service you are providing). Since your are providing a free service to your neighbors (fellow citizens) which has substantial legitimate use, getting any form of a jury conviction is about zero. 4. The cost of prosecuting an individual (for a corporation) far exceeds any remedy the corporation could expect to collect. 5. Bad publicity could cost the prosecutor dearly (political as well). Look at how fast Adobe backed down against Dmitry once public opinion has been aroused. 6. First Amendment rights probably apply which will also have a deterrant. I do not think that the private citizen is at risk. Notice how much hot water the police agency in Tiawan got into when they raided a school dorm looking for napster use.
A business is a single legal entity.
That sounds fine, except that AOL is probably the only cable modem provider in your community, whereas "Bob's" can only provide 56k or a $800 T1 line.
No, ISPs, especially smaller ones, can't afford to bow to this pressure.
They already are! Look at Adelphia cable. (Do a search). If they are a monopoly in your community, and you don't like their terms of service, what do you do?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They don't have to finger anyone, they will just get a law passed making it illegal to run "un-certified" P2P networks, or get your ISP to chop you off at the knees just for running the client.
Mega-media companies (TimeWarner/AOL) are buying up broadband like crazy. This should scare you, because without broadband, it slows to a trickle.
yay
You're nothing; like me.
Do it only with a very few people you know and do it over an encrypted pipe, storing into an encrypted filesystem.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
The idea that struck me the hardest from Fred von Lohmann's reply is "substantial noninfringing uses". I already stated in another post how I believe that the ideal filesharing client will be a successful implementation of many ideas in one program.
Hopefully law will follow logic here. If this filesharing network enables something that should be illegal, but is composed of many different parts which are all individually legal, it should follow that the process of combining these legal activities should not be illegal. The *intent* and the *actual usage* can be used to gauge the legality of the whole system.
Note that Usenet isn't illegal. (I missed that too -- I think I wasted some of Fred von Lohmann's time by making him explain that.)
Perhaps the most successful implementation of 'the perfect filesharing client' will create a large number of individual services that have tons of non-infringing uses, establish their value and their common use, and then all at once build a filesharing program that connects them all.
I think that's what you just said. Movie trailers, convention broadcasts, etc.
--Michael Spencer
blocks@mspencer.net
(use my IP's ARIN contact to reach me IRL)
As with any tool, it can be used for both good and evil. The cloudier we make it, the harder it is to pin blame on any one person should they decide to look for something illegal in that big cloud. Of course 90% of it will most likely be illegit since no one is really into trading pictures of young cars over encrypted pipes or encrypting their band's music (since being noticed is what they *do* want), but that will be for "them" to decipher.
Bullshit. For real efficiancy Freenet should be coded and optimized in Assembly. Those who say that you need to pick the right algorithm is simply wrong. Just code in Assembly and you'll come out allright. If it's too slow, just optimize the code some more.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Performance-wise, this caching is actually one of Freenet's strengths. If a cached copy of the data you want exists on the near side of a slow link, you never have to traverse that slow link, and Freenet's caching makes this much more likely. Obviously cache hit ratios, miss penalties, etc. have a lot to do with exactly how well it works in practice, but the caching in general will help far more than it hurts.
Speed problems in Freenet are implementation artifacts, which I expect to be fixed. There is, however, a much more serious design-level problem with Freenet: its lack of reliability. Freenet drops data. While Ian Clarke always turns several pretty colors whenever someone characterizes the data loss as random, data loss that occurs in response to events or conditions that the requester cannot control or even know is just not practically any different. Even if the data exists somewhere in the system, you might not be able to find it. Search requests have a horizon, which Freenet developers in a classic instance of "Not Invented Here" syndroms call HTL (Hops To Live) instead of using the well-known term TTL (Time To Live). If you're 10 hops from where the data was inserted, and your requests use HTL=4, you'd better hope that not one but (at least) two nodes between you and the insertion point requested the data before you. One might argue that you could just use larger HTL values, but if everyone did that your overlay network would get totally clogged with everyone's search requests hitting every other node: ask the Gnutella guys how much fun that was. Freenet makes it even worse because the routing's not reliable enough to avoid loops. The basic problem is that Freenet doesn't have any solution better than HTL to prevent this sort of query-overload meltdown, and adopting HTL as your "solution" guarantees that search results will never be more than guesses.
