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Can P2P Filter Copyrighted Content?
scubacuda writes "DRMwatch reports that technologists acting on behalf of porn publisher Titan Media reported to Congress that P2P networks could (if they wanted to) use "fingerprinting" (aka "hashing") to detect copyrighted works and then filter them with the "spyware" installed on all nodes in the network."
Then they came for the music. And I didn't speak up because I was a leecher and never shared my songs.
Finally, they came for the porn. Nobody touches our porn. And that's when we got REALLY pissed off.
Now why would they do that?
Who are these guys? Underpants gnomes?
Slackware is Copyrighted, and P2P, more specifically Bittorrent, is one of its official distribution channels.
Stick Men
Did common sense go on holidays?
Load a fingerprinted file.
Change one bit.
It has a new fingerprint.
The eDonkey/eMule network already identify files by an MD4 hash to ensure you get what you ask for. For instance: if a file has many sources then that means they have the same hash, you can be quite sure that it isn't a bogus loop of a pr0n flick when you really wanted that latest DVD rip.
If this goes through you'll see a new kazaa-compatible P2P client appear that pops a few random bytes into the ID3 tag of an MP3, the comment section of a JPG or in the headers of a video file. Each one will then have a new hash. Oops.
Oh, the new KazaaDRM(tm) ignores comments & tags and only looks at the actual data? OK, the new client toggles a bit that won't cause any visual or audio degradation of the file. Oops.
That all said if 100 people rip an MP3 or DivX file they won't generate the same byte-identical file. This is doomed to fail at the expense of your computer's CPU cycles as it generates these useless hashes.
Trolling is a art,
Now p2p app program downloads will be upwards of 600MB each, just to satisfy every single publisher who wants other people to protect their works for them.
The courts decided that it wasn't enough to remove works known to be copyrighted: rather they must know that works were not copyrighted.
Sounds like a fun time to be had by all.
1) Include a random text-file 2) compress the files again 3) ...
4) Profit !
--> Insert Funny Sig Here
This one shouldn't be too hard to get around at all right? Can't you just append a couple of random bytes at the end of the file and change the hash?
However, anyone who has used a P2P network knows that for any given file people are looking for, there are about a dozen variants with very slight differences (encodings, cropping, someone added a few frames of "encoded by..."). Since we don't have digital purchase of data, there is no "authoritative" version of a file to fingerprint in the first place.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
It is possible only according to the suits in the government. The p2p traffic accounts for ~2/3rds of the internet traffic nowadays, so unless you have an echelon-type system good luck!
(and that is not counting all the anonimity-protecting nets such as freenet, MUTE, and the new i2p (don't remember link, sorry).
Don't go silently into that peaceful night
P2P, hashing, DRM, fingerprinting and spyware, diagonally from top right! Yay! What do I win?
GTRacer
- Oh yeah, more crap on my PC
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
"Providing creatively-driven, strategically-sound marketing solutions designed to help your business grow."
That ain't all they wanna make grow
Couldn't it NOT be shut down?
Just like with Napster, there's a core that they can shutdown and be done with it. Are any of the popular P2P networks truly independent?
As it is Kazza is doing a decent job poisoning the town well with all those mp3 that have a horrible screech in them.
I think the hash will simply suffer the same fate of being broken up and reassembled in the wrong way, rendering it useless.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
filtering files based on hashing values won't work, especially for audio and movie files, you can always modify the file a bit, add a black frame to the beginning of the movie for example, so the hash value changes, and the file passes the filter.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
didn't napster try to block certain files by name? what happenedis people renameg George Acosta to something like G0rge Ac0sta. What to stop people from creating the same file with a different hash (by repacking the file or chaning some bits. .mp3 is lossy, so I'm sure a hash could be completely different by changing a few bytes without a noticable difference.
Comments, questions?
The person making the statement that the apps can filter anything doesn't realize the sheer volume of fingerprints, etc. that the app has to keep track of.
Nice try- better than most, actually... But it still doesn't resolve the real problem which is that most of what the labels are selling is crap and grotesquely overpriced at that. People swapping all of that music is more a response to that than anything else.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
just change a random bit or two somewhere in the general data section (ie - where the actual video or audio is stored) and the hash gets defeated easily. (yes - an oversimplification, but it'll do)
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Well, he's wrong. If they used hashing, then people would only have to change a few bytes of the files to get around the filter. In audio and video, this could be done without any notice at all. And it would require people to have a huge hash database on their computer. Tens of Megabytes at least, if not hundreds. It would make performance really slow.
So, watermarking? Well, so far all watermarks that have been tried have been broken, and it would be much easier to figure out how the watermark worked if you had a binary file sitting on your computer that checked it. Just disassemble to find out how it's checked (and once one person does, this everyone will be able to). Plus, you could always just zip+password any file anyway, to prevent watermark checking.
Of course, that doesn't mean they wouldn't try to include this stuff, but why would anyone ever download something so restrictive in the first place?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
For every man hour of time that's put into 'protecting' their work, there's a thousand man-hour's worth of effort that will freely be contributed from the "public" to try and break it. All encryption like this can and will be broken over time, the only way to beat it seems to be for the companies to try and repeatedly adapt and stay one step ahead. Unfortunately that's very expensive and can't be maintained for long. Regardless of your stance on the argument of p2p, this is the way it looks like continuing for the near future.
P2P networks could (if they wanted to) use "fingerprinting"
:D
That would give fingerprinting a whole new meaning
Free XBox, PS2
Put aside the fact that all DRM can easily be bypassed anyway. But filtering 'copyrighted' content based on a hash? Give me a break. I'll padd my AVI withone byte and throw your hash completely off. This is like editing MP3's ID tags -- it changes the hash, makes it impossible to automatically identify a file.
Wow, so now all the Divx rippers will have to chop a few frames off of each divx they rip so each hash is different. Companies should really stop worrying about what their customers do with the materials they have purchased and figure out a way to actually encourage them to purchase said materials in the first place. And no, I'm not just talking about pr0n, but CD's and DVD's in general. If it's a quality movie or CD I'll buy it because I know I'll want to watch it over and over and add to my 'collection.' I've spent more on Peter Jackson's works in the past two years than I have on any other media combined. (at least that I own... not counting all the Blockbuster rentals)
I mean seriously, how much money is Blockbuster making right now renting movies (some of which get ripped by the Divx kiddies 'cause they have way too much time on their hands) while the music industry bemoans their inability to sell records like they did in the late 90's?
