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Software To Stop Song Trading

Shippy writes "Palisade Systems is about to launch new software that can identify and block copyrighted songs as they are being traded online. However, the article fails to mention that it will also stop legal song downloads. The software blocks anything that's copyrighted, whether you already own the song in another format or not. Here's some snippets from the article: 'If installed in a university, for example, it could look inside students' emails, instant messages and peer-to-peer transfers...', and 'Jacobson said the identification process would not work on an encrypted network, such as is used in several newer file-swapping programs. However, the Palisade software could also act to block those applications from using the network altogether.' Great."

595 comments

  1. And, thusly... by McCrapDeluxe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Encrypted protocols increase in popularity.

    1. Re:And, thusly... by NtroP · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The article claims that the software could block encrypted communications, apparently indescriminantly. I wonder how that would affect legit transfers like scp, ssh or vpn connections.

      I'm probably talking out of my butt here, but what if, instead of the entire "stream" being encrypted, just the "content" was, with a one-time, mutually agreed upon key? How would their software know the difference? It would never have the same "fingerprint" twice. Would it just block any traffic that looked like random noise?

      I can see this software pissing a lot of sysadmins off - could you ever be absolutely sure those "ghosts" you've been chasing weren't this software being over zealous?

      The parent is right though. This will just prompt those who wish to trade on P2P to take it to the next level. Especially now that the "Big Five" labels are trying to force Apple to charge $2.50 per song! If that happens I will stop buying songs from iTMS and say "screw the bastards, release the hounds", P2P here I come!

      --
      "terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
    2. Re:And, thusly... by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's no way that any piece of software would be able to peek into encrypted sessions... so the only option this software would have would be a "deny all".

      Seems like this could be useful as something a college could threaten installing unless P2P violators knock it off... but would be trading off quite a bit of legit functionality to ensure zero violations.

    3. Re:And, thusly... by Curly-Locks · · Score: 0

      The real question is this, whether IP will continue alone, or will IP networks get superceded a superstructure containing secure trusted authentication. If this happens, will the secure layer allow the transmission of encrpted data. Well, for some business purposes it is pretty critical to have encryption, and for some other business purposes encrption is not wanted. So, you have 2 networks, one allows encrypted and one only allows non encrypted information. The you change a fee on the "free" network to increase the cost of data transfer. None of this will however prevent the transfer of digital data since 2 billion users will always outsmart 1 million lawyers.

    4. Re:And, thusly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think the question he was asking is how could the software tell if the communication is encrypted.

    5. Re:And, thusly... by Dragoon412 · · Score: 1

      Or more likely (in the short term), .zip, .rar, and other compression methods gain in popularity.

    6. Re:And, thusly... by zenthax · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Isnt SSL also encrypted? So does that mean no more online shopping and banking?

    7. Re:And, thusly... by mibus · · Score: 1

      It can't peek inside encrypted sessions.

      From the Slashdot summary:

      'Jacobson said the identification process would not work on an encrypted network, such as is used in several newer file-swapping programs.'

    8. Re:And, thusly... by Hinde01 · · Score: 1

      I hope to god that it does not block ssh transfers. My university has a habit of screwing over the computer science department, not to mention the students, and with the way the administration is posturing they might implement this or somethign like it. The computer science department, at which I am preparing for my career, practically runs on ssh. It is the only way I know to access a SPARC machine, as well as the only practical way to compile using our linux lab.

    9. Re:And, thusly... by Nadsat · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes, McCrapDeluze: what you describe is the blowback, the reaction against the controllers.

      Technology tries to liberate. Technology was once thought of as the essence of freedom's revolution itself. Recall Apple/1984... recall www-idealism. Then technology turns against itself and tries to control. Porn regulation, satillite cameras, fingerprints, RIAA server-side 'intellectual property' monitoring. Liberation vs. control. Hacktivists and regulators engaging in battle royal.

      Sure there are always loopholes and entropy... but I fear the capability of technology to regulate and control will become so strong and so automated that only the most astute hacktivists or fleeting script kiddies will find sanctuary, leaving the rest of the populace to graze like sheep on genetic grass.

    10. Re:And, thusly... by kmonsen · · Score: 2, Informative

      And, it would be quite illegal as well, or? I thought that was one of your wonderfull new laws that med cracking codes illegal. So it would be enough to just encrypt it in a simple way, since it is illegal for them to try to decrypt the files.

    11. Re:And, thusly... by hsidhu · · Score: 1

      OK, this is probably far fetched. How about running a deamon lets say on port 80 (since its http and its most popular), ok so lets say this deamon tho doesnt serve up only data for one application. Rather its a application routing deamon, that is to say it knows where ssh is running and where http is running.

      So if i want to connect a ssh server if fire up my ssh client and connect on port 80 and the deamon passes this request to the ssh deamon, at the same time i fire up my browser and connect to port 80 on the same server and the deamon routes the http request to the httpd. Is that possible feasible?

      Been thinking about this since some of the other port restricitng/blocking stories came about.

    12. Re:And, thusly... by cheekyboy · · Score: 0, Troll

      University admins are the biggest pedlers of warez/mp3s I know.

      Them and the staff of departments (the techy geeky ones at least) keep internal servers of Gigs of warez and mp3s. They just keep it within their group.

      Im sure any IT/soft engineer in a university is going to get around any scheme they put in, and the company will always be slow to update the checkers coz they are a normal slow responding business, they arent going to update data files constantly for 1000 diff clients daily.

      --
      Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
    13. Re:And, thusly... by swilver · · Score: 1

      Encrypted protocols, or simply protocols that donot send the data as a stream. A simple way to defeat these filters would probably include sending all odd numbered bytes first... try fingerprinting that :)

    14. Re:And, thusly... by j.bellone · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You see, every college that installs this will just piss off the students in the college. It will eventually prompt someone to write an application (if one isn't already written) to bypass this.

      Look how Napster started... at college.

      --
      I'm f#$king magic!
    15. Re:And, thusly... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      password protected ZIP files already bypass this extremely lame attempt at a program. same as simply inverting the file or Xoring the whole thing with a simple passphrase like RIAASUCKS.

      are the people that make this stuff complete morons? the programmers writing it are certianly telling them that it will not work for any longer than 10-15 seconds before the first work-around is published.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    16. Re:And, thusly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In other words "Hey, lets create a tunnel using http!"

    17. Re:And, thusly... by Clovert+Agent · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Network security devices do this with SSL by proxying the connection so you think you're connecting to the remote site by SSL, but in fact it's only as far as your perimeter, where it's managed (scanned, audited, etc) and sent over a new SSL connection.

      There are lots of ways a P2P app could prevent that from happening of course. But then it might be easier to detect and block outright. Cat and mouse, as always.

    18. Re:And, thusly... by 3terrabyte · · Score: 1

      Are you thinking of the DMCA? Well, you need to be the copyright holder and then sue your offender for attemping to crack your digital protection. Kind of a big undertaking of for a trader going to college, who has already signed the college's TOS.

      --

      Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

    19. Re:And, thusly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *cough* IPv6 anyone?

  2. wouldn't it be simpler by tsunamifirestorm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    to spend money and give students a paid subscription for music downloads (some colleges have) then spend money tracking file sharing?

    1. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mod parent up.
      If my school did this, I would never
      do my occasional "download a popular song
      just because it's catchy this week" thing.
      That's the only illegal music downloading I do.

      Ooh, there should be a liscenced porn archive too,
      then I'd be completely legal!

    2. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I attend a Big 10 School, and while
      interviewing for a tech-related position with
      the head of dorm network-type stuff, I was told
      that well over 90% of the internet traffic (barring worms and the like) can be attributed
      to file-sharing. With the tightness of funds
      that today's universities are dealing with,
      maybe that bandwidth money could be better spent.

    3. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by FlipmodePlaya · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, it would be cheaper to do neither. The U of Rochester, up here, is doing that, and they are under constant criticism for the program. People tend not to like money being spent on music for others (Windows users who live on campus) as opposed to their education, after they had paid for the latter. I don't see why a University is liable for the actions taking place over its network anyway... Make the students agree not to do it, so you can't be blamed, and let the RIAA hang them if they do.

    4. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by FsG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Simpler, perhaps, but not a particularly good idea. What gives my college the right to decide what kind of music I'm going to listen to, and whom I'm going to buy it from? Despite common belief, not all music is owned by the RIAA, and I certainly wouldn't want a part of my tuition going into the pockets of these monopolists.

      --
      I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
    5. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Alsee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      spend money and give students a paid subscription for music downloads

      Pointless so long as the RIAA refuses to sell anything except DRM crippled crap.

      Even if the college did jack up their fees and force such a subscription on me, I'd still take free non-crippled files (P2P) in prefference to "free" (pre-paid) crippled files.

      If they offered ordinary MP3's they'd attract more customers. The RIAA's refusal to sell a non-crippled product is purely self destructive. It's not like they've ever kept a single song from reaching P2P by refusing to sell MP3's. Using DRM only accomplishes one thing - driving away customers.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    6. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by sadangel · · Score: 1

      The trouble is, no one music download service has everything students are apt to want. I listen to some pretty obscure music that isn't likely to be supported by any major download service. It's called college rock for a reason. As a result, someone like me might be prone to resort to less legally sound methods to get their music. So the school would be back where it started having to decide if it's worth spending even more money to try to preserve their bandwidth for acedemic pursuits by force or let it slide and risk the RIAA breathing down their necks, threatening legal action, and bringing spurious lawsuits that they just don't have the resources to defend themselves from regardless of the merit.

    7. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      With the tightness of funds that today's universities are dealing with, maybe that bandwidth money could be better spent.

      Every college's Terms of Service says that their computer systems are for "academic use only" or some similar phrase, in part because they have to in order to get grant funding to pay for their bandwidth. You might not remember signing that TOS, but trust me, every student at a college has signed something when they accepted admission that basically binds you to everything the school ever puts out as a "rule" whether you bother to read it or not.

      So, forget the dream that they have to give you totally unrestricted bandwidth as part of the price of your dorm room. They never promised that to you, so if it goes away, tough.

      Colleges have mostly played dumb that P2P has been going on, trying to claim that they're just a common carrier that can't really coprehend what's fair and what's foul over their network. Once they start trying to block copyrighted content, they'll start becoming liable for whatever slips through their checkpoint.

      So... that's why any blocks we're going to see going up are going to be whole-protocol blocks or bandwidth throttles. They won't be blocking in the name of copyright protection, they'll be blocking in the name of bandwidth protection...

    8. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by UID1000000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is a good point. Frankly make them sign a contract or a LOI stating that if they do anything illegal that they have to indemify the university of any illegal actions and take full recourse for the aforementioned.

      But if 90% of their traffic is P2P why not make it all internal traffic thus eliminating bandwidth costs? If there is a way to do this for instance block the ports that P2P programs use, hell block all the ports except 80 and then setup a VPN client with all ports open but restrict traffic to being only internal. Then the bandwidth load is reduced by 90% and the traffic (which would probably cut down) might come down by as much as 60-70%.

      If new items need to be introduced to the P2P networks on the campus then the students should have to go out and use their own, their parents or some cafes' then they can bring it back into the closed school network.

      What do you think of that?

      --
      UID 1000000 is just around the corner.

    9. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by alienw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      At least at my school, ResLife runs its operations on its own separate financial account. Therefore, all of that bandwidth is paid for directly out of the pockets of those who live in the res halls. Therefore, they have absolutely no right to bitch about how that bandwidth is being used. I suspect the situation is exactly the same at your school, too, and the department is just trying to be greedy.

    10. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by packeteer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your recomendations lead me to believe you dont understand how internet traffic works. Becuase of the nature of traffic that real academic work uses (basically all ports/protocols/speeds are needed) you cant simply block it all to webpages.

      --
      unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
    11. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by FlipmodePlaya · · Score: 1

      Well, the bandwith point is good. 90% of the bandwith being for P2P sounds a bit high, but lets go with that figure. How much of that is from illegal music? At 3-4MB a song, they don't make that much of a dent even when being downloaded by the thousands. It seems more likely to me that it is from mainly larger file transfers. Kids downloading software (not always warez), videos (not always bootlegs), encyclopedia length PDFs and other eBook type things, etc. If they were to block network access to P2Ps, students might not be able to get those files necessary to their schooling. Imagine some kid who wants to download Debian, some 12 discs, to increase his productivity, but can't and is forced to use lesser sotware on his current Windows install (Linux has some good math/science/writing/etc. software that college students rely on). There are HTML mirrors for that, so its not the best example, but I'm sure you see what I mean.

      'Preventing' music trasnfers seems to hurt the people who don't share as much as the people that do. Be it funding being cut to more important things, or blocking access to legal files. It might be cheapest to subsidize the bandwith payments with money saved from trying to stop file sharing.

    12. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by UID1000000 · · Score: 1

      well my understanding of proxies, VPNs, and ports overall is somewhat limit. I do have some exposure to these at my work (indirectly).

      at my office we can't utilize any programs that access the internet through certain ports. my understanding is that they watch the traffic and when they see a certain port range boom they block it assuming it's P2P or IM client or something new. so what i'm assuming is that indeed only port 1080 and 80 are open but again your right I don't know too much about the primary web viewing ports.

      please feel free to elaborate though. i'd like to understand more. thx.

      --
      UID 1000000 is just around the corner.

    13. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Bullshit. Most universities have separated their residence hall network from their academic network in some manner (many have a completely separate ISP for their ResNet). So grant money has nothing to do with it.

      We've moved beyond the "you can only use the computer network in your residence hall for academic purposes." Internet access is an expected utility for today's students, not a generous gift from the university or a special privilege. It's no different than electricity or telephone access. We don't place ridiculous limits on those services (imagine if we only let students talk to the their professor or advisor over the phone!) and we shouldn't (and many don't) place them on Internet access. Besides, how in the hell do you define "academic use?"

      You're absolutely right that most universities block P2P and similar due simply for economic reasons. Many universities tried to increase bandwidth to keep up with student demand but it's proven impossible. And none of us want to play copyright cops. It's not our damn job to protect someone else's copyright.

    14. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i agree that the whole P2P issue is way overrated and it should be moved away from mainstream. what can you do with coked up executives though? just wait until they hit rehab.

      bandwidth is a commodity it's as simple as that. a few major uni's have started a 1G backbone for their networks and have direct bandwidth from major players like ATT, VW, etc but it's still costly.

      we don't want the price of uni to go up but bottom line is that it's going to either way.

      but back to what you said. i don't see music being that big of a consumption, 6-8 mg at the most for 160Kbps quality depending on the length of the song. the following can take up bandwidth though, torrent (1 to 1 searching not leeching), distros, movies (porn, education, whatever), and ebooks (i've seen some that are 40-60MB a piece). Kazaa and DonkeyFile are really lagging in selection lately and it seems the only great place to get anything is torrents anymore.

      again torrents can consume more BW than /.

    15. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by jrockway · · Score: 3, Funny

      > you cant simply block it all to webpages

      My school does. The internet is essentially useless. SSH in from your home computer (because you don't want to cart your tower home just so you can use eclipse; my computers at home won't run it quickly but they run X fine) and forward X? AHaahahahaaha that's a security hole!

      CVS from sourceforge? Ahahahaha that's a security hole!

      Check your off-campus email? Ahahahaha that's a security hole!

      Vist a site running on port 8081? Ahahaha that's a security hole!

      I'm also required to run an anti-virus program* on my Linux box. Linux is a big virus-spreading OS these days.

      * Actually, I'm required to lie and say that I'm running Anti-Virus software. I'm not. You know why? BECAUSE THERE AREN'T LINUX VIRUSES ;) (Ooh but you can be a vector for transmitting windows viruses. Block email then, that's where all the fucking viri/viruses come from these days)

      Yeah sorry. I'll be so glad to be out of this place (where students are expelled from privately writing a rap song about the math program) in 2 months.

      --
      My other car is first.
    16. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, there are bandwidth throttles. Very good ones, in fact. If you download more than X megabytes in a day, you get moved to a slower pipe. Keep it up, an even slower. Eventually, there's no way in hell you can do anything but email. Much smarter than turning it off.

    17. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by DarwinDan · · Score: 1

      I take serious issue with these institutions (namely Penn State) that take student money and divert it to services that students have not authorized the institution to do so. What if a student doesn't even own a computer? Should that student still have to pay for the service through their tuition?

      --
      $DEITY bless $NATION
    18. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by melikamp · · Score: 1

      That is pretty darn useless :p

      What school is that?

    19. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Brandybuck · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Frankly, it would be much easier to simply not give the students free internet access. Make them buy their own account, just like everyone else does in the real world. Then crack down hard on inappropriate use of the university network. I fail to understand why students and universities need special exceptions to the rules the rest of have no problems with.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    20. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It takes all of ten minutes to add a feature to a web server that would allow it to become a proxy for a P2P server if sent the right request. Start by sending an extended OPTIONS request to the server. If it supports a message body in the OPTIONS request, it will respond to the request by answering whatever the client asked. If it doesn't, it will reject the request. Either way, you immediately know if the server supports that functionality. It's kind of like the CAN/CAN'T/WILL/WON'T handshaking for a telnet connection.

      Now you have a mechanism by which any web server could be a P2P server in disguise. Unless you're willing to proxy every HTTP request and reject all encrypted https transactions, there's no way to block such a P2P mechanism.

      For what it's worth, I strongly disagree with people downloading lots of music for reasons other than A. academic research, B. music software testing, or C. to see if they like it before buying (or tossing) it. That having been said, people do have a right to do those three things. They also have a right to use P2P for other non-infringing reasons. It is unfortunate that we have to take the bad with the good, but in that regard, P2P is no different from any other technology---it can be used for good or for bad, and blocking it outright is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

      (Remaining anonymous for obvious reasons.)

    21. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by eyeye · · Score: 2, Funny

      They should run an NNTP server then all the students can download from inside the network. That would really save bandwidth.

      --
      Bush and Blair ate my sig!
    22. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's what we're doing at my school. Internally we're wide open, externally the most common P2P ports are throttled and students don't get public IP's. However we have a DC++ hub running internally on the 100Mb backbone and we share freely without worrying about lawsuits. It's rather nice and there are some very eclectic tastes here on campus.

    23. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A lot of things would be simpler if uni students and FOSS zealots didnt think it was their God given right to steal other peoples property.

    24. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by nzkbuk · · Score: 1

      You've got the idea backwards. They don't watch and block. If it's a router / NAT box then it simply blocks all ports EXCEPT the ones specified.

      If it's a proxy, then it simply doesn't listen to any ports except the ones specified.

      Net result, You tell it what you want to allow and block everything else.

    25. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      sut your computer to accept SSH connections on :80

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    26. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by packeteer · · Score: 2, Informative

      two examples of linux anti virus follow/;

      http://www.centralcommand.com/linux_products.html

      http://www.drweb-online.com/en/index.asp
      (included in some distros such as mandrake 9.2)

      --
      unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
    27. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by DuncanE · · Score: 1

      "academic use only"

      Hmmmm...

      I think Im going to do some "research" in to how quickly I can download the new metallica album".

    28. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by echucker · · Score: 1

      U of R isn't the only one that spends money on something all students don't necessarily want. SUNY Brockport had a "BSG" (Brockport Student Government) fee is a required portion of your registration fee. It paid for club funding and various activites about campus. Since they were to broaden student background or some such, it was required. Didn't matter if you never partook of the things they funded.

      Then there was the parking fee... Almost the same dollar amount per semester, but only applied to those who actually purchased a parking sticker. Their reason for not including the parking budget as part of your registration costs? Not everyone uses it.

      Nice double standard if you ask me.

    29. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by rhsanborn · · Score: 1

      Well, what if the RIAA wants the online file trades to fail? No offense to potential artists here, but if I were to go back and rebuy all of my music through an online service, I would have bought half of it. Bands today tend to write good songs and neglect to put together a decent album. It follows that people will then only buy the songs they like and I'm willing to bet that the RIAA wants to avoid that at all costs.

    30. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      This is a good point. Frankly make them sign a contract or a LOI stating that if they do anything illegal that they have to indemify the university of any illegal actions and take full recourse for the aforementioned.

      IANAL, but I was under the impression that in order to indemnify someone, you need to have the funds to be able to back up that promise. Certainly, very few college students could do so, and that would make such an agreement useless. Then again, I might be speaking out my ass.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    31. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by hedge_death_shootout · · Score: 1

      Maybe this obscure music is available for purchase on CD - crazy idea I know!
      Would it work? :-)

    32. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by cloudmaster · · Score: 1

      How much do you think it costs to live in a dorm? Is that really just rent? Nope - it includes other services. What about tuition? Does that all go to salaries and building upkeep? Nope - it pays for network connectivity. Students *do* pay for their connectivity - it's just hidden and/or much faster than what the typical home user can get.

    33. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Debillitatus · · Score: 1
      I don't know if you should take serious issue with such things, because then you'll overload your self-righteousness circuits. There are tons of services universities make students pay for regardless of whether the particular student uses them.

      Hell, think of it like taxes. I'm guessing you don't agree with every use the government puts your tax money to...

      --

      Come on, give it up, that's

    34. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by jratcliffe · · Score: 1

      "Despite common belief, not all music is owned by the RIAA, and I certainly wouldn't want a part of my tuition going into the pockets of these monopolists."

      Sorry to be pedantic, but this doesn't make sense. If they're monopolists, then they own all music. If they don't own all music, then they're not monopolists. Can't have your rhetorical cake and eat it too.

    35. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Using DRM only accomplishes one thing - driving away customers.

      No, DRM only acts as an incentive for people to break it. Then they can go to congress and say "See we tried to protect our property, give us 100 beellion more dollars", OF YOUR TAX MONEY by the way.

    36. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Not every student lives in dorms. Yet every student pays tuition. Dorm students to pay for their connectivity, but they're paying so low prices for it they're getting crap service. Sort of like that crap mystery meat (zebra?) they serve in the cafeteria.

      The university's thinking is "we already have a campus network, why not just plug in the dorms?" You're being thrown a bone. And you in turn are making a tragedy of the commons. The solution is simple: separate the university campus network from the dorms.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    37. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by singularity · · Score: 2, Informative

      Reverse SSH tunnelling is your friend.

      I have not had problems checking mail from anywhere.

      --
      - (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
    38. Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Rich+Klein · · Score: 1
      It's no different than electricity or telephone access.
      Are we talking about students who pay for their internet access just as they pay their electric and telephone bills, or do they get all that stuff included in their tuition these days?
      --
      -Rich
  3. WiFi. The 3rd Internet by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I guess it's time to start bridging those WiFi networks around the world. If you can't beat em, fuck em. I start file sharing over WiFi networks. I look forward to the days of local BBSes again. (WiFi BBS?)

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
    1. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Lord+Asbestos · · Score: 1

      Yeah, not to mention the fact that it's not below RIAA to unleash some virii onto your WiFi network. Only way to change their minds is with a bomb, methinks. Or else someone needs to write a worm to kill the anti-share software. But that person won't be me :(

      --
      "Always outnumbered, never out-gunned..."
    2. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by AndroidonPPC · · Score: 1

      actually, if someone can figure out how to make a wi-fi repeater / router the thickness of paper powered by solar, you could flyer for a band and create a Wi-fi network to share the music on.... ALL IN ONE!! Perhaps I just best stick with my flying monkey p2p network...

    3. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by name773 · · Score: 2, Funny

      ah, you must be an American
      it would be far more interesting and fun to write a program to circumvent their measures as many others have found

    4. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by dont_think_twice · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Posting this concept on Slashdot is easy. Doing it is a whole different matter ...

      Mod the parrent down as a troll... nothing to see here.


      I love it. Pure, honest intellectual fascism. Basically, you say "Your suggestion is impractical, so you should be modded down, and nobody should even see your idea."

      I don't have any problems with your objections to his idea, but why insist that he should be modded troll for saying something that you disagree with?

    5. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The best way to make this happen is to put a product on the market which enables it. Basically someone needs to start a company to make the best darn tootin'est wireless router around. It needs to do ipv4 and ipv6, support mesh networking, and have nice common connectors for its antennas. Almost all the functionality you need is present in Linux and BSD kernels themselves, so there is a variety of software you could run on the thing.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Why? If you don't like your ISP, get another. If you're on a university, buy your own damned account that they can't touch. It's simple really.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    7. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by lazybeam · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Hey there are wireless meshes starting up everywhere. I am running one in my city of 100k people - there are already 10 nodes after a few months. The uni here has always blocked all "external" traffic and has only 3MB/day allowance for the proxy server.

      --
      --
      no sig for you. come back one year.
    8. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by hazem · · Score: 1

      Universities usually control all the communications access to the dorms. For example, universities have a monopoly on the phone lines going into their dormrooms. They use this monopoly to charge extra-high rates for long distance. (My university really hates that kids now have cellphones with unlimited long-distance. There was a huge revenue hit with that.)

      When you live in the dorm, you can't just have another carrier handle your line, so you can't do DSL. You can't have another cable company handle your cable conneciton, so no cable-broadband. You may be able to do point-to-point wireless through a wireless ISP, but the Uni probably prohibits the antenna you'd need.

      In short, you only get the service the uni provides, unless you can afford to move to your own place.

    9. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by torokun · · Score: 1

      right.... that's why i do everything i can to evade the law too. That's 1337, man...

    10. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Lehk228 · · Score: 3, Informative

      your university only allows 3 Megs a Day!?!? I'd be packing my bags and make sure to let the administration know why i was leaving.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    11. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      The obvious question is "why don't you move out of the dorms?" Not having been in college for two decades, things might have changed. But when I was there only a small percentage of the students actually lived in the dorms, and only during their freshman year. Most students did NOT live in the dorms.

      Yes, it could very well be a pain in the butt. But if you're so damned concerned about this alleged injury to your unalienable rights, a pain in the butt is a small price to pay.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    12. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      No, the point is that I don't want to be labeled guilty untill proven inocent in the court of law. It should remain the other way around.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    13. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      this is a great idea, and many people have been thinking about it for a long time now. it is NOT impractical. all that is needed is simplification of the tools involved. the argument that the average user wont be able to set this up is easily solved. all somone has to do is write up a program, similar to many of teh file sharing ones out there, that also auto configure a wifi connection.

      now here is the good part. with a big wifi mesh the cost of an internet connection = 0. no more bowing to big cable and phone monopolies for high speed access. (funny how anyone can porvide dial up/slow service, but the really fast isp's just happened to fall into the big telco infrastructure)
      secondly nobody could track what you are doing. the only accurate way of locating a radio signal is triangulation, not warchalking, lol. this would be impossible with hundreds, even thousands of simultaneous transmissions. even if there was a way to zero in on a particular node, a counter measure could be programmed, causeing other nearby nodes transmitting signals to cause confustion. somthing like this would happen anyway, as a wifi mesh similar to the web would have many, many repeater servers. ahh the days of bbs's and free long distance could come back. this time however, instead of 0 day files, we would be getting movies, albums, even video games before they hit the stores, like certain newsgroups out there.
      big record coompanies, telcos, govt yesmen getting nothing? hope i live to see the day. mod this parent up, it is not only insightfull but visionary.

    14. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

      The dorm won't let you have a company lay cable and knock holes in walls - so you can't get anything better than phone modem service from any provider other than whom the owner of the dorm sets up for you to use.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    15. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

      When I went to college, this wasn't an option. The rule was that anyone under a certain age must be living in the dorms until they had built up 60 credits (after sophomore year, typically). There were special exceptions for people who's family already lived nearby (and thus the student already lived in the city), and people who were married, but the typical 19-20 year old freshman or sophomore was required to live in the dorms. (And anyone living in the dorms was required to have a food plan, meaning the food service was not beholden to its customers - they HAD to pay for the service, like it or not. The quality of the food service is pretty much what you'd expect it to be under those circumstances.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    16. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Penguin+Follower · · Score: 1

      Hmm... maybe I should put a wifi card in my BBS.... :)

    17. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's Lenin's birthday, not Stalin's. You fucking moron.

