RIAA Tracking Songs by MD5 Hashes

aSiTiC writes "Apparently RIAA has obtained some technical experts in their prosecution of file swappers. Currently they are tracking traded mp3 files from the Napster network by matching MD5 hashes. This seems quite interesting but I was under the assumption that identical hashes could be created with identical rips and id3v2 tagging. Now may be the time to update your illegal mp3 file MD5 hash sums."

Comments

gee?

[Comsn]

The RIAA, the trade group for the largest record labels, said it also found other hidden evidence inside the woman's music files suggesting the songs were recorded by other people and distributed across the Internet.

ya think? and here i thought it was the magical mp3 fairy who put mp3s on my hd...

Re:gee?

[geekoid]

al% rm pf*wav
al%

ha nice try, we know the only way to delete something is to highlight it and click delete, and then empty the trashcan!

You can't fool us!

Plumper porn

[Anonymous Coward]

I only trade plumber porn pics. Should I be worried?

Re:Plumper porn

[martinthebrit]

Is that pictures of men with pipes?

No, don't tell me, I don't want to think about it. It could involve builder's cleavage and everything.

Job opportunities

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Apparently RIAA has obtained some technical experts in their prosecution of file swappers. Currently they are tracking traded mp3 files from the Napster network by matching MD5 hashes

After all, in these dot-bust days, it's still possible to get a nice highly paid job and be called an expert by putting the right spin to strcmp() in your resume ...

HOWTO: Encrypted partition

[geeveees]

modprobe loop
modprobe cryptoloop
modprobe aes

losetup -e aes /dev/loop0 /dev/hdb1
(input password)

mke2fs -j /dev/loop0

mount -t ext3 /dev/loop0 /home/kombat/pr0n

enjoy!

Give up

[Rutje]

Ok guys.. let's all give it up. Let's delete all our MP3's and start buying CD's now. The RIAA has clearly won!
Hail to the king!

Re:own rip identical to download

[Asprin]

Audio rippers aren't always perfect AFAIK.


... or even competent! How many rippers can't get the tagging right when the song and artist ARE PRINTED RIGHT THERE ON THE LOUSY CD COVERSLIP! Sheesh! Learn the difference betwenn Meat Loaf and Leo Sayer for cryin' out loud!

RIAA Propaganda

[rnd()]

I think this sums it up!

Re:Condoning illegal activity???

[iMMersE]

So you are admitting to having child porn, both in the parent, and in your resume, under hobbies ("# Amateur photographer"), and in the same document your provide your work and home address?

You sir, are a dick.

From the Napster Network??

[re-Verse]

From the NAPSTER network??? This is worse than i thought - it appears the RIAA has built a Time Machine! Next they will be going further back than napster andprosecuting free-thinking pilgrims who would share their newspapers.

Yikes.

Virus

[MikeHunt69]

Maybe someone should write an email virus that listens on the Kazza ports and reports back gigs and gigs of shared mp3's to anyone who asks.

Then, when people get busted, they can say "It was a virus".

Of course, this would make the search feature of Kazza useless...

Re:MD5 Cannot stand up in court.

[ComaVN]

Not to mention one hell of a (de)compression algorithm

P2P modifying files..

[bobthemuse]

How long is it until a P2P client is created which appends a half second of noise to the end of everything you download, thus modifying the checksum?

I can see it now... "And in recent news, according to the RIAA there are over 10 billion songs being traded. The organization is quoted as saying 'We intend to sue individual users for having more songs than we've created...'"

Re:MD5 Cannot stand up in court.

[Mechanik]

So all P2P users / software makers need to do to circumvent this, is to agree on a specific MD5 sum, then patch every file so that they produce this same MD5 sum :)

That would totally pooch clients such as E-Donkey that use MD5 hashes to actually figure out which clients have a particular file (whether just a portion thereof, or in their entirety), irrespective of how each individual client may have renamed it.

And trust me, there are fringe benefits to the hashing as well, such as making it apparent when someone is trying to masquerade a file as something that it's really not.

E.g., consider the following scenario...

1. You are searching for Red Hat ISOs.

2. You find a match called "Red Hat.iso" shared from one user.

3. You notice that there are 50 other users sharing the same file.

3. The other 50 versions are named as "Goatse.cx guy and tubgirl together at last.mpg"

4. Therefore, something is very very rotten in Denmark... :-)


Mechanik

Re:MD5 Cannot stand up in court.

[prator]

So its possible that a Britney Spears mp3 and an mp3 of me raking my fingernails across a chalkboard might have the same md5...

Now that I think about it, those two things actually sound alike also. :P

-prator