Glad to hear Congress is listening to and believing sleazeballs from the porn industry blowing sunshine up their collective legislative butts. It's a shame we can't make congresscritters refer to an unbiased (hahahahahaha) technical agency who can tell them when these kinds of things are full of it.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
... at least in the music genre.
I used to work for a small company called Relatable (http://relatable.com/), which was working with Napster back in the day to identify the music being traded over the network.
Relatable's technology recognizes music by the acoustic properties of the audio itself regardless of how it was recorded, encoded, etc.
Obviously there are still ways around this, but it is a fairly solid solution.
It is important to recognize that "fingerprinting" does not equal "hashing". We all know that hashing will *not* work. But there are other techniques, at least for audio, that can work.
Josh
Realistically, how much storage space are we talking about for fingerprints for all know copyrighted works and how much processing power to check against them for every file you up and or download?
So, P2P no longer means Porn 2 People. Sigh
Free XBox, PS2
Yes, I agree with you for the most part - that was the first thought that came to my mind as well.
:)
However, for the average Kazaa user, it just might work. Most of them seem to think that if you uninstall kazaa your music is gone...or that you can't play the Kazaa music outside of the Kazaa client.
Keeping this in mind, then, we can give a little bit of credit to these guys in that they may succeed in fooling the idiots who use Kazaa.
Of course, people like that usually aren't the ones to come up with "original" content anyway.
Its actually amusing to think of the cat and mouse game this could develop into
It's also predicated on the idea that the hashes exist. Taking the first example of encoding at different bit rates and using different formats. Who's responsible for providing a reasonably exhaustive and authoritative list of the hashes? If Sharman et al. implement these schemes do they get bullet-proof immunity from criminal and civil liabilities?
Also, who says users will continue to use these "spyware" enabled P2P products once it becomes widely known that blocking has been enabled?
There are just too many excpetions to this idea to be really workable.
Hashes are designed to prevent collisions. No two files will reproduce the same hash. Change a single bit and the filter no longer works. A better "fingerpring" technology would look for similarity not exactness. Hashing can help but not by hashing the entire file.
P2P technology is worldwide, what is illegal in one place might be perfectly legal elsewhere, good luck trying to enforce it
of course the USA can have their own crippled P2P, the rest of us in the other 191 countries and 95% of the worlds population shall just carry on
you have to laugh at the stupidity of americans sometimes
There are two fallacies with the proposal:
Spyware on the nodes? Even if you could somehow ensure that all compatible clients comply with the spying requirements, how long will those clients be left unmolested? Any P2P "server" is really just a client of many other "servers."
This depends on a mathematical hash performed on a given rendering of a copyrighted sample. Resample and the hash is broken. Hell, even a second-rate email spammer knows how to avoid hash detection: just tweak an unused ID3 field.
[
..will be roughly as effective as shutting down napster.
That is to say, not effective at all.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
Some stupid fuck might just take it seriously.
This whole time they thought it was just for trading Metallica MP3s.
It's the future and will happen. However, I doubt "hashing" will be a big part of it. Digital fingerprinting will involve one of the many emerging audio and video recognition technologies, to avoid issues that come with applying a filter to a media file (or even changing a single byte). True recognition will be required, and will become a part of P2P life.
Whether this is used for good or evil depends upon who prevails in the courts and the moral disposition of the P2P developer. But media file recognition will eventually be an inseparable part of the P2P landscape.
I can think of at least *one* good use right off: wouldn't it be nice to look for a particular song and be able to find it without having to try various spelling variations, including pig latin?
ARgh!!! What would they think up of next??? Can't even let a guy wank in peace....
stuff it, troll
I don't think those progs are going to de-tar files on the fly over the net... way too much work. Maybe at the client side... But then again, why would they de-tar/de-zip every file?
But I can change my ID3 tags all day. Can they match me (hypothetically, of course ;)) md5sum to ID3? I highly doubt it.
This would end up working about as well Kazaa's user rating (or whatever it was called) thing. It had been out for how many days before people started showing up with their points maxed out? And it is worth noting that the second and third most common file sharing tools, dc++ and emule are both open source, so that anybody who feels like removing the controls can do so, and recompile.
Peer to peer networks that control what people communicate are possible. As are ones that control who talks to whoom, that people really allow the uploads they purport to, etc etc. As is any software that acts against, rather than for, the person that is running it. We just need to get Palladium in place first. What are you waiting for Microsoft!!!
>>...porn publisher Titan Media reported to Congress that...
were the porn people part of the MPAA or is it just the mainstream hollywood movies?
my blog
maybe just rename the *.avi file to sumething ...
...
like *.titan.porn.video to get around the
water/mark hash detector
if (ah! IF!) the spyware watermark/hash detector
is programmed to search in *.avi *.mp3 etc. files
only that is
you can host *.mp3 on free tripod website as
long as you rename the file to sumething like
*.mpthree.
There are systems by which the network cannot possibly detect whether material travelling over it is under copyright or not. Freenet is an example. Everything that goes over the network is encrypted. Nodes may not necessarily have decryption keys. There is then no way for a node to recognize a particular work.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Until someone can combine face recognition and hashing algorithm on the client side.
---
Error 404: WMD Not Found
More to the point - a ripped file probably wouldn't match the officially distributed checksum anyway, and if you use some kind of "more or less matches" algorithm in the file deletion robot/spyware, someone will eventually lose something vital.
I've always wondered why copyrights conglomerates like the RIAA and the MPAA put millions into attacking the most popular network ( once Napster, now Kazaa ) ; people will just switch to other networks if they can't go to Kazaa. Gnutella ? OpenFT ? BitTorrent ? Name it.
Information wants to be free, suckas. Get it into your head.
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
But I think that this is a GREAT idea!
I mean...Everyone knows that there's a billion ways that each file on P2P networks will have a different hash (different encoding, a ID text file, or even just ending the file 1 second early). Regardless, this hash will differ, and they won't be able to filter out what's out there.
But -- what about the garbage taht the RIAA is putting on kazaa? I haven't tested this theory - but do teh RIAA files all have the same hash? Would it, theoretically, be possible to block the tainted files using this same idea? It would just mean that someone would haev to keep a database of RIAA mp3 hashes.