There are other less technical problems with the Freenet project, but it's not necessary even to go into those. On the basis of technical problems alone, I think that Freenet can never be more than a mediocre niche solution. It will certainly never be the world-changing tsunami that its self-appointed PR flacks (hello IC, OS, BW) would have us believe it is.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
One point he failed to make concerning the Freenet issue was with nodes B and C passing traffic, and the DMCA. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aside from it being difficult for the node operators to know about what traffic they're passing along and to remove infrigning material, would it not be illegal, since the traffic is encrypted, for the node operator to find out what that traffic is, and hence filter it?
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
"The internet should be illegal. It's one big "p2p" network, after all.
FTP, HTTP, Telnet, Usenet, Gopher, POP, SMTP...and of course, IRC! "
Although I agree with the point you are trying to make, it is important to note that the internet (at least the examples you mentioned) are definetly NOT P2P. They rely on a server/client architecture (servers being apache, wu-ftp, ircd, sendmail, etc, clients being mozilla, ftp, x-chat, evolution etc)
FTP, HTTP, Telnet, Usenet, Gopher, POP, SMTP...and of course, IRC!
Ban it all! One computer connects to another computer and gets stuff from it. That's how it all works and always has, dimwits!
While the article says that Freenet is safe under current US lays, it doesn't address a large potential problem: Congress could pass a law making "anonymous, encrypted, peer-to-peer networks" illegal on the grounds that the only reason you would choose to use that kind of P2P network would be to trade illegal material (especially since Freenet tends to be slower than a P2P network that doesn't involve encryption).
I think we should be thinking about ways to shift public opinion in favor of Freenet, so that such a law doesn't get passed, instead of trying to work around current laws. One thing that might help would be if official videos (movie trailers, convention broadcasts) were officially distributed through Freenet, saving the content providers money on bandwidth. That doesn't help to argue that anonymity and encryption are important, however. Can Freenet be defended, or is it truly only useful for trading kiddie porn and bootleg music?
The shareholder is always right.
As a freenet node operator, I feel no threat from IPDroids that I would ever be a direct infringer. I would be no more responsible for IP Infringement, than say a panty hose manufacture would be liable for using stockings in a robbery.
I have a strong feeling that this is exactly how Freenet operates
Yes, it does. It's one of the nicest bits about it IMO. If the RIAA tried to setup a honeypot of songs and record the IPs of the people downloading them it would fail. Each Freenet node sending data to another node cannot tell whether it is the one that originated the request, or just another node passing data along the chain.
A good example of a decentralized p2p network is FastTrack; you'll find FastTrack in some of the newer p2p software like Morpheus and Kazza. FastTrack extends what the Gnutella developers have been trying to do.
1. It incorporates SuperNodes automatically. A SuperNode is a computer with the capacity to host serial other clients. Which solves the weakest-link problem with the Gnutella network; an example would be a user with a 56k connection having to relay all PING/PONG/QUERY messages for its section of the network. It also solves the problem of slow searches.
2. It uses a hashing scheme to identify files, this allows for the software to positively identify identical files for simultaneous downloads.
3. It's not file specific. Users could share anything. Or course he network is rampant with copyrighted software, pornographic material and mp3's. But at least it's not designed to do that - it's just used for that.
The central problem with FastTrack isn't the technology but in how's it's marketed. FastTrack license its technology to be marked by third party developers, these third partly developers market as the next napster. To manage there user base they have established a login system which breaks the decentralized nature of the network.
Thankfully the gnutella scene has been working on incorporating these features into the gnutella network. Namely the flagship gnutella companies, BearShare and Limewire.
Freenet IMO is broken except for the most fanatic of freedom fighters. The central problem with Freenet is its speed, which I believe is inherently broken. When a user begins a transfer of a file over the Freenet network it is copied to every node (space abiding) along the path. This is to enforce redundancy, and is central to the anonymous nature of the Freenet network as it allows users to be unaware of what they are storing; it also has a weakest link problem in that a hop from the source might be very slow. In theory if a file is popular enough it will always be close, however we have yet to see that happen.
The other problem with Freenet is that it is un-searchable; users are required to KNOW what they are looking for. I don't deem this is a death blow as other services could get around this, an indexing service for example
Some links that you might find helpful:
FastTrack
BearShare
Limewire
Gnutella Developer Forum @ Yahoo
MusicCity's Morpheus
Freenet
-Jon
this is my sig.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A serious question: How many broadband ISPs would both a) kick you off, and b) refuse to ever allow you to sign up with them again? Considering that that means they'd refuse to ever take money from you again? Anyone know of cases where this has happened? Which ISPs?