    18. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "What is with the average /.er's obsession with fascism? Communism is just as associated with the opression of ideas as is fascism."

      Dude. The communism you're thinking of, the Soviet kind, was nearer to fascism than it was to actual Communism. Labelling the soviet regime as communist was Stalinist propoganda; something the US was happy to propogate because it suited their purposes too.

      "Why not call him Stalin while you're at it?"

      Because Stalin wasn't a communist not a fascist.
      Dude. Get a history book.

    19. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      i>I look forward to the days of local BBSes again. (WiFi BBS?)

      why dont you try it! That article here about the portable hotspot got me thinking so I built one for my backpack out of a broken laptop and a wi-fi card that can be put into a accesspoint mode in linux. I set up a webserver and ftp server on it put the content there and made it "open" coupled with one of those battery-slabs they sell for giving your laptop 8+ hours of battery life I now at LUG meeting and other places have tons of fun.

      the "BBS" is running myphpnuke and some custom stuff to allow file and info searching.

      Works great. yes it's a tad heavy at 16 pounds.

      nocatauth tricks make every computer automatically re-route to your internal pages for everything typed at the client's keyboard. so telling peole where to go is not needed.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    20. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The dorm won't let you have a company lay cable and knock holes in walls - so you can't get anything better than phone modem service from any provider other than whom the owner of the dorm sets up for you to use.

      Heard of DSL?

    21. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by aminorex · · Score: 1

      So go to a different university.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    22. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by Eraser_ · · Score: 1

      Thats hilarious. I mean heck, view a couple pages of slashdot in "nested" view or load any news website. Heck, download windowsupdates. I wouldn't even consider myself as on a network at that point.

      Some of the updates are 3 megs in themselves, couple that with a few hundred K of the windows update website and catalog. You sure this "uni" isn't scientology or in need of a 5$/semester rate hike?

    23. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

      My tax money had already paid for part of the tuition at this one, like it or not. Besides, college isn't as portable as some services and products. Changing your mind and going with a different "company" partway through means losing credits in the transfer. It's not like switching brands of cola or something simple like that.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    24. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

      Heard of PBX's? The dorm usually isn't wired up the same way a person's house is.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    25. Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet by lazybeam · · Score: 1

      OK I haven't used it in a while, it's now 15MB every Monday and Friday, rolling over to a maximum of 50MB. (So effectively 30MB/week)

      clicky

      But most people don't live on campus, and so it's dialup to their crappy servers, it's much better to get Dodo "unlimited hours" for $10/month.

      I have been using ADSL for years, really only use the USQconnect if I need to (eg their wireless network - one of Australia's biggest mirror sites (mirror.aarnet.edu.au) is not counted in the quota - this is even faster than my 1.5Mbit ADSL.)

      Oh, and they are increasing fees (HECS) next year for new students, by 20%.

      --
      --
      no sig for you. come back one year.
  4. Eck by Lacota · · Score: 1

    I dont think this'll go over well, as there are SOME legal uses for MP3s.

    --
    It is not a god that would do evil biddings, but only a mortal and its limited knowledge would let such atrocities exist
    1. Re:Eck by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 1

      If you RTFSummary, you'd notice that it says "Copyrighted".

      --
      Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
    2. Re:Eck by mark-t · · Score: 1
      Copyrighted or no... there are legal uses for mp3's.

      An artist can copyright his own work and choose to release it to the public under the terms he dictates. It's still copyrighted, he still owns the work, but it can still be legal to distribute it if the copyright owner says you can.

    3. Re:Eck by Lacota · · Score: 1

      Yes, but copyright does not mean it's illigal, I have several mp3's that are copyrighted, and I have legal use of them. As a) I was the creator of the actual content or b) I have written permission from the Garage/Pub band to distribute said MP3s.

      --
      It is not a god that would do evil biddings, but only a mortal and its limited knowledge would let such atrocities exist
    4. Re:Eck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      RTFS again ;)

      well it's not really in the summery just because they are copyrighted doesn't meean its illegal to use ;P. Think it a song was done and then put under a creative commons licence that allows trading but not selling. Then it is legal but copyrighted means the thing will block it thats why the summary has it as a caviot (love that word wish i could spell it ;P)

    5. Re:Eck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Not in the summery? What about the fallery, wintery, or springery?

    6. Re:Eck by l810c · · Score: 2, Informative
      From the article:
      seeking audio "fingerprints" that could be compared with information in Audible Magic's database

      I think they will get a database from the RIAA of copyrighted songs to compare against. I doubt garage bands will be in the database.

    7. Re:Eck by clarkcox3 · · Score: 1

      All music is copyrighted by somebody (at least until that copyright expires), whether they assert their rights or not. If I hum into a microphone, and record the resulting sound, that is copyrighted by me.

      --
      There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
    8. Re:Eck by LostCluster · · Score: 1

      An artist can copyright his own work and choose to release it to the public under the terms he dictates. It's still copyrighted, he still owns the work, but it can still be legal to distribute it if the copyright owner says you can.

      Of course, in the case of anybody with a major-label CD deal, that's the RIAA-member-owned label who is the copyright holder, not the artist.

    9. Re:Eck by djr1952 · · Score: 0, Troll
      Well then the RIAA database will just say that ever possible numeric sequence from one zero(0) to a stream of all one(1)s is a copyrighted song and therefore should be BLOCKED.

      That's what the RIAA is after anyway isn't it? Unless they get payment any form of commincation is ellegal.

      --

      -- DonJr --

    10. Re:Eck by Kevin_Peters · · Score: 1

      Wrong. The copyright is owned by the one that filed the papers, be it the artist or the label. Myself, I have all my music copyrighted to me. I can do whatever the hell I want to do with it. The copyright is there so that I can dictate what others can do with it. If I'm making it available for free, then I'll be DAMNED if someone else is going to make money off it.

      --
      The music is all around us. I can hear it. Can you?
    11. Re:Eck by m3000 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Heh, some universities (cough*mine*cough) don't care if there are legal uses. We were the subject of this wonderful article from the beginning of the year about schools to avoid.

      Basically all file sharing programs are blocked, along with all bittorrent (say goodbye to Linux ISO's and any other legitimate use) and most recently they've blocked off IRC. Yes, all of IRC. It still works on the campus wireless network, but you can't get any wireless signal in the dorms where these restrictions take place. As much as I love the dorm life, I'm getting an apartment next year.

      So legal uses or not, if someone thinks it'll solve a problem, they don't care what else gets in the way.

    12. Re:Eck by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 1

      All music is copyrighted by somebody (at least until that copyright expires), whether they assert their rights or not.

      You can specifically disclaim any copyright on any of your works, though. I used to put this notice on some of the software that I wrote: "This program is truly public domain. You can use it, hack it, change it, give it away, sell it or anything else that makes your little heart go pitter-patter."

      Seems pretty clear to me.

      --
      If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
    13. Re:Eck by Suidae · · Score: 1

      Wait.. So, the RIAA is going to help us block all their copyrighted content off the network... So all I'll get will be the stuff indy artists want to share, and I won't have to listed to RIAA music anymore...

      Tell me again, how is this bad?

  5. Encrypt everything by Zorak+Man · · Score: 5, Informative
    --

    404 .sig not found
    1. Re:Encrypt everything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You brought up something interesting there.
      How many "encrypted" file-sharing tools are there?

      * Waste
      * Mnet
      * Freenet
      * Entropy

      From what I know most of these are either not very popular (Waste, Mnet) or not suited to distribute large files (Freenet, Entropy).

      Am I misinformed?

    2. Re:Encrypt everything by Ezel · · Score: 3, Informative

      MUTE

      Looks promising but not ready for primetime yet.

      --
      Prosp long and liver.
    3. Re:Encrypt everything by phats+garage · · Score: 0, Insightful

      The last time I tried entrophy, it was still small and the encryption was trivial and non robust. As much as I'd like to see a c based freenet workalike, I'd hazard a guess that entrophy's still an experiment at this point.

  6. Possibly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Jacobson's web site: here

  7. rar by giraphe · · Score: 1, Informative

    So, what if you .rar the file?

    1. Re:rar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or tarballs. those are fun. heck what if you cut off 1 second of the begining and end then it's not the same file.. how exactly are they making sure it's copyrighted? what if we all started using AAC. suddenly MP3 detection is useless.

    2. Re:rar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OGG!!!

  8. Hmm... by LordK3nn3th · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How does this effect pay-for programs like iTunes?

    Also, is this RIAA-only songs being blocked, or other songs? Copyrighted doesn't always mean "undistributable". Someone may hold the copyright to something but may actually let people distribute it-- am I wrong there?

    --

    ---
    Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
    1. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's "affect", not "effect".

      Isn't it past your bedtime? It's a school night.

    2. Re:Hmm... by darkewolf · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, you are correct.

      I write 'music'. I legally own the copyright, but for the most part I give it away free. Eventually going to press a CD or two but I'd prefer people listen to it, and that does mean filesharing is fine :)

      --
      "That is not dead which can eternal lie...."
      Nimheil
    3. Re:Hmm... by spellraiser · · Score: 1

      Hmmm ... just how easy would it be to thwart this software? Let me see; probably about as easy as thwarting the filtering that Napster installed as a consequence of their legal troubles. Namely, to simply change random characters in the song titles; for example, by using l33t sp34k.

      Add the already mentioned issues with legit downloads and inability to work over encrypted networks, and the usefulness of this software starts to seem pretty limited ...

      --
      I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
    4. Re:Hmm... by maxbang · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, dude. This actually looks at the sounds of files being transferred and compares them to an existing database of songs. It's not as simple as adding random characters.

      --
      I also reply below your current threshold.
    5. Re:Hmm... by ciroknight · · Score: 1

      more interesting, why not create some kind of transparent mp3 encryption? simply have it encrypt every frame using a signature from the last frame. twarts any kind of detection because the perodicness of the file is destroyed, and would be really simple to implement as a filter inside of the player.

      hmm, maybe I should start my own song selling client, I'll call it iTunes!.. oh wait..

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    6. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      cock holster

      grammar nazi

    7. Re:Hmm... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      may hold the copyright to something but may actually let people distribute it-- am I wrong there?

      If you're wrong, then the GPL is invalid. Someone notify the FSF!

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:Hmm... by TastyWords · · Score: 1

      tosser

    9. Re:Hmm... by Angst+Badger · · Score: 1

      Copyrighted doesn't always mean "undistributable". Someone may hold the copyright to something but may actually let people distribute it-- am I wrong there?

      I hope not, because that's the principle the GPL rests upon.

      All having copyright means is that you get to decide who, if anyone, gets to have a copy. How you parcel that out is up to you. You can grant copies in return for money, or in return for nothing. It's up to you.

      You can also surrender your copyright by casting your work into the public domain, which basically gives everyone a collective copyright to the work.

      --
      Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
    10. Re:Hmm... by j.bellone · · Score: 1

      Heh, that's actually a pretty damn good idea ;).

      --
      I'm f#$king magic!
    11. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Just as long as no one tries to steal the precious HTML source of your website with their evil right clicking, I guess.

    12. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmm.... If I write music and intentionally distribute said music over a P2P network, and the school blocks it while the students might presumably want to listen to it could I sue the school for violation of my right to free speech? They're preventing their students from downloading my 'speech' through what I have established as a legitimate channel. Would public versus private funding come into play? Even better what if I'm a student who's trying to be heard at the school that's blocking the P2P network.

    13. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just as long as no one tries to steal the precious HTML source of your website with their evil right clicking, I guess.

      The funny thing is how it doesn't even work... the right-click blocker fails in FireFox, and even in IE "View -> Source" works perfectly.

      All right-click scripts do is piss people off. Give up already, mister darkewotsit.

    14. Re:Hmm... by darkewolf · · Score: 1

      Good point. I forgot its there. Using both mozilla and opera I don't notice that its running. Oh well, time for a site revision anyhow.

      Amusingly my site got a number of hits from /. cause of my post. Rather interesting.

      --
      "That is not dead which can eternal lie...."
      Nimheil
  9. Not a chance. by rdsmith4 · · Score: 2, Funny
    This will never work - if it does in fact suppress the legal transfer of imformation, it's clearly counterproductive and stands little chance of ever being implemented. Universities are more reasonable than that!

    ...right?

    1. Re:Not a chance. by nomadic · · Score: 1

      Universities are more reasonable than that!

      Unfortunately the students aren't reasonable. Universities are supposed to be places of learning, and when they're paying vast amounts of money to maintain internet connectivity then they have the right to try to make sure that bandwidth isn't being wasted.

    2. Re:Not a chance. by 1lus10n · · Score: 1

      Last I checked that money was coming from the students, taxpayers, and ex-students. Last I checked students weren't given an option regarding how they wanted their money spent (library, computer room, sports etc).

      Universities are not limited to learning hence dorms, cafeterias, sports complex's and other recreational activities. Universities are about culture as well, and mp3's, p2p etc are now part of our culture. Evolve.

      --
      "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
    3. Re:Not a chance. by PianoComp81 · · Score: 1

      That's why you upgrade the routers and put a cap on upload speed (and if you want, download speed). My college was having massive troubles with bandwidth usage a few years ago because we had old hubs that couldn't control bandwidth. Once the network was upgraded to switches that capped the upload speed to 50 Kb/s off campus (people were uploading too much by leaving Kazaa running), our bandwidth usage went back to "normal". The people who run the residential network still go after high bandwidth users. You don't solve the bandwidth problems by banning something, something new will just take its place. You control how much bandwidth each person uses and go after those who abuse the network.

    4. Re:Not a chance. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately, my university already has it installed.

  10. what about my copyright? by Bhull · · Score: 5, Insightful

    how do i tell this software that i want people to trade MY copyrighted music? if they block my file swapping would that be some sort of anticompetitive thing? just because the RIAA and its labels own the majority of music being traded doesnt mean that all the music being traded belongs to them.

    1. Re:what about my copyright? by mao+che+minh · · Score: 1
      That's an interesting point. Unfortunately, I know the answer already: since you are a little fish swimming in their huge pond, you sort of have to play by their rules. In their pond, money talks. Without enough money and power, they simply out litigate you.

      It's really sad when you think about it.

    2. Re:what about my copyright? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actually, you don't have that right. You cannot force anyone to open their network to permit your traffic to use it. It's the same with email. Someone can say, "You can't block it, it's not spam." People forget, "it's my sandbox, my rules." So if someone puts a block in place, you legally cannot force them to accept and process material from you.

    3. Re:what about my copyright? by Bhull · · Score: 1

      i have the right to allow a college kid to download my music if he/she so choses. im not forcing anything on anyone. this will stop them from legitimatly downloading my stuff. if my isp were to install this software, it would forbid me to upload my music to my website. it IS my right to do these things.

    4. Re:what about my copyright? by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 1

      And the university's network doesn't belong to you. The school is not obligated to let people use their resources to download your song anymore than they would be obligated to carry a book you wrote in their library.

      --
      I'd rather be lucky than good.
    5. Re:what about my copyright? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait until you're a sysadmin some day. Your college kid may not even get it because it may not make a complete trip. As far as your uploading it, there could be AUP rules against it with your ISP or with the student wanting to D/L. You are used to a lot freebies online but don't understand what actually can be done to isolate and cut off some of the things which go on.

    6. Re:what about my copyright? by Bhull · · Score: 1

      id rather work at mc donalds then go back to the shitty sysadmin jobs. this is just the RIAA controlling what you can download. go ahead and applaud it. you've already lost your choices on what you can listen to on the radio, now you get to lose the ability to listen to what you want on the internet.

    7. Re:what about my copyright? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actually as an ISP which they act as, they are obligated to transfer traffic when the studen pays for it.

      so dont start.

      ISPs get very little leeway.

      why cant you think about protecting the actuall small artists, instead of crying about the theft

    8. Re:what about my copyright? by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      But it is NOT your right to compel your ISP to enable you to upload your music.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    9. Re:what about my copyright? by JamieF · · Score: 1

      >as an ISP which they act as, they are obligated to transfer traffic when the studen pays for it.

      Nonsense. First, there's almost certainly a set of terms of use which the student must agree to (and probably sign) in order to be allowed to use the network. Spam, porn, death threats, etc. are not things that a university or an ISP in general has any moral or legal obligation to allow just because a student has an account and may have paid for it. ISPs terminate spammers, shut down porn sites, and cancel user accounts for various kinds of forbidden behavior all the time.

      Second, there are clearly some uses that any ISP has no obligation to allow, and has a fairly clear obligation to block for liability reasons, such as denial of service attacks, worm propagation attempts from exploted machines, etc. Some ISPs (including some of the largest national ones in the US) also block all port 25 traffic unless it's to their mail servers.

    10. Re:what about my copyright? by rhsanborn · · Score: 1

      Firstly, I don't think your ISP will install this. They are in the business of pleasing customers, and to date I know of none that have been held responsible financially for P2P. I wouldn't count on them loading this software soon.

      Secondly, I doubt your music would be caught by this software. They did say they had a database with specific traces for copyrighted material. My guess is that it would keep a database with specific strings froma song or something like that to match up against. This would actually make it really easy to break as long as you knew what they were looking for. As for you, I doubt your big enough for them to even bother throwing in their database. No offense intended at all.

      I could be entirely wrong, but trying to identify things any other way would most likely block any and all mp3's. Last I check the RIAA didn't own that right yet.

    11. Re:what about my copyright? by racermd · · Score: 1

      Uhhh... If I'm not mistaken, a student pays the tuition/fees to attend classes and use the facilities that the school offers. Unless there's an additional fee for network usage that wasn't paid for (and the student doesn't violate any laws and/or school policies regarding usage), there is no reason why a student couldn't use the school-provided network connection to distribute their work.

      And it's not as if the student is actively pushing their work onto others and violating their right to privacy... They would only be making it available for others to download if they wanted it.

      The flaw in your analogy is that the work offered on the network would not be stored on school owned equipment, just like a physical book would have to be. The means to obtain the file would still be over the school-owned network, but a student could obtain a copy of that file from any other source by using the same network that they have paid tuition and/or fees to access.

      --
      My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
    12. Re:what about my copyright? by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 1
      The flaw in your analogy is that the work offered on the network would not be stored on school owned equipment

      It's using the school's bandwidth which costs them money, just like keeping a book on a shelf would. The student is paying tuition and paying for the network, but it still belongs to the school. They set the policies as they like, and if the student's disagree, they can complain (or take their money elsewhere, for example by living off-campus), but ultimately the final decision belongs to the school. You may not think their decision is the wisest one possible, but no one's "rights" are being violated.
      --
      I'd rather be lucky than good.
    13. Re:what about my copyright? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your assuming that their method of identifying the copyrighted music is valid.

      It may not be. They may simply have an algorithm that's almost guaranteed to find any material in their database, but with many false positives

      (Having a lot of content to analyze and little CPU
      [IE: it's not a supercomputer] probably means some corners have been cut, and it's a rough approximation that will have a possibility for error)

  11. 'finger print' by Mattwolf7 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    But how can it determine?

    Palisade's version of the technology sits inside a network, rather than inside a file-swapping program. If installed in a university, for example, it could look inside students' emails, instant messages and peer-to-peer transfers, seeking audio "fingerprints" that could be compared with information in Audible Magic's database.

    If I send my friend an mp3 of me playing some music how can it tell that from me sending a copyrighted work? Is it reading the 'finger print' and then checking byte by byte? Isn't that going to kill traffic... But couldn't it be beaten by adding one extra byte to the file? Sending in another format?

    1. Re:'finger print' by Jim+Starx · · Score: 1

      Well, as it's technologically possible for a computer to identify a song over the phone, I'm sure having a quality digital recording to work off of only makes it easyer. That is a good point about the latency though, how long would the identification take? It would have to stall the packet delivery untill it could be sure it was non copyrighted material.

      --
      The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
    2. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FFT and MD5
      Were you looking for something more complicated?

    3. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how effetive are they. what does it take to change them. If i edit tags will it change them if so they're useless.. so everyone starts leaving off the last letter of artist names in the tags and suddnely they aren't the same file anymore.

    4. Re:'finger print' by phorm · · Score: 1

      Not only would that be a nasty impact on traffic, as it might very well delay legit data transfer in search of music... but it would be a huge resource hog.

      Think about this: comparing each data stream against audio comparison of what... several thousands songs? I guess it depends on how much they want to compare... the popular stuff or everything? But it would still be a huge bottleneck as well as a major resource hog on the scanning servers.

    5. Re:'finger print' by jparp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Apparently, you have to be a little more createive.

      Supossidly it uses a technique called, Mel-Filtered Cepstral Coefficients to look for patterns in the audio output of the file. that is they dont check-sum the file, they play the file, and use there fingerprint technology on the way the file sounds when it is played.

      This still has many problems. As other posters already pointed out, encrypting, archiveing, or simply renaming the extension of the content, would make it difficult to find. Unless of course, they plane on playing all the data on people PC's via every known music codec in existance.

      Im assuming they actually look at peoples PC's as the problem of reasembling the packets would require identifyingm, emulating, and extending every p2p protocall known to man.

      Of course, they probably figure they can find most stuff by focasing on kazaa and mp3's.

      As another poster said. this might work. for about 10 whole seconds.

    6. Re:'finger print' by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      encrypting, archiveing, or simply renaming the extension of the content, would make it difficult to find

      Encrypting would work. None of the other options will. Encrypting will need to be coupled with renaming if the software is decent.

      Renaming is completely and utterly useless because they'll be looking for certain ostensibly unique patterns anyway. In Unix we call these "Magic Numbers" and if you read the fine man page for the file(1) command, you will learn what they are good for.

      As for archiving files, antivirus software scans files inside archives. This is pretty much a completely solved problem.

      Finally, though you didn't mention it I think I'll just shoot down the idea of steganography while I'm at it; you need too many bytes to hide media files. You didn't bring it up but I like to be as complete as possible.

      Unless of course, they plane on playing all the data on people PC's via every known music codec in existance.

      Every time you re-encode you lose quality. This can be viewed as analogous to the quality loss when copying audio information between analog storage media. Barring the use of FLAC which generates large files, you're going to lose information when you re-encode. So this is really a non-problem. The music industry is primarily concerned about digital copying because of the lack of quality loss. With digital media, one person could conceivably provide the whole world with perfect copies.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:'finger print' by achurch · · Score: 1

      Every time you re-encode you lose quality. This can be viewed as analogous to the quality loss when copying audio information between analog storage media. Barring the use of FLAC which generates large files, you're going to lose information when you re-encode. So this is really a non-problem.

      If scanning like this ever takes off, I bet people will discover really quickly that they don't mind quality loss that much after all.

    8. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your question looks a bit mysterious. Do you understand what FFT and MD5 are and how they would apply?

    9. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "use there" ?

      shouldn't that be "use their" ?

    10. Re:'finger print' by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      As for archiving files, antivirus software scans files inside archives. This is pretty much a completely solved problem.

      rename Metallica_complete_works.rar Mtlka_cplt_rar.dat
      antivirus recognizes archives by name, also antivirus cannot work with encrypted rar files. mtlca_cplt.rar with the option set to encrypt file names.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    11. Re:'finger print' by James4765 · · Score: 1

      Probably using the "copyright" flag in the ID3 header - after all, most of the people who write crap like this would never take the time to read sox's man page.

      After all, when I take the same CD and rip it on two different machines, the checksums for the resulting mp3's don't match. Copyright tags could be stripped out of your mp3 collection with a shell script - and the games that spammers play with keywords could be used to make a keyword search pointless.

      You can make a p2p client that emulates a web browser - download an mp3 chopped into bits and stegoed into 20 pictures put on an auto-generated web page. Almost impossible to detect or block, especially if you use porn as the images. :)

    12. Re:'finger print' by ajs318 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They certainly didn't mind the loss of quality when walkman cassettes were all there was.

      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    13. Re:'finger print' by j.bellone · · Score: 1

      Or just use a program like Nullsoft's Waste. Encrypted file sharing, gotta love it.

      Now all we need is Piolet to encrypt communications and we're golden.

      --
      I'm f#$king magic!
    14. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I doubt it's done inline. Bear in mind song identifying services (like Shazam) only need to "hear" a couple of seconds of a song to identify it.

      All they'd need to do is spot a stream carrying illicit content and issue a TCP reset.

      At which point I guess you'd just start downloading where you left off, so maybe that's not an option after all.

    15. Re:'finger print' by s0l0m0n · · Score: 1

      Hmm..

      I'm thinking that if I ever run into this thing, I might just whip a couple of custom mp3's... You know, 10 second clips from, say 30 popular songs.

      Then I'll transfer it back and forth until the damn thing crashes, or the network admin gets annoyed that I'm screwing up his CS game and smashes the thing with a hammer.

    16. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      well i was kinda hoping my questions would imply the truth. I wasn't trying to in anyway imply that I do I don't. I've heard of MD5 but call me a noob because I don't know what they are.

    17. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The music industry is primarily concerned about digital copying because of the lack of quality loss.

      WHAT!?!! is anyone else seeing this? perhaps I'm reading it wrong but i'm fairly certain the music industry doesn't care bout people copying music beause loss of quality. The music industry is concerned about d.c. because they don't get paid for it. they don't care about physical copying because those require time efffort and are miniscule compred to digi copies. digi copies are easy and free and most importantly THEY DON'T GET PAID.

      please someone correct me if i'm wrong.

    18. Re:'finger print' by imadork · · Score: 1
      Supossidly it uses a technique called, Mel-Filtered Cepstral Coefficients to look for patterns in the audio output of the file. that is they dont check-sum the file, they play the file, and use there fingerprint technology on the way the file sounds when it is played.

      Is that really how it works? It plays every single song it finds in TCP packets on the network?

      So, to combine what you said with what's in the article, the software sniffs all the data on the network, figures out which ones are media files, plays them to generate the fingerprint, and compares the fingerprint to the database? And, as the article states, it does all this in real-time with the ability to cut off an illicit download mid-stream?

      It seems to me that it would take an awful lot of processing power to do this correctly, without doing a half-assed job and either letting lots of content get through or fingering legal content. Remember you have to analyze the song and "play" it in real-time to cut off the download mid-stream! It *might* be practical to monitor all traffic leaving and entering the university network, because at least then you have a choke point where all the traffic will go through and a bandwidth limit, and you can scale your monitoring hardware accordingly. But there is likely an awful lot of sharing that never leaves the campus, and unless the university is willing to install a box on each sub-net, this method won't catch that.

      Not only is this very hardware-intensive, but it might give some people pause. After all, some of these students are foreigners who left countries where they were contstantly watched and thought the U.S. would be better...

      My first impression is either that these guys are selling snake oil, or the article's author is writing out of his ass. It can't possibly perform at the level the article claims it will.

    19. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      understood thnks. well if nothing else that does sound feasible

    20. Re:'finger print' by sgt_getraer · · Score: 1

      But how can it determine?

      Easy! All music is copyrighted at conception. The whole 'music' part is the fingerprint.

      Wish I could share my own music that I write with people over P2P, but luckily programs like this save me from myself. Whew!

    21. Re:'finger print' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could always automatically dial up the RIAA hotline and tell them which machine it came from so they can conduct a raid of the computer.

    22. Re:'finger print' by Jim+Starx · · Score: 1

      FFT's would be skewed by the mp3 compression. I also wonder how probable it is that more then one song could match the same FFT profile.