So how long before the come up with a solution that actually works? If they do there will be ways around it of couse... our file sharing went down at school once for a few days and all you had to do was walk down the halls in the dorms and yell asking if anyone had such and such software/movies/music/porn, someone would stick their head out the door and you'd go burn it or run a cable down the hall
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
" Complaint to nic.cx results in goatse.cx being suspended. Obligatory online petition is started. Screams and sobbing are heard on a regular basis on Slashdot. Links are SFW, but any investigation further may not be. This is truly a dark time for the internet. "
This deserves it's own story under YRO. Whether the slashdot editurs like it or not, goatse.cx is (was?) a high-profile website on many online forums. The fact that they ran afoul of their TOS, and whether those TOS were changed specifically to shutdown goatse.cx should be of interest to many in the slashdot community.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I assume this is more than a worthless md5 sum: certainly in terms of the images that this guy is talking about it should be possible to steganographically hide a watermark in the image. If the p2p bots checked for this there might be a chance his scheme could work: some watermark techniques are apparently quite robust to re-encoding of the image, etc. Where all this falls down is that it'll be 5 seconds before some w4r3Z d00d releases a p2p client that just lies about having checked for the watermark and allows distribution regardless. That's the thing about the p2p model: there is no central server where the running code can be verified - to implement any kind of workable security model you have to assume that everyone on the network is going to be trying to defeat it and design it so that it's core to the whole application - unless the security validates, and other machines can prove to themselves that it validates on your machine, no transfer should work. I suspect something along those lines is possible albeit very difficult, but the fact that that kind of application isn't what p2p users want would still render the entire thing useless. Nobody would use such an app.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Sure, you might lose a couple of frames (at worst), but who cares ?
The Raven
detect copyrighted works and then filter them with the "spyware" installed
So under the DMCA AD-Aware and all other spyware removal tools will be illegal as they could be used to circumvent DRM.
Sounds like a ploy by the pr0n industry to install more crapware on our pc's.
Come to think of it *nix will be illegal too as their spyware will only run under wind0ze.
business men are just a bunch of useless greedy asswipes, who really can't do shit. Instead they indenture programmers to make something they can sell and steal. The whole non-compete BS should be banned as retarded and illegal.
The only problem with hashing is that it is not unique. You and I could rip the same song, on the same platform, with the same settings, and get the same hash.
I hate sigs.
Think about it, these people sell mostly digital content, as opposed to cds or dvds. So what do they do? First they separate two issue: one is the swapping of their original content (the original .avi). This can be obtained as such:
- Make a master list of hashes
- Before downloading or sharing, a p2p app has to check against this list (send the hash, get back response).
All p2p apps should be required by law (in their view) to include this check code. At this point, p2p distribution of 1:1 copies of their works is effectively crippled.
Secondly I'm sure modification of original art is not permitted by copyright law, so they can go after whoever does it and/or add new hashes to the list.
It does not solve the problem, but it sure makes it a better case for them in court and it does not bother the legitimate end user with DRM and authchecks.
My Stack Overflow user
Goatse.cx lives on, kinda, under the new Goat.cx, albeit with a disclaimer immediately above the image.
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
This might sound a bit familiar for anyone that's had to repair a spyware infected computer.
Personally, I've done 4 in 2 days. And I can tell you I'm so sick of it it's not even funny.
One was so screwed up the HOSTS file was infected with encrypted javascript. Took me 3 hours just to knock that bastard down to the point I could get explorer open in under 10 minutes.
Special thanks to everyone that fights it by writing those removers... god they are a lifesaver.
when they pry the delete key out of my cold, dead finger.
Not that I watch porn of course. Not me, nope, not one bit. None.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Totally different files can end up with the same hashes. There goes the whole system.
I didn't have time to read your entire post, but from what I could tell, it had something to do with porn. Right on brother! I love porn, too!
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
yeah you keep making your laws, that will stop it !
i dont think your millionaires congress club has a grip on reality never mind relating to the common man
If you could get this headline published, it really would kill the effort. A few people calling in to talkshows with congress people asking them why they were considering measures to protect the producers of pornography would have them running away like frightened children. I could see this really causing trouble for Fox News, How could they not report on the sleaziness of a porn story with out hurting their ultra-right wing congress buddies. Bill OReilley's might explode from the internal conflict, MUST REPORT SLEASY STORY -- CAN'T HURT REPUBLICANS -- AHHHHH! Oh, how am I kidding he'd just blame it on liberals.
Guys like this make me jealous! If I look at porn, it's just me and a picture--big deal--it's forgotten in a moment.
But Xsters--wow. It's me, a picture, satan and and a crowd of slathering demons, and god hisself, heavenly nostrils flared in anger, while a chorus fiery-sword-wielding seraphs chorus 'for shame, for shame.'
I just don't get that kind of mileage out of it.
Is there really a person in this planet stupid enough to _STILL_ believe there's something you can do to prevent copying?
Un-freaking believable. It doesn't matter if you have some hidden watermarks or whatever, all I need to do is to crypt the package with my RSA key. There's no way in hell anyone - not to mention any computer program could know what's inside!
That was a most interesting story, but who the hell is Mr. Brownfield?
... That I religiously remove, subvert, and hunt for with a passion and paranoia that makes the germ-fearing people from those cleaning-product commercials seem like dogfood munching toddlers?
I wonder if future antiviral systems will begin to be modelled more on the mammalian immune system, which seems to work reasonably well, considering the constant barrage of invaders we deal with daily.
Ah, using hashes to identify files, isn't that patented by that great P2P innovator, Altnet?
Mod up!
IANAL, but taking off the tech hat, and trying to think from a legal standpoint...What would it mean if they can prove to the judge that there is a P2P scenario in which nearly foolproof copyrighted file identification exists ?
Would that then ruin the argument that "P2P should not be shut down because there are plenty of legitimate uses" by countering with "there is an equally efficient P2P architecture that brings all the same functionality to legitimate uses without hurting copyright law" ?
By doing that, wouldn't they change the issue of whether or not to allow P2P into one of which P2P can be allowed ? (or what is required of a legal P2P ?).
Just wondering...
