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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."
They are really fighting a losing battle.
Exchanging music is not about piracy, it is about exchanging culture, just like when my grandfather leant me some old Jazz records and said, "here, you might like this".
Today culture moves at the speed of light and the RIAA believes it has the right to tax this movement. It cannot succeed except by destroying the Internet.
I'm starting to believe, watching this debate evolve over many years, that the file traders are right, for the wrong reasons.
Human culture depends on exchange of ideas and information, and music and films are a large part of this in today's world. No album, no movie scene, no written text is a personal creation, they are all taken from the pool of common culture, modified, and redistributed.
Seeking all means to do this faster than ever - and ignoring the barriers, such as "ownership", that stand in the way - is the prerrogative of today's world. We simply can't put the genie back into the bottle and start exchanging pieces of paper and vinyl discs again.
The debate is huge, but the results already seem clear: any laws designed to stop the process from continuing will be further and further ignored until they are seen by a majority of people to be useless vestiges of a material-obsessed past.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Ummm, I paid for a CD the other day but I want to listen to it on my MP3 player. The CD is copy protected. I run linux. The only way I can listen to it via mp3 is to, yup, download an 'illegal' mp3! Whoever thought that up was a fscking genius.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
There is an interesting pattern here:
- Some one comments that the IP laws have not kept up with technolgical and social change, and that they are now impeding the cultural goals they origonally served. They may have made sense when we were limited to exchaging physical objects, but they don't make sense now.
And the responses are allong the lines of:The respondents are completely missing the point. To see this, imagine what the discussion might have looked like if it had happened way back when:
- The rule about not eating X hasn't kept up with the times. It made sense when we didn't know about the parasites, but now that we know how to clean and cook them it doesn't makes sense.
I suspect the responses would have been along the lines of:Every time I see this played out, my response is, "Gee, IP law really is dying, isn't it?", with the same sort of awe I had watching little bits of sand wash downstream at the bottom of the grand canyon.
-- MarkusQ
I thought I remembered seeing something about how you have to have a certain $$ amount before getting a felony. $2000? ANyway, they then said each song was worth about $200. I think it was something like $20 per song, times 10 people. 10 people being the gestimate of people you magically distributed it to, because obviously more than one person can download a song from you. Anyway, 10 songs and you're a felon.
Anyway, these numbers don't add up. The RIAA likes to paint a screen of terror by saying that your one song you shared, can then be shared exponentially after that. Sure, it's true. You share it to 2 people. They share it to 2. By the end of the day, 1,000,000 people have it. But why would you be responsible for the 2nd thru 20th level of distribution? You only gave it to 2 people. And if it's "worth" $1 on iTunes, why isn't the damage $1 per song per download?
It's this magic number system the RIAA counts by that causes them to sue 4 students for 47 billion dollars. It would have taken the RIAA 5 years of GROSS profits to hit 47 billion dollars. How can a search engine running for a couple months on a campus amount to 5 years of GROSS profits?? It doesn't...make...sense.. you must acquit.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
The MD5 thing isn't for tracking the same song ripped by different people. The thread on this, so far, has left me scratching my head as to why folks feel the need to restate that encoding an mp3 with different settings/software will result in a different md5. Right, this is slashdot and we all know this already.
The reason for md5 matching is so they can nail someone as the 'origin' of the ripped song, then hold them liable for all the copies of a matching md5 on P2P networks. It would be more a demonstration of "look how much damage one copy did to us!".
Just out of curiosity...Did you have insurance? Did they write you a check for the CDs you lost in the fire? I doubt it, but if it had happened, would still feel you had already "paid for" the CDs, and simply thumb your nose at the RIAA and Big Insurance and download the files, as you'd already "paid for" them?
I promise, I'm not begging to be flamebait. I'm really curious.
Where does the line get drawn between physical property and intellectual property, and what rights do you have if you HAD purchased it, but it's gone now? I mean, I can't go to the lot and get another car because mine is destroyed in a fire. Of course, I could go take a picture of it...but I could do that anyway.
I'm curious.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.