Also, couldn't one go through a reseller or
sign up under a different name if one has been
banned?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Well, this sounds like it's time for Freenet to reach a usable state. :)
That is the only real way we can be safe from bad laws made by people who protect business interests and don't understand technology.
An encrypted, anonymous network can completely ignore legal implications, because there is nobody directly responsible for it, or even for any single transfer.
No one is advocating stealing CD's or music. Copying is not theft. If you don't want to pay, you can copy it and you still are not stealing. It may be wrong, it may be piracy, but it is not theft.
Ultimately this big ole network has to have some way to figure out how to get those little packets of information into your computer, rather than MIT's mainframe or Aunt Mildred's or mine. That's what the IP is for. It's like trying to "anonymously" send a letter by putting it in the mailbox in front of your house. You may misrepresent the return address (IP spoof) but unless you go to a public mailbox (internet cafe) the Post Office (net) can trace the letter back to you if it wants to badly enough.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The freenet architecture competes with traditional dns internet servers. When mature, Freenet could replace all the .com's .org's .*'s, or at the very least, make them a commodity, like everything else:-)..ie..ICANN would not like everyone to turn in their domain name for a freenet key, LOL..
The legal opinion and other comments are touching on the problem of sharing copyright protected material or information which is not accompanied by the owner's release.
P2P technology itself has almost nothing to do with this, because the problem also applies to those who plagarize or share content using cassette tapes. Nobody has ever seriously suggested banning tapes or hard drives or CD-[W]R's, or photocopiers, which are all equally powerful technologies of infringement: The reason napter got into trouble was due to it's blatant promotion of infringment itself and the cheerful knowledge of it, not because of it's software or it's servers.
You will outgrow your usefulness - actual Slashdot footer quote
These programs are run BY THE GOVERNMENT, yes? So obviously even they see a need for anonymity.
This is a short paper on the current enforcment of "intellectual" property rights.
:-)) convinced a *court* that the only real use of DeCSS is to crack DVDs and make illegal copies.
:-)
I am a strong supporter of property rights, including so called "intellectual" property rights. However, as everyone knows, things like patents on algorithms and obvious ideas, the DMCA (e.g. DeCSS) etc, have forced many people to take a second look at how we are handling property rights as far as "intellectual" property goes.
Now I think the way we approach the protection of "intellectual" property is much like how we approach computer security. How much convenience, and more importantly, how much legitimate information are we going to sacrifice to protect a copyright?
Now it should be obvious to anyone who takes a look at the Internet, or any other large network, that we are going to have to sacrifice *alot* of both. As exchanging information and bits becomes an *even* bigger part of everyone's daily lives, everyone will be a suspect.
Now it is easy to look at something like say, Napster, and see that it's only real purpose is to steal music. Hold on though! That is right, even with a P2P network like Napster, that appears to exist for nothing other then to pirate music, there is infact many legitimate uses.
As many of us know there were many musicians who had no problem with their music being on Napster, *infact* many musicians put their music on Napster just so others would be able to listen to it, much like the radio today, many of these where start up muscians.
However, it was determined that the majority of music being shared on Napster was being shared against musicians wishes, so most of Napster was shut down.
Now many P2P networks share more or less legitimate information, with pirated materials being a very small minority of the information being shared. However most organizations are no doubt going to argue that these P2P networks are a "threat" to them because pirated materials *could* be exchanged.
Am I trying to say that "intellectual" property rights, to use marketing jargon, can not "scale"? Maybe.
Take a look at DeCSS. Now DeCSS is much like that P2P network that exchanges legitimate information I mentioned above. DeCSS has *many* more legitimate and useful pruposes than it has illegal purposes.
Infact as most of you probably remember DeCSS was created by a your person in another country so he could play DVDs on his platform of choice, he didn't even consider the DMCA because it was not law in his home country. And if you do a little research you will find many, atleast three, projects using DeCSS to build DVD playing software that is starting to have a remarkable resemblance to "licensed" DVD playing software on other "licensed" platforms.
However the MPAA has somehow (not going to say anything about corporate "influence" a.k.a donations, that is a whole other paper
Looking at P2P networks and their incredible ability to share large amounts of information, regardless of the legality of that information, we can see the same (legal) problems effecting them in the future.
So should we shut down all of our networks that *could* be used to exhange copyrighted materials? Should we allow our networks to be monitered?
I imagine that what I am trying to get at here is, whether they like it or not, copyright holders are going to have to change with the technology, because networks, the Internet, and the whole world are not going to change for *them*.