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
After reading this I'm really feel the urge to get some porn, drink beer, do drugs, have sex with some one elses wife and, well, all those other fun things the bible lovers say you can't.
And why not? Since I'm not a believer I'm going to be sent to hell anyway, so I'm going to have as much fun as I can here.
Could work as an after the fact tool. If the rules of the P2P network in question where such that copyrighted material, if identified, could be prevented from being listed, or Downloaded. I stress that the network would have to set up in that way and inforrced by the Network Protocal it self. And not by some spyware/virus that would search and destroy personal files.
FastTrack might be able to enforce such a policy because they have much more control over there network, and more importantly there clients but not Gnutella.
This could never work as a tool to keep content OFF P2P networks.
I say bring it on. Every small thing that tries to stop the p2p networks will only make them stronger.
Anyone that does not realize this must've been hidden under a rock for a long time.
I'm not happy until the p2p networks are completely anonymous, fully encrypted and has just about everything a person could be looking for.
The coming generations will see this as the default behaviour and will probably not stockpile mainstream digital stuff like some people are now.
RIAA and their lackeys will push all their latest releases on to p2p networks, not whole albums, but a couple of songs. Mark my words.
A hash doesn't identify a unique work, an unlimited number of files could share the same hash value.
I can't imagine the amount of fun when people start harrassing companies by generating files with the same hashes.
Do you know what does the fingerprint from a straight ISO file and the one from the same file zipped, gzipped or split for more convenient pirating? or with a frame inserted at the beginnig reading "brought to you by yetAnotherScriptKiddo"?
Yep you're right. Nothing.
Will this people get a clue some day?
The best way to look for copyrighted information, and check whether it's being shared, is to see if it's available. If it is then it's copyrighted. Everything ever created is copyrighted, we're looking for things that are copyrighted without the copyright holder's permission.
I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
Anyone familiar with downloading albums from p2p networks knows that it is just as easy to download the rar or zip archive of a new release as it is to get the individual mp3s. Can they tell that the rar contains copyrighted material by checking the hash? NO! They can't. Even if they attemped to create a library of illegal rars to block, just change the filename and insert a txt file into the archive to circumvent the DRM.
Oh, nevermind, that would be breaking the DMCA, I guess they got us there.
How about they create a "service" that indexes the names of a pr0n item's creator, as well the names of the prominent "actors/actresses."
When I find something I like, I could find more items with the same "actress" and perhaps make a purchase. Hell, I already know some places that put their logo on small clips for distribution... I'm guess the reason that pr0n isn't so bashed by industry as movies/music is that they probably do noticed they are pulling in some profit from it (site subscriptions, etc).
Your company is free to establish whatever policies it chooses on your internal network. But I think it is very dangerous to suggest that we create laws that require the providers of public networks to filter content. Have you really considered the implications for free speech and privacy? Who controls the list of banned materials? Who controls the controllers?
"fingerprinting" (aka "hashing") to detect copyrighted works and then filter them with the "spyware" installed on all nodes in the network."
Ok, open movie, insert 1 second of black frames, save movie. Hash changes and now it matches beauty and the beast, or someone's home movie which is legal to share.
Try again sammy.
l8,
AC
"...all nodes on the network."
Haven't we seen a plethora of P2P protocols developed precisely because someone we don't trust controls the older protocol? The reality check on this clearly bounces. Even if Microsoft, er, someone did manage to grab a monopoly on the US network's P2P population, which is VERY unlikely, the REST of the world would definitely not play along with those American imperialists. Scheme fails, game over.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
The enemy (Satan) picks his moments very carefully. I joined the US Army right from high school.
Hey if Satan is the enemy you somewhat picked the wrong Army to enlist to... Or did you mean Salvation Army?
Seriously though, you're just one of those screamers I never pay attention to. (Or maybe this is a "clever" astroturf by a church for more members and income, dunno about that.) Your rant gives some interesting grep results and that's about all there is to it.
Just leave peoples' religions alone. (Says a Christian who understands what "nobody else's business", "privacy" and "real respect for fellow human beings" mean... You don't.)
... will their 'copyright filter' detect that I have a VHS copy of a movie and simply want a digital copy to watch on my laptop during a business trip?
"Derp de derp."
MusicBrainz works surprisingly well to identify music files. I don't know how it works exactly, but it surely isn't just a simple hash, because files I ripped myself were identified by MusicBrainz. Of course they could try something like that for movies...until everyone switches to a different network 2 days later.
If they took all the porn off the internet, there would only be one website left, and that would be bringbacktheporn.com.
-"Scrubs"
I have misplaced my pants.
What a bunch of morons. Sure, maybe with enough computing power you can detect a copyrighted work...maybe. But so what? Who's going to download P2P software, or use a network with this type of filtering in place? Only people who wouldn't have stolen stuff in the first place.
Besides, P2P users will just scramble the content in some ridiculously simple way that will invalidate the filters and they'll have to go back to square one. Ig-pay atin-lay anyone?
Xesdeeni
>> I WANTED A RADICAL MOVEMENT OF CHRIST
I am offended by your scatological references, you insensitive clod!
I have misplaced my pants.
I don't think he's trolling here, the human mind has a failing in that it likes to form habits. You can see that with non physically addicting things like chronic or in this case p0rn. Sure you might live a healthy life with it.
but if you're addicted you'd probably be better off without. It's such a marketting gimic to disregard the posibilities of addiction. Then there's the fact that he posts anonymously, how hard is it to sign up.
** back on topic ** There's no way the porn industry could do anything about "copyrighted" material being distributed cause all it takes is a slight change in the archive to change the hash and blow the system away. The only way it would work is if the porn industry started setting up tons of high traffic nodes distributing all sorts of stuff just to block some porn on some searchs, but they'd just get blocked anyways.
I've seen tons of post suggesting that a few bytes changed in the file will get around the hashing.
... just use a packer and the hash is useless...
First of all, I don't think this is necessarly true. They never say how they will hash the file... for all we know the hash could be based on every 100th byte in the file.
Secondly, how many KaZzA users know how to change bytes in a file using a hexeditor? How many KaZzA users know what a hexeditor is?
