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RIAA Moves Against College-Network Fileswapping
pazu13 writes "The RIAA is taking action against college "Napster networks". It's suing four network operators, two at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, one at Princeton University, and one at Michigan Technological University. Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc... my speed across the network is ridiculously faster than when I try to access outside sources."
The recording industry has stepped up its campaign against campus music swapping, filing suit against four university students who operated file-search services on their school's internal networks.
The lawsuits, filed against two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and one each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological University, ratchet up the pressure that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently has been putting on universities to block campus file-trading. The trade group still has not filed suit against average file-swappers who use more common services such as Kazaa, however.
"The people who run these (campus) networks know full well what they are doing--operating a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music thievery," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. "The lawsuits we've filed represent an appropriate step given the seriousness of the offense."
University students have been widely viewed as the core of the various file-swapping networks ever since the appearance of Napster on the digital scene in late 1999. Universities have seen half or more of their network bandwidth used by people uploading and downloading songs, software and movies over the past few years.
Schools have attempted to crack down on the practice of file swapping in various ways, ranging from blocking network traffic associated with Napster or Kazaa to confiscating computers used to trade files. In a recent congressional hearing, some lawmakers called for criminal prosecutions for campus file-swappers.
In its lawsuits, the RIAA compares the use of the campus search software--variously called "Phynd," "Flatlan" or "Direct Connect"--to the defunct Napster service, dubbing the services "local area Napster networks." The particular technology in these lawsuits in fact represents something different than the file-swapping techniques used by Napster or Kazaa, however.
"Phynd" and the other pieces of software set up servers--often on ordinary dorm room PCs--that search all the computers connected to a campus network that have Windows file-sharing turned on. Unlike Napster or Kazaa, which helped create a network of computers that would not have existed otherwise, "Phynd" and the others search a network that already exists.
"Dan," a university student who runs a similar server but has not been sued, said the RIAA is missing critical differences in the file-sharing technologies. He asked that his full name and university not be used.
"With or without these services, people would be able to share these files," the student said. "It's Microsoft that's allowing people to share these files; we're just accessing public information."
That difference in technology may or may not have any effect in court, attorneys said.
"It does seem like all it's doing is indexing resources that are available on a network that people are already a part of," said Fred Von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group that has defended file-swapping companies in court against the RIAA. "It doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with building a tool to do that. And it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with running that tool."
Where the students could run into shadier legal territory is when those indexes and search results come back loaded with MP3 files, Lohmann said. According to the RIAA lawsuits, several of the students also maintained archives of hundreds of songs on their own machines.
All four civil suits were filed in federal court near the universities.
I used to run a Phynd server for a little over a year while in the Berkeley dorms... it was actually pretty cool, but it's not like Napster.
Basically, the Phynd concept is actually very basic: scan all SAMBA shares (i.e. windows shares), store the results, put in a file/DB and then make a searchable webfront or application. FlatLAN is actually a separate, user-friendlyish application to the webfront. Scanning only takes place every couple of hours, so it might miss a couple computers. Also, if people turn their computer off, the shares are still listed in the database, but aren't accessible. It isn't updated in real-time like Napster/KaZaA/
The reason this is popular, in case you don't know, is that you're just searching all available shares and downloading them at the speed of the internal network... mmm... 100Mbit switched network... it was quite useful, especially if you're looking for bigger files.
While I think that the RIAA does have a point, I mean, honestly, why would you put a compressed (.zip/.rar/.arc) category or a mp3 category to narrow searches down?
However, they do miss a really great aspect of Phynd: it can be used as a security scanner. Since a lot of new computers do come with their computers sharing the entire harddrive (in the same way some trojans do), it's easy to figure out who needs to secure their computer.
Another legit use is actually sharing ISOs... no, I'm not talking about your latest w4r3z fix, but the latest Linux ISOs. I was able to pull Slackware 7.1 (I think it was 7.1) off the network at a cool 2-4MB/s which is much faster than trying to grab it from a mirror at 50-100K/s.
Damn you RIAA...
No, you are simply wrong.
What these students were doing was simply providing an index of the locations on the SMB network of shared files. Not only music and movies, but research papers, free software, etc.
They did not pirate music by provinding these listings, they simply said "Hey - this kid over here has what looks like music on HIS computer whith the filename you are looking for"
The individual people sharring songs are at fault, not the technology provider that allows you to find songs.
An RPI Student and Phynd User
Phynd does block external access from IP addresses outside of the RPI LAN.