      --
      The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
    23. Re:'finger print' by phats+garage · · Score: 0

      How do they skew? From reading, an application of FFT is to move from the time domain to the frequency domain. Visualizing this, it seems to me that results would produce values indicating what frequencies were active during a given time interval. Given this, can you then have a graph of frequencies updated periodically (say for some microseconds) then with further work, determine what notes are actually playing? Watching how midi software can actively write sheet music based on what keys are played on a keyboard then "quantify" the results to line notes up to their nearest interval (say 16th or 32nd notes), seems then it would be a simple as searching sheet music. Noise in the audio could be clipped at some level to narrow the search.

    24. Re:'finger print' by Jim+Starx · · Score: 1
      It's not that simple. FFT doesn't give you exact frequencies. It lumps frequencies into "bins" that get more precise as larger chunks of time are analysed. It's not sufficient for sheet music because the time interval between notes in most music is smaller then the time interval required to differentiate those notes. There are ways to try and circumvent the accuracy problem (such as stuffing) but you still have to deal with bin leakage, and there would be no information available to seperate the notes of one instrument from another, let alone deterniming what is a base note and what is a harmonic interval. Maybe in time this will become possible, this is something I'd definitly like to take a crack at, but at the moment I don't believe it is.

      If FFT's are used then it's probably as a kind of hash function, with the entire song taken at once. My original point was that lossy compression (especially the mp3 formats psychoacoustical compression) alters the frequency spectrum. So if you're using FFT to derive signatures, the quality of the mp3 is going to be somewhat proportional to the accuracy of your FFT results. How proportional is going to depend on the software's ability to interpret those results. I imagine it would be easy for entirely diffrent types of songs. But two diffrent songs from the same band recorded with the same instruments are bound to be close enough that the FFT discrepancies compression introduces are bound to be a signifigant problem.

      --
      The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
    25. Re:'finger print' by phats+garage · · Score: 0
      maybe the same audio could be scanned several times with different filters for different bands of frequencies. (Assuming there are digital bandpass filters, not that I'd know how to make one %^)

      Seems like it could make things more manageable or otherwise get on top of the note speed vs resolution problem. I had imagined some time ago doing the entire thing with enough bandpass filters but then the more precise the bandpass filters (analog thinking) the more "ring" they'd produce and this would indeed cut into the time accuracy. Clearly the human ear and brain can do it though and this is done with many sensors looking for a their own particular frequency and we humans can appreciate fast notes, of course where it goes in the brain is anybodys guess.

    26. Re:'finger print' by Jim+Starx · · Score: 1

      There are digital filters. The problem is that digital filters are designed using the Forier Transform, so it suffers some of the same shortfalls ass the FFT (Fast Forier Transform). Filters have a rolloff, usually measured in dB per octave, that tells you how quickly the filter attenuates as you move away from the center frequency. The faster it roll's off the more ripples you get in the frequency responce plot (that's what produces the "ring"). If you've got a calculater graph y=sin(x)/x. That is the base equation that shows the ripples of a bandpass. There are windowing techniques to reduce the size of the ripples but it is mathamatically impossible to completely remove them. There really isn't a very good workaround to the time v. accuracy problem. It doesn't have anything to do with bad equipment or lack of trying, it's a result of the fundamental mathamatics behind digital audio.

      --
      The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
  12. Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes lets just block it immediately, because we all know in the US you are guilty until proven innocent...

  13. MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    When did trading copyrighted music online become one of my "rights"?

    Funny, on slashdot GPL violators are on step below Charles Manson, while copyright infringers of music, movies, and software are somewhere below jaywalkers.

    1. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Perhaps that opinion mostly comes from the fact that GPL are mostly violated by people with money to make yet more money without earning it, while copyright infringers (of the most common sort targeted by the music industry) are not looking to make a profit from thier actions.

    2. Re:MY Rights?? by ovit · · Score: 0

      Yup. Their is about 1 sane (when it comes to copyright law) person out of 100 on slashdot these days.

      Tony

    3. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Many supporters of the GPL do not like copyright in principle. If copyright didn't exist there would be no need for the GPL. In that light, it is perfectly reasonable to dislike copyright yet like the GPL.

    4. Re:MY Rights?? by dolphinling · · Score: 3, Funny
      When did trading copyrighted music online become one of my "rights"?

      When the internet was invented.

      --
      There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
    5. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The GPL is about fighting fire with fire. Many of its advocates dislike copyright and see the GPL as only a means to an end. In an ideal world it wouldn't exist.

    6. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When you bought the music?

      Recently I went to work overseas for a couple of weeks. After a few days, I missed a CD of mine that I had at home and hadn't really listened to much. I got a friend back home to grab the CD and turn it into FLACs and send them to me. You could call this trading copyright music online, I suppose. And while I can't say I've read every last letter of the law, I'm pretty sure I have a right to do this?

    7. Re:MY Rights?? by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Perhaps that opinion mostly comes from the fact that GPL are mostly violated by people with money to make yet more money without earning it, while copyright infringers (of the most common sort targeted by the music industry) are not looking to make a profit from thier actions.

      If a company puts GPL'd code in their (closed) product, they save the money they otherwise would have had to spend to pay programmers to write equivalent code. If you copy music, you save the money you otherwise would have had to spend to buy it at a store. These are more similar than you seem to be willing to acknowledge.
      --
      I'd rather be lucky than good.
    8. Re:MY Rights?? by LostCluster · · Score: 0, Troll

      If a company puts GPL'd code in their (closed) product, they save the money they otherwise would have had to spend to pay programmers to write equivalent code. If you copy music, you save the money you otherwise would have had to spend to buy it at a store. These are more similar than you seem to be willing to acknowledge.

      Yep, it's all about preventing money transfers. And therefore this thing known as an "economy" grinds to a halt... stuff stops being made and we decend into anarchy...

    9. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That fails in two ways:
      First, my point was more towards the resultant use of the copyrited material. The company stealing GPL code sells that code to make an economic profit. The music trader listens to the music and does not sell it to others. They make no profit.

      Secondly, many people still buy CD's, often moreso, after they are exposed to it online. So it seems that the companies do not usually give back to the GPL project if they decide to take something.

    10. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
      Being hypocritical is being human. Some issues are always more important from one perspective than other issues are, and inconsistency doesn't tell us who is wrong or right. More likely it point to (usually) hidden assumptions that everyone is making as they state their point.

      As long as no-one can clarify the platform from which we speak, meaningful dialog will be impossible.

      FYI...

    11. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Theft is theft. You don't justify the legality of theft by trying to make one method less harmful. It's still theft...

    12. Re:MY Rights?? by rmull · · Score: 1

      Some would say ascend. There's more to it than you think.

      --
      See you, space cowboy...
    13. Re:MY Rights?? by byronne · · Score: 1

      If there ever comes a day when the artists themselves are fairly compensated for their art instead of one of five corporate conglomerates' measure of compensation I will gladly pay attention to copyright laws. As it stands now, 90 percent of the artists are actively getting skullfucked by their 'supporters'. Royalties and song copyrights are a joke - owned by the record company and not the creative talent. Until that changes, I will go to the live shows of as many bands as I can that I have discovered only through P2P file sharing. That is the only way they see any reward, and I'm all the better for it.

      Copyrights are bad deals. Ask around.

      --
      "Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
    14. Re:MY Rights?? by deathazre · · Score: 2, Interesting

      and there's more than enough jaywalkers here at my school.

      I've already lost all faith in ITS here, so I have no problem yelling at them if they implement something like this and it interferes with the legal stuff I do (say, IRC). Cable back at home's better than the school's network anyways.

      --
      Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
    15. Re:MY Rights?? by mark-t · · Score: 0, Troll
      Wrong.

      The last syllable of copyright _IS_ the word "right", and as such carries with it the right to copy. This right is initially held only by the copyright holder and can be granted to whomever the copyright holder chooses. The right to copy has been in existence since the dawn of copyright itself... but this does not mean that one has the right to copy without permission. The invention of the internet has given us the ability to do so quickly, easily, largely covertly, and at minimal cost in terms of time and dollars, but this does not give us the right to do that any more than the invention of the home color printer gives people the right to produce counterfeit money.

    16. Re:MY Rights?? by s20451 · · Score: 1

      Many supporters of the GPL do not like copyright in principle. If copyright didn't exist there would be no need for the GPL. In that light, it is perfectly reasonable to dislike copyright yet like the GPL.

      Which is absurdly ironic, in my opinion. The GPL is actually quite a restrictive license compared to public domain (or no copyright), and depends heavily on copyright protection. It appears that the real contribution to the GPL is to illustrate the power and flexibility of copyright law.

      The GPL involuntarily enforces a trade: I'll show you my source if you show me whatever you do with it. Without copyright protection, there is no incentive to share source code, because the ideas behind a piece of software can be locked away in binaries or used only on proprietary hardware.

      --
      Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
    17. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, you mistake me. I am not trying to say that under the current laws, pirating music is not illegal. But the origional poster asked why people ranked the crimes at various levels (I would probably disagree with where the author puts the weights associated to them... breaking the GPL murder...). But in terms of econmic damage, the scale of a company stealing code and selling it and a single file trader is much much different.

      If you want to argue that it should be legal, well thats entirely seperate, and I would argue that the current copyright system is unconsitutional.... but different discussion.

    18. Re:MY Rights?? by Oriumpor · · Score: 2

      well uhh... they aren't checking for VIOLATORS sir... they are checking for ALL copyrighted material in the database... Transfering a song from one of my machines to another of my machines for my personal use, via EMAIL/P2P intercepted, and cancelled because it is copyrighted material is not protecting the copyright holder, it's preventing my fair use.

    19. Re:MY Rights?? by PhxBlue · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When did trading copyrighted music online become one of my "rights"?

      I think the fair question is, when did you lose the right to trade copyrighted music online? Especially under circumstances that are already allowed by Fair Use?

      --
      !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
    20. Re:MY Rights?? by Xeth · · Score: 1

      This argument has got to go. Seriously.

      First of all, most GPL infringers are using the material they take for commercial gain. People who share music and such aren't. You can try and claim that yes, they are benefitting, but in my mind, there's a world of difference between the mood-enhancing effects of entertainment and making a profit.

      Secondly, the spirit of the GPL and the spirit of media copyright are entirely different. People that violate the GPL are trying to not share, while those that violte media copyright are trying to share. In the eyes of the law, they may be identical, but morality (especially in the US!) doesn't seem to have much to do with law. Someone who believes that information should be free would believe that violating the GPL is bad, since you're trying to restrict information, while violating media copyright is not, since you're trying to share it.

      That said, why should personal copyright infringement be worse than jaywalking? Is protecting corporate profits more important than protecting human life? Because copyright exists to protect profit, while jaywalking laws exists to protect people.

      --
      If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
    21. Re:MY Rights?? by brucmack · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because trading copyrighted music online doesn't have to be illegal:

      1) It could be paid for (iTunes or by tax on recordable media).
      2) The copyright holder could wish for the file to be openly shared.
      3) The copyrighted music has already been purchased on other media.

    22. Re:MY Rights?? by spitzak · · Score: 1

      If you took Metallica's songs and somehow managed to convince people you wrote and performed them, and then sold them for as much or more than Metallica's publisher gets, then maybe you might be as low as a typical GPL violator.

    23. Re:MY Rights?? by PsiPsiStar · · Score: 1

      First;

      I don't mind if people share files, as long as they don't make money off of it.

      I don't mind if people violate the GPL as long as they don't make money off of it.

      When people first started selling used books around the turn of the century, there was an effort to make that illegal too. It didn't work because people (including used book sellers, which included major retail chains) stood up and said they wouldn't be bullied. (Their lawyers said it, anyways).

      Second;

      There's a difference between charging people for carrying out a particular action (looking, listening, giving) and regulating trade.

      Besides, intellectual property isn't a natural right to begin with. It was instituted in order to encourage works to be put into the public domain, and has since been hijacked so that those works stay in the private domain for a length of time much greater than what the public good would warrant. This was not a democratic action.

      In a just legal system, the law codifies the popular perception of what is fair. In an unjust legal system, the law is used as a weapon by the powerful against the weak. I'd argue that copyright law has shifted to the latter, and people are justifiably angry. I see nothing democratic about current copyright law. It is the bastard child of a campaign finance contribution and a few hundred Washington polititians. The average Joe on the street didn't ask for copyrights to be extended. Disney did.

      Americans are supposed to tell their government what the law is, not the other way around.

      The law has little force if people don't believe in its legitimacy.

      --

      ___
      It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
    24. Re:MY Rights?? by a+whoabot · · Score: 1

      Yes.

      Funny, ahem, how a reply/masturbation for the grandparent from one of the weak "i'm not a slashbot!"[yes, you are-a.w.]-types(username: ovit, I believe) said something akin to: "yeah! you're one of the few people here who actually understands copyrights!". Whilst, actually, the grandparent seems to be so misinformed that he apparantly thinks any copying of copyrighted works is copyright infringement, and, so, not a right.

      But that seems to be the trend in simulation here. The insecure grasp unto and consume the sign of "I am no slashbot!" and then they believe that there is somehow some sort of auto-justification. Because, to them, it's only the appearance of thought that counts, not actually thinking.

    25. Re:MY Rights?? by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      The commercial gain has nothing to do with it. Zip, zilch, nada. In fact, the GPL encourages commercial gain. Start talking about GPL software being free-as-in-beer and you'll be shouted down. Commercial Redhat Corporation is on an equal footing with noncommercial Debian.

      Second, the spirit of copyleft and copyright are absolutely identical: regulating the distribution of creative works. Start throwing binary-only derivations of GPL works on p2p networks and the FSF will become unglued with outrage. Not because you are subjugating users, but because you are violating copyright! Go and look at all the instances of GPL violations. About one percent of the rhetoric is about subjugating users. The rest is shouts of "you can't do that with my software!"

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    26. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WTF is a jaywalker? You have some weird laws in foreign parts. On the Queen's Highway, motorists must give way to pedestrians. The only exception is on motorways, where walking is only allowed in an emergency.

    27. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, if I copy music, I'll save the money I otherwise wouldn't have used to buy a CD I didn't know if I would like.

    28. Re:MY Rights?? by JamieF · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >when did you lose the right to trade copyrighted music online?

      That depends on what you mean by "trade". If you're talking about allowing anonymous strangers to make complete copies of songs from your computer that are copyrighted and not authorized for this kind of distribution by the copyright holder, then you never had that right. There is no such right. The rights belong to the copyright holder, except for fair use. Allowing unlimited copies to be made for free and given to anonymous individuals is not fair use.

      Maybe the song is copyrighted, but the copyright holder has authorized free online copying of the song. Maybe you know the person you're giving the copy to, and you know 100% for sure that they have a legal license to that song, such as from owning a CD. Those are mitigating circumstances.

      Just because it's easy to commit a crime doesn't make it not a crime anymore. Little old ladies don't fight back as much big beefy ex-cons when you try to mug them, but that doesn't make it less illegal, or less wrong. It just makes it easier.

    29. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But there are _many_ other reason, which doesn't have anything to do with money that people uses GPL.
      Compatility is one thing. If people just could take GPL code, and use it as they wanted. They could make non network compatible version, and it would be very hard to see how to be compatible.

      With music it is _only_ about the money. Big difference.

    30. Re:MY Rights?? by Soluxx · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why do you assume that someone downloads an MP3 of a song would actually buy the CD if they weren't able to get the MP3?

    31. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the point you are missing is that the software containing the GPL'd code is being resold.

      Songs obtained from a P2P filesharing program are likely not being sold. The rocket scientists at the RIAA are assuming that every song downloaded = a CD containing that song not selling. Which is retarded, IMHO.

      Therefore, I think they are much less similar than you seem to believe. If someone were to download an album, burn it, and sell it on the street, your comparison would be accurate.

    32. Re:MY Rights?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously, AC, it's because rights ARE being threatened. This one is threatening to block ALL encrypted internet traffic, as well as generally snooping through EVERYTHING you do on the internet. You want some computer program (and people too quite possibly) looking through all of your internet traffic and deciding what IT wants to let through? I hope you don't try exercising fair use by using a short clip of music or still frame from a movie in one of your school projects, or you might find you can't turn the file in to your teacher...

    33. Re:MY Rights?? by lysium · · Score: 3, Insightful
      If a company puts GPL'd code in their (closed) product, they save the money they otherwise would have had to spend to pay programmers to write equivalent code. If you copy music, you save the money you otherwise would have had to spend to buy it at a store. These are more similar than you seem to be willing to acknowledge.

      That is not similiar. If I downloaded copyrighted music, and then incorporated that music into my own music for resale, then I would be committing an equivalent violation. Using downloaded music as an 'enterainment tool' is comparable to a company downloading GPL software for internal company use.

      It's just a bad analogy, either way.

      ===---===

      --
      Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
    34. Re:MY Rights?? by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 1

      Why do you assume they wouldn't? If someone downloads an album online, the record company (and music publisher, artist and whoever else), loses:
      (cost of cd) * (probability that this person would have paid for this cd if they hadn't downloaded it)

      I am assuming that that probability is not zero. This is based primarily on personal experience, and I don't have scientific studies to quote to you backing that up. If you genuinely believe it is zero, I'm not going to argue about it, but I disagree.

      --
      I'd rather be lucky than good.
    35. Re:MY Rights?? by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      If a company puts GPL'd code in their (closed) product, they save the money they otherwise would have had to spend to pay programmers to write equivalent code. If you copy music, you save the money you otherwise would have had to spend to buy it at a store. These are more similar than you seem to be willing to acknowledge.

      Thankfully, the law disagrees with you. It recognizes that copyright violations done for commercial resale for profit is different from a non commercial sharing of copyrighted material.

      But even if they didn't, you are equating deliberate copyright violation with identifiable gains (the product sold that wouldn't have worked without the copyright violation) to one where there is no number attached (despite all the lies to the contrary, there is no evidence that illegal P2P sharing has reduced the revenue to the record companies).

  14. Umm... by Ryan.Merrill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wait... it did say that it can look into student's emails and instant messages right? So basically it is giving the University free right to look into student's messages and claim that they are merely looking for illegal songs. There has got to be something that can be done by the students at these universities to block this. This is a total invasion of privacy. If any university tries to impose this onto the students attending, the students must do something. Hopefully we haven't lost all of our rebellious nature.

    1. Re:Umm... by r4bb1t · · Score: 1

      Email and IM aren't encrypted or private in any sense of the word. Try tracing the hops it takes for your email to get to the mail server you're sending it to. For that matter, AOL can log all your conversations if they wanted to. I'm not so sure this would be any different than what can already be done.

    2. Re:Umm... by xSquaredAdmin · · Score: 1

      Most universities probably have a clause in their network usage agreement stating that they are allowed to interecept and view any data transmitted over their network, and if they don't, they probably will be doing that soon.

      --
      Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
    3. Re:Umm... by dfung · · Score: 2, Insightful

      r4bb1t is absolutely right here. People get up in arms because GMail says they will read your mail to index it and that seems like an invasion of privacy. In fact, there's nothing that would stop AIM from capturing all your IM chatter.

      Except of course, that if they did that, there's a danger that they'll become liable for the content of the information that's passing through. This arose before when it went to the courts as to whether ISPs are liable when their accountholders harbor kiddie porn on the ISP's computers.

      If AOL/AIM had the ability to scan for possible terrorist actions, porn, or the next Columbine, and DIDN'T intercede, then potentially they would be open to enormous damages. If you were a 9/11 victim and you found out that AIM was the facilitator for planning an attack (and I absolutely am not implying that!), you can bet that AOL would become a lawsuit target after everybody realized you won't get a multi-million dollar settlement from selling the terrorist's apartment junk.

      This issue of possible liability will probably prevent Palisade from getting anywhere. I'm sure that AIM reserves the right to scan your IM, but probably zealously makes sure that it's not doing that. Now, when they get a subpoena from the Justice Nazis, that's a totally different question.

    4. Re:Umm... by Undefined+Parameter · · Score: 2, Informative

      Lost all of my rebellious nature? Nope. I'll fight tooth and nail to prevent my uni from even considering purchasing one of these things, if I get a chance.

      (And, unfortunately, they probably will; the MPAA came down on our IT department, a few years ago, because someone -- not necessarily a student, as it was summer and there are a lot more summer camp-goers than students here, during the summer -- was allegedly trading a movie that hadn't been released, yet. My uni's response was to immediately fold, shutting down internet service, then blocking some ports and bringing it back up just in time for students to arrive, and finally buying a packet-shaper a couple of months later. This last step has been the worst, since not one person in our IT department knows how to use the thing, no less use it right. It is currently being used to block gnutella, kazaa, and the other 'usual suspects'... as well as every computer game known to man. I'm not only assumed to be guilty, I can't even be a gamer, anymore, because it's "not an academic use of the university's resources." Sorry for the rant.)

      Now, if you can get me a shotgun, shells, a kevlar vest, leather gloves, a hairnet, rock-climbing shoes, and a couple of alibis, I'll not only make sure that the students rebellious nature is not lost, I'll prove it by taking care of the packet-shaper and any other intrusive or offensive hardware/software! ;-)

      (Note to the FBI and Homeland Security: I'm joking.)

      ~UP

      --
      Eat the Path.
    5. Re:Umm... by batura · · Score: 2, Informative

      Uh, dude, they already have this right. This has been around in the user agreement at Universities for quite some time. When I went to the Dorms at UW, I believe I signed on to this with my living agreement, not to mention that you probably agree to this when you receive your computer account.

    6. Re:Umm... by localhost00 · · Score: 1
      I tend to think it only applies to the university-supplied email, so I think they might be able to get away with it on a certain level.

      It's if they were to scan my Hotmail account that I would find illegal.

      --

      Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.

    7. Re:Umm... by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      I am failing to understand where all this student bleeding heart is coming from. The answer is simple. If you don't what the university seeing what you do with university property, go get your own damned ISP account!

      All this whining isn't about the right to trade files. It's about wanting to continue leeching university resources.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    8. Re:Umm... by jeffkjo1 · · Score: 1

      If you don't what the university seeing what you do with university property, go get your own damned ISP account!

      That's all well and good, if it's even possible to get an outside high speed ISP. While dialup internet will work in the dorms, nothing else will. The university maintains a monopoly over high speed internet services.
      If the university wanted to open up and allow outside high speed connections, then I'm all for it.

    9. Re:Umm... by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      The university maintains a monopoly over high speed internet services. Bullshit, there is nothing High speed about my Dorm connection... Oh you must have meant High Latency

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    10. Re:Umm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you were a 9/11 victim, you would be dead. dead people cannot sue. problem solved.

    11. Re:Umm... by Maestro4k · · Score: 1
      • Wait... it did say that it can look into student's emails and instant messages right? So basically it is giving the University free right to look into student's messages and claim that they are merely looking for illegal songs. There has got to be something that can be done by the students at these universities to block this. This is a total invasion of privacy. If any university tries to impose this onto the students attending, the students must do something. Hopefully we haven't lost all of our rebellious nature.
      Students don't even need to be rebellious to fight this, just bring up the law. There are some pretty strict federal laws regarding releasing any personal identifying information on students, in fact several universities fought the fast-track supoenas the RIAA used citing those laws as the reason. If they start letting a program dig through student's personal E-mails and chat sessions and check that against an outside database the students have a good reason to say the university is releasing personal information about them without due process.

      It should be interesting to see how this pans out, I wouldn't want to be the University who first lets this on my network!

    12. Re:Umm... by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      You still haven't explained why you think unregulated and unmonitored internet connections to dorms is some sort of unalienable right. What gives you any rights to university property and resources?

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    13. Re:Umm... by tr0p · · Score: 1
      All this whining isn't about the right to trade files. It's about wanting to continue leeching university resources. FreeBSD: Open Source without that fishy smell

      U SOUND L1KE TEH DORK FROM THE MOVIE 0LD SCH00L. WE ALL KNOW WHAT HAPPEND TO H1M

      --

      My only regret... is that I have... bonitis..

  15. Well-intentioned software, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you can hear it and if you can see it, it can be copied.

    The PHBs insist upon wearing ties, not realizing a tie shuts down the oxygen reaching their brain. Won't they ever learn?

  16. Stenography by dduardo · · Score: 3, Funny

    I wonder how this technology will hold up against stenography. Let me think about it for a moment. Hmm...

    1. Re:Stenography by Darth+Coder · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why, do you have a protocol for P2P via court reporters?

      --
      The ability to monopolize a planet is insignificant next to the power of the source.
    2. Re:Stenography by casuist99 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Perhaps you mean Steganography?

      Somehow I suspect it would not prevent file sharing via that sort of method, but there are simpler methods out there. If you're sending it to a friend, why not just PGP encrypt the file and send it to them? Then no one would know what you're sending, and it's a heck of a lot more secure than steganography (see recent posts on /., other sites).

    3. Re:Stenography by maxbang · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think you're on to something here. Writing all of your songs in shorthand, scanning them, then emailing the resulting tiff files will prove no match for this anti-filesharing initiative.

      --
      I also reply below your current threshold.
    4. Re:Stenography by maxbang · · Score: 1

      Sure, for a simple transfer to one user it would work, but that's not really p2p filesharing, is it? If your method were encorporated into a simple, one-click method for encrypted communication for everything from directory listing to transfers then it could work. I don't know how it would prevent the admins from catching on and shutting down that network traffic if it ever did take off. But I see your point about them not being able to determine what is being transferred, thus providing them zero factual basis for stopping the network. Is this something freenet would be able to bypass easily?

      --
      I also reply below your current threshold.
    5. Re:Stenography by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 1

      Somehow I suspect it would not prevent file sharing via that sort of method, but there are simpler methods out there. If you're sending it to a friend, why not just PGP encrypt the file and send it to them?

      In the article, they said that it looked into email and would/could blocked encrypted transfers. I took that to mean that they'd also block PGP-encrypted mails (rash assumption, but how could they tell anything other than the mail's size?). That really torques me, if that interpretation is correct.
      I'm anti-P2P generally, but too many dolphins can get caught in their tuna net.

  17. What is needed.. by bcore · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ..is a P2P app that can run over an SSL connection, disguised as web traffic. I'd bet that could beat this thing. Does such a thing exist?

    1. Re:What is needed.. by dolphinling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's wrong with just plain FTP over SSL? No one's going to be blocking FTP anytime soon...

      --
      There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
    2. Re:What is needed.. by Rikus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > ... disguised as web traffic

      And it won't look the least bit suspicious when the host is connected to several other hosts, transferring encrypted data at full-speed 24 hours a day.

    3. Re:What is needed.. by bcore · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And it won't look the least bit suspicious when the host is connected to several other hosts, transferring encrypted data at full-speed 24 hours a day.

      Suspicious maybe, but surely this thing can't be designed to block anything that is remotely suspicious.. Maybe I'm wrong, but damn that would suck.

      I guess uploading with it would be particularly suspicious and problematic though, given that the uploader would appear to be running a public webserver, which college campuses don't seem to like either.

    4. Re:What is needed.. by UID1000000 · · Score: 1

      currently you can use HTTP Tunnell and it will access whatever ports your using through port 80. but to a proxy server it shows up going to HTTP Tunnells server thus showing someone your cards. soon they're just blacklist the server/IP and then you have nothing.

      I'm sure that there are enough smart people out there that could rewrite some software to emulate other ports. setup the software so that it runs whatever program at it's port (like 6989) and then have the software make the computer think that it's port 80.

      Also, what about a VPN? isn't that another way around it?

      --
      UID 1000000 is just around the corner.