I think that packing is the best way of getting around hashing. Zip, Rar, Ace etc etc
It's hard to believe that the folks at Kazaa (and DRMWatch) don't understand this, but essentially EVERYTHING on the net is copyrighted, at least according to U.S. law. Since 1976, copyright is automatically accorded to any work that is fixed. What that means is if you've written it down, recorded it, or typed it into a file, it is covered by copyright, whether you intend for that to be the case or not. And it stays copyrighted until 70 years after your death, whether you want it to or not, and only then does it enter the public domain.
What I assume that Kazaa means is that they will try to detect files that represent songs owned by recording companies and others who assert that they do not want their songs traded. Indies can just sit back and let your copyrighted files be traded by fans without fussing. But it's not a question of copyright, it's an assertion of ownership and a desire to enforce copyrights. And changing one frame or a few bits doesn't affect copyright, even though it could make automated detection difficult.
I just read
First, this is possible and these people have (duh) thought of people slightly changing the hash.
You could go one of several ways. One (as another poster pointed out) is to look at the accoustic properties. Treat the file as analog music, and do some fancy analysis such that even if you change the bits it'll be recognizable (barring complete mangling, but who wants mangled music?). You could also generate multiple hashes and store them on a server and use challenge/response to validate hashes sampled at random points in the file. There are other solutions that will work "well enough". They don't need 100% accuracy.
Next, why are people so adverse to DRM and copyright ownership? If you don't like the music or the prices vote with your wallet. "I only steal because it's crappy anyway and I don't want to pay" is not a valid defense for illegally copying other people's copyrighted property.
Um --
no?
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
It takes a small college town in Finland to distinguish between different versions of the same song? What is their method? Perhaps they all go down to the local pub, form two teams, write out the bit patterns long hand, shout back and forth and consume many beers:
Team A: "Beet 1,204,933 - Uena!"
Team B: "Yah!"
Team A: "Beet 1,204,934 - Uena!"
Team B: "Yah!"
Team A: "Beet 1,204,935 - Zaero!"
Team B: "Yah!"
Team A: "Beet 1,204,936 - Zaero!"
Team B: "Neigh!"
Team A: "Beet 1,204,936 - Zaero!"
Team B: "Neigh!"
Team A" "Uuuurrrpp!"
Sigs are bad for your health.
"The internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it."
Lots of MP3s were shared via FTP in the past, until the RIAA began a campaign to root out and shut down pirate MP3 servers. Then people jumped to Napster, but were eventually frustrated first by the forced filtering of some searches and then the service's discontinuation. Now supernode-based P2P networks like Kazaa are being used, and the central company can't be sued Napster-style because they never see any search data. When they are forced to change their code to allow searches and data to be filtered, users will jump to another service designed to avoid the law.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Short of locking down every computer in the world, there is no way of preventing the digital trading of copies of information. Entities like the RIAA, MPAA and MPA know this. They may try having everything locked down via Palladium or something similar, but knowing they may not succeed, they are trying to fight a holding action, to keep the cash flowing in as long as is possible.
The music and movie industries didn't exist a hundred years ago; I sincerely doubt they'll exist a hundred years from now, no matter how hard they try.
You are all of you deceived. Jesus, as "it" was known IS the root of all evil. You gave yourself to evil.
Satan and Lucifer? (not the same being, you should know) They were in the right place at the wrong time. They're benevolent. They are still around, and the time will come; they will be seen. And the army of Yahweh
The so-called anti-christ will be the true messiah, and he will be backed by Lucifer and Satan, and the rest of the seraphim.
You and your kin have fallen to the ploy of evil. This dosen't mean that you will burn in hell; nay such a place does not exist, except in thine own mind.
They can take our freedom, but they can never take away our porn!
Someone selling an overpriced good will be undercut only if there are other providers of the good. Yes, other people can make music, but they can't compete with the RIAA labels for two reasons. One is that the RIAA labels are really selling characters rather than the music itself. The value of most pop music is in who makes it, not what it is. Of course, this is an absurd situation, but since when has any of this not been absurd? Second, the RIAA seems to be quite effective at stiffling any sort of competition. Other people can make music, but can they make studio quality recordings? Can they distribute that music effectively? Can they sell it or get people to buy merchandise or go to concerts? They can sometimes do so to some extent, but not very effectively. Certainly not effectively enough to compete with the RIAA.
The thing is, in order for clients to filter their songs you need to have the co-operation of that client. If you have an open network protocol then any client can get around that problem by writing their own client. Open p2p networks can never trust their clients. It's really quite annoying actually. With kaazaaaaa, from what I remember, they have safeguards in place to stop just any old client from connecting to their networks. I believe their network protocols are encrypted and undocumented for a start.
;-) ... Not to mention the fact you'd probably need a central server to authenticate the keys which would introduce a central point of failure in an otherwise distributed system..
As for filtering songs by hash value, no this obviously won't work. Change one bit and you have a different song. However, if it's possible to create a filter that can tell a piece of spam from a legit email then it should be possible to tell that two songs are the same even if there is multiple bits different. I'm not sure of the kind of crazy computation overhead involved, though. Calculating an MD5 hash ishard enough
This is actually really, really, really dangerous, and here's why.
In theory:
The base case, System One, will use fingerprinting like TunePrint to check for copyright infringement. If it matches the database, pull it off the stream.
PROBLEM: suppose somebody released an important piece of free speech which government wanted to stifle... add it the the copyright database, it vanishes.
PROBLEM: suppose I encrypt my illegal music? Now it doesn't match the tuneprint database any more. Quickly the system becomes useless.
So now SYSTEM 2 is announced: in system two, tuneprint is used in the other mode - only things which are in the database as legitimate to copy are permitted. I.e. you can't record something and move it on othe network without registering the work first. And you need a frickin' license to publish.
Oh, and encrypted work can't be moved around, so you have no privacy.
PROBLEM: this would suit those Patriot Act Loving Bastards a little too well.
the civil liberties and free speech implications of these kinds of on-the-wire filtering schemes are horrendous. kill them before they take hold
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Don't forget the volume of people required to generated that volume of fingerprints. If you have a program running around deciding which files to ban by hash, then you just have a name-based filter. If you pay someone to run around downloading songs and deciding that they are illegal and not, for example, a promotional MP3 released legally, then you have a huge volume of songs missed. If you have a warehouse full of people banning songs, then you are spending far more money than Kazaa earns.
I'm surprised that nobody has suggested a network of legal content... Things that someone is willing to vouch for. That's a more appropriate use of hashing, and would have very fast, centralized searches.