If they can't enforce their copyrights effeciantly they will have to find a new business model that works with the current trends in computing. The Internet is obviously were the computer industry is going, and boxed software sporting restrictive, unrealistic licensing, does not lend itself to that.
The computer industry is going to have to start changing with the times, because computer science is *not* going to "slow down", or change for them.
This article is nothing to special, after all, I wrote it after reading a news story on slashdot so I could post it as a comment.
When you read the whole conversation, von Lohman essentially says, "I don't know if it's legal or not," which is how almost any lawyer answers almost any really interesting question. At some point he even says, "You should consult an attorney...before proceeding." Well then what's that guy gonna say? Instead of figuring out more ways to weasel around copyright law, how about if we figure out how to change it, so we can quit having these discussions? See an earlier /. story (The essay link is now broken, but the comments are worth reading.)
It's worth pointing out that most of the dialogue is only "fascinating" if you accept the clumsy application of copyright to electronic works. Surely it isn't necessary here to reiterate why copyright is so grossly inapplicable to electronic works.
Or is it still necessary? While people have been offering well-constructed arguments against copyright for years, "progress" marches on, in the shape of lawyers and their loopy discussions about the "unexplored terrain" of "encrypted token servers". Look, if copyright law makes it illegal to copy work X, then everybody who participates, even unknowingly, is liable -- somehow or another. There is no question of finagling some workaround through encryption or any other scheme...sooner or later the copyright owner is going to come knocking. The real, unresolved questions, are still about whether copyright can be reformed or replaced with something that fits the technology space we live in.
First it sends a cookie, then it wants you to register. Those guys aren't anarchists, they're control freaks.
I've thought about this. You want to be anonymous, but at the same time you want to make sure the person that just joined up isn't a narc waiting to bust your mp3 sharing ring. Can't have both. Would you trust that blank certificate? You basically have to resort to the ignorance of not knowing what it is you are carrying and letting the folks who encrypted it and put portions of it on your server worry about who they talk to.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I know the purpose of something like FreeNet is that the content is encrypted, such that you don't know what you're storing, sending, and receiving. But anyone else on FreeNet also knows that you are running a FreeNet host, and your IP address, correct?
What I'm getting at is that FreeNet sounds great... but what if in the future, it is made illegal/difficult to even run a node? (and that IS coming) What then? Is there any way to hide the fact that you're running a node, and still be able to access the network?
The reason I bring this up is that many people are getting broadband. Frequently, there is only 1 DSL and 1 cable provider per community. You can't afford to get kicked off for a terms of service violation. (Whereas with dialup, you could just get another account...)
So how can you participate in peer to peer networks without endangering your (possibly only) source of broadband connectivity?
It is clear that P2P is being used to refer to something more precise than the traditional meaning of peer-to-peer networking, something with new relevance, which deserves its own name. So what are we going to call it?
The distinguishing technical feature is nodes storing the bulk of the data (connected as peers on the underlying network), which are run voluntarily by the end-users of the system, so they appear and disappear relatively quickly. The distinguishing use pattern is almost exclusively copyright violation.
"transient node architecture"?
"peer today, gone tomorrow"?
"thing sorta like Napster"?
"copyright violation hack"?
"litigation whack-a-mole"?
"free as in peer"?
In all seriousness, we can't go on calling it peer-to-peer and bitching that peer-to-peer is too general. Can anyone think of something technically accurate that doesn't come off as propaganda from either side?
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Answer: The gov't doesn't want you to be secure.
And companies seem perfectly capable of enforcing this world, using a variety of strategies: putting "no server" clauses in your access provider's TOS, forcing the world to adopt proprietary and patented content formats for audio and video, and legally going after anybody who writes software that does not fit into their master plan.
What good are encrypted disks if the kernel swaps out decrypted data to a plaintext swap partition? BSD supports encrypted swap. Does Linux? No.
This is hilarious! But you're absolutely right! I mean what were they thinking? When the internet burst onto the scene, didn't they stop to ask someone that knew, what exactly it was? (Maybe they should have asked Al Gore...after all didn't he invent it?)
"Let's put our stuff up on this cool new internet thing...Holy Shit!...people are stealing it and were not getting paid...make it stop!!!"
You're using her as bait, Master!
Like the "anonymous" 1-800 number they use on America's Most Wanted?
I sometimes get the feeling the only reason the cops allow "anonymous" tips is so that, after listening to an illegal phone tap, one cop can go outside, pick up a pay phone, call his partner and "anonymously" report a crime...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
If you don't like broccoli then don't eat it. If you don't like Linux then don't use it.