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Future Pocket P2P - Discreet Data Sharing?
"IMHO this vehicle for data sharing would be very discreet, anonymous, and unstoppable. Your ISP would not be involved, so they can't block your traffic. In a sufficiently crowded area of people, it would be difficult to pick out someone transmitting data and nearly impossible to locate person(s) storing a copy of said data. Pocket P2P transfers would be local and spontaneous in nature, so an organization trying to stamp it out would essentially need enforcement spying everywhere, equipped with RF detection and triangulation tools.
The devices for doing this already exist, albeit in slightly suboptimal forms (laptops, palmtops, and PDAs). However, it should not be impossible for enterprising engineers to eventually build more specialized devices toward this goal."
Technological predictions are fun and easy. Ethernet NICs cost $100 ten years ago and $10 now; 802.11b cards cost about $100 now and might cost $10 in 2012. So by then, will some entrepreneur be able to build an MP3 storage/playback device with wireless capability for $50 or $60? Think "Sony Walkman that trades music with whatever other devices are around."
The hard part is legal predictions. Right now the entertainment industry is trying hard to reduce the power of fair-use exceptions to copyright law, and thereby expand their own power. And they've made their key weapons things like the DMCA and the doctrine of "contributory copyright infringement" -- going after not music's fans, but the corporations that enable music sharing. The corporations that provide your access become the bottleneck that the copyright holders can control.
But suppose someone released a Walkman-sized, cheap MP3 player that had a wireless network card used to download (legitimately acquired) MP3s from your computer? It's not Napsteresque; it's like Apple's doohickey, except it connects wirelessly. That's all.
And then suppose it turned out that a simple command given from that computer could trivially put your player into a promiscuous, music-sharing mode?
The device need not connect to the internet (perhaps it can't) -- it talks to whatever other devices are around. "I like Jimmy Buffett, anyone got any Jimmy Buffett? I'll trade it for some Wayne Newton." A short-range hardware Gnutella. Set some parameters, go for a walk in a public park, come home with some new music. Pass it along.
(Your problem becomes spam -- come home from the park with ad jingles disguised as Jimmy Buffett... better to trade at parties with people who are friends of friends...)
This would surely stretch "fair use" to the breaking point -- but the question becomes, what part of the chain would the copyright holders be able to attack?
See our 7DS for an implementation of a closely related concept.
All they need is possible cause and they can corral and search everyone in the area.
Go into a building or on a public transit system. Detect someone sharing stuff. Force everyone to lineup for a search.
Not a big deal. Or they'll just make it illegal to carry a *concealed* electronic transmitting device. If you get caught with one, they arrest you for carrying a p2p box. If they catch you with one concealed, you're fucked anyway. They can make laws to get around anything they want. Hell, look at the "unlawful right of assembly" imposed on any group of more than two people wearing masks or mask-like devices on their faces in public.
It's criminal that so many people have posted to this story without mention Bruce Sterling's highly relevent (and extremely enjoyable) story, "Deep Eddy".
The standard reference, incidentally, is
Phil Karn, "MACA - A New Channel Access Method for Packet Radio". Proceedings of the 9th ARRL Computer Networking Conference, London, Ontario, Canada, 1990.
There are four multihop routing protocols currently under consideration at the IETF MANET WG.
First is that routing in an ad-hoc network of that scale can be very difficult. People are working on it (see books by Charles Perkins or C-K Toh) but it's sorta not there yet.
The second problem, which exacerbates the first, is that battery power will likely continue to be an issue. The reason this matters is that it can make routing even more of a challenge, especially when nodes keep dropping out to conserve battery power. There are also issues with trying to run expensive algorithms - e.g. crypto - on slow power-constrained devices.
If you allow at least some of the devices in your system to be stationary (and therefore mains-powered) things become a lot more interesting. They key is not so much the wired/wireless nature of the network, but rather the number of nodes - more nodes generally means more opportunities to obscure who's sending and who's receiving what - and how the high-level protocols they're using above TCP/IP.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
such technology could be easily used as spyware.. Why risk meeting or handing off a cd rom? the 2 couriers could easily "swap" their state secrets wihout getting any closer than 100 feet. Granted I'm sure the CIa is looking for such swapping already but being able to do it without having a laptop open...
the evil uses scare me more than the joy of seeing entertainment crime families destroyed...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Then it hit me: if they revealed that Napster is so easy to defeat without resorting to the law, they can't tell Congress and the media about how The Entertainment Industry Will Be Doomed unless stiffer copyright legislation is passed. Bwah-hah-hah!
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Not that anyone will see this, but the old Cybiko would almost be perfect for this. The wireless link isn't all that fast and only has a range of 150 ft or so, but can already hold 64megs of card ram and has a C devkit. The new cybiko might be even better, I've heard it has a 500 ft range.
The real kicker is that the old cybiko is only 30-60 dollars, depending on where you get it.(which is really nifty, cause if you buy two, you can leave one hooked up to your computer, giving you a short range network that let's you use a WAP browser)
Not sure where I read this, but the US military is looking at using this type of technology for its next generation soldier equipment to provide networking between grunts, as well as planes, tanks, etc. (I can just see the jokes about Beowulf clusters.)