    5. Re:What is needed.. by jrockway · · Score: 1

      Suspicious, yes? Provable that you did anything? No.

      Oops. You can't sue someone for being suspicious. Yet :)

      --
      My other car is first.
    6. Re:What is needed.. by veg_all · · Score: 1

      And it won't look the least bit suspicious when the host is connected to several other hosts, transferring encrypted data at full-speed 24 hours a day.

      No, it won't, as long as everything else is encrypted. I used to make this argument regarding email, when asked why I insisted on encrypting everything. Granted, I send more unencrypted mail nowadays, having given up to some extent. But I use more and more encrypted http connections. It's not overoptimistic to think that https might become the norm. Nor is it technically such a big hurdle.

      --
      grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
    7. Re:What is needed.. by syousef · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "What's wrong with just plain FTP over SSL? No one's going to be blocking FTP anytime soon..."

      I work as an IT consultant in Australia and work on site most of the time. Our clients - banks and insurance companies - certainly do do block FTP and SSL. They usually block anything that isn't HTTP or HTTPS on port 80. This is a genuine frustration for me as I often want to send log files and software to the HQ of the software firm I work for.

      To make matters worse one client I worked for had a policy of restricting access to external email and other content (games, porn etc.). They used web filter software which I won't name here for now. Lots of legitmate sites I'd want to get to for genuinely work related purposes were also blocked.

      I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is the method adopted by large educational institutions in the end. They won't be able to fight large corporates for very long with the limited funding they do have. It will only take a handful of large law suits to sway them towards censorship.

      Its an interesting world we live in now. It seems to have become standard practice somewhere in the late 90s to make product and then intimidate or sue your customers.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    8. Re:What is needed.. by Ark42 · · Score: 1

      HTTPS is port 443, unless you do some unstandard setup.

    9. Re:What is needed.. by Malc · · Score: 1

      Some ISPs block those ports for incoming connections to prevent people running web and file servers.

    10. Re:What is needed.. by ultranova · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Oops. You can't sue someone for being suspicious. Yet :)

      Yes you can. You can't win, but you can drive them bankcrupt trying to defend themselves.

      It isn't about justice, it's about extortion.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    11. Re:What is needed.. by Ark42 · · Score: 3, Informative


      Unfortunately, you can get written up for such a thing. Its the only thing I was ever written up for while at college. Go outside and go for a run at 12:30am? Campus police come knocking on your door and cite us for "Unusual Behaviour". Were we loud? nope. Break anything? nope. Go anyplace offlimits somehow? nope. 'We *could have been* raping people or looking into windows if people didn't close their blinds though'. Sure it was completely rediculous, and I fough it, and won, and had it removed from my record, but that doesn't mean everybody else will.

    12. Re:What is needed.. by syousef · · Score: 1

      I stand corrected. What I said was incorrect. What I meant was HTTP on port 80, HTTPS on 443. (ie no non-standard ports). Even servers serving HTTP on 8080 were inaccessible.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    13. Re:What is needed.. by uhlume · · Score: 1

      HTTPS is SSL.

      --
      SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
    14. Re:What is needed.. by syousef · · Score: 2, Informative

      HTTPS is HTTP _over_ SSL. Typically its a single port that handles web requests on 443. You can block all other ports for SSL, and still allow port 443.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    15. Re:What is needed.. by rixstep · · Score: 5, Funny

      What we should do...

      Is use steganography.

      We embed an MP3 inside a JPEG.

      Then, just to really screw them up, we embed the JPEG inside an MP3.

    16. Re:What is needed.. by Yosi · · Score: 1

      You are not nearly ambitious enough.

      What we need is a more general way of defeating all things that will block traffic based on it not using http, as put forth in rfc 3093, dated from 1 April 2001.

    17. Re:What is needed.. by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      ftp://foo1.foo2.foo3.foo4:80/warez/mp3z

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    18. Re:What is needed.. by syousef · · Score: 1

      "ftp://foo1.foo2.foo3.foo4:80/warez/mp3z"

      Well that won't work, since the ftp server makes connections back in to the client.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    19. Re:What is needed.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Our clients - banks and insurance companies - certainly do do

      Heheheheheheheh....do do

    20. Re:What is needed.. by uhlume · · Score: 1

      Sure, but there's nothing about the HTTPS protocol which dictates the use of port 443. That's just a convention which has become an ad hoc standard. More to the point, your client isn't blocking the SSL protocol, just all non-standard ports. Granted, that prevents you from using SSL over any of those alternate ports, but that's not really pertinent to the grandparent topic, which is what I was trying to point out in the first place.

      --
      SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
    21. Re:What is needed.. by eliza_effect · · Score: 1

      FTP has been blocked multiple times, in durations as short as a week to as long as a month at San Jose State University. That sure, made it hard to do my work for classes that required FTPing, since when they block FTP for students, they also block it for all of the accessable (and most of the faculty) connections accross campus as well.

    22. Re:What is needed.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Passive mode?

    23. Re:What is needed.. by ajs318 · · Score: 1
      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    24. Re:What is needed.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Dude. Move to a free country.

    25. Re:What is needed.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry, but what's the problem again? You have site blocking software? It WILL have a way of allowing specific sites through. You just need a policy so that you can submit a request to your network guys.

      > It will only take a handful of large law suits to sway them towards censorship.

      Nope, censorship is the wrong word, as the government is nothing to do with this. They're just protecting themselves from time-wasters and law suits related to copyright infringment.

    26. Re:What is needed.. by zcat_NZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Even if all your web traffic was encrypted, multiple https sessions to a large number of different hosts, and doing a lot of traffic is _much_ different from normal websurfing. They could reliably detect and block this if it became common.

      Here's my suggestion. Open an https session, and pass some sort of simple 'obfuscating' key to the sender. This is a short https session that can't easily be distinguished from normal web surfing.

      Then the sender obfuscates the data with your key, and send it back to you via a 'plaintext' FTP session. Nothing identifies the data as encrypted, but it's also not recognisable as a 'copyrighted' work. What are they going to do, block all ftp?

      --
      455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
    27. Re:What is needed.. by ConsumedByTV · · Score: 1

      It's possible to setup a full ssh tunnel over port 443 even over a strick webproxy.

      --


      "Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
    28. Re:What is needed.. by pikine · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is the method adopted by large educational institutions in the end. They won't be able to fight large corporates for very long with the limited funding they do have. It will only take a handful of large law suits to sway them towards censorship.

      Not true. The universities tend to comply in a case by case basis (when some computer on the network is subpoenaed) than to restrict general access. Furthermore, there is no need to fight for anyone.

      There are other problems created by peer to peer file trading, namely the increase in network utilization. In my school, they decided to charge students rather than restricting file sharing access. They began doing this in Fall 2003.

      I imagine most schools would never take the restricted access approach.

      --
      I once had a signature.
    29. Re:What is needed.. by 3terrabyte · · Score: 1

      Suspicious.... as in doing things in your own home, behind locked doors is suspicious? It's like saying using PGP to send email is susupicious.

      --

      Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

    30. Re:What is needed.. by Shakrai · · Score: 4, Funny
      We embed an MP3 inside a JPEG.

      Then you'll get sued by RIAA and Compression Labs at the same time! Two for the price of one! Can't beat that.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    31. Re:What is needed.. by IntentionalTort · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah. You try that, and you'll be sued for misuse of legal process. For such a clearly intentional violation, punitive damages will be likely. Let's try it out: (1) institution or continuation of a criminal or civil proceeding against the accused (CHECK) (2) termination of the proceeding in favor of the accused (CHECK) (3) absence of probable cause for prosecution or civil proceedings (CHECK) (4) improper purpose of the accuser (common law requires malice) (CHECK under both standards) Anyhow, this entire discussion is partially moot: universities absolutely DECRY clamping down on ANY free speech rights. Hell, most won't even put up a firewall because of the "potential to block the flow of information." This is more likely to be a commercially supported venture, to make sure the employees aren't going to rack up any respondeat superior / acting within the scope of duty liablity.

    32. Re:What is needed.. by Debillitatus · · Score: 1
      Hey, BU...

      I got my PhD there, and not that long ago. Damn, I miss Boston...

      --

      Come on, give it up, that's

    33. Re:What is needed.. by swillden · · Score: 1

      You need HTTP tunnel.

      I actually built my own half-baked (but workable) HTTP tunnel six or seven years ago when working in an environment with annoying firewalls. I did it by writing a pair of simple Java applets, one for use on my laptop, the other to run on the server in my basement. It's pretty simple, actually, but now you don't have to write it yourself!

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    34. Re:What is needed.. by sageman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One easy way we found to beat the typical way of blocking programs (port blocking) was to write and algorithm that changes the port being used every hour or so based on certain "seemingly random" variables. And, for a small interim period (so as to not drop packets during the port transition), two ports are actually opened. That's what we have done for our WASTE modifications.

      --
      --- "To iterate is human, to recurse divine." -- Robert Heller
    35. Re:What is needed.. by DavidTC · · Score: 1
      Nope, censorship is the wrong word, as the government is nothing to do with this. They're just protecting themselves from time-wasters and law suits related to copyright infringment.

      I don't know what universe you live in, but mine, universities are often owned and operated by, gasp, the government.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    36. Re:What is needed.. by Delphis · · Score: 1

      OpenVPN will tunnel over an HTTP proxy too.. so not just SSH, anything you want to run over a VPN connection :)

      --
      Delphis
    37. Re:What is needed.. by eric76 · · Score: 1

      Just tell them slashdot encrypts everything now.

    38. Re:What is needed.. by Eraser_ · · Score: 1

      Uhh hello? I would have torn up the citation in that jokers face and told him that I have the right to free travel. Get arrested. Do not resist. But tear up any and all citations for going for a jog in the middle of the night. Do not tear up citations for raping people or being a peeping tom ;-)

    39. Re:What is needed.. by morgue-ann · · Score: 1

      Where I work, we can't make *outbound* connections on anything but 80 and 443 and all connections are through a "transparent" http proxy (on 80- not sure how the SSL stuff works), so my sshd at home listening on port 80 wasn't reachable.

      What finally worked was using httptunnel with hts running at home on port 80, then sshd listening to localhost:arbitraryport. I can run ssh with reverse port forwarding so I can get access to work machines from home.

      We run htc on a Mac w/ MacOS X sitting in a corner of the USB test lab. No one realizes that it's a unix box that we have root on. The NFS exports on the Solaris boxes are set up without authentication because you'd have to create a user matching a Solaris user on a client box. Knoppix anyone?

      [yes I'm aware there are security risks in what we're doing & such hackery could be a fire-able offense. That's why I use the authorized VPN solution now that I've proven the backdoor is doable.]

    40. Re:What is needed.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ..is a P2P app that can run over an SSL connection, disguised as web traffic.
      ---
      its called WASTE

    41. Re:What is needed.. by modge · · Score: 1

      some of our accomadation started to block the ports used by the more common p2p cleints just because they didn' have the band width for us all to use it. bastards. ne way, so long as it was a smaller network (i.e. not kazaa or one or two others) it didnt seem to attracht attension

      --
      I am a sig
    42. Re:What is needed.. by bluGill · · Score: 1

      Tearing up the citation is likely illegal in itself. However suing for harassment is not.

      Being a college campus, 12:30 am is not an unusual hour. Now if the guy happened to be out at say 8:30am I'd agree they need to ask questions. Bars generally stay open until between 1 and 3am (depending on local laws). Even at that I know from experience that campus computer labs were open until 2am the night before big assignments are due...

    43. Re:What is needed.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, such an app does exist.

      EarthStation5 is an excellent application that uses SSL proxies to connect to the P2P network. It is also gIFT compatible too.

      http://www.es5.com

      I don't condone all of what they advocate on their website, but the product works well enough I guess. They even publish proxy lists in the forum that users can use to stay hidden.

    44. Re:What is needed.. by osssmkatz · · Score: 1

      wrong. it's very clear that they will try to identify copyrighted files going over a network. FTP piped over SSH would do it.

    45. Re:What is needed.. by fingerfucker · · Score: 1

      At one of the large investment banks that remains unnamed, they have a system by which you cannot talk with the outside world at all, except for web traffic, all passed through a proxy server.

      The way I solved my upload problems is I set up a website (http://my_site_on_my_remote_server), extended it with SSL and password protected a secure area where I set up an upload facility for myself. This way, I was able to access a remote repository of files, upload, download and not worry about technical problems you describe.

    46. Re:What is needed.. by jrockway · · Score: 1

      24 hours at many places now. Sleeping* is not something that college students do :)

      * at night. The dark is good for coding, the light for sleeping :)

      --
      My other car is first.
    47. Re:What is needed.. by WhiteDragon · · Score: 1

      Indeed. I've been using SSHWebProxy for quite a while at work. My employer blocks all external traffic, so everything has to go through their http proxy. I run sshwebproxy on my apache-ssl server at home, and as far as the proxy is concerned, it is nothing but a web page! The author also makes a cool program called SOHT (Socket Over Http Tunnel) that can tunnel any ip socket over http requests. Again, the proxy sees nothing but http requests, and gladly forwards them on!

      --
      Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
  18. How will this work any better than spam filters? by digitalvengeance · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the article:

    "seeking audio "fingerprints" that could be compared with information in Audible Magic's database."

    We've tried database-oriented filters to stop spam in the form of keyword lists and the like for years, yet spam is more of a problem today than it was 5 years ago. Why won't the same techniques that let spam slip past our filters let content slip past these filters? Add a byte here or there, run a very light encryption routine over a file and bam - one broken filter.

    Even if the networks that use encryption in the protocol itself are stopped - encryption on the file level can be used on insecure networks and this software becomes useless.

    Josh

    --
    How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
  19. Will it look inside... by ChangeOnInstall · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...of an SSH tunnel? :)

    --
    What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
    1. Re:Will it look inside... by xSquaredAdmin · · Score: 1

      Hell, you don't even to RTFA, just RTFP!

      "Jacobson said the identification process would not work on an encrypted network"

      --
      Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
    2. Re:Will it look inside... by BillyBlaze · · Score: 1, Redundant

      No. So the important question is, will your university continue to allow you to use SSH? You'd like to think so, but unfortunately it's not an inalienable right.

    3. Re:Will it look inside... by IntelliTubbie · · Score: 1, Funny

      ...of an SSH tunnel? :)

      Sorry, buddy -- I own the copyright on the sound of Britney Spears' latest single being sent through SSH. Sure, laugh if you want, but it sounds better than the original.

      Cheers,
      IT

      --

      Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

    4. Re:Will it look inside... by Rikus · · Score: 2, Informative

      > will your university continue to allow you to use SSH?

      Don't be ridiculous. Banning SSH would basically be banning secure remote logins, which would be so outrageous that nobody would accept it. Besides, universities frequently give students SSH access to various machines for use with classes. Are they going to switch to telnet?!

    5. Re:Will it look inside... by michaelhood · · Score: 1

      that's where my traffic will be driving from now on.
      /me turns on his headlights.

    6. Re:Will it look inside... by Ancient+Devices+King · · Score: 1

      My university REQUIRES me to use SSH. Can't log in to the unix mail server without it. And since that's how anyone taking a programming course is expected to code and submit their work, they're not likely to change it anytime soon.

      --
      -"It seems like you're trying to exploit a security hole. Would you like help?"
    7. Re:Will it look inside... by Vengeance · · Score: 1

      Not gonna happen, unless they go ahead and block port 443 (https) as well. Just watch the fur fly then! The old 'run sshd on port 443 trick' works every time.

      --
      It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
  20. I bet it doesn't work with ogg! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    And just the other day people were saying it'd never catch on.

  21. someone will use this for sure by neurosis101 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Despite the restrictions of the softwared, I'd bet that a University for sure will pick this up. Eventually what will happen is some people on the network won't be able to download some voice recording or some file send to themselves or something and a big fuss is going to erupt. That or some privacy issue is going to kill it.

    The university I attend has explicit privacy rules, available for everyone to read. If I recall correctly this sort of thing would violate those rights awarded by the school and as soon as someone brings it up it'll disappear.

    1. Re:someone will use this for sure by crackshoe · · Score: 3, Interesting

      NJIT (New Jersey Inst of Tech) has something similar to this in place, and has for this most resent semester. we get around it by zipping the files or modifying the suffixes.

      --
      Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
    2. Re:someone will use this for sure by LostCluster · · Score: 1

      The university I attend has explicit privacy rules, available for everyone to read. If I recall correctly this sort of thing would violate those rights awarded by the school and as soon as someone brings it up it'll disappear.

      Do you mean this software, or the particular privacy rule that it violates is going to go away?

    3. Re:someone will use this for sure by GizmoToy · · Score: 1

      They sure will. In fact, I've gotten a number of attempted connections to my machine from a "University of Iowa Palisades Systems" (according to PeerGuardian. It's all over the place. I was getting pinged constantly downloading that new Mandrake awhile back.

  22. yeah.... by mesach · · Score: 1

    I'll stick to Usenet

    --
    moo.
  23. New Build by thegreat682 · · Score: 1

    'If installed in a university, for example, it could look inside students' emails, instant messages and peer-to-peer transfers...' In related news, Palisade Systems has now finished build 1984 of PacketHound

    --
    Hard Hat Area: Sig Construction Zone
  24. so archive it by tintub · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is this software going to intercept any archives (.rar, .tar.gz, .zip etc.), unarchive them and check them? I'm not against such software - Universities have a right to disallow file trading on their networks, just as I have a right to use an ISP which doesn't use such software for my home connection. However, I just think that this won't work, at least not without blocking or hindering so much legitimate use that everyone revolts against it.

    --
    sig under construction...
    1. Re:so archive it by tintub · · Score: 1

      and also, I should ask the obvious question: can it do .ogg ???

      --
      sig under construction...
    2. Re:so archive it by protocol420 · · Score: 1

      i sure hope it look in archives! ever heard of a decompression bomb? 6k file de-compresses to 100Gb, or something similar. google it

      --
      www.gaian-mind.org - eco-punk/crust coop and collective | www.anarchistfederation.org - so cal anarchist federation
    3. Re:so archive it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why google it? You already fucking explained it.

    4. Re:so archive it by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I should not have to tell you that it is not difficult to see how many bytes the file is going to expand to and simply not expand it.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:so archive it by grahamsz · · Score: 1

      Well that's a simple solution... make a version of zip that also puts a 10GB file in the archive with the mp3, or even adds 10GB of length to the mp3.

    6. Re:so archive it by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The second solution will require special archival software and most people won't bother. The first solution won't work, it will just skip the "large" file.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:so archive it by JWhitlock · · Score: 1
      Is this software going to intercept any archives (.rar, .tar.gz, .zip etc.), unarchive them and check them? I'm not against such software - Universities have a right to disallow file trading on their networks, just as I have a right to use an ISP which doesn't use such software for my home connection. However, I just think that this won't work, at least not without blocking or hindering so much legitimate use that everyone revolts against it.

      GNU zip: zip -e archive.zip file1 (file2...) to encypt (password is prompted, repeated). unzip will recognize as an encrypted archive and prompt for password. See also zipcloak. Easy to use GNU zip is included with Cygwin (for Windows), Linux, probably BSD.

      GNU gzip: No encryption option.

      GNU bzip2: No encyrption option.

      WinZip: Look for password encryption options. You can lock files in the archive, but not the archive itself.

      WinXP zip (e.g., right click on file, Send To->Compressed/Zipped Folder): You can set up certificates for encryption (Properties->Advanced->Encrypt Contents), but they are not password based, and by default the Administrator has access - probably not done in a form where you can email it. Use Cygwin's GNU zip or WinZip (or, maybe winrar).

      Poor man's masking: rename the file from "Eminems_new_song.mp3" to Eminems_new_song.mpthree.txt". Recepient renames to undo the "encyption". Two problems - some email clients rightly block attachment sizes, and once the mail filters figure out your devious trick, they will update their filters. See "Arms Race".

  25. Lame. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    However, the Palisade software could also act to block those applications from using the network altogether.

    Holy crap! They've invented the firewall!

    And doesn't this whole anti-filesharing thing pretty much smack of the antivirus game at this point? Every time you come up with a way to kill one, two new ones show up that you're not sure what to do with. The effect on stopping the phenomenon is nil, just one more IT guy required for every hundred users.

  26. an interesting point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And how exactly can it detect copyrighted works transfered through, say, a VPN?

    It can't.

    Blocking the ports is asinine because there ARE legitimate uses.

  27. wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant
    ... if schools stopped spending students' money to do RIAA's bidding, and made them do their own dirty work?

    Last I checked ISPs and ISP-like entities aren't required to filter out file sharing traffic.

  28. Gates offers his own solution to protecting IP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Microsoft founder Bill Gates is scheduled to make a press release Friday morning to announce his partnership with the MPAA and RIAA to release a product that he guarantees can block all illegal file sharing 100%.

    The solution will be called "Knife". This aptly named solution will entail taking a sharp pointed object to cut a network connection cable in half. Knife is to be released in a Home ($99 - straight edge) and Professional ($199 - serrated) version.

    Rumors are circulating about a WiFi solution Gates has pondered entitled "Complete Technological Annihilation via Nuclear Bomb Generated EMP fields".

    Both are expected with a Fall 2004 release date.

    1. Re:Gates offers his own solution to protecting IP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *snerk*

      In other news, early beta copies of the "Knife" product have been seen at American flea markets, in retail stores, and they have been seen in use at regular American homes and in the streets.

      Gates refused to tell us about how his newest product got leaked out to the public so fast.

    2. Re:Gates offers his own solution to protecting IP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With a Fall 2004 planned release date we don't need to worry until around 2006.

    3. Re:Gates offers his own solution to protecting IP by Pofy · · Score: 1

      That would be "MyKnife", no?

  29. What about legal material? by Professor+D · · Score: 1
    So what happens when I log into iTunes and listen to a song preview? How does the software distinguish me listening to a perfectly legal snippit versus an illegal download?

    What happens when I buy the song from iTunes and download it to my computer. Will they reimburse me if they block my legally purchased song?

    What about streaming audio? Will I only get to listen to the stupid DJ's talking between the songs?

    Does this software violate the DMCA by illegally decrypting encrypted channels between me on the road and my secure, legal music server at home? how about breaking into my VPN? Or listening into plain old HTTPS/SFTP/SCP/rsync-over-ssh ...

    Or is this just some marketing-speak BS about some crappy pattern recognition software that doesn't really work (ie image 'watermarking' that survives recompression) ...

    1. Re:What about legal material? by BrookHarty · · Score: 1

      Thats exactly what scares me, legal mp3 streams via net radio will be killed, as all mp3s on legal streams. I bet it allows MS Media format, how monopolistic of them.

      Just packet filtering won't stop P2P, unless is stop's known ports. It will hurt the legal services, what a waste of money.

    2. Re:What about legal material? by Ancient+Devices+King · · Score: 1

      How is it going to stop an iTunes download? They're unplayable unless you're authorized. They'd get in a lot of deep shit if they started stripping the DRM from stuff.

      --
      -"It seems like you're trying to exploit a security hole. Would you like help?"
  30. Copyright-status repository? by mfh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > They want to take the position of not filtering out all peer-to-peer [traffic], stopping copyrighted works but not the other content."

    Here's the problem: how do RIAA and MPAA distinguish, legally, between copyrighted material that is permitted (fair-use), and that which is not? I'm talking about articles, fair-use media vs. illegal-to-distribute-or-possess copyright media. How do these watchdogs inform the public of such differences? The onus is truly on the RIAA/MPAA if you ask me. The story, strangely, is "Copyright © 2004 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved," which begs to question... how can a twelve-year-old truly understand this discombobulated law?

    That's the problem with the whole thrust of the RIAA argument against P2P (that the illegal trading of this copyrighted material hurts business). What about Internet articles? These articles are copyrighted works, published to the Internet by their respective owners, but quite often articles are mirrored by websites like Slashdot. Sometimes the copyright owners like this mirroring, and other times they do not (they seem to flip flop on it, depending on the source). Therefore, the lack of consistancy *should* make it extremely difficult to win a copyright case, although somehow the owners always win.

    IANAL, yet my argument is that two distinct laws ought govern copy protection, because this fork-in-the-road is quite ambiguous. Firstly, how are any of us to know the status of copyrighted materials downloaded? What if we download a song over P2P, expecting the song to be one of the songs that are fair-use, and we pass the song along to a ton of other people? Secondly, how do we distinguish between the legality copyrighted articles that are online and music, and the fair-use music?

    Because there exists no truly accurate copyright-status repository, I think all the people under suit from a watchdog might have some ammunition.Without a bona fide/impartial database of illegal filenames and md5 checksums to verify your current P2P files, how can you be responsible for these files?

    Furthermore, if you downloaded a song from P2P, you should legally be able to upload it back to that P2P, if you truly believed the files to be fair-use, which could truly be any file.

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
    1. Re:Copyright-status repository? by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Insightful

      quite often articles are mirrored by websites like Slashdot

      Slashdot doesn't mirror anything, it just links to the article at source. The reason for that is copyright - slashdot doesn't have permission to mirror the article. Stuff published on the net is still copyrighted unless specifically mark as being public domain.

      Linking to an article in no way copies it, and so cannot be prevented by copyright law. There is no inconsistency here - if slashdot copied the article verbatim and hosted it on their own site, then they'd be infringing copyright.

      True, people do sometimes copy articles into comments here, in case the server is slashdotted. For what it's worth, they are in fact commiting copyright infringement, and are opening themselves (and potentially slashdot) up to legal proceedings. I don't suppose it would ever come to that, but the copyright holder would be within their rights to sue.

      (Disclaimer: IANAL, etc)

    2. Re:Copyright-status repository? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True, people do sometimes copy articles into comments here, in case the server is slashdotted. For what it's worth, they are in fact commiting copyright infringement

      Not necessarily. If slashdot had linked to it, presumably the content was already freely available.

      The 'paste of text' is further down than the link, so people seeing it means they already couldn't follow or could follow the link.

      I.E. Fair use... they're reproducing for criticism/comment/journalistic purposes, generally factual (not purely entertainment/creative works), and there's not an impact on the market for the article, (it was free to anyone who could click on the link when the site was working), there was no market to begin with: otherwise, they would have been selling access to the article.

      And the posting on slashdot _brought attention_ to the article. If anything, overall, impact to market for the owner would be positive.

      So very likely pasting text was fair use, not infringement at all.

      In some cases, making complete copies of even books is fair. It really is hard to know, and nobody can really be sure that it is or is not infringement, unless a court has decided the matter.

      Yes, the owner could sue for infringement. But then so could anyone, really, regardless of whether there's any actual evidence of infringement or not.

      May I remind you of SCO?

  31. Stopping secure transmissions by zymurgy_cat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but how can one stop all "secure" file swapping communications w/o killing off unrelated important stuff? I tunnel through anonymizer.com when I surf, and I imagine any file sharing program worth its salt could do a similar type thing through the same port (22). Wouldn't they end up not only killing file sharing but also people checking their bank accounts, registering online, buying stuff on Ebay, etc?

    As for looking into email, sheesh! Public key encryption will avoid that, and any attempt to block those types of communications would be rather stupid and overreaching.

    --
    -- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
  32. IRC? by I+Love+this+Company! · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm interested to see how this will affect those who download from Usenet and IRC, my two favorite ways of getting music. Surely they can't block newsreaders and legitimate IRC clients.

    --

    "All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
  33. This will work for about ten seconds by Poilobo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If this is based on fingerprinting technology it would be pretty trivial to cutoff the Type 1 and Type 2 tags, reverse the content and stick'em back on. Reverse the process after downloading. Of course you could always UUencode the song and add a zip extension to it or a multitude of other tricks to hide what your doing.

