Future Pocket P2P - Discreet Data Sharing?

zilym writes "Think about a class of portable devices that include storage space, wireless networking (ala 802.11b), and user loadable Software. For these devices, why not implement a protocol for adhoc, wireless data sharing (Pocket P2P)? This is what I'm imagining... Lots of people carry around Pocket P2P devices hidden in their car, backpack, purse, pocket, handglider, whatever. Normally these devices stay half dormant, listening to see if another Pocket P2P device is in range. When one or more Pocket P2P's get within range of each other, they automatically trade their data store with each other." This is a keen glance at the future with enormous consequences -- unless copyright law is drastically extended, a clever hardware hack a decade from now could be the Model A to Napster's Model T. Are we living in the ten-year bubble before the collapse of entertainment media copy prevention?

"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?

Comments

Already being done...

[SpookComix]

IMHO this vehicle for data sharing would be very discreet, anonymous, and unstoppable.

Hate to break it to you, folks, but this is already being done. It's called the Gaydar.

No, this is not a troll, and this is not a joke. Check the link.

--SC

There's already a kids game available that does it

[codemonster]

http://www.p-o-x.com
This kids game is played similiar to how the article describes pocket p2p. the game is a hand held that is played by a user to teach its warrior how to fight. As the trainer walks around town,(mall,school,neighborhood), the game can sense other consoles and battle them. The trainer later sees that his warrior has won or lost a number of battles, and in the process gained abililities or weapons.

Everything can be controlled

[Eloquence]

It's nice to fantasize about a world where all existing barriers to content distribution are broken. But as long as the law is practically controlled by large corporations, these fantasies will remain just that: fantasies. In the given example case, it would be simple to impose restrictions on the manufacturers of such devices not to include distribution mechanisms without built-in DRM. (Black market is not an issue here since these devices are only relevant when you reach a certain critical mass, as some manufacturers such as Cybiko have already learned.)

Furthermore, this kind of thinking is still rather primitive: "The content industry controls everything, but ha!, we, the great hackers & crackers, will break everything they come up with, and then we will distribute it for free! But if they ask nicely, we will still send the artists a check, or something." What is currently happening in the software industry -- the slow substitution of proprietary software with copylefted software developed collaboratively by volunteers and supported by sympathetic individuals and corporations -- must repeat in all other areas of information production. If that is the case, we can use all the existing infrastructure to distribute the content in question, be it Bluetooth or be it UMTS, without any limitations. Or has anyone ever sent you a nasty letter for downloading a Linux kernel?

So we need to develop revenue and marketing models that can compete with the existing oligarchy. And in order to take the laws into our own hands, we need to reform (or rather, reinvent) democracy itself. The tools that are needed to accomplish these goals are essentially similar and closely related:

• Rating mechanisms that allow people to find high-quality content, as well as reputation mechanisms, that make it possible to select ratings according to the people who have expressed them. This makes traditional mass marketing obsolete if widely deployed. Think Slashdot (or rather Kuro5hin) effect, but on a p2p network.
• Easy and secure user-to-user payment standards. Don't think "micropayments" (the basic micropayment idea is to have incredibly tiny payments running transparently in the background all the time), think mini-payments that are clearly associated with specific transactions. Support a website, request a feature for an open-source-product, support an especially good artist, support the production of a movie or book by a renowned creator Street Performer Protocol style etc. etc. -- but much easier and more wide-spread than possible with Paypal. Probably best implemented with prepaid digital coins.
• Distributed, secure voting systems. Currently even open source projects have not yet agreed on such a standard. Optimally, the voting process should be combined with the information gathering process, so that people who vote will also be able to discuss and rate comments on the same page.

These are all key technologies, all implemented in software, that are much more important than any file-sharing solution alone. For all of them, user interfaces are of utmost importance: One click too many, one second too much latency and people will not use them. Nevertheless, little progress has been made to wide deployment of these technologies. These technologies will not only make it possible to make money with any kind of content, they will also allow more direct participation of people in the lawmaking process -- if only on the level of newly formed political parties at first.

It's all nice and good to complain about the stranglehold that the content industry has on content distribution and on lawmakers. And I'm the first to support the kid who is locked up for copying an MP3 or DivX movie. But if there's not a serious counter-culture, the industry will win. There will be licenses required for cryptography. There will be DRM in every major operating system (even in Linux, in the form of binary only drivers), because otherwise hardware will simply not run. There will be laws like the SSSCA to enforce this. This will be done on an international level using organizations such as WIPO and WTO, which are fundamentally undemocratic. There will be protests and cracks, but think "war on drugs" here: You will find few people on this site who think locking drug consumers up en masse is a good idea -- yet that's exactly what's been happening for the last decades. Don't complain about your government but then naively assume that they are actually still kind of good misled guys who just need to be sent a few nice letters. Not with the money involved in this game, now and in the future.

Create counter-culture, not cracks. That's what the revolution is all about, baby.

Re:A very exciting idea...

[sethg]

Plus, the minute the MPAA/RIAA decides this is a problem, they write up a handy little app that shares an unending stream of random data.

For a long time, I've wondered: why didn't RIAA use this technique to deal with Napster, rather than suing it into oblivion? For the amount they spent on lawyers, they could have easily set up a few thousand computers on DSL lines running Napster, claiming to have every top-40 song that's been published in the past fifty years, and sending out MP3 files of white noise. If nine out of ten customers who try to download a song end up getting one of the noise recordings instead, what are those customers going to do -- sue? They'd just give up on Napster in a New York minute. Problem solved.

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!