The ______ Agenda
Maybe your problem is that you were hiding this and lying about it, not that you looked at pornography.
/. account)
God has a lot to say on acting on covetous desires, and a lot on lying and being faithful. However, if I recall correctly it's not God or Jesus that gets all riled up about things, but Paul. Read through the Old testament and the Gospels and see how much the subject comes up.It doesn't really. Now read Paul - that man had issues of his own that were not reflected anywhere else in the Bible. However, the very early Church decided to make it part of canon, and here we are today.
If you think you have an addiction that's interfering with your life, then yes, you probably should stop (and that goes for anything, be it video games, the internet, drinking, etc). However, don't be a Christian sheep. If all you believe is what they tell you and you haven't explored your faith and beliefs for yourself, then you don't have faith in God, you have faith in the Church, and that is a very different thing.
(Sorry about the AC post, but this browser isn't set up for my
Just have the pR0n suppliers encode a serial number in each copy of each video they sell. Then, if a copy got illegally distributed on the Net, they'd know who to go after.
A big job? Yes. But so is the "fingerprint database".
And this way, they'd be responsible for their own content, instead of requiring Big Daddy Government do it all for them.
Since they claim to be losing billions of dollars to "piracy", it should certainly be worth their while to charge a few bucks more for each video in order to increase their sales by (according to some numbers I've seen) an order of magnitude.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
OK.. I'm not a big porn collector, but I have seen the prices for these DVD's. At sometimes $60-70 a copy, it's no wonder there's file sharing. Just as in the case of music CD's, why not lower the cost of the retail product? I'm sure I'd feel less guilty of purchasing some of these titles if I wasn't spending so much ;-)
im sorry but the idea that they can secure the rights to smut is down right comical, not to mention the fact if any network gets bogged down by drm you can CERTINALY expect another one to take its place.
By the latest law, isn't everything ever recorded copyrighted? Therefor, wouldn't this algorithm be { return true; }
I can't remember if there are any films that have expired copyrights. Close to the same is true for all music.
Most posts here indicate that it's easily defeated, because changing just one insignificant bit (eg for music files, an MP3-tag) results in a different hash value - thus defeating a blacklist of hashes. Of course they are right that this would work. But on the other hand, it would seriously harm the usefulness of P2P networks. If everybody would produce his "own" version of an MP3 song, that's different from all the other versions (by one MP3-tag frame), the software could not match them anymore.
As a result, a possible downloader would be presented thousands of DIFFERENT files with IDENTICAL naming. He would have to decide which one to download. He may then become victim of RIAA flooding and by chance download a "bad" file. Eg when 100x more bad versions are offered than good versions, he would have to download 100 times until he hits a good version. This doesn't have solution, because the solution would be to publish hash-lists of known-good-versions (like SHAREREACTOR) which could then be automatically merged into the blacklist of forbidden hashes by a RIAA robot script.
Another consequence is that the software couldn't do multi-source downloading anymore, because it can't know which files are identical (except for the MP3 tag). The downloader would have to rely on the SINGLE source to give him the FULL file. This might be feasable for MP3 (though already considerably degrade service quality), but is totally impossible for 700MB ISOs. This problem isn't solvable either, because the only solutions would be to either exclude the MP3 tags from the hash calculation (so that different files share the same hash), thus reverting to todays situation (where a hash blacklist would work). Or, one would have to split the file into various small chunks and modify only the first (so that all other chunks are common between all versions) and thus reduce the problem of single-source to just the first chunk. This however would keep all but the first chunk vulnerable to the blacklist approach and consequently is not a working solution either.
In short, P2P would not work anymore if the "defense" against blacklists would be any different from "ignore blacklist and download anyway".
(at least in current P2P structures)
Marc
Peer to Peer networks have to go from Peer to another Peer. For almost everybody this means going across the routers, switches and wires of ISPs, backbones, and other telecommunications providers. Laws can mandate that these companies be held responsible for things going across their wires and forcing them to filter content.
Yeah, unless they happen to be encrypted. So then I can only run Approved Services(TM). Where I can of course not run any Unapproved Service(TM) over standard connections, such as a P2P program working over HTTP, FTP, DCC or NNTP. So basicly, you have to ensure that only Proper Requests(TM) get through. Which probably means only Approved Content Sites(TM), not your buddy's HTTP server. Either you end up with a AOL-like "mini-Internet", or it will be fuller of holes than a swiss cheese.
You might as well demand that the phone company makes Al-Quaida unable to speak in code over the phone. When they ask "How the F*** are we supposed to do that?!?", well... I hope you have a good answer.
I do that very same thing here. The internet connection comes in, goes through a firewall and then to snort both of which squeeze off peer to peer connections. This is to reduce bandwidth consumption and to make the boys over in legal happy.
Working for a company, you can do pretty much whatever the hell you want, purely on the suspicion of P2P activity. But what do you do as an ISP when your customers start suing you for killing off their connections? You'll need hard evidence, not "it was on port X" or "we couldn't identify the traffic type".
Ask the chinese how their "great firewall of China" is doing. They know it's leaking all over the place, and that's in a country where you'd think they have more control than in the US. What works for your company simply doesn't work on a mass scale.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Instead of hashing, they could take each movie or picture, pass it through a discrete cosine transform, quantize it, and produce a list of major signal components which characterize the image.
But who would ever do that - it would take a whole group of motion picture experts to get it to work.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
This is actually about copyrighted content that authors wish to control .. not "copyright" simply as such. That's why the Creative Commons Project is so important.
This seems like a very upstanding thing to propose - from a smut-peddler.
"Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
I'm curious: wouldn't that kind of content recognition kind of require that you already have a copy of what you are looking for, or at the very least somehow know its "content profile" (if I may call it that)?
Seems somewhat counterintuitive to me at least.
Sure, it might work for finding the same file on multiple hosts. But even that is doubtful (at least I would rather know when I am downloading different parts of a file from different hosts, that I am downloading parts of the same file), and an ordinary hashing algorithm like SHA1 would definitely work better for such a purpose.
Been modded interesting, insightful and funny. Why does real life have to be so different?
Imagine... all of us back to home dialin BBS's :-)
"/Dread"
A simple harmless change in the files would change the hash, and let the 'new' file get thru the filters.