    Never underestimate the power of broke, bored, determined college students.

    --
    Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
    1. Re:This will work for about ten seconds by LostCluster · · Score: 1

      If this is based on fingerprinting technology it would be pretty trivial to cutoff the Type 1 and Type 2 tags, reverse the content and stick'em back on. Reverse the process after downloading. Of course you could always UUencode the song and add a zip extension to it or a multitude of other tricks to hide what your doing.

      Yep. This might be effective in blocking the known P2P protocols... but even the slightest level of change would create a new protocol that'd send this thing for a loop. It's slow the spread of copyright violations, but it won't stop it.

    2. Re:This will work for about ten seconds by bot24 · · Score: 1

      Even better:
      Let other people's stuff get through by zipping your UT2004 Demo(or maybe a home movie) multiple times at the maximum compression level and then a lower one and then a higher one again. The program will either crash, or get way backed up. Since it sits on a network, then it can only stop the transfer as it is progressing, and other stuff will sneak through while this program is zipping and unzipping.

      Or maybe send it in spanned archives one at a time.
      There will always be some way of doing this.

    3. Re:This will work for about ten seconds by torokun · · Score: 1

      Unless they start getting thrown in jail or fined... You gonna take the chance that your spiffy new encrypted philez or p2p net doesn't have a bug in the algorithm, or wasn't compromised somehow on irc??

  34. Legal Use? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, I tape class today, and send it to you via email because you live on the opposite side of campus from me (or you are at your parents having a birthday for Granny). But now the MP3 of the lecture recording can't be sent.

  35. You're right, but for the wrong reason. by AltGrendel · · Score: 1

    Music transfer will be like spam or email viruses. It's a moving target now. They'll put something like this in place, someone figures out a way around it. The manufacture figures out a way to block the changes, start round two. Repeat as often as necessary.

    --
    The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination

    - Douglas Adams

  36. So where's my... by Dragonshed · · Score: 1

    So, where's my encryption plug-in for Azureus and bittorrent trackers man?

    Seriously, it's a proverbial game limbo, where the commercial interests setup up to stomp out piracy, and piracy reinvents itself instead of dying. I think the pirating trends on the internet will continue indefinitely, at least until the nature of the network itself changes.

    1. Re:So where's my... by S.Lemmon · · Score: 1

      Actually I think it would have real problems with BT since the files arrive in random pieces. It would have a hell of a time re-assembling enough to get a fingerprint during the transfer, and it would need to know the specific protocol pretty well.

      I'd suspect this thing can only detect a file sent in one contiguous TCP/IP stream.

  37. Re:Damn fair use scum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Settle down there, Valenti.

  38. iTunes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what about that wildly popular cat iTunes. Will those downloads be blocked. You don't use a web browser to interface but it does work thru the http protocol does it not?.

    Can i get some names.. who (legal downloads) are being blocked. I'd like a feel for the situation.

    This does sound rather impossible i mean how? are they gonna check the hashes? just change a little osmething and that's useless.

    1. Re:iTunes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      don't bother modding me down.. i didn't see (#8946214)

  39. Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by LostCluster · · Score: 2, Informative

    it will also stop legal song downloads. The software blocks anything that's copyrighted, whether you already own the song in another format or not.

    Uhm... no. That's not a legal download. That's a rationalization that some people have tried to claim, but it's not exactly one the courts have confirmed. You can format-shift your own copy of a song, but you can't take somebody else's copy of a song you happen to own a copy of in another format.

    Unless you're the copyright holder, you don't really "own the song", you own a "copy of the song" that you're allowed to use. If all you've done is just buy the overpriced CD, you're still not allowed to distribute a copy of your copy under any conditions...

    1. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by byronne · · Score: 1

      No, not distribute, but you can download an 'upgraded' copy, technically.

      --
      "Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
    2. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by LostCluster · · Score: 1

      No, not distribute, but you can download an 'upgraded' copy, technically.

      There's simple gray area of law... nobody's ever been sued for being the downloader in such a situatioin as far as we know.

      But this is in part why the RIAA's facination is with the uploaders rather than the downloaders. It's a lot easier to get the evidence to prove that somebody was offering something for download that they didn't have the right to do so with, than to have get the evidence to prove that somebody downloaded that thing.

      In any case, whoever's offering that "upgraded" copy for you to get is going to be breaking the law. At least the concept of "reciept of stolen property" is one thing that hasn't fully attached to so called "intellectual property".

    3. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by SamNmaX · · Score: 1
      Uhm... no. That's not a legal download. That's a rationalization that some people have tried to claim, but it's not exactly one the courts have confirmed. You can format-shift your own copy of a song, but you can't take somebody else's copy of a song you happen to own a copy of in another format.

      While clearly a much illegal trading is going on, not all transfers of copyrighted material of the network is illegal. It's hard to pass judgement on this front given the small number of details in the article, but, as an example of legal use that is on the rise is people streaming their own music to other computers they happen to be in.

      More importantly, there are some serious privacy implications with this. If a university is going to search people's IM traffic for copyrighted music, why don't they go a step further, and search it for evidence of plagerism. Or perhaps a step further and search for keywords of clearly nefarious purposes, such as 'bomb', 'kill', or 'bush sucks'. While perhaps the latter examples are a bit extreme, I personally consider the former quite extreme as well, and I keep getting suprised as to how far the government goes in invading people's privacy.

    4. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by Phanatic1a · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's not a legal download.

      Bullshit.

      Don't make the mistake of assuming all nations operate under the same set of laws.

      According to the Copyright Board of Canada, downloading copyright files from P2P networks is completely legal, provided that the copying is done for private and noncommercial use. You don't even need to own the song in another format.

      So yes, over a rather large percentage of the earth's total land area, it is a legal download.

    5. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by byronne · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Alright, let me get one thing straight here. I've been in several bands over the last 10-20 years and frankly, I would fucking love it if our material was being actively traded over P2P networks, because at least then someone is listening to and enjoying what I've done. I don't care if I see a dime from P2P, cuz I didn't see a dime from the record company either. I'm still in debt, supposedly paying for the privilege of being in their 'roster' of stars. Well, fuck them. Maybe I made a bad business decision, but I feel zero obligation to think that many other 'artists' haven't also been given similar treatment. Believe me, the sooner we expose the RIAA for what it is (i.e. - a corporate protection agency) and for what it is not (artists' protection), the clearer this ludicrous debate will become.

      --
      "Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
    6. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by corian · · Score: 1

      example of legal use that is on the rise is people streaming their own music to other computers they happen to be in.

      Computers they happen to be IN? Is this another Tron story, in disguise?

    7. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you for clarifying that. You must have a very big penis. Now shutup, the US owns the world.

    8. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      please stop posting to slashdot

      thanx

    9. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by pikine · · Score: 1

      Believe me, the sooner we expose the RIAA for what it is (i.e. - a corporate protection agency) and for what it is not (artists' protection), the clearer this ludicrous debate will become.

      There are two kinds of artists. Artists who are corporate properties (songwriters who don't sing their songs, and singers who don't write songs), and artists who are not corporate properties (but may still have contract with label for distribution). The former kind is what RIAA seeks to protect, since their artistic talents do not stand on their own but is exploited to make profit by a fragile, strategic combination with other talents.

      --
      I once had a signature.
    10. Re:Slashdot: News for trolls. Stuff that's biased. by I8TheWorm · · Score: 1

      You should try reading the Canadian law regarding copyright. Just in case you don't feel like linking...

      18. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the maker of a sound recording has a copyright in the sound recording, consisting of the sole right to do the following in relation to the sound recording or any substantial part thereof:

      (a) to publish it for the first time,

      (b) to reproduce it in any material form, and

      (c) to rent it out,

      and to authorize any such acts.

      That percentage just got quite a bit smaller...

      --
      Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
  40. If you want to get picky... by NivenMK1 · · Score: 1

    It wouldn't be so hard to just use some compression program to alter the file's contents and thereby thwart the new software. Either that or people could start trading .ogg files around, that would fix it.

  41. Look, it's easy! Just ban music. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ban software. Make having an Internet connection a felony. Actually, just ban computer ownership for everybody except corporate and government executive management. Then legislate for a new tax to cover the cost of enforcing these bans, to be split 50-50 between the government and the RIAA/MPAA.Problem solved. Everybody happy.

  42. Trivial Obfsucation, or stenography by sPaKr · · Score: 1

    Uh wont trivial obfsucation defeat this? Really we need to invest time into stenography as it should defeat this process. The university deplopment doesnt make much sense as one good CS major will tell everyone else to use steno and whamo everyone defeats it. You might have a play where users dont know each other or dont commuincate much to each other ala ISP.

  43. I call BS by Wolfier · · Score: 1

    Just another company trying to make a quick buck.

    I doubt that it can even recognize a ROT-13 Mp3 attachment renamed "readme.txt".

    It has a lot of catchups to do when students start sending encrypted traffic through ordinary channels. (an easy example, IM file transfer of a password-protected ZIP file)

  44. So... by lightspawn · · Score: 1

    When is the army going to install this in Iraq?

    Oops, I forgot we don't deserve the same freedom as the Iraqis. Silly me.

  45. Oh, No! Not SSH?!? by pjkundert · · Score: 1
    Jacobson said the identification process would not work on an encrypted network, ...

    Hmmm. Since I (and undoubtedly many others, I'm sure) use SSH for everything, I wonder how they plan to shut down even an insignificant fraction of any kind of sharing?

    --
    -- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
  46. SSH by mrpuffypants · · Score: 1

    IF I use an SSH tunnel to bore out to a server outside their net would they also block SSH? Should we be blocking IP too? After all, bad things can go across TCP/IP networks!

  47. So what happens when encryption becomes illegal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When only government departments and agents, as well as "licenced" corporate users, are permitted to apply encryption methods? If anybody other than those authorised users is detected using an encryption method and is therefore by legal definition a criminal?

  48. RTFA, - Geez.... by byronne · · Score: 3, Interesting

    neither RIAA nor Audible Magic had given them a demonstration of the filtering tools. Industry trade group P2P United says it has repeatedly contacted the company asking to see the filters in action.

    Ikezoye said he still has not demonstrated the technology for the peer-to-peer companies.


    This brings up a ton of questions:
    - What are they looking for in the content of P2P traffic?
    - What defines copyrighted or 'controlled' material? Bootlegs won't be in there...
    - If it ain't installed in the client, where is it installed?
    - Will this work on server based P2P like soulseek?
    - What possible gain is to be had by filtering this?

    Studies have already shown that CD sales increase where there is a market of 'try before you buy'. (Australia, for example) When is the RIAA going to wake up and realize that the biggest marketing tool in history is at their command and they don't have to do a damn thing to prevent it?
    Radio killed the vinyl star? Nope.
    Video killed the radio star? Um, nope.
    MP3 killed the video star? Maybe, but absolutely to the artists' benefit and not some fat f*ck from Clear Channel.

    Filtering is way too invasive to even be considered an option. Sheesh.

    --
    "Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
  49. Legal P2P? by LostCluster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If they've got software that can "name that tune" as it passes by in MP3... isn't that the holy grail for legalizing P2P?

    All it would take is some authorizing legislation, and every time a P2P song passes through the toll booth, a few pennies (quanity specified in the law) get transfered to the song owner. Those pennies can either be asorbed by the ISP as part of their service, or they can pass it along to the customer as part of their bill.

    There you go. If it can block it, it can log it too...

    1. Re:Legal P2P? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "If they've got software that can "name that tune" as it passes by in MP3... isn't that the holy grail for legalizing P2P?"

      P2P is already legal. There's a very specific behaviour that is illegal however and you're (deliberately?) confusing it for a general behaviour. The specific behaviour is this:

      The distribution (ie. uploading) of copyrighted material to which you don't have a distribution licence, is a civil tort.

      That's all the law says. Nothing more.

      TBH, I'm getting sick of your constant trolling on this subject.

  50. Audible Magic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Audible Magic is another "tool' that performs TCP resets when it detects what it believes to be illegal file sharing.

    This type of activity is introducing a frightening level of interference in the network as a whole. Imagine trying to troubleshoot network problems caused by tools such as these "accidentally" dropping network connections.

  51. I'm torn in two by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm torn in two over whether this is a good thing or not. OK, to be honest, I'm not torn at all, but I have to admit that after talking to a lot of people I have come to the conclusion that over 95% of all downloads on p2p networks are illegal sharing of music. The problem with this system is that it blocks the 5% of legitimate downloads.

    Let me give an example. I live in a country where the use, possesion, growing and sales of marijuana is illegal, even if it's for saving someone with glaucoma or MS, and simply speaking out against these laws can draw attention from law enforcement and gov't types that would rather have us shut up rather than try and create a better world through civilized education and political activism. We use p2p file trading (bittorrent and WinMX) in order to distribute rather large video clips and audio files, partly because we can't afford high-badwidth servers overseas. These files are copyrighted by us, but we do want to distribute them, for free, and our medium is p2p sharing. I recognize that what we do is probably ~0.01% of the way p2p networks are actually used, but it is a legit use.

    In a sense though, the illegal music/movie file trading scene has given us an additional edge. There are a lot of people using p2p that wouldn't if it hadn't been for the free music. The medium itself probably wouldn't have been developed so fast and so well either, for the same reasons.

    So while I don't condone the illegal trading of files, I personally see it is a "grey area" where it may be illegal, but there probably is more benefit than not. (And I won't even go into the "but they wouldn't have paid for the music anyways" argument.)

    Just a thought.

  52. The more you tighten your grip... by Mskpath3 · · Score: 3, Funny

    You know, I'm not one to break out the Star Wars quotes lightly, but : "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." What a dopey system. Everyone knows that the only way you're going to stop this kind of thing is through draconian legislation! :)

  53. cash in on the trends . . by Diabolus777 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Software companies just are out looking for the quick buck.

    They know for sure no protection is fail proof. They just think of something that looks clever to the unknowing, and convince them that their software can really do what it claims to do.

    Then it gets cracked in matter of hours, but the maker of the software has already made it's profit.

    We see this all the time. We just hear about the really lame protections that can be broken by holding the shift key or using a common black felt tip marker.

    Still, the problem is not with inventing new protections, the problem is inventing new protections that don't work but prevent legitimate users to fully enjoy what they paid for.

    They are grinding the fair use to a point where buying a cd (or movie or else) will only be legal if you play it using a DRM enabled device with you locked inside a black box connected to the copyright holder's server with a secret password key they will have given you after they made you swear an oath in front of a federal judge.

    Freedom? Yeah, you're free to get fucked.

    --
    We should have been
    So much more by now
    Too dead inside
    To even know the guilt
  54. What a Cat and Mouse game... by qualico · · Score: 1

    ...will it ever end?

    We are definitely going to need all the extra bandwidth that is being toted as of late.

    There is going to be so much crap in the pipe!
    Encrypted P2P, bots sniffing each other's packet ends like dogs.

    Enough already.

    1. Re:What a Cat and Mouse game... by Mskpath3 · · Score: 1
      When you think about it though, we are every inch approaching the realities of cyberpunk sci-fi.

      Ice. Intelligent agents. 'Cryptoanarchists'. 'Cryptocapitalists'.

      You read Gibson and Stephenson, and their weird networkian futures seem more and more plausible. In our particular case, it seems we're heading that direction (ultra sophisticated, pervasive network software, virtual combat between parties with gray areas of good and bad) due to much effort being expended to stop the flow of information that 'wants' to keep flowing.

      Hack the planet, indeed.

      Disclaimer : I generally find hardcore cyberpunk a bit silly and masturbatory. But in this case, there's a lot of interesting parallels.

    2. Re:What a Cat and Mouse game... by qualico · · Score: 1

      masturbatory. lol!

      Its all about control isn't it?

      I'm glad there are elements to offset the capitalists.
      Its the lawyers who are making all the money in the end though.

  55. Back to tape trading ... by newdamage · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it'll be alot slower, but I guess the only surefire way around this is to start burning entire MP3 librarys to CDs, iPods, USB harddrives ... whatever, and swapping music the old fashioned way.

    --
    ce n'est pas un Sig.
  56. 2 Camps by dedeman · · Score: 1

    I've seen a few (hmmm....) articles/submissions regarding privacy issues vs. RIAA/MPAA vs. file sharing. While I love to see the fervent debate and great minds that post rhetoric to this site, these debates quite often fall into two or more discussion a) the technical ramifications b) the legal ramifications and c) the evil imposed by the aforementioned groups vs. what legal entitlement they have to impose such evil. This can lead to posts getting messy and off track sometimes. Maybe you can't have one without the other. Maybe I'm just some damn college kid (yeah, so...). I guess it's good to see that we have code monkeys, lawers, and philosophists posting to slahsdot.

  57. there's a simple description for this software by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

    this software is a solution that is worse than the problem

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  58. Re:So what happens when encryption becomes illegal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    then, my friend, it is time for violent revolution.

  59. Maybe they'll patent it... by Thinkit4 · · Score: 1

    ...so anyone trying to write copyright-enforcing software will encounter a patent minefield. Actually, just abolish copyrights and patents--that's much better!

    --
    -I am an elective eunuch.
  60. We don't need no education by SunPin · · Score: 1

    We definitely don't need no thought control.

    The University System is a scam at its core. You can make something out of the social networking but it's severely over-priced and chronically stricken with hype.

    At the end of the day, the University is a corporation that gladly sells students for questionable social engineering experiments.

    If arbitrary rules on the Internet at your school bother you then stop putting money in their pockets. Universities need a serious check against their propaganda defining themselves as the only way to succeed in society.

    Check the car your plumber drives during off hours.

    --
    Laws are for people with no friends.
  61. They don't need to by poptones · · Score: 1
    Usenet is only peer to peer in the sense of servers mirroring one another - it's not hard to send out takedown notices these days and, from what I can see (via my dealings with easynews), providers don't ask questions when served. So to essentially kill the "open" groups all it would take is a few weeks of careful attention from the US copyright holders and bye-bye a.b.s.complete-cd and the rest. All that would be left is the indie stuff and the world music (and maybe not even much of that) and whatever was left in the spanish, korean and russian groups.

    Of course this just drives the networks to the binary.pgp groups, the zip groups, etc - but that sure cuts a hole in circulation. You go from "free for all" to "free for me and you" - essentially killing the entire concept of usenet.

    Frankly, I don't think people who post top40 type stuff (the type of music most likely to be policed by this software) are helping "the cause." All they're doing is helping hype the people who have been running the show the last century - if those people want their stuff off the channels, I say more power to'em and I hope this lets them finally shoot off that last leg they have left standing. Let's see'em try to serve a takedown notice when I post Shiva in Exile or Brad Sucks... or even Linda.

  62. Lyrical Email by kyoko21 · · Score: 2, Funny

    The following IM conversation is brought to you by the fUtUrE between two hormonal college freshmens:

    AeFr4tb0y69: Damn babe, you were so hot last night!

    CutIeyPiEKit86: ya know I gots da bounce ;-)

    CutIeyPiEKit86: oh papi

    CutIeyPiEKit86: baby hit me one more time

    >: This Instant Message session has been detected to contain copyrighted materials. The network administrators here at {INSERT SCHOOL_NAME} has been made aware at {INSERT TIME_STAMP} a copyright violation was detected and all parties including copyright holder(s) has been notified. Thank-you for using {INSERT INSTANT_MESSAGE_CLIENT_NAME} and have a wonderful day.

    I suspect the ACLU will not be very far behind.

  63. This is just stupid by darnok · · Score: 1

    Surely, if this shows the tiniest chance of becoming widespread, the next release of Evil P2P Sharing Program X will include shared key encryption at either end. Both peers will exchange public key pairs, and the content will be encrypted so no sniffer program will have a chance of knowing what the content is.

    But, far be it for me to stop people trying to hold back the tide

  64. easily beaten by timmarhy · · Score: 1

    this is so gimicky. you can defeat finger printing by tagging a second of low volume static at the end of a song. the listener won't even notice it but it's audio finger print will be completely changed, rendering this thing useless. hell watch mp3 rippers implement this as a standard feature.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    1. Re:easily beaten by ciroknight · · Score: 1

      i've even wondered about this. What if they dont use simple md5'ing and instead look for signatures of certain frames, which could be anywhere in the song, and at any small level. Of course, the level of detection drops, but at least you can pick one frame as copyrighted data out of a million, making extranious noise irrelavent. Makes it more like an antivirus program...

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    2. Re:easily beaten by Rikus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't think that simply testing the fingerprint of the actual data in the file would work very well, since there isn't a very good chance that an mp3 of a track encoded by Person A will match an mp3 of that same track as encoded by Person B. Aside from the obvious changes such as higher or lower bitrates, the actual data is likely to be different depending on the encoder used (though producing basically the same sound).
      I assume a more complex system involving actual analysis of the sound would be necessary in order to detect illegal audio files.

  65. Free is better than Copyright. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Funny, on slashdot GPL violators are on step below Charles Manson, while copyright infringers of music, movies, and software are somewhere below jaywalkers.
    Seems funny, but actually it just shows you aren't looking at the issue correctly. In reality many of us don't give a hoot about copyright. What we really want is free (as in speach) software. When we complain about people violating the GPL, we aren't complaining because they're violating the copyright laws, we're complaining because they're getting in the way of free software.

    --
    Qxe4
    1. Re:Free is better than Copyright. by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1
      In reality many of us don't give a hoot about copyright. What we really want is free (as in speach) software.

      Actually, IME, what most people around here want is free (as in beer) software. And music. And movies. And lunch. Arguments about monopoly abuse or free-as-in-speech are just convenient excuses to justify ripping people off and breaking the law.

      The free-as-in-speech argument is genuine from a few people, including yourself I suspect, and I have nothing against it: as far as I'm concerned, you're the guys writing the stuff, so you can impose whatever conditions on its use you see fit. It is irritating when other people use it in a fairly pathetic attempt to cover their real motivation, though.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  66. already illegal to use encryption in one media.. by zogger · · Score: 3, Informative

    .. and that's the HAM bands. Encryption is verbotten. Of course, the government doesn't follow it's own laws, witness, it's "legal" to broadcast without their "speech license" if we are in a state of emergency.
    *But*, we are *always* under several overlapping "states of emergency"(one of the main reasons we do not have constitutional government-side isue), YET they still bust microbroadcasters whenever they feel like it for not having their license or paying their fees. In short, liars.

    See, their laws mean nothing, they are there for THEIR convenience and THEIR profit, to be used ON you when they see fit..whether it's their own little idea or some lobbying force bribes them into it.. so don't be surprised if encryption on the net is made illegal, or to sort of slide into it first, they might make you register, pay a fee, get yet again another government "license" permission, and make you hand over your private key first before you use it. They already have gone on record saying they want that, various alphabet goon agencies, and eventually they get what they want. All they need to do is drop the buzzword "terrorism" now.

  67. After reading by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So - this software will block my VPN to work and not allow me to work from home?

    Methinks that this software will die a quick death.

    --
    _ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
  68. What about fair use and off-site backups? by Anubis333 · · Score: 3, Insightful


    So this software would make backing up your data illegal? I have all my CDs ripped, and I ftp them to another drive at another location frequently. This would stop any student from sending any of his MP3's to a computer at home for back up. That sounds fair.

  69. Carnivore? by kyoko21 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it just me or does this sound like RIAA bought their own version of Carnivore?

  70. WiFi. The 3rd Internet-SelfishNET. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's even worse than that. Why should the rest of the world be alturistic enough so the parent post can practice piracy? What's in it for them? Plus don't forget WiFi is an "unlicensed" band. Can you say "oops" interference? The fact that people go to all this trouble (1), instead of working just a bit more to get it legally (or doing without, but that involves not getting what they really want, despite words to the contrary), simply just shows how selfish, and disrespectful humanity has become.

    (1) Reminds me of the schemer who comes up with elaborate "get rich quick" plans, instead of just working like everyone else.

  71. This is a turn for the worse by Obscenity · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If this actually comes to pass, this will set a horrible precident for the future. To be allowed to intrude into private computers should be against the law, unless a search warrant is granted. Allowing this to be implemented in an actual setting would be disastrious. Not to mention that THEY get to decide what is copyrighted and what is not protected. --Those who would trade in freedom for security deserve neither. -- Jefferson

    --
    OMG OMG OMG WTF OMG WTF BBQ STFU RTFM, OMFG OMG OMG OMG ROFL LMAO OMG WTF STFU ROFLMAO
  72. Re:already illegal to use encryption in one media. by name773 · · Score: 1

    and that's the HAM bands
    does tin foil help or hurt the reception of those?
    seriously though, you have some good points if a bit overplayed

  73. Re:I AM THE KING OF THE PRAWN PEOPLE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dan Quayle posts as an A.C. on Slashdot!

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    If you have mod points and would like to support RIAA, please moderate this post up.

    ______________$*________________________________
    | _____________&@_______________________._a,____ |
    | _________._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
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    | ______________________________________________ | (c) RIAA 2003, 2004
    ` _______________________________________________'

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  75. Sounds like a pointless 'make work' technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    It's a proven fact that the technical 'underground' can move much faster than the RIAA/whoever. We have plenty of evidence that fingerprinting does not work as well as people originally intended (think SPAM and pr0n).


    It sounds like the only thing this is going to do is raise students awareness of privacy and their rights, and require universities, etc, to employ staff as pirate monitors.


    In the meantime whatever losses musicians are supposedly suffering due to file trading will continue, either due to the innefectiveness of this technology and its application, or through the simple fact that people will get smarter.


    At the end of the day its a law vs technology battle, and the law has a pretty poor track record to date

  76. So all you high school grads out there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now there are 2 things to look for when picking a college:

    1) It must be amongst the top 10 party schools
    2 It must not block file sharing

  77. I used to work for Palisade... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was working for Palisade when they developed the first version of PacketHound.

    Actually, I should say when they stole PacketHound, since it was actually created by a coworker in his off hours, outside of Palisade. The CEO at the time fired this guy and sued the developer to gain the rights to PacketHound. Kind of ironic that they stole something that is supposed to prevent stealing!

    Like Palisade's original product, called ScreenDoor, PacketHound is just a packet sniffer that sends out TCP RST packets to disrupt connections. Palisade (and Iowa State University) actually have a patent on this, even though there have been firewalls and other programs (like Snort) which do the same thing, and predate the patent.

    Palisade itself is a tiny company that is milking this one patent/idea for most of its products. But they are somehow good at getting press...

    1. Re:I used to work for Palisade... by The+Bod · · Score: 1

      I had Doug Jacobson for CprE 211 when I was at Iowa State. Does he stare at the ceiling even when he isn't teaching? It was annoying. I found myself always looking up at the ceiling trying to find what he was staring at. I am not exaggerating this. He spent a good 50% of his time in class staring at the ceiling either to his left or right.

    2. Re:I used to work for Palisade... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      From the Article:
      "What we're looking for is a real serious business discussion," Ikezoye said. "At this point, it doesn't look like anybody's interested in real business."

      In other words, once someone pays us a bunch of $ we'll let them install it and find it doesn't work as advertised... well after their check clears that is.

    3. Re:I used to work for Palisade... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The protocol I am developing is completely immune to this. Completely.

      Besides which, nothing but the other host should be able to send RSTs or SYNs on a connection in progress. If you've been reading the news, you'll know exactly why, and exactly why this is regarded as a Denial of Service attack and already fixed.

  78. Re:Oh, No! Not SSH?!? by BitterOak · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Since I (and undoubtedly many others, I'm sure) use SSH for everything, I wonder how they plan to shut down even an insignificant fraction of any kind of sharing?