~An anonymous Phynd User/RPI Student
i go to RPI, and i know both the students here that were sued. one of them wrote a win32 front end to the web based search engine operated by the other student.
the web based search engine, phynd (http://www.phynd.net/) was written originally about 5 years ago by a student at RPI to scan SMB networks. the original author has since graduated, and the 3rd generation of phynd admins was the one sued. the win32 front end "flatlan" (http://www.flatlan.com/, currently slashdotted, i guess) was written by a current student at RPI.
A little OT, but I once heard a DJ say Rush would be a cult band if it weren't for the 20 million fans. They rarely get airplay and yet have been putting out albums since the 70's. No, airplay or MTV is not necessarily a way that I'm going to find music I like thought I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that will.
On another note, have you checked out iuma.com? That's a site where musicians (all types) can post their samples for preview. It's a great way to find stuff you'll never, ever hear on the radio. There is usually some info on how you can obtain a CD
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Right...So you're saying I should pay money to evaluate whether I want to buy something?
Because in practice you can't sell CDs for the same price you buy them, new or used.
In Japan, I used to rent CDs as a palatable method of evaluating music before I bought it. However, here in the good 'ol US of A, the RIAA in their infinite wisdom got legislation passed which prevents this. Thanks to them, I'm basically forced to buy it or "steal" it.
I would just like to speak out, as a student at RPI, that Celery and Phynd, the samba search engines in quesiton have been an invaluable tool. Yes, they are frequently used for mp3's, divx, warez, and even pornograhpy, but at the same time they are invaluable when it comes to locating a paper that your class group is sharing when you've forgotten where its shared. There are lots of times these engines have saved my butt.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
The biggest trouble with p2p networks that I see these days is that they don't seem to take into consideration Internet geography. Wouldn't it make sense to trace route potential sources for files and prefer ones that are fewer hops away? This way you would automatically download from people on your campus, or for home users, other people on your ISP. Seems like this would really cut down on the backbone traffic and speed up many of the downloads. I mean sure the traces would take time, but the saving in bandwith and the faster downloads would probably more than make up for it. Of course the few LANs that block outside ICMP packets would suffer but they would still prefer users on their own LANs.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
College-age kids, and younger are the RIAA's target market, and are the ones who can put them in their place by boycotting the recording industry. Once they go broke, the RIAA and record company execs won't have the resources to bring DMCA lawsuits or any others. Once the current greed for greed's own sake driven record racket dies, a new recording industry run by people who love music can rise from the ashes of the old. That is the way it was back in the day.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I'm a student at RPI, and I thought I'd let the Slashdot community know about the real nature of these "Napster Networks."
Create a system that only lets local IP's access the servers.
The "Flatlan" and "Phynd" search engines are limited to people with RPI IP addresses. I know this because I live off campus and can't access the systems without Cisco's VPN client, and even then I need my student ID and password, and STILL can't access the songs. I know there's ways around this, but I haven't bothered figuring them out because it's just not that important to me.
Secondly, Phynd and Flatlan are NOT napster-type programs, they simply search the windows filesharing network (RPI has a lot of people who share lots of their files, a few people are even dumb enough to full-access share their c: drive). The RPI network is fast and robust enough to stream DivX movies from one computer during peak hours and have it still be watchable.
Phynd is a (from the client's point of view) web page that lets you search for any files you want: back homework, videos, music, etc. Then it has clickable links so you can just save the file.
Flatlan is a program that searches Phynd and provides a nice interface to download the songs.
I don't know why the RIAA is avoiding two other search engines for the network that do the same thing, one of which is even maintained by the campus chapter of the network administration group.
I don't think they realize that there are Phynd search engines (to my knowledge)at at least two other colleges. IMHO, they should sue either everyone or no one.
Maybe they should try targetting Microsoft for allowing people to share illegal files on the official MS network.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
25 cents an mp3, a CD has around 10 songs right? maybe 15? 15x25=375 so for about 4 bucks you'll have a whole CD, while right now 4 bucks pays for just a single.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
My teenager downloads music and it is fine with me. Why? It is not because I'm amoral, but because the reality is quite different than how the RIAA sees it. She owns MANY more purchased CDs than downloaded CDs (without counting I'd say the ration is greater than 9:1). Most of her downloads are test drives; most of the rest are collections of old, outdated, and/or obscure music.
Most important is that without downloaded music, she likely would not own more CDs.
(I'm solidly in the camp that the RIAA needs to figure out how to utilize this technology rather than criminalize it.)