It would just be a big game, much as the 'mis-spelling' of tracks was in the last days of Napster.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You've looked at this too naively... Take around a hundred MD5s of nonoverlapping chunks of the file. If 90% of these match, you have near certainty that the files match except for exactly such tampering as you suggest.
So the "content" industry would want operators of P2P software to store 100 MD5 hashes of EVERY PIECE OF COPYRIGHTED WORK IN DIGITAL FORM, and compare EVERY SET OF THEM against EVERY FILE TRANSFERRED.
That is just wacko.
For starters you'd requre every peer machine to have a copy of all those hashes and/or every indexing service to actually transfer the indexed files to compare them. How big would that be? How much bandwidth would it take to update it, or to do an extraupload of everything that gets indexed (possibly by many indexers)? WHO PAYS FOR THE BANDWIDTH AND STORAGE? Note that the BENEFIT goes entirely to the copyright holder, not the P2P user.
The onus of detecting copyright violation and proving their case is, and properly should be, on the copyright holders, who are the recipients of the benefit.
Yes, it's hard. Which means that the copyright holders only catch a few of the violators. But it's ALWAYS been that way. That's why the copyright law provides draconian penalties for the ones they DO catch - to balance the equation and deter violators.
(And THAT'S why you see hundred grand fines laid on little old ladies whose underage grandkids used their computer to download some MP3s.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Of course it's doubly nuts because your proposal is trivial to beat. Add an extra random-sized bit of silence / blackscreen at the start and end. That changes the file size and shifts the hashed regions, causing all the hashes to come out different.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Paul?
He never even knew Jesus. The 11 other apostles didn't even like him; they thought he was wack and corrupt.
Paul is nothing but a lying flaming powermonger of an asshole. What a fuckup.
...with P2P networks already, that they're full of different encodings (good and poor), corrupted files and other shit leading to different hashes?
If, presuming they actually publicly distribute this database, or make it a queryable server, I imagine it'll be used against them.
Ohh 20 different versions of this song - but we queried the database, this one is "registered". Well, that must be the proper song then, let's download that. And then they'll have to start poisoning the database to counter that, filtering out their own (and other's) bogus files.
This has got to be the most dense proposal I ever heard. I don't think they realize how massive the task is, and even if they were to succeed it would only be used against them. So let them try.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How about... a square?
I suppose the fact that it's embedded in your finger will make the job that much more difficult.
It's simple. If it exists in any sort of recorded form (writing, magnetic, phonopgraph, punch card, etc) it's copyrighted. That's the way U.S. copyright law works. You don't have to register a copyright for the work to be protected.
So... if a file exists on a P2P network, it is copyrighted. Whether the item is there with the permission of the copyright holder is another matter all together.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
That makes no sense because you can't track the numbers very far. Even if the stores that sell the tapes track customers (I imagine that porn shop customers would be miffed if you asked them for their address) the goods can still be resold. I doubt that everyone selling old porn DVDs on ebay keeps customer records. Any infrastructure that enabled this would be massively expensive and inpracticable.
Photos.
You're linking to the wrong Titan Media. http://www.titanmediaconsultants.com/ is not a porn publisher. http://www.titanmedia.com is the one in the Washington Post article.
Of course they could do that.
There is only two minor problems.
While I am against violating other owners copyrights, it seems odd to claim that other companies are in some way responsible for enforcing them for you.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
He is trolling, he copied the text of that post from the URL he posted. It's not his actual personal confession of porn addiction. :)
I have three problems with this idea.
1.) Change a bit in file and the hash comes out completely differant.
2.) If people can remove spyware from programs like Kazaa and add new features what makes them thing there "spyware" is going hold up any better.
3.) People can easily start using open source clients.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> The only way it would work is if the porn industry started setting up tons of high traffic nodes distributing all sorts of stuff just to block some porn on some searchs, but they'd just get blocked anyways.
Well, then people would start developing new websites that contain links only to the "real" content.
On the Internet, people eventually get what they want. That just seems to be a law of nature. It's a worthwhile academic exercise to think up ways of violating this law of nature, but your efforts will ultimately fail.
Yer only PROBLEM, dude, is you're acting like the normal male that evolution made you into, but your religion tells you it's "wrong" and so you try to repress your sexuality. (Unsuccessfully.)
Why should they have to do it... Using their logic, shouldn't the manufacturer of a gun that kills someone be accountable? How about printing press equipment manufacturers, are they liable if someone uses their equipment to print out illegal pr0n? :)
First they ignore you Then they laugh at you Then they fight you Then you win -Mohandas Gandhi
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerfull than you can possibly imagine!
I hope this succeeds, because I can't wait until it's adapted to be used for spam blocking. Of course, by copyrighted, they don't mean copyrighted, they mean a small number of works whose copyright is owned by an exclusive cabal of powerful media companies; and of course, it wouldn't work anyway.
Ah, the inexorable corruption of the profit motive...
Anytime you have a power-distributive technology fall into the hands of a group whose first priority is profit, the tendency for the technology to distribute power always loses.
Napster was sued out of existence (Brand name notwithstanding), and rightfully so, not so much because it contributed to copyright infringement, but because it sought to profit from that infringment.
Red Hat has decided that it's priorities require that it profit before it supports the small Linux user, so using Red Hat Linux has become that much less of an option for most people.
Sharman Networks has it's network, and has shown for some time its disregard for its users in preference to its profit motive. If the business can profit from cutting user's throats, it will do it.
Now, I'm not going to engage the issue of whether profit motives are justified, or whether these individual examples were motivated by survival or profit motive.
It seems only non-profit groups, whose priorites lie with their actual stated goal (making and maintaining quality software - SPI/Debian, Mandrake, etc.) can actually be trusted.
The profit motive, by definition, is to concentrate power in the form of money (and the process of doing that benefits from other kinds of power). This has consequences for any technology which has the potential to distribute power of any kind. The two tendencies inevitably conflict.
If I rip a CD on my computer with one bit rate and encoder and then rip the same CD with a different encoder or bit rate, the hashes will be different. If I change the tag in an MP3 file, the hash will change.
They can generate hashes for things they have seen, but those can be easily changed. (I expect to see random id3 tags and/or file names similar to what spammers use to evade Baysian filters.)