    Simple. Ever heard of a man-in-the-middle? You make an SSH connection to a computer on the other side of this software. It detects you are using SSH, and steps in during the key negotiation protocol. Your client complains that the host key has changed. You either refuse the new host key and you're SOL, or you accept it and the software can still look for copyrighted material. You complain about security, but they claim your connection is still "secure" as it is reencrypted on both sides by this software.

    --
    If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
  79. and so began.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mutually assured destruction

  80. how about... pu the tech to some good use. by uv_light · · Score: 3, Insightful

    as someone noted before, encrypt everything. It is not just good idea for file swapping, also, it is good practice incase of information leak.

    anyway, that's not my point, I think it would be good idea if people can change the software slightly so that it block different thing, *cough*spam*cough*, it might be more constructive than blocking `any` kind of copyrighted material. Well of course, it would be nice there is no censoring of information, but we are too far away from that.

    if you like this, thank you. If you don't, sorry I took your time to read this.

  81. How will it stop these connections? by CRC'99 · · Score: 1

    Hmmm... on a tech note, how will it actually stop the transfer?

    I can think of a few, but none are ISP/Internet friendly.

    --
    Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
  82. encrypted zip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    how about complete albums in an encrypted zip file, with a trivial password?

    Oh wait, laws will be "fixed", and zip files will be outlawed.

  83. Typical business... by LostCluster · · Score: 1

    "It's the kind of thing we hear from universities or customers that act more as an ISP," said Doug Jacobson, Palisade's founder and chief technology officer. "They want to take the position of not filtering out all peer-to-peer [traffic], stopping copyrighted works but not the other content."

    They want something impossible. Therefore, we've developed a program that kinda-sorta does the job and we're here to sell it...

  84. Steganography by markan18 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    maybe we just need to rename songs as .doc or .jpg. If that crap can still catch them, cram the song into real images or insert them into real office documents.

    One may insert them into icmp packets (ping still allowed??). What if i encrypt all my email, will encryption be outlawed? The war on file sharing is turning into a war on drugs, we all know how effective it is.

    I think anyone can still get packets and or out a given network can download and upload songs or anything. those big 5 labels are causing real damage trying to police the internet and deserves to die real fast

    1. Re:Steganography by markan18 · · Score: 1

      Oh, and i forgot https, if i can connect to my bank, i can download songs? no? Do i am missing something

    2. Re:Steganography by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doubtful. All those files have headers in the data detailing what they are. in letter.doc, the .doc is just used for the os to know what to open it with. if you opened letter.mp3, it wouldnt be recognized as a valid mp3 file.

    3. Re:Steganography by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Simply compress into an archive. Zip, arj, ace
      Fingerprint will then be useless.

    4. Re:Steganography by Brandybuck · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The war on file sharing is turning into a war on drugs, we all know how effective it is.

      Except pot smokers aren't being sued by large corporations for failing to bogart and the DEA isn't blowing the heads off of neighbors of file traders by mistake.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    5. Re:Steganography by dolphinling · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, how about embedding the .ogg in a data: url in a web page? That might get around things if they check each file individually. And if need be, you can use steganography to put the song in a .png, and then embed that in a data: url. How cool would that be?

      /. apparently mangles data: urls but you can see some in action at http://www.mozilla.org/quality/networking/testing/ datatests.html

      --
      There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
    6. Re:Steganography by phreak03 · · Score: 1

      Yes, encryption can be blocked, I was recently monitored and charged with criminal conduct for alleged use of encryption, in my mail, IM, and file transfers.

      --
      come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
    7. Re:Steganography by Fweeky · · Score: 1

      Does IE support data: URI's yet? :/

    8. Re:Steganography by 3terrabyte · · Score: 1

      Yea right. I think you're leaving something out. I am interested in hearing it, though.....

      --

      Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

    9. Re:Steganography by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does IE support data: URI's yet? :/

      Does it matter? People are used to having to install new software to access illegal downloads, I doubt they'd have any problem installing a new browser for the purpose.

      Of course, the last thing Mozilla fans want is for their browser to be inextricably associated with the warez and mp3z scene... I can just see Microsoft lobbying for these "terrorist 'alternative' browsers" to be banned...

    10. Re:Steganography by schemanista · · Score: 1

      Except pot smokers aren't being sued by large corporations for failing to bogart and the DEA isn't blowing the heads off of neighbors of file traders by mistake.

      You forgot the word "yet".

      --
      I saw that shot more than a few times back when Starbuck was a man. ~ lucabrasi999
    11. Re:Steganography by g0at · · Score: 1

      Except pot smokers aren't being sued by large corporations for failing to bogart

      Not to nitpick... but wouldn't that be for NOT failing to bogart, or in other words, for recklessly bogarting?

      -b

    12. Re:Steganography by gargan · · Score: 1

      yes that's just about the same conclusion I came to as well. guess we can see who actually smokes eh?

      --
      Emory: Uh..we're still..beta testing that.
      Oglethorpe: What you're testing is me and my patience!
    13. Re:Steganography by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably the monitoring device is not too effective anyhow... it's a countermeasure they're trying to promote to stomp on P2P users. I am really skeptical as to false positives/etc.

      Seems to me like they're more interested in making bucks than combating piracy though... What with refusing to demonstrate the technology.

      I.E. sounds like their main goal is to sell product, of course: whether it actually works, is effective, and good enough not to disrupt the network with false positives is another matter.

      I'm more worried about its use setting bad precedent... that censorship of this form is OK. You _can_ probably get around censor devices with stego, etc, you should _not have to_, because tools should not be installed that hinder exchange or snoop on two internet peers (People who agree to interract with each other).

      The first major intermediate step down the slope to loss of free speech was the Nanny-ware type software, I.E. "protect the kids", Technology-aided censorship by parents Then came the DMCA, and censorship by the government for commercial interests.

      This is getting close to what I think is the next step down the slope: Technologically Aided Government-Enforced Commercially-Supported Censorship.

      I'm afraid it starts getting slippery... namely, if a commercial ISP ever starts with this kind of censorship (Probably an ISP related to a media company, doing so in the name of stomping piracy or protecting the kids), or the government mandates ISPs censor their users (even worse), then we may get Technology-enhanced censorship BY the corporation.

      And then the next step of course, once that step is entrenched, is that ISPs will likely censor their competitors and their critics... Once they do that successfully, they can of course censor anyone and anything.

      As for this monitoring device..

      I don't know any details, but I'm sort of guessing people could just use compression a ZIP file, or TAR GZ, or RAR, LZH, ARJ, etc, and download resume... (The thing can't really be uncompressed until the whole thing's arrived) If the file's really big uncompressed, surely it would not be practical for the monitoring tool to hang on to it locally and try to decipher it.

      XOR the first half of the file by the second , then XOR the second half by a bunch of 1s!

      Pass around stub files instead of content, where stub files are just text documents with a list of files to compressed split files to download and 'merge' into one file by XORing the pieces with each other or some method of controlled merge... So you don't just embed it in one image, you embed tiny pieces in a bunch of arbitrary files, and have "control files" to tell how to merge the bytes... I.E. which pieces to choose, and which operations to combine the pieces with... Like deltas... think like diff, rsync

    14. Re:Steganography by c0bw3b · · Score: 1

      and the DEA isn't blowing the heads off of neighbors of file traders by mistake.

      Yet.

      --
      ||:|::
  85. I'm a holder of a copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On a certain song in electronic format that I use to publicise my work.

    If this program is used and filters out my song can someone be held accountable for intefering with my intent to distribute my work for advertising purposes?

  86. This is just going to become a cycle... by Peterus7 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    (It already is one...)

    Music is shared. The industry finds way to block it, but in doing so pisses people off. New P2P app. Random corporate ups ante, finds new way to find out identity of P2P user. New P2P program that blocks ID. People post about it on slashdot. People make funny comments, and get modded up. Piracy increases, RIAA makes new blocking program. Cowboy Oneal finally decides that he's sick of it all and declares a ban on P2P relating articles.

    Anyways, down to real business: The more people try to stop people from downloading files, the more it becomes damaging to themselves. Not only are they blowing money on quick fix solutions that do nothing but piss people off and force them to resort to other methods, but in the end their problem is that people are going to download their crap no matter what. If they stop them from downloading, they sure as hell won't buy it, so they might as well let them be.

    Now, I'm not saying that's the right solution, or there is a solution, but I think trying to stop it and potentially messing people up all over the board is just a haphazard and dangerous way of doing things. Go back to the drawing board... And as much as I hate to admit it, but I feel by the time they solve P2P, Mac will be in control of the market, we'll be insectoid alien slaves, and Elvis will have returned, and will have posted a story on the truth about aliens here.

    1. Re:This is just going to become a cycle... by John+Courtland · · Score: 1

      The solution is to make it easy and cheap (within reason, $0.99 a song is actually sorta expensive, but $0.75 seems sort of cheap) to get the music you want, when you want, in whatever format you want. I do NOT want a shitbag MP3 of my music. I want a lossless WAV (I'd even prefer better quality than 16-bit 44100Hz, DVD Audio all the way), with a good file transfer speed, (hell, you could even make money by offering various levels of transfer speeds) and then let ME do what I want with it. I'll compress it to Ogg Vorbis if I want to. It's all about me, because it's my money these pricks want. So give me the rights I have, stop bothering me and provide me with the ability to actually GET the songs in a format that's worthy of being played.

      Neil Diamond even said that he doesn't care about file sharing, because the quality is so crappy that it's like getting a junk demo of the song. I feel the same way. Offer me the things listed above and you won't have to worry about me stealing your songs.

      --
      Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
  87. Didn't they raise a stink about.... by m0ng0l · · Score: 3, Insightful

    GMail looking inside e-mails? Isn't this just doing the same thing? What is to stop them from releasing a "new, improved" version of this software to allow universities to look inside e-mails for other things? Phrases that look like part of a term paper, that I *may* be plagarizing (sp?)

    FUD off

    At least not going to college anymore, I don't (for now) have to worry about this. What I can see is this software is automaticly presuming you are guilty of music swapping, and searching your e-mail without due process (BTW, IANAL)
    If the courts want to use an e-mail as evidence, do they not have to get a warrant? Why should this be any different?

    harumph.
    Jason A.

    --
    Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
    1. Re:Didn't they raise a stink about.... by boris_the_hacker · · Score: 1

      The TOS of the university I am doing my PhD at requires you to hand over your user name and password for email accounts when they request them. Even external private ones. Therefore people who are aware of this 'term' don't check their external emails.

      The only way it seems to get around this is to use your own laptop.

      --
      chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
      http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
    2. Re:Didn't they raise a stink about.... by TechnologyX · · Score: 1

      GMail looking inside e-mails? Isn't this just doing the same thing?

      Exactly. How much do you want to bet that the media will dub this "the music industrys answered prayer" while pounding GMail for "scanning our personal private emails to advertise.. FOR SHAME"

      --
      Slashdot sucks
    3. Re:Didn't they raise a stink about.... by BCoates · · Score: 1

      Because, you know, nobody ever throws bullshit claims they can't enforce in a TOS.

  88. Hell yeah! by andalay · · Score: 0

    Thats the slashdotter answer to DRM

  89. Privacy Issues by zors · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article says that personal e-mail will be ran through this as well, as a student about to go to college in the fall, this is truly disturbing. Is anyone else angry about the idea of their school looking through their e-mail? What if i'm sending a legal copy?

  90. HTTPS?? by quinkin · · Score: 1
    So they are going to block HTTPS??

    That should make the net more secure...

    Q.

    --
    Insert Signature Here
  91. MY Rights??-Flyswatter moderation. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Haha, sorry I'm not laughing at you. I just noticed that the parent post was at two and your a one:troll. It's behaviour like this that makes people use words like "we" when it comes to slashdot, and point to when they say moderation doesn't work. There may be people who don't follow the party line, but apparently they're not getting mod. privilages (::puts on tinfoil hat::).

    1. Re:MY Rights??-Flyswatter moderation. by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1
      There may be people who don't follow the party line, but apparently they're not getting mod. privilages

      Yes, we are. Unfortunately I've already posted to this thread so I can't mod him back up, but I would have done otherwise.

      And cos I'm such a nice guy, I'll even self-mod this down to 1 since it's off-topic.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  92. As long s there's a network connection... by ruhk · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... this software cannot block file sharing.

    If I decide to encode a song as a text file containing the bit-string of a song and slap that on a web server, what is this software going to do? Oh, sure, the size of that MP3 just jumped by a factor of sizeof(char), but its out there. Maybe it'll be smar t and read the first X bytes of any file it passes? What if the file is multiple parts? I can serve it on my web server. I can toss it up on NNTP.

    In short, the only way this software can stop filesharing is to block the network connection entirely. This is perfectly obvious even to a dimwit like me.

    --



    404 Error: .sig not found.
    1. Re:As long s there's a network connection... by scot4875 · · Score: 1

      size of that MP3 just jumped by a factor of sizeof(char)

      1?

      --Jeremy

      --
      Jesus was a liberal
  93. Hmm I bet this gets circumvented... by Vacant+Mind · · Score: 0

    Within hours of its release...

    Also there's WASTE which offers encrypted p2p

    http://waste.sourceforge.net/index.html

  94. Maybe try the obverse by Badanov · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Maybe the cry to go to encryption is the wrong way. If it is in fact the intention of trade organizations to scan networks and invade privacy to enforce their rights, maybe it would be better to create a standard that could not encode an audio file but transform it into plain text.

    The wargame company that makes Combat Mission does this to their save game files. The files are encoded not encrypted and the data read in/out into the file is true plain text, but unreadable. You cannot tell this is an encoded file by any means I am aware, but the file loads up smoothly and quickly.

    Seems to me iffin you wanted to defeat this new drive to invade privacy, making a software module that will allow you to store and transport music (and many other kinds of files as well ) files as plain text would be a tremendous blow to those efforts.

    --
    Dawn of the Dead
    1. Re:Maybe try the obverse by Suidae · · Score: 1

      Converting it to text is just a weak form of encryption. Any form of obfuscation that is used by very many people will be identified and the system will be modifed to handle it.

      Even if encryption or some other difficult to identify transfer is used, there is still a gaping hole in the way p2p users seem to trust all other p2p users. I have no idea if the computer at the other end of a connection is just a regular guy or someone working for the RIAA.

      Of course there are a lot more traders than there are enforcers, so if traders stick to their guns they'll win in the end, but thats not the way people usually behave. When the going gets tough, they'll probably scatter, but I hope I'm wrong.

  95. sooo...they're saying by nomel · · Score: 1

    we have to start doing a fast rar or zip on our files before transmitting them? Hell, you could probably just do a rot13 shift on all the data in the file. /me gets to work, wondering what a rot n shifted mp3 file will sound like.

  96. Fan Mail by GrEp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Please direct all fan mail to the head of Palisade, Doug Jacobson. dougj@iastate.edu

    Check out his senate testimony(Google Cache). This guy makes a living spooking the spooks.

    --

    bash-2.04$
    bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
    1. Re:Fan Mail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Morons, if you all flood his email it'll make it harder for me to tell him I need new toner in the lab. Since all of our boxes are BSD, Linux or IRIX, I'm sure they'll be able to take the extra email load with no problem.

    2. Re:Fan Mail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      from parent-linked testimony
      An argument could be made that, other than for governmental security purposes or to protect the transfer of confidential or proprietary information between commercial interests, legitimate peer-to-peer applications would not need to hide from detection or evade monitoring.

      I can't believe this guy. Please tell me he did not imply that citizens do not need privacy, and that only corporations & governments should be able to hide information!

      These tactics are only the "meantime" efforts before our old friend Palladium becomes possible on a widespread basis. Indeed, no method will work to selectively block file copying based on decoded content when the current computer model is in use. But redesign that model specifically for Digital Restrictions Management enforcement, and these tasks would be near-impossible. Implemented well enough, it could cause the death of free software & significantly stifle program releases.

      THAT is what we should be worried about. E-mail Intel in protest against their new DRM hardware. Hell, start an Intel boycott until they decide to stop developing DRM. But one thing we can't do is just stand idly by & let only lawyers and judges decide the future of freedom of information.

  97. Re:IRC? - too late by Undefined+Parameter · · Score: 1

    IRC clients are incredibly easy to block with the hardware and software already out there. If your sys admin knows what s/he is doing, IRC can be completely blocked.

    ~UP

    --
    Eat the Path.
  98. What about streaming..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How could they prevent users ripping streaming audio which are *legally* broadcasted (in fact, by several radio stations as well as individuals)? Considering the fact that the user agent variable can be "adjusted" in most ripping programs, I wonder how could they ever find out what is being done to an audio stream.. is the user simply listening over winamp or actually ripping it and growing their collections royally.

  99. It's all about neutralizing copyright by Pausanias · · Score: 1

    Funny, on slashdot GPL violators are on step below Charles Manson, while copyright infringers of music, movies, and software are somewhere below jaywalkers.

    That is because the GPL is a weapon for neutralizing copyright. It uses a copyright to thwart the practice of copyright itself. That is the beauty of it. The poison becomes its own antidote.

    Think about it. If all reproducible works were GPL'd, then for most purposes copyright would be meaningless.

    GPL supporters dislike GPL violators because they slow the working of the antidote.

  100. Time to add SSL to P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Time to add SSL to P2P..

    Actually according to the DMCA isn't downloading music you already own illigal? Or isn't that covered under the young people are automaticaly breaking the law when they use a computer clause?

  101. What about reproductions? by AstrumPreliator · · Score: 1

    Say I played a song on my guitar and sent it to my friend (which I do sometimes). I'm not making money off of their song. You can get tab anywhere for practically any song. Just so long as you aren't making money off of it. But since this program actually looks at the sound itself it wouldn't let me send this to a friend. Just a thought though.

  102. Here's an idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Couldn't someone create their own proprietary music file format, create a ridiculous licensing scheme such that it's never licensed to companies like this, therefor they can never create applications like this to intercept it? Right now they just have to get an MP3 license to do this. What if the owner of MP3's patents said, "No!"

    1. Re:Here's an idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me guess: you've never heard of ogg vorbis, right?

    2. Re:Here's an idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, I have. It's completely Open, which means that a company can come and make and application like this. What I'm suggesting neccesitates being closed and patented, however you give away licenses to anyone who wants them, as long as it meets your stringent requirements for usage. (ie: You can't use it to try to stop p2p... )

  103. I fund it very doubtful... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...that any algorithim could determine what is and isn't copyrighted. There are literally millions of unique songs on the net. Consider that each ripper will create a unique rip of a song (differing settings, differing qualities, header info, tags, etc.) that pushes the number of data variations potentiall into the trillions. The code will have to have a db to compare the datastreams digital fingerprint to. It will have to be very fast and constantly updated with every new tune. Alternately, I suppose they could use a heuristic method, but that will be entirely hit or miss with any given song that is checked.

    This will not stop or even slow the flood of pirated music on the net. It is a stupid waste of time, but hey, I'm not footing the bill; full speed ahead!

    A much easier way to stop music trading would be to just put everyone back on 33.6 modems.

  104. Of course copyright doesn't mean no distribution by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Look at the GPL. The only reason the GPL can exist is because of copyright. When you make a work, it is copyright to you. That means no one can legally distribute it or derivitives of it without your permission. With the GPL you say ok, you have my permission to distribute it freely, but only so long as you publish the source for all derivitives, and give others the same rights I gave you.

    Copyright simply means that the creator has control over who gets to distribute something. That means if the creator wants they can allow anyone to distribute the work freely, no strings attached.

  105. I do this because I have to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    why insist that he should be modded troll for saying something that you disagree with?

    Obligitory: You must be new here.

  106. the death of a thousand cuts by zogger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    really, what's overplayed? the various cop shops want to be able to intercept any net trafic, they are on the record of desiring everyone's private keys. The FCC violates it's own laws on little guys, yet lets the fatcats skate most of the time and rip billions from the public. It's just data. The discussion evolved to "using encryption" and to me, starting with the one verified example I brought up, it's not far fetched to assume that sometime in the not so distant future it will be illegal, or highly regulated. They already made copyright infringement be a felony punishable by jail time and fines if the feel like it. Anyone see that one coming even 3 years ago?

    If anything, I think more people need to get more upset over it, because a too-casual outlook towards this whole... creeping big brotherism and being a serf in your own nation afraid to enjoy life won't be stopped by ignoring it.

    I don'thave a dog in the file sharing fight, don't do mp3's or movies, but I can smell a conjob when I see one, and the record and movie ghouls been pulling a rip of massive proportions for decades now. There's laws on the books and then there's laws that beg to be broken. Prohibition was one that went on way too long until it was a national embarassment. They started another stupid buncha laws, and not enough people spoke up and fought to stop it,so now we have the war on some drugs, that got us 1/2 way to a full-bore police state.

    Sometimes ya just got to say no to stupid stuff. I walked with people who got refused service in restaurants because of their skin color,and it was "legal" for that to happen to them at the time. I took the gas when we tried to stop a stupid war that wasn't legal and was a scam based on a whopper lie, yet they called it "legal" and killed millions of people over it, both "our guys" and some other people, and they didn't care. And on and on, stupid things big AND little, but they all add up, and they all apply to everyone sooner or later. Even when you think this latest stupidity don't apply to you, eventually it will, because their job is to think of stupid things to make life more complicated and to make it harder to avoid "offending" them so they can "crack down" on you for..whatever. Just think of all the things they are gonna "crack down" on. Believe me, they won't run out of nouns to target. Eventually they'll get to something really important to you, "general you' I mean.

    Now we got all sorts of stuff like that going on, PLUS we got this cyber world to deal with, and some things are just as stupid as the others. I say it's righteous to say NO to obviously stupid things. And the deal is, with government and their corporate pimps, it's the death of a thousand cuts with those people,they just keep coming and they ain't got no pity, you got to say "NO! quit cutting me" everytime they try it,no matter how small the cut is, and be quick with the bandaids and iodine.

    If you keep taking the little cuts, because "oh well, it's just one little cut", pretty soon it adds up to be the equivalent of a meat cleaver in it's effects. It's like, what's the line, how far do you eat it when they are trying to make you eat it constantly?

    In short, it's not tin foil hat if it's real,and if you can step back and look at the bigger picture and not get hung up on minutiae, and realise that they WILL cut you as often as they can think of a new way to do it.

    1. Re:the death of a thousand cuts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well said ! Anyone who disagrees with you is either a fool, or a young and naive fool.

      The most dangerous enemy common Americans face is the American government, much more so than any terrorists.
      Do you disagree ? Then compare the number of lives _wasted_ in Viet Nam to the number killed by the terrorists.

      And frankly, if the US government would quit screwing with other countries, and let nature take its course in the Middle East, the terrorists would lose most if not all interest in attacking the US.

    2. Re:the death of a thousand cuts by inode_buddha · · Score: 1

      I would like to remind everybody that the current Wi-Fi bands *were* Ham bands not too long ago. (1990's). For that matter a lot of the tech we take for granted came from radio hobbyists. FWIW the Hams usually lose when there's a bandwidth auction, in my experience. (FCC, USA) being non-profit and all.

      --
      C|N>K
    3. Re:the death of a thousand cuts by name773 · · Score: 1
      what's overplayed?

      they are on the record of desiring everyone's private keys
      do they have those keys?

      they WILL cut you as often as they can think of a new way to do it.
      here is where your tin foil hat comes in. the government is run by citizens (in gov. positions) and these "cuts" will effect them too if allowed. please realize that the government is not intentionally out to get you. they may try to help businesses or make crime fighting easier and miss the side effects because they are overly zealous (and the number of things affected is huge)

      there was other stuff (like mentioning the little guy), but saying it's got nothing to do with tin foil then ending on "'they' are out to get you" seemed a bit contradictory

  107. Everything is copyrighted by FattMattP · · Score: 1
    The software blocks anything that's copyrighted
    Everything is copyrighted. The important thing is do you have permission to access the copyrighted work. That's a determination that this software can't make.
    --
    Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
    1. Re:Everything is copyrighted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "That's a determination that this software can't make."

      In particular, it cannot determine if I am distributing my own works to which I hold the copyrights. When it gets this wrong, somebody has violated my rights, and they should face severe consequences for it. Violating my rights under copyright should carry the same consequences, under the same force of law as, say, somebody violating Sony or Universal. Based on the precedents being set, I believe that means I should be able to seize their assets and have them held in police custody for a single violation.

    2. Re:Everything is copyrighted by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

      Exactly. This technology is thus nothing more than replacing /dev/eth0 with /dev/null.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  108. Scare Tactics by Axel2001 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't think that stuff like this comes along with the intent to actually use it in the long term...

    It's kind of like shopping at a place like Walmart. They have those stupid little detector things at the doors that go off and are supposedly to catch shoplifters. The fact that they are there is the deterrent. I have yet to see one person caught shoplifting, but have seen countless people doing some shopping, pay for the item(s), and walk out the door. Everyone stops and looks.

    The music industry is doing much the same thing. They don't really think they are going to catch anyone doing serious damage, they just count on the deterrent factor, and they count on publicity. We need to stop making such a big fucking deal of everything the RIAA, et. al. does. It only empowers them.

    1. Re:Scare Tactics by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 1

      Cause the real criminals KNOW how to steal and not get caught.

      OK. those panels are RF panels. What block RF? Lemee see... Aluminum foil covered bag.

      --
    2. Re:Scare Tactics by fishbowl · · Score: 1


      "Cause the real criminals KNOW how to steal and not get caught."

      I haven't seen Walmart loss prevention numbers but I would bet you a bag of donuts that the inside theft is orders of magnitude higher than customer shoplifting. That's just merchandise, mind you, without getting into the realm of embezzlement in the accounting office or stock scams by the execs.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    3. Re:Scare Tactics by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 1

      I wasnt talking about insider jobs.

      --
  109. Legitimate sharing of copyrighted works by Eythian · · Score: 4, Informative

    iRATE is a program that downloads music that artists have put on the net. These downloads are also taylored to your own tastes, based on comparing what you like with other users. With this, there isn't a need for P2P music file sharing, and risking being sued by the RIAA, as copying this music is sanctioned by the artist. (Unsurprisingly, not much of this music is made by RIAA labels)

  110. Or SSH by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would LOVE to see a university try to block that. A small private one might (and I emphize might) be able to get away with it but a big one? Forget about it.

    Hell, our university REQUIRES SSH for many things. You can't telnet to the e-mail cluster any more, it's SSH only. Likewise the webmail is SSL only. You just don't have a choice, you'll use the encryption or you'll not use the system. My department is working on going to that. Going to be no telnet, no FTP, no unencrypted IMAP or pop. Everything will be SSH, SFTP (which is also SSH), or SSL. Unencrypted communications will be in-building only, or for things like the main website. You want to access any systems, you'll do it with an encrypted protocol, or use an encrypted VPN tunnel to get a local address.

    So either SSL or SSH would work well. They are just too useful and used for too many things. Try and shut that down and you'll find backlash like you can't believe.

    1. Re:Or SSH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I go to a very large, mostly liberal arts university, and I assure you that a large School would do this. Our mail, wifi, etc is all unencrypted. Our network idiots have even accused me of hacking because of port Scanning. they think eneyone with linux is a hacker. Eney port is blocked as soon as they find out someone is using it to download large p2p or similar files. Even any Bittorrent down load is blocked. (IM writing onapda so this comment looks Jnetty weird , sorry )

  111. Re:Not every college by Bastian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not every college says their computing resources are for academic use only. Honestly, such a policy is kind of ridiculous - with such an agreement, you've suddenly said your students aren't allowed to do a whole host of things, such as use their campus network connection (or campus e-mail account) to keep in touch with family and friends. You've also said your students can't use the campus network to download games and all sorts of other stuff that you really shouln't be disallowing people who live on campus from doing.

    At the college I went to, the computer center understood that the campus network and internet connection weren't just an academic tool. They were also a student entertainment service and a way to attract kids. A college with a TOS that doesn't allow this or has a generally crappy low-bandwidth internet connection in the dorms stands to lose a lot of good applicants to well-wired schools. Which isn't to say that the network was totally unrestricted - there were bandwidth caps on traffic going through all the popular filesharing ports, for example, and all non-port-80 traffic in the dorms was restricted during peak hours.

    I have seen such policies on computer labs (with the understanding that e-mail is okay), and that does make sense.

  112. Well by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    If it's a private school, they are basically fucked. Falls under the same laws as a company more or less. Their shit, their rules. If they want to look at your traffic, they can make that part of the rules of using the network (or even of attending the school).

    Public schools are a little different. Here it might not fly so well. Students would also then probably have a legit claim that the university should have to open up its dorms to 3rd party competitors for Internet access. As is, most public universities have a monopoly over data and phone service in their dorms. This isn't really challenged by anyone because it's a good deal. However if they start with severe restrictions (espcially something assinine like no encrypted traffic) I think you'll see a lawsuit to try to force them to open it up to competition.

    1. Re:Well by j.bellone · · Score: 1

      That's why you get everyone in the uni dorms to chip in and start purchasing fat bandwidth pipes. Or maybe Slashdot could start up a Frat around the US:

      Slashdot Frat; serving your unmetered, unmonitered, internet bandwidth needs when your college shuts it down.

      --
      I'm f#$king magic!
  113. How to tell by mfh · · Score: 1

    > how can it tell that from me sending a copyrighted work

    Basically, they do an md5 hash of the files most commonly traded that are copyright protected. If your file doesn't match (and it won't) then you should be in the clear, if these programmers aren't stoopid.

    Yes, adding one byte to any file will change the md5 dramatically, so the watchdogs like RIAA have a random method for checking traffic.

    These watchdogs are really just attacking randomly, and that aspect of their nature could actually prove a valuable defense for someone under fire (with a huge legal budget). Targeting twelve year olds pays off for the RIAA because they know damn well that a kid won't have a huge fortune backing them in court, and therefore such targets will settle out of court. I truly can not wait until the RIAA hooks someone with a serious hatred for them, with the cash to back it. Any lottery winners out there wanna have some fun with that money?

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
    1. Re:How to tell by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      Any lottery winners out there wanna have some fun with that money?

      Of all the stupid ways you could waste a lottery...

  114. I doubt they'll have any choice by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Secure protocols are becomming necessary to do bussiness. More and more places (including a great many systems) are REQUIRING the use of SSH, SSL, and so on to access anything.

    More to the point, that sort of ban would interfere with professors and their research. You just try and do that, see how long it lasts. The RIAA can squalk all they like, if the deans and department heads unite against something, it's just not happening on that campus.

  115. Colleges could throttle upload bandwidth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One thing University campuses could do that would bog down file sharing while allowing most "normal" internet usage is limit uploading bandwidth, perhaps on a mb/day basis.

    If one guy with tons of songs can only share 10 of them a day, it would make it enough of a pain in the ass to encourage legitimate sales.

  116. Re:Not every college by LostCluster · · Score: 1

    Not every college says their computing resources are for academic use only. Honestly, such a policy is kind of ridiculous - with such an agreement, you've suddenly said your students aren't allowed to do a whole host of things, such as use their campus network connection (or campus e-mail account) to keep in touch with family and friends. You've also said your students can't use the campus network to download games and all sorts of other stuff that you really shouln't be disallowing people who live on campus from doing.

    Eh, that's where they point to that clause that says they reserve the right to non-enforce any policy and only apply it when they feel like it.

  117. Return of binhex. by Steamhead · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just plain old text, can't be something bad with that.

  118. Ports by Theatetus · · Score: 1

    A lot of people seem to think that ports have some mystical power. A port is just a number. It's just a number two processes have agreed to both use to keep track of who is talking to whom. You could not make a computer "think that" port 6989 is port 80, but it's trivial to configure a web server to listen on port 6989 for a connection on port 6989. It remains normal http traffic over a nonstandard port.

    --
    All's true that is mistrusted
    1. Re:Ports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      depending on how the software works, you can rewrite the packets before they go over the monitored segment then then rewrite them back once you get to the other side. Thats kinda silly if you only use it for two computers. However for connecting two networks it makes more sense. a vpn would make more sense though.

      however there is something magical about port 80 on some networks. Some networks have a transparant proxy in the middle so if you try to use something other than http on port 80, it will just choke on it. Put the same traffic on another port and it would work just fine.

    2. Re:Ports by Fareq · · Score: 1

      Ok, fine...

      just... have your P2P client act as a real webserver -- passing the data back and forth via simple HTTP requests and HTML documents that *just happen* to have the relevant data...

      just request http://foo.bar.com/dir/file.html

      and have the server spit back to you an HTML document that contains the MP3 embedded in it somehow. you could even be more clever and do things like file.4016.html -- implying that you want the 4016th "chunk" of the file.

      Wasteful, yes. Tricky to detect? Probably yes.

      If you got really desperate, you could reverse the process so that you could send the MP3 embedded in 1 or more valid-looking HTTP requests and have the user respond with an HTML doc that requests the next packet.

  119. Illegal search and seasure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it could look inside students' emails, instant messages and peer-to-peer transfers

    Illegal search and seasure?

    1. Re:Illegal search and seasure? by Firefly1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Now, if people are already leery about the government, which is notionally accountable to them, doing this sort of thing, what on Terra makes these private entities think that their doing it will be accepted?
      Quite aside from the insulting and inexcusable assumption that is at the root of such a program ('guilty until proven innocent'), what reassurances do people have that this capability will not be abused? For instance, it's quite easy to destroy someone's reputation by planting child pornography on their hard drive, then 'anonymously' tipping the FBI...

      --
      - White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
  120. Company location: Ames Iowa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey I grew up in the midwest myself (notice I don't live there anymore though!), but why am I not surprised some backwards company like this would be based there - notice what other obsessive-compulsive christian-taliban products they sell.

  121. Re:How will this work any better than spam filters by drinkypoo · · Score: 1
    Why oh why do people not realize that the music and film industries are not trying to stop so-called "piracy"? That's impossible. (Instead, realize that there is no piracy?) They just want to slow it down.

    As long as they can make it sufficiently inconvenient to copy music, most people won't bother. They're really not worried about people trading music face to face, because that is truly impossible to stop. Forcing people to encrypt individual files in a way that is difficult to intercept currently goes a great way toward dissuading the majority of users. Blocking known P2P applications based on the protocol's "fingerprints", especially encrypted ones like Freenet and Waste, will cut down on the majority of the remainder; these are the easiest and thus most-used methods of encrypted filesharing.

    Thus, this software does exactly what the more tight-fisted copyright holders are trying to accomplish.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  122. Non-US law by achurch · · Score: 1

    According to the Copyright Board of Canada, downloading copyright files from P2P networks is completely legal, provided that the copying is done for private and noncommercial use.

    Out of curiosity, does that extend to the people making the files available on P2P as well? Or is it just a "we won't go after you unless you upload" sort of thing?

    Incidentally, Japan has a similar clause in its copyright law--"a user of copyrighted material is permitted to make copies for personal, family, or similarly limited use". A couple of people were arrested recently for sharing some movie or other, though.

    1. Re:Non-US law by aridhol · · Score: 1
      Out of curiosity, does that extend to the people making the files available on P2P as well?
      Yup (for now)
      --
      I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
  123. Mistake in article: _Everything_ is copyrighted! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What songs aren't copyrighted? In the US since the 1980's all works which can be copyrighted are by default unless the author specifically disclaims the copyright and puts the work in the public domain. How this thing could possible tell which copyrights have been disclaimed I don't know. But the point is that everything is copyrighted including this post. That does not mean you aren't free to view/listen to it. It depends on the license. What we need is something that knows what license a work is distributed under, not something that detects copyrights.

    Here's a simple copyright detection algorithm:

    bool CheckCopyright(Song s)
    {
    return true;
    }

    See my point?

  124. Hmmmm.....Perhaps a clever idea...... by localhost00 · · Score: 1
    Maybe we could compile an executable with MP3 data cut up, shuffled and encrypted so harshly, that you couldn't just simply extract a segment of that executable file and get the MP3. In fact, only that executable could only reconstruct the file, and of course, it would be optionally password-protected.

    Look out for a WinBatch script sometime in the near future that will have an MP3 embedded in it. I will post it on my web server.

    --

    Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.

  125. and people thought GMail was bad for "Privacy" by dargon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > 'If installed in a university, for example, it could look inside students' emails, instant messages and peer-to-peer transfers...'

    Damn, someone comes up with a piece of software that will snoop into your e-mails, im's and p2p, violating your privacy in an even bigger way than GMail and not a single person even mentions the fact that this program could be hijacked to snoop for things such as credit card numbers, passwords, etc. Atleast with GMail you have a choice whether or not you use the service. The people this software would effect don't exactly get the choose whether or not they participate in it's use.

  126. How to be really sneeky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Develop a big scarry product that feeds on the FUD surrounding p2p and then sell it to universities and corporations for huge bucks so you can afford to buy your music instead of download it..

    It's brilliant!

  127. Too easy to work around by thehomeland · · Score: 1

    For every copy protection or filter, there are tons of easy ways to bypass them. It doesn't give much details on how exactly it checks for the "audio fingerprints". For example, does it only check files ending in *.mp3? Solution: rename the mp3 you want to send to a *.exe file, then the recipient renames it back. Does it check all zipped (zip, rar, lzh, etc.) files also?

  128. This is great . . . by aaronhurd · · Score: 1

    This is great . . . except that Dr. Jacobson, founder of Palisade Systems, is a professor at my school. Good bye file sharing on ISU's network. ;-)

  129. Why harass the man by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

    Why harass him?

    He's just bumped up technology a bit more. The whole P2P arms race is producing some of the fastest and best improvements in software ever. Encryption (aside from e-commerce) is essentially nonexistent -- except in P2P systems like WASTE and Freenet. I'm all for this -- he'll drive people to use encrypted systems, which I would have liked to see a long time ago.

    It'd be awesome if people started distributing software that logged, spied upon, and retransmitted email by sniffing networks. We'd have PGP deployment en masse for the first time.

  130. Fraud by Dwonis · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If an ISP claims to offer "internet service", but knowingly provides only "HTTP service", isn't that fraud?

  131. Not every college-Universally Bad Apples. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "A college with a TOS that doesn't allow this or has a generally crappy low-bandwidth internet connection in the dorms stands to lose a lot of good applicants to well-wired schools."

    Well in the context of this story, if the problem children keeps running from "well wired" school to well wired school? Then the only this will accomplish is that the bad apples are going to spoil it for everyone else (don't they usually?), and mean that what is presently happening with a few non-"well wired" schools will be more universal. Besides I think far too many people forget why we go to school (1). If I want to be entertained, I can certainly do it cheaper than going to school. Or at best, get your own Internet connection, and leave the school out of the schenanigans.

    (1) Especially in this day and age of "retrain in order to get a new job". Why risk that for some dubious short-term benifits, that will end up hurting you in the end.

  132. Wouldn't it be simpler... by ShinyBrowncoat · · Score: 1

    ...to just slap a bandwidth quota on students? Perhaps with some white-listed sites that don't count towards the quota (specific coursework-related downloads/files, etc.)?

    --

    "They've canceled the show but we're still here. What does that make us?" "Big Damn Junkies, Sir!" "Ain't we just"
  133. Where can I download this? by ummcdou4 · · Score: 1

    I want try it out at home on my linux box but I can't find it on Freshmeat.

    Any ideas?

  134. ha-ha *nelson laugh* by Brakz0rz · · Score: 1

    This stories up for three hours and /.'rs are already figuring out how to break this lame tech. The current copyright laws are screwed and partial. I look forward to the day when the RIAA lies down and dies.

    Here's another reason to deprive them of money... Recording artists have a habit of losing it and *sucking* when they get fat and rich. Poor artists tend to produce better work. Do you believe that a musician deserves to be a multi-millionaire? Maybe... but Metallica used to truly rock and now they are a shadow of their former selves. They don't have to worry about me stealing there music anymore, no-sir-ee bob.

    --
    "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot
  135. Another way to get around the problem... by Elliot+Anderson · · Score: 2, Funny

    All you would have to do is write the song out in binary, scan it in, save as a jpg and pgp the email.

    Problem solved!

  136. wouldn't it be simpler-Rules are made to be broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "This is a good point. Frankly make them sign a contract or a LOI stating that if they do anything illegal that they have to indemify the university of any illegal actions and take full recourse for the aforementioned."

    And how's that that much different when you remember the last slashdot story about a young, college P2P'er being sued? Remember the outrage, and all the jokes following for weeks afterwards?

    The only difference is that we'll have the same outrage, and how the university (backed by the RIAA) forced people to sign them, and The League of Sugarfree Slashdot Lawyers questions it's legality, using assertions pulled from a greatly abused dictionary, and a copy of Poor Richard's Almanac.

    To borrow a common saying. Technical solutions don't work on people who want to ignore the rule of law. Terrorists and events after 9/11 are proving that, and P2P'ers are trying their hardest to prove it.

  137. Oh, my... Where to *start*... by The+Master+Control+P · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For starters, I'll be damned if your fscking spybot will ever acess my hard drive. Block all ports by default, opening as needed.

    How, exactly, does a remote program ruffle through my files without my permission, anyway? Mandated backdoors? Screw them.

    If it looks for an audio "fingerprint," how will it react if some 10-year-old wrote a 5K program to insert a random byte every N bytes of the MP3 (or any file)? If I do something as idiotic as flipping all the bits? The ways to foil things that search based on fingerprints are too many to name.

    Who the hell gave you permission to look at my private e-mails? Oh, yeah... I DIDN'T!

    Amendment IV: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

    How exactly will it react to a file named "Britney-Spears.mp3" that contains nothing but static? Did I mention the violation of privacy?

    They've already admitted that it's completely impotent against encrypted traffic, and there are already encrypted p2p clients.

    For the love of God, don't these control freaks realize when they're beaten?

    OK, I think I've got most of the obvious replies out of the way. It's obvious that the current control freaks "up there" see the Internet, and realize quite well what it can and will do them if they can't nip it in it's budding stages. Kid yourself not: They will wage an all-out war against privacy on the Internet. And as always, all that is needed for evil to win is for good to do nothing.

    Contact your congressperson. Have all your friends do the same. Snail-mail them. E-Mail them. Donate money to their campaigns. Get the word out!

    1. Re:Oh, my... Where to *start*... by 87C751 · · Score: 1
      Amendment IV:
      Which only applies to Congress and the Government. Private companies don't count.
      For the love of God, don't these control freaks realize when they're beaten?
      Of course not. They're control freaks.
      --
      Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
    2. Re:Oh, my... Where to *start*... by wk633 · · Score: 1

      "Who the hell gave you permission to look at my private e-mails? Oh, yeah... I DIDN'T!"

      Depends on your TOS fine print. If you're an employee or student, using employer or campus networks, you may have already given permission.

  138. Yep by ae-valkyre · · Score: 1

    And this will be cracked and worked around, just like every other attempt.

  139. Re:How will this work any better than spam filters by Lehk228 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually they are more interested in keeping music off the internet in order to prevent bands from going independant, the internet makes them far less important than they once were.

    --
    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  140. MY Rights??-Right to compensation. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    BINGO! BINGO! BINGO! Someone actually using their god-given brain, instead of following the popular dogma. To put it simply, a world that's strictly public domain, can have locks, as it were. Copyright just happens to be the most agreeable lock that the founding fathers could come up with.

    Imagine a public domain were much IP is deliverd encrypted (also ironic that the P2Pers savior can also cut the other way) six ways to sunday with a thousand algorithms, and keys a mile long, were little is naked for long. DRM will not be in just our computers but elsewere in various forms.

    And how will we get all this? Because people want to ignore the most basic rule of all. People want to be compensated for their efforts. Nowere in that does it speak of the nature of what is being produced.

  141. Re:I used to work for Palisade... Slightly OT by DeICQLady · · Score: 1

    Palisade (and Iowa State University) actually have a patent on this, even though there have been firewalls and other programs (like Snort) which do the same thing, and predate the patent.

    If this is really the case then anyone can request to the USPTO that the patent be re-examined and hopefully thrown out based on the fact that the technology was obvious.

  142. Sounds familiar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Didn't like Jacobson when I had him for CprE 308, liked him less after he put out some comments about porn, piracy, P2P, etc. to the Senate about six months ago, and definitely don't like him now. It was actually my wife that remembered the connection between Palisade and Jacobson - and she's got about the same opinion of him that I have. Let's face it, they've got a very basic idea and he's just trying to milk the hell out of the current climate for profits.

    It's kinda like the "war on terror" Really it's a never ending escalation, because as soon as one side shuts down one mode of operations, the opposition evolves and comes up with something new. This will only be a hiccup in P2P - formats will evolve to produce inconsistent signatures on the exact same music, or encryption will save the day. If you really want to end piracy, it's a matter of creating a climate where users don't want to pirate - they'd prefer to buy, because they feel like they're getting something for their money. It might also have something to do with treating the customer like a customer and not like a criminal. Perhaps acknowledging that they have rights would be a first step, MPAA / RIAA.

  143. encrypt the files themselves by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 1

    Man these people are daft. "It won't work with encrypted networks, but hey, just disallow those and you're set!" Well, ignoring the fact that it's propgandistic bullcrap to paint all users of encrypted systems as copyright infringers, there's the fact that you can still encrypt the content and then send it over a plain unencrypted system. And I suspect this thing doesn't really know how to parse through even such simple "encryptions" as pkzipping your mp3.

    --

    Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

  144. Coders... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about a Linux port of this?

  145. P2P by vlu · · Score: 1

    p2p should have the same status as freedom of speech. Nobodys gonna control what is say or do within reason. My computer is part of me. I spend most of my waking hour being inside it/them. I also hate organizations for rich people that work together to slay the poor people, and im very on edge this morning coz i dont sleep much! grr

    --
    - vlu
  146. Spam Trading? by hInstance · · Score: 1

    Apparently the one form of communication governments and society will fight to protect is spam. Sure, universities and ISPs might block peer-to-peer sharing, shut down encrypted protocols, screen email attachments, etc. But they wouldn't dare infringe on the rights of spammers.

    So maybe we just need a file-trading system which encodes all transfers as spam?

  147. horay by nilbog · · Score: 0

    congradulations, BYU has been blocking ANY mp3 downloads for years... Waste still works though :)

    --
    or else!
  148. What should publishers do? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

    If you really want to end piracy, it's a matter of creating a climate where users don't want to pirate - they'd prefer to buy, because they feel like they're getting something for their money.

    Antipiracy work is not, fundamentally, an invalid method of doing this -- it devalues pirating, rather than increasing the value of the product, but it still produces a difference between the two.

    The problem that content producers have is that, aside from tying a product to a service (a la MMORPGs), it's awfully hard to improve the value of your product without the value of the pirated product increasing an equal amount. How would you suggest that they convince people to purchase their product rather than pirate it?

    Currently, the main benefits that a non-pirated version of software provides are (we'll leave out music and movies, which are even more difficult to differentiate from pirated versions):

    * Support. Pretty much theoretical. A publisher can't profitably provide much support with the amount they make on a game.

    My take: I don't think that support is a very useful factor. You can have "help forums" and require a login obtained through registration, but this is a severe impediment to all users, and it's easy to just use another non-publisher-affiliated forum.

    * Ease of use, especially relating to updates. Generally, pirated copies of software are more difficult to install/use than non-pirated copies (though the fact that the user doesn't have to screw with putting his CD in the drive each time seriously impacts the value of many legitimate copies of software). The user can just run an update program, and the software is updated, etc. Not going to work on a cracked binary.

    My take: This can work well, in certain situations. If updates are frequently released, it may be worthwhile -- the problem is that many people are just going to ignore updates. Releasing a buggy piece of software that needs updates to help facilitate this irritates users, and is disadvantageous in competition with other pieces of software. Multiplayer games are a good example of somewhere this can be done -- if updating is extremely easy, protocol changes can be made that break compatibility with older clients, which forces people to keep upgrading. The problem is that unless the copy-protection scheme is updated each update in the software (expensive and error-prone), it's generally pretty easy for crackers to just release updated patches. This is still a pretty good incentive. Half-Life/(Counterstrike) multiplayer used this in one of the most effective approaches I've seen, with proxied authentication. Sure, you could crack the client and play only on cracked servers, but it was enough of a pain in the ass that most people weren't interested in hassling with it.

    * Guarantee of quality. The user knows that the software is not trojaned or broken.

    My take: This is currently under-leveraged by software vendors. It is illegal for vendors to provide maliciously trojaned copies of their software, but they could deliberately break cracked releases in ways that are not immediately obvious -- a user gets to stage three in their game, or attempts to print, and just sees a dialog "This copy is pirated. Please purchase a legitimate copy of this software." and exits. Currently, there is only rudimentary work to detect fake pirate releases in the P2P world, and all the current efforts that I know of rely upon a centralized server (a la ShareReactor's fakes database). Such a server has heavy bandwidth requirements. There are unlikely to be many of such servers, and they can easily be tracked down by publishers. A business could provide a service of flooding P2P networks with bogus copies of software (as was attempted by the RIAA with Madonna's music) and shutting down all fake detection servers. It would be possible to set up a PKI trust network endorsing valid software to avoid a centralized server, but this has a number of problems of its own, in

  149. End digital piracy is easy... by Kindaian · · Score: 1

    Just turn off the internet!

    1. Re:End digital piracy is easy... by ln+-sf+head+ass · · Score: 1

      Young whippersnapper--people have been infringing copyrights (not to be confused with pillaging treasure and killing crews of ships on the high seas) practically since there were bits. Even before modems, copies of digital media were traded by hand. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if there had been a punched card WAREZ (no lowercase and no symbols back then :) ) scene!

    2. Re:End digital piracy is easy... by wk633 · · Score: 1

      The only reason that 14th century monks aren't considered warez pirates is that the bible is public domain.

      If you copy a book, character by character, you are making a digital copy.

  150. Re:Not every college by gl4ss · · Score: 1

    just introduce daily transfer quotas for connections outside of the campus network(like 1-2 g bytes per day in the long run or risk getting banned)... ...and soon someone will most probably introduce some way to limit sharing to only the campus network(like a direct connect hub with the outside network banned - and everybody is happy since a local, f5*4n fast, big enough dc hub is all that they wanted anyways).

    just blocking spesific ports works great for clueless newcomers though in limiting their idiotic use of kazaa.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  151. US law and ethics by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

    When did trading copyrighted music online become one of my "rights"?

    It isn't (usually) legally a right.

    However, I think some are speaking of ethical rights. Clearly, a lot of people do take issue with many current laws, be it drug law, the extremely-extended copyright law, or whatnot. They may not feel that the law is just.

    Actually, I suspect that few people's ethics actually match up perfectly with US law. Do you believe that you cannot safely drink alcohol until 21 (a law that contrasts with most of the rest of the world)? Do you find yourself attracted to nude 18-year-olds, but repelled by nude 17-year-olds? Despite the fact that it's legal for an Olympic swimmer to stand by and point and laugh at a drowning person, would you consider it ethical? Is it ethical to continue to enforce a monopoly on reproduction of someone's writings sixty years after the producer of those writings has passed away? Is what SCO is doing ethical, even though US law shields executives of a corporation from criminal charges under almost all circumstances, leaving them free to continue doing what they're doing? Does your sense of ethics agree with the imprisonments that result from people using marijuana?

    I'm sure that there are a few people out there that have an ethical system that fits *exactly* with all of the points above. However, I suspect that they are in the minority.

  152. Filetopia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Filetopia http://www.filetopia.com/

    seems to be the leader of the pack in encypted peer to peer, network is still small though, few thousand, as opposed to 3mil or so on Gnutella.

    Anything more popular out there?

  153. music is information by mikeg22 · · Score: 1

    ...and information wants to be, and will inevitaby end up being, free. That is a fact of life. The recording industry needs to understand this before they sink any more money into a useless cause. In todays world where any information can be digitized, and therefore copied, basing a business model on the scarcity of any kind of information (music in this case) will not, I repeat will not work. Musicians can make money off of live performances and distribute their music in a digital format for virtually nothing in terms of capital...which just leaves marketing as a needed skill that the recording industry can provide.

    RIAA, WAKE UP, your business model is obsolete. Change it now or become irrelevant.

  154. No man is an encryption island by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2, Informative

    Encryption only works if other people do it too.

    I use GPG. Nobody else that I know does, and so I cannot encrypt email to them.

    How many people really use WASTE?

    As for AIM encryption, how many people are using gaim, have the encryption plugin compiled in (which frequently doesn't work with the latest version of gaim), and don't mind the occasional compatibility problems the encryption plugin causes with other AIM clients? I've come to the conclusion that the *only* instant-messaging protocol that I know of with effective and widespread encryption is Jabber, but few people use Jabber -- sure, it's great for talking to your techie friends, but not everyone in the world is a techie.

    1. Re:No man is an encryption island by MKalus · · Score: 1
      I use GPG. Nobody else that I know does, and so I cannot encrypt email to them.


      I have / had similar issues, it takes some time to convince people that they should be doing it, and slowly but surely I do convert people in my surrounding to use it.

      But you are right, unless MS does it by default the majority will not use it, and if it is done by default I am not sure I would want to trust it.
      --
      If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
  155. He got paid to find porn?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow. I guess getting your PhD is useful.. I wonder if he got a grant for his "research" into P2P pr0n. Hell, he's probably getting paid for conferences. Dirty old bastard.

  156. And the list grows... by UrGeek · · Score: 1

    Add Palisade Systems to the ever growing list of "m----r f----rs who go up against the wall come the revolution!"

  157. Re:How will this work any better than spam filters by modipodio · · Score: 1

    "As long as they can make it sufficiently inconvenient to copy music, most people won't bother. They're really not worried about people trading music face to face, because that is truly impossible to stop. Forcing people to encrypt individual files in a way that is difficult to intercept currently goes a great way toward dissuading the majority of users. Blocking known P2P applications based on the protocol's "fingerprints", especially encrypted ones like Freenet and Waste, will cut down on the majority of the remainder; these are the easiest and thus most-used methods of encrypted filesharing.
    "

    Currently is the operative word here. As soon as this technique is in any way widely used the p2p networks will evolve and people will either upgrade to newer versions of what ever program they use that stops this or switch to a new program. It happened with napster, it happened with audio galaxy and if this method becomes popular it will happen with old school p2p programs. The point that the parent poster is trying to make is that this technique will have pretty much no affect just like similar efforts had no affect on spam. In other words it wont cause any perceivable slow down, it will just be a minor inconvenience. This product seems designed to milk money out of clueless university staff who do not understand the technical issues involved in blocking filesharing, it reeks of snakeoil and opportunism. Finger printing relies on some sort of patern recognition it is very easy to write an algorythm to change a few bits here and their within a file and disguise it.

    --
    __________________________________________________ "UNIX is a fascist state, Windows is a democracy.
  158. Er... Not necassery. by trezor · · Score: 1

    Ever heard about PASSIVE-mode? You should try it. Usually works even trougnh the most firewalled connections.

    --
    Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
  159. The rule of general rules... by Kjella · · Score: 1

    ...always have some extremely broad, general rules you may apply if you need a reason. Particularly if you're "giving" it away and can set the terms any way you like.

    That doesn't mean they are going to enforce it strictly, it just means that if you're abusing their service in some way, chances of getting away on a technicality is slim and none.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  160. And, thusly...Fermat's Foil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "There's no way that any piece of software would be able to peek into encrypted sessions... so the only option this software would have would be a "deny all"."

    Actually there's one very simple but obvious thing they could do. Proof of which I will write in the margins of this post.

  161. draconian by tacocat · · Score: 1

    was the only word that came to mind this morning

  162. Back to Front! by Manip · · Score: 1

    I think these colleges have got the wrong idea completely.. instead of blocking students activities they need to be protecting students by blocking the people that want to sue them :D

    If I was admin, I would dump a list of MPAA etc onto my filter and see if they can cause problems then?! Thing is, it is not illegal at all.. a organization is quiet legally able to block these people that are scanning traffic from your network. I would also consider it if I where an ISP.

  163. Let us suppose... by Epeeist · · Score: 1

    That the RIAA finds a watertight mechanism for blocking music downloads. What happens then?

    At the end of the next quarter would you expect music sales to have gone up or down? My belief would be that it goes down, people can't try before they buy, and they won't buy a complete album when they only want a couple of tracks.

    So what do the RIAA then blame the reduced sales on? Would they accept that it is their policies, the marketroid based bands or would they just put the prices up?

    Do we then get into another cycle, or rather spiral, or would the RIAA finally accept that online music is the way of the future?

  164. I fail to see the problem... by calypso15 · · Score: 1

    Let's say... you're transfering a song. This system compares the songs "fingerprint" to their database, seeking a match. So this implies that, theoretically, bitrate and file format don't matter. How about instead, before a P2P program sends a chunk of data, it uses a random, lossless encoding that preserves the MP3 format. In this situation, you would have to exchange keys in clear text, presenting a possible problem, but maybe not. Or why can't you make a P2P program that uses public-private key encryption over an unsecured connection? Basically, what I'm getting at, is that, in order for this to work, they have to A) Have the song you're trading in their database and B) Be able to identify which song you're trading. Since changing A is hard, focus on B.

  165. Communication laws by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Isn't it a felony to intercept/disrupt communications regardless of medium?

  166. Re: the cycle ends there ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the RIAA will try to shut down the internet because it can be used for file sharing. after all it didn't help , people still trade their cds , but this time as in good old times by copying the cd directly, thus they finally realize the have to stop making business to achieve 100% IP protection.

    but they themselves pushed the digital media , because it's much cheaper to produce cds because they are so easy to copy ...

    the RIAA has the right to make money by selling IP (songs). but as long as they are in business they have to accept, that people want to do much more with their cds than just listening to it. On the other hand, imagine RIAA paying their fixed price for a CD-Master and then just selling 1 cd , because the rest of the world copied from that one cd?

    as long as they keep missing the point, their fall is predictable.

  167. Your Rights!! by Lucky_Norseman · · Score: 1

    It IS one of your rights if you are either the copyright holder or have been given explicit or implicit permission from the copyright holder.

    I have dozens of MP3's that were given to me directly from a member of the band.
    These have all been small bands with no CD for sale yet, and they want more people to listen to their music.
    The RIAA, and their counterparts in other countries, are of course totally against small bands getting any free PR without having to sign away their first-born.

  168. Jacobson by luphus · · Score: 1

    Regardless of how I feel about this particular app, Doug's a great guy - I took a networking class from him at ISU a few years ago.

    1. Re:Jacobson by ln+-sf+head+ass · · Score: 1

      What he is, however nice, is a traitor who is using his knowledge to suppress freedom.

  169. http://eff.org/IP/freeculture/ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    no matter how encrypted your p2p data are, you will in the end share it with the world (friendly and unfriendly). all you files and information will be public and you computer will be acessible (ip) to people get the files, so you can get the files from other people.. the solutions is not technical, is political http://eff.org/IP/freeculture/

    WTH, go to China or Cuba.. they are communists.

  170. Song Sharing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In the old days two or more kids would have their
    own tape recorders. The kids would then load the master tape in one of them and a blank in the other. A cable was run between the output of one and the recording input of the one with the blank; the appropriate buttons were pushed and the copy would in due course be made.

    Now we have 'progress'. Our kids are suckers who all bought CD's and now they are squealing like stuck pigs because their 'players' do not have recording ability. The industry suckered them. What choice they have now is to use laptops with Wi-Fi cards. Just form peer to peer networks with only each other and not anyone else but. Use WEP if there are snoopers about and all the spy scum will be locked out. Then share all you want the old fashioned way. All you kids know each other so you know what to do about finks in your own group. End of story. These 'networks' will harken back to the old days of tape recorders and will be in the words of Winston Churchill in the face of the old Nazis: "A mosquito armada that will be impossible to stop!".

  171. BitTorrent / Zipping / Encryption by ArbiterOne · · Score: 1

    BitTorrent beats this thing because it recognizes names of files through "apps like KaZaa or Morpheus". BitTorrent just passes data as pieces, and, as it's being downloaded from several different people at the same time, it won't get caught by the app... Or, of course, just ZIP whatever you're sending, and the software can't tell it's an MP3 or WMA without downloading the whole thing... Or, even better, use an encrypted program like DC++.

  172. Re:How will this work any better than spam filters by pommiekiwifruit · · Score: 1
    Simple - any music using the western 12 note scale is obviously derived from an RIAA work. All the note combinations have been used up already.

    So people will have to start sharing Middle Eastern tracks that use different scales!

  173. Please teach me. by hummassa · · Score: 1

    I tried to do it, and did not succeed.

    --
    It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
    1. Re:Please teach me. by ConsumedByTV · · Score: 1

      Come on, you have a lower UID than me.
      You should be teaching me things.

      Ok, ok. Kidding. Sorry.

      Check out corkscrew and read this article on the subject.

      That should be enough to get you started.

      --


      "Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
  174. Copyright is automatic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The software blocks anything that's copyrighted, whether you already own the song in another format or not.

    This is clearly untrue. As soon as a work is fixed into a particular medium, it's copyrighted. If I recorded the sound of my own farts as a WAV file, that would be copyrighted. Unless they block everything by default, and have a whitelist for things that have been placed into the public domain, they cannot "block anything that is copyrighted."

  175. Why bother? by trezor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why bother with encryption? Just set up some phony malformed files (and keep your mp3s rared whatever) and share all your bandwidths worth.

    The system is supposed to work on audio-finger printing. I can imagine how easy a system like this could be DOSed. Now imagine all P2P users worldwide doing this (P2P-app prepares this stuff). It'd be the biggest DDOS of all time.

    This censorship mayhem is so ambitious it's bound to fail.

    --
    Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
  176. Waste of money by polyp2000 · · Score: 1

    'Jacobson said the identification process would not work on an encrypted network, such as is used in several newer file-swapping programs.'

    If thats the case then it seems stupid to even launch the thing in the first place.

    --
    Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
  177. Impossible by ajs318 · · Score: 1

    There is simply no way that something like this is EVER going to work.

    In the technological domain, it is impossible -- not merely difficult, actually impossible -- to prevent something that can be perceived from being copied. I shouldn't have to explain why that is the case -- I've done so often enough, on Slashdot and other places, that I'm already several shades of blue in the face. And just because I can't complete the reductio ad absurdum by proving it would require you to travel faster than the speed of light, or to create or destroy energy, or to have the pressure in a fluid act differently in different directions, or add a vector to a scalar, doesn't mean it isn't just as impossible as any of those things -- it might even be a fundamental law in its own right.

    In the social domain, people have been sharing music since the first instruments were invented. They aren't going to stop just like that.

    Traditionally, manufacturing audio permanent-storage media used to require specialised equipment not commonly available to everyone, and so the record companies had an advantage over the likes of you and me. This is no longer the case. {In fact, it hasn't really been the case since the late 1960s, when Philips invented the compact cassette.} The record companies could make records cheaper than anybody else; and if some Fred-in-the-shed set up in competition, he was liable to get himself bought out. With the advent of CD in the late 1970s / early 1980s, and the first really cheap players in the early-to-mid 1990s, almost everyone began replacing their old vinyl LPs with CDs.

    By the year 2000, the mass replacement of LP with CD was almost complete, so people stopped buying quite so many back-catalogue CDs. The fashion for "Reality TV" shows led to a phenomenon of short-lived, disposable wannabe acts releasing albums that were not actually very good, and people soon stopped buying quite so many new CDs.


    I don't know which is sadder: the fact that there seem to be people who think that it is possible to prevent copying, or the fact that they are attempting to do so with flagrant disregard for the fact that we might have obtained the necessary permission for said copying. {Until quite recently, it was the law in Britain -- dunno about other countries, sorry -- that you were to be considered as innocent until proven guilty. Upon which basis it would be up to the authorities to prove that you did not have the right to copy that material, and not up to you to prove that you did have such a right. However, in cases of racism, paedophilia and terrorism, the suspect is often considered guilty until, or even sometimes despite being, proven innocent.}

    When you buy a CD, the money you pay gets split various ways. There are lots of things you are paying for: pressing the CD, printing the sleeve, packaging it all up, delivering it to a record store conveniently located in your neighbourhood ..... and of course, actually performing the songs in the first place. That is the only job that can't really be done by anyone else {since one typically is not so interested simply in the song "Baby One More Time" but in Britney Spears' particular rendition of "Baby One More Time"}.

    The best anyone can hope for is that people will make use of a system which allows them to compensate artists directly for downloading music. If I wanted to listen to Britney Spears singing "Baby One More Time", I wouldn't really object to paying a few pence to Britney Spears. I'd certainly hope that she'd slip me a few coppers if she wanted me to sing for her. What is bad, though, is that I'm expected to pay a small fortune for some record company to perform logistical services {stamping a CD, printing a booklet and delivering the whole thing} that could be obtained {albeit to a lesser standard, but hey --

    --
    Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    1. Re:Impossible by t_allardyce · · Score: 1

      {since one typically is not so interested simply in the song "Baby One More Time" but in Britney Spears' particular rendition of "Baby One More Time"}

      Actually i think most people couldnt care less who sings some catchy melody, thats why people hum songs - its generally not the singer we want to hear its the song.

      --
      This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
  178. encrypt by Fuzzums · · Score: 1

    That is the solution for everything.

    p2p-ssl :)

    Work with certificates to prevent infiltration in your system. create smaller but secure overlapping communities. more than enough options...

    --
    Privacy is terrorism.
  179. And you can see where it's going, too by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think you've got the problem absolutely right. This is a direct consequence of two things: big media business abusing its monopoly, and a certain type of Joe Public breaking the law. In both cases, these are not good things, but they are done because the perps think they can get away with it.

    As has often been said (but rarely heard) in these parts, the correct solution to this situation is to fix the problem, not to try to circumvent it by ever more devious means. The music industry should be compelled by the legal system to stop its price fixing practices, under the threat of having its business made seriously unprofitable by the courts. That will lead to reasonable competition in the market, and fairer prices and better distribution methods will naturally follow.

    At the same time, I have no sympathy for the song-swappers who have been taking the piss for years because the tech was ahead of the law. You brought this upon yourselves. Copyright law is there for a reason. If you don't like the law, the solution is to seek to have it changed. If as many people agree with you as you think, that shouldn't be difficult, now should it? Of course, in this case, the widely-flouted law actually is reasonable, it's the failure of the authorities to enforce the flip-side of the law and smack the media outfits down that is causing the problem.

    By carrying on with the current approach, all the oh-so-clever, we'll-just-use-encryption song swappers in this thread are simply inviting the inevitable: legislation to ban encryption in electronic transmissions, together with draconian enforcement rules and mandatory monitoring. This is a fight you cannot win. Wake up and start fighting the fight you can, or the world will be a worse place for your selfish actions.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    1. Re:And you can see where it's going, too by maggot+the+shrew · · Score: 1

      "If as many people agree with you as you think, that shouldn't be difficult, now should it?"

      I'm sorry, but this is a hopelessly naive statement. If we lived in a direct democracy instead of a representative, largely corporate socialist economy, then you might have a weak argument, but what you are claiming simply stumbles, staggers, and falls in the face of the literally hundreds of thousands of attempts to address the issue, not to mention the millions of us who "vote with our checkbooks" by not buying big 5 CDs while their control gets even tighter and prices continue to climb.

    2. Re:And you can see where it's going, too by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      No, sorry, it's not naive at all. At the end of the day, voters elect representatives, not corporations. Campaign contributions matter because they sway a disproportionate number of otherwise ambivalent voters. If those voters aren't ambivalent, it's a different game entirely.

      Tell me, of those "hundreds of thousands of attempts" you mentioned, how many of you offered to donate the cost of 5 CDs to your local representatives in exchange for supporting your cause? For that matter, how many of you even wrote your representatives? Now tell me how many of you just bitched about how the world sucks on Slashdot, and resigned yourselves because you can't beat big business.

      Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -- Margaret Mead
      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    3. Re:And you can see where it's going, too by maggot+the+shrew · · Score: 1

      Campaign contributions matter because they run our elections and determine who gets to be selected between. Hopelessly naive is the statement that said, "It shouldn't be too difficult" considering the mass movement of very active and involved participants fighting the big 5.

      You can accuse people of being armchair warriors, but you haven't really got a perspective on the conflict.

      I just think that people who claim that since we're some sort of democracy that it should just be a cake walk to put public opinion into policy should try some college level reading, but that's a very involved topic.

  180. Re:JOIN THE RIAA TODAY! JUST FOUR EASY STEPS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's amazing what a change of two letters will do to a GNAA post.

    Hmm...GNRIAA?

  181. Nonsense.... by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    Private companies can't submit your to any of the conducts explained.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  182. Alternate Network by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I would guess that now wireless cards are so cheap
    a secondary private network just for p2p will grow up - there should be quite a lot of diversity in music tastes in a campus of thousands so plenty to swap without touching the internet - though I would guess some kind person(s) may bridge out to the internet to inject fresh material.

  183. How long before... by gillbates · · Score: 1

    Said software filters out not only copyrighted files, but political speech as well? How long before said software will prohibit distribution of any copyrightable content, regardless of the owner's intent? (Thus preventing "publishing" by "unauthorized" parties...)

    This is a serious threat to liberty.

    Yeah, copyright infringement is illegal. But the primary reason why people use the Internet is the free flow of information. If we restrict the flow of information on the internet, people will instead move on to another medium where it is not so restricted. A literal case of "we had to destroy the city to save it..."

    --
    The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
    1. Re:How long before... by t_allardyce · · Score: 1

      We have to ask ourselves "Whats more important, preventing copyright violations, or giving people freedom of speech" and even though it might be a simple answer to you and me and the bill of rights and many other human rights conventions, the RIAA thinks its copyright, and their vote is worth more than ours.

      --
      This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
    2. Re:How long before... by elflord · · Score: 1
      How long before ... Said software filters out not only copyrighted files, but political speech as well?

      Bogus slippery slope argument. You could make exactly the same argument about spam-filtering software -- it could, in theory, be used to filter out political speech, and indeed, anti-spam technology would be much better at doing so.

      I suppose you regularly post to this forum criticising anti-spam software for the same reason. After all, it restricts "the free flow of information".

      My opinion is that you're intellectually dishonest and your primary concern is actually that the software will be used as intended, but instead of being forthright, you cry crocodile tears for "liberty".

  184. Oops, standard GPL myth by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1
    Think about it. If all reproducible works were GPL'd, then for most purposes copyright would be meaningless.

    No, if all reproducible works were free-as-in-freedom, then copyright would be meaningless. Making software free-as-in-RMS requires copyright just as much as making non-free software, because it imposes artificial limitations on how the material may be used.

    Using the word "freedom" to imply otherwise is just as disingenuous on the part of the FSF as claiming mass distribution of copyrighted works is "fair use" when you're not personally receiving money from it (but are profiting nonetheless), or using the deliberately inlammatory terms "software piracy" or "theft" to refer to such copyright infringement. All sides do it, but the debate would be more constructive if they didn't.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  185. Iowa State Rocks! by Necroman · · Score: 1

    We have a research park that puts out crappy software, and we have riots too!

    http://www.iowastatedaily.com/galleries/pdf/041904 .pdf

    --
    Its not what it is, its something else.
  186. Big Whoop by Rufus88 · · Score: 1


    The software blocks anything that's copyrighted, whether you already own the song in another format or not.

    And in other news, airport security will confiscate your knives before you board, whether you were planning on hijacking the airplane or not.

    Just because you own the song in another format doesn't mean it isn't illegal for the person you're downloading from to distribute a copy of the song to you. And even if that were not the case, how do you propose that it distinguish between people who already own it and people who don't?

  187. Re:Not every college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I used to run a dc hub on my campus just like this, but the university network services made me shut it down. I'm fortunate they didn't do anything else but that, but sure enough, shut it down and the next week was filled with rarely working internet. 800 normally internal-only file traders suddenly went to kazaa and the like...makes me smile

  188. If you're wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    And since I saw everyone stumbling about how they 'thought' it works:


    The technology is able to passively monitor the data traffic of a network and capture information about digital media transmission activity. Since the technology is not located 'in-stream', there is no performance impact of the monitoring on the network. Data of interest can be collected for reporting purposes and used to set policies for a bandwidth shaper or firewall, or individual transactions can be blocked in real-time, based on data characteristics specified by the network operator.

  189. Just songs? by eaolson · · Score: 1

    IANAL, but isn't bascially everything copyrighted unless it's done by the government or explicitly released into the public domain? Music, emails, fiction, poetry, etc. Heck, I bet even this post is copyrighted.

    The problem is that, from the article, it's not at all clear what this software does. Does it just seek out some data somewhere that's an MP3 and delete it? And how does it differentiate between improperly transmitted MP3s and perfectly legitimate ones?

  190. Who needs encrypted protocols? by Tsu-na-mi · · Score: 2, Informative

    Who needs encryption? Just move from Songname.mp3 to Songname.mp3.zip/rar/ace/lzh/whatever. The compression should remove any 'fingerprint'.

    Makes for a few challenges but it would easily defeat the system by the sounds of it.

    --
    I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
  191. How about a mp3 cache system? by telemonster · · Score: 1

    Someone should make a mp3 cache system for the schools. This magic box loaded with ATA disks and could jump in when college kids go to download the latest Justin Timberlake track. This could greatly reduce the amount of bandwidth being used. It could also be used to cache warez and porn.

    --
    Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
  192. Drive in H/P/A/V/W by telemonster · · Score: 1

    I was thinking about that, can you imagine... instead of BBSes running the Courier HST dual standards pimping the latest Sierra titles, drive in warez sites.... people drive into "the zone" or point a directional at a tall building and gain access to the host, trading files @ 802.11g speeds. It could be the future!

    --
    Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
  193. I'm sorry.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I control-click, you insensitive clod!

  194. SSL prevents man-in-the-middle attacks. by Z-MaxX · · Score: 1

    An SSL web server knows a private key that is required to initiate the connection. Any man-in-the-middle, such as any kind of "network security device", will NOT be able to masquerade as the server because it doesn't have the server's secret key.

    --
    Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
    1. Re:SSL prevents man-in-the-middle attacks. by Clovert+Agent · · Score: 1

      You aren't masquerading as anything - just terminating the connection and reestablishing it. Usually easy to identify (because of the key, as you said), but that's OK - it's not meant to be covert. A lot of SSL VPN applications rely on this, since otherwise they'd be unable to do any kind of enforcement between client and server.

      You might also want to look at how Ettercap handles https man-in-the-middle attacks.

  195. What about denial of rights? by satchboogie · · Score: 1

    Is it possible that work created by an artist is copyrighted and distributed themselves could be blocked?

    If so, can blocking not be considered illegal? They would be blocking an independent artist from distributing their own works and thus potentially limiting their sales.

    I think they need a better method of controlling file transfers. The best method is something they should have done a long time ago; create their own COMPLETE distribution network. This network would contain copies of every song from every genre, or at least attempt to. Then a small fee is charged.

    The problem with current versions, correct me if I am wrong, is the lack of distribution rights. So if you go to a certain legit website and search for a file, you will not find much because that sight does not have the rights. These people really should stop and think about these rights issues a little more clearly.

    While someone on Virgin Records may not want to be released on a site sponsored by TVT Records, they should realize that by combining to a central site or two would be more profitable.

    I am sure that if given a fair price (= $1 per song) people would start using those sights. We realize that free-swapping is wrong, but if given a more thorough legit site we may actually do what is right.

    What do you think?

    1. Re:What about denial of rights? by elemental23 · · Score: 1

      If so, can blocking not be considered illegal? They would be blocking an independent artist from distributing their own works and thus potentially limiting their sales.

      Only in the same way that spam filtering is potentially limiting the sale of whatever snake oil is being peddled.

      Private networks are under no obligation to carry any traffic they don't want.

      --
      I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
    2. Re:What about denial of rights? by satchboogie · · Score: 1

      Spam is different. Spamming is sending out ads to emails without care of whether they want it or not. File sharing is exactly that; sharing files. If someone wants to download something I wrote and am sharing, it is their choice. It is not like I would be sending tonnes of emails containing my music to people.

      Sorry, but I do not see the correlation between spam filtering and blocking of copyrighted works from transferring on a filesharing network.

  196. Best. Parody. Evah. by Tackhead · · Score: 1
    > It's amazing what a change of two letters will do to a GNAA post.
    >
    >Hmm...GNRIAA?

    Naw, that'd be more like GNMPAA, wouldn't it? :)

    Still, someone owes me a new monitor. This one's got coffee all over it. Best slashalchemy (turning troll into gold) I've seen in a long time. Fucking brilliant!

  197. RIAA go home by t_allardyce · · Score: 1

    Coolio the rap-bot will hunt down y'all punks who been tradin da songs and cap u in da head!

    Where do we draw the line here? Is it ok to swap CD's with friends and let them copy them? would police really go to the length of busting people for that? no then what happens if you give friends copies of your music online - say by emailing an mp3? will that still get you in jail? i think not! Even if filesharing gets pushed further back to the point where people chat on IM before sharing songs (In a totally encrypted manner) then thats what will happen and the government and RIAA can keep their fucking noses out of my private conversations. You could kinda parallel this with drug dealing and prostitution, police regularly pretend to be customers so they can make a bust and theres no way to tell whos who, but close the gap abit and make sure you keep a tight-knit network of friends and the police will have a hard time getting in. So where do you draw the line? would the RIAA like to believe they can bust two friends looking over eachothers music collection?

    --
    This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
    1. Re:RIAA go home by elflord · · Score: 1
      Where do we draw the line here?

      You're right that it's not clear exactly where the line should be drawn. But that's no excuse for permitting even the most egregious infringements. There's a huge difference between swapping CDs with 1 or 2 of your best friends, and doing the same with a million of your "best friends".

  198. High school is different by GlobalEcho · · Score: 1

    They can get away with such heavy restrictions because you are in high school (minors for students, little or no faculty research, etc.). A college would have quite a bit more trouble, methinks.

    Enjoy college this fall!

  199. You'd be surprised to learn by apankrat · · Score: 1

    You'd be surprised to learn that average (antivirus) file scanner is capable of unwrapping and checking tar/gz/rar/ace/.. files up to ten levels deep. Some most advnaced ones do that in a pass-through mode, ie without buffering entire file. And only most primitive scanners rely on file extension when it comes to determining file content.

    In other words zipping .mp3 4 times and then rar'ing it will not help. Renaming resulting archive back into .mp3 will help even less.

    As others pointed out, trusted p2p networks is a next logical evolution step. If properly implemented, it should last a while.

    --
    3.243F6A8885A308D313
    1. Re:You'd be surprised to learn by Elias+Serge · · Score: 1

      easy solution: use a password protected zip/rar/whatever thats named songtitle(password is foor.rar

    2. Re:You'd be surprised to learn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      easy solution: use a password protected zip/rar/whatever thats named songtitle(password is foor.rar

      This will work until they modify their program to automatically test any filename embedded passwords and various other common passwords.

      The solution is trust. P2P is going to have to become tight communities with higher trust required for entrance (along with internal encryption). As a result, this will probably eliminate 75% of the current users, which is all they are really after anyway.

  200. Re:How will this work any better than spam filters by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

    "Actually they are more interested in keeping music off the internet in order to prevent bands from going independant, the internet makes them far less important than they once were."

    I have to agree here. The RIAA/MPAA/Big Labels *are* terrified that bands/artists/content producers will, in the near future, simply no longer *need* them. They are simply seeing the writing on the wall, and trying to restrict/halt/regulate *all* content distribution that isn't under industry control now, while they still have enough power/money/control to matter. *That* is why they are willing to alienate large sections of their customer base, use questionable legal practices, borderline vigilantism, and anything else they can dream up. The copyright infringement reasons they give are largely a red herring, to distract from the true goal, making (and keeping) themselves as the *only* practical means of distribution on a wide scale, enabling them to screw both the content producers *and* the content consumers. Sadly, all too many people only see the smoke and mirrors "piracy/theft/copyright infringement" strawmen thrown up to cover the attempt at content distribution monopoly being perpetrated here.

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  201. The trend among content-filtering firewalls is .. by apankrat · · Score: 2, Informative

    The trend among content-filtering firewalls is to filter SSL sessions by splitting them in two - one from the client to the firewall and another from the firewall to the server. If the session cannot be split, it's rejected.

    Eventhough it's client-friendly man-in-the-middle attack, which defeats the whole purpose of SSL, there is a demand for this functionality.

    --

    The way it works is the client installs extra root CA certificate, and the firewall is given its own CA-enabled certificate derived from the former. Whenever it sees SSL connection coming from the client, it accepts its on behalf of the server, handshakes with the server, then replicates server's certificate signing with its own key and proceeds handshaking with the client. And the client accepts this forged peer's certificate, because it traces back to 'trusted' firewall CA. Pure magic.

    --
    3.243F6A8885A308D313
  202. how can you tell? by rilian4 · · Score: 1
    "The software blocks anything that's copyrighted, whether you already own the song in another format or not."
    This statement embodies the entire issue of going after illegal song swappers...you simply cannot tell from network traffic whether either the sender or the receiver has a legal license to have a copy of any given song. I just can't see how any legal action can hold up when you can't say whethere or not either party is actually comitting a crime.
    --

    ...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
  203. Dead already by jwhyche · · Score: 0, Insightful

    When will these fools ever learn? This is already dead technology before it hits the streets. They kill file sharing apps such as kazaa people will just move on to something else. They still haven't even address the old techonologies yet. You can still download shit from usenet all day long.

    --
    I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  204. Re:How will this work any better than spam filters by soliptic · · Score: 1

    Well, thats a nice utopia, but not entirely true. I'm in an independent band. We've had 33,000 downloads of our free MP3s in the last 2 years of having a website (whilst touring the country extensively, displaying a huge banner with our web address on it on stage every gig, and including the URL on every press pack, CD artwork, etc that we produce). And we've sold 2 CDs from the same page.

  205. gee I am shocked by abolith · · Score: 1
    and the P2P arms race continues....

    --
    if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
  206. wtf?Re:wouldn't it be simpler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it would be simplest for the universities to block p2p ports (for now.. when p2p uses port 80 this will be moot) alltogether! last time I checked, universities weren't supposed to concern themselves with providing students with a way to play music on their computers. they're supposed to be educating people!

  207. Bypass fingerprinting using.... by RoadWarriorX · · Score: 1

    bit shifting and rotation...
    byte swapping...
    reversal...
    zip archiving...
    uuencode...
    stenographic merging...
    flat-out encryption...
    ...

    Ack! I'd better stop before I give them to many ideas...

    1