Would be real useful for distributing tactical information, commands, and battlefield conditions.
recently announced on Slashdot. It's a conference on P2P and crypto code, taking place Feb 15-17 at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco. Unlike the more commercial/marketing flavor of conference, presenters need to have actual working code.* There's now a Schedule as well as a Program.
In addition to the code presentations, there are also several panels on legality, security, and business models by a number of usual suspects.
So be there or be square!
* ok, or at least well-rigged demos :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As long as you don't promote it, I don't see why not. But say that you publish it freely, broadcast it...well then better make sure no copyright stuff on it.
It all seems to boil down to the same, I guess the only thing that changes in the story is with this device there are digital police walking around sniffing in public places. Any predictions on how long until that comes to pass? Before or after UAVs* become derigeur?
Unmanned Aerial VehicleI'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Here's why. It might work if you are sitting in a coffeeshop with one or two other people and you can sit there for a few minutes while your devices trade off, but what about walking past someone in the street, where there was only time to grab part of a file? What about if you were in a room with hundreds of similar devices, how would you keep the bitrate up and use channels efficiently? With present tech, that partial file could never be recieved fully, as the "same" file with a different length or checksum couldn't be integrated within the filesystem. Channel congestion and crosstalk would reduce concentrations of devices of nine or above to substandard bitrates. Eavesdropping concerns are rampant. Lastly, you could never make it cheap enough for the system to be adopted.
Distributed services of this type require entirely new network service layers, not the least of which are:
Seamless encryption. I do not want people to lock in on file transfers between me and a trusted client. Period. In addition, one might implement a 'friend' list that would only lock in on people that were known clients, or friends of a known client.
Robust file transfer services that support successive and iterative media interleaving. As in, devices that query, "Hey, I have half of G. Love's Kick Drum, anyone got the other half? What about a different bitrate, or a slightly different checksum? I don't care, just give it to me and I'll integrate it with the half that I have on the fly."
Semi-intelligent cooperation methods between groups of devices to relay content to distant users, and power and channel scheduling to prevent congestion in high-density concentrations of these devices. As in, "Anyone know anyone that knows anyone that has any 216? Think you can get it for me?"
What about providing live recordings in realtime to people at a concert as part of their ticket price? You'd need broadcast data methods that have almost no upstream information, not even error correction, coming back to the reciever, as it would be wasteful of available channels. Instead, you'd need to be able to broadcast redundant media streams that could reconstruct themselves at the reciever, with minimal loss. You'd need an entirely new data transport service to realize this.
But that's just me thinking. Nope, I'm not thinking about starting a company that does this with off-the-shelf hardware. No, I haven't put together simulations that indicate that concentrations of these devices in 'recieve from broadcast node' mode can work at 943KBps, in groups of 1500 on a group of three channels 24MHz wide. No, I don't think I can get it in a form factor the size of a cell phone, with cost projections indicating that this device could cost under $70 in two years with the prices of 2.4GHz radio transcievers and storage media dropping as they are.
Nope, nothing at all. I have nothing. Nothing that could possibly worry the RIAA.
But I do need funding.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Nah, don't believe that folks like the RIAA can go around restricting digital media forever...If nothing else, people will eventually recognize how simply uncool it is.
Being a musician first and a geek second, this issue has been on my mind a lot. I believe that we should get paid for our work, but the fact is that running around fascistly protecting my IP is not what the essential spirit of Rock and Roll is about, in fact its contrary!!!
I think that as the 21st century gets rolling, we're going to see a more holistic and inclusive approach to making money in the music biz. The archetype of "the band as demigods" and all else as mortals will fade, in exchange for the valuation of a band as a mindset, and a holistic experience. At the consumer level, this will manifest as a diverification of options as to how you can buy into a given bands experience. Bound no more by the extremely limited idea that a band can only make money through CD's and t-shirts, in the coming years you will likely see a rich new set of entertainment experiences involving digital media, visual art, and even smells and foods offered as a part of a bands experience, rather than the bland current offering of a "show", which usually consists of sitting in plastic seats and drooling!
These offering will be diverse, and a given band will offer several levels of entertainment experience ranging from a normal show up to a complete experience, including food, dancers, and brushing elbows with the performers (for more money). While the nature of these experiences will vary greatly by the band, (belly dancers for Dead can Dance, corporate sponsors, free Pepsi and open dance floors for Britney spears) they will have their roots in a common concept that everybody already knows: an artist isn't somebody you pay money to hear sing, a good artist is someone you identify with, a good artist is a personification of a way of being, a way of thinking, s/he gives gives voice to your tribe, singing the unownable truth that defines a part of who you are, and who everybody who listens is...
As evidenced by the proliferation of P2P technologies, this idea of "music as community" is already embraced by younger generations, who so lightheartedly "steal" from their music idols..."Of course we can take it...its our tribe...its our music, about our truths." Is the general sentiment, and is in fact THE threat to standard labels, not the p2p technology itself, and will continue to be a threat untill record companies recognize the changing role of music in our society and embrace the ideas of the youth, the financial praxis of which will be the commodification of entertainers as facilitators of global idealogical communities, rather than proprietors of intellectual content.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.