Obviously some company has come up with a "solution" and is trying to sell that "solution" with the claim that it will solve the "problem".
"Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it."
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
All you need is a program to append a couple random bytes to each file you download through p2p. They'll still play except maybe in rare cases that I haven't heard of. A downside is that you'll lose the download splitting aspect of p2p.
Making small changes to break the hash checking can be defeated though. You only need a few pieces of a media file to identify it with certainty. And you can create a signature in a way that is offset neutral. Suppose for every unique x bytes whereby the hash matches a specific constant for the rightmost n bits (determined by file size), you recorded the following y bytes. Those strings of y bytes form the signature. Signatures can be matched with only a few strings in common between them.
But then, people could always re-encode or encrypt their files.
> Can P2P Filter Copyrighted Content?
Well, the Internet is based on TCP/IP, which is a P2P network architecture.
So if the Internet can filter content, then by definition, so can P2P. It is trivially obvious that the technology can support this.
> P2P networks could (if they wanted to) use "fingerprinting" ...
Well, people could (if they wanted to) respect the copyrights of rich media conglomerates.
You can ask all the hypothetical questions you want. But is there anyone who seriously believes that people want their P2P networks to be crippled with DRM?
This topic seems pointless to me. Is there any substance here for those of us who choose to focus on the feasible?
ya I just meant that those porn high traffic restricted nodes would just be left off the server lists cause ppl would catch on.
this'll be an intresting year with microsoft loading on tons of DRM and linux maturing as a mainstream desktop. It's funny how the two go hand in hand.
they must know that works were not copyrighted
This one always sticks in my craw. My understanding of current copyright law says that basically every original composition of anything (music, pictures, stories, whatever) is copyrighted the second it is created. If I write some silly nonsense rhyme on a cocktail napkin tonight, it's copyrighted. If I draw a circle on my arm with a BIC pen, it's copyrighted. Until such time as I explicitly state "this work is in the public domain", or the copyright expires (haha), it remains copyrighted. And me putting my file up on Kazaa for sharing doesn't automatically revoke my copyrights, either, no more so than putting up a work online. Copyright notices, the little R or C in a circle - all of that serves only as a reminder. Stuff is still copyrighted regardless.
Am I wrong, or are we using the definition of copyright that only includes works owned by mass content producers?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Maybe that's why WinMX is taking so damn long to come out... their implementation of DRM... //didn't RTFA
You know, every time I've ever seen someone who described themself as a technologist describe a hypothetical system, I've been disappointed.
What the hell is a technologist *supposed* to be, anyhow, and why are so many of them imbeciles?
When your file is blocked, simply change one bit of the file. The hash while change, thus defeating their so called security
CopySense by Audible Magic. I make these things. They listen to network traffic, identify audio file types, decode them to audio, and compare them with a database of audio fingerprints.
http://www.audiblemagic.com/copysense_appliance.ht ml
They don't use hashes -- they use fingerprints, which allow for much fuzzier matches. You might also note that they don't check encoded files, they check the audio stream. And though it reduces the capacity, it is possible to scan zipped files.
It can't scan a fully-loaded 1000 Mbit connection, but what is your actual Internet connection speed? 2 Mbits? 10 Mbits? Do you really think that it's unreasonable to scan this much data in real time?
Then again, it runs a FreeBSD, so linux users will probably claim that it doesn't exist.
This fascinating paper (also available in easy-to-read MS Word format) postulates that any real attempt at suppression will lead to a samizdat-like interlinking of P2P nets, each comprising a small group of people who trust each other. That ``web of trust'' will still get the info through.
They'll have to try harder than that.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
In which case they have one of the few examples of a quite legitimate monopoly (I have a monopoly on being me), and they are not overpricing their product, they are pricing it at a fair market price. (directly controled by the demand, ie what an 8 year old can persuade their parents to pay fo r the latest whoeveritis single).
You might not think it is worth what it says on the ticket, but then you aren't buying it so it doesn't matter to you what it says on the ticket.
Other people can make music, but can they make studio quality recordings? Can they distribute that music effectively? Can they sell it or get people to buy merchandise or go to concerts?
Studio quality recordings can be made if you have the money. They is no monopoly on studio equipment, especially these days when technology has gotten (relatively) cheap. Distribution is surely what we are talking about, distribution is easy, so much so that any old 8 year old can distribute stuff they rip off so widely that the RIAA are worried. Merchendising is an alternative to selling music, not part of it.
But yes, labels provide important services to artists in the form of promotion, access to equipment, subsidising live performances etc. This is why artists sign with labels, and in turn is why stiffing the labels by illegal distribution is not an attack on the men in suits (who will be payed anyway), but on the artists.
Labels act as venture capital companies, management consultancies and marketing arms for artists.
The less profitable it becomes to sell the third Foobar album and associated tat to the fan base they have used used the label's money to build up, the less the label will be able to justifiably risk on the next act who turns up at their door. In turn that means they will concentrate more on churning out more of the same from an ever less interesting Foobar and manufacturing bad Foobar clones.
(There must be a band called Foobar out there, so appologies, I wasn't talking about you:-)).
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
More than that, all you have to do is encrypt the file (as a zip or a tar or a rar or whatever) and put the key in the filename. If your file is spotted and blocked, you just re-encrypt with a new key. The encryption doesn't have to be great, you're not really trying to stop anyone from reading the file. It's just quick and dirty obfuscation to get it past the hash filters.
Of course if the filters can pick the password out and decrypt the file before checking it, then some sort of obfuscation for the password will also be necessary, but that's not hard to do, and it'll slow down automated filters a lot more than it'll slow down wan^H^H^Hconsumers.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Suddenly its only the RIAA and MPAA that have copyrights. This is NOT the law! Whenever you play notate or film something you have the copyright to it. If you require more protection you send $25 to the U.S. Copyright office and fill out the form and send the stuff in,then it is a registered copyright. My music is copyrighted, I own the copyrights and I dont mind if people share my music as long as they dont try to claim that they created it and try in some way to market it. I want people to hear my music, the RIAA does not speak for me, nor many others. If you enjoy my music you can take it at http://celestial-image.com
http://wiki.invisiblenet.net/iip-wiki?I2P
http://i2p.dnsalias.net/
http://i2p.dnsalias.net/i2p/
http://www.invisiblenet.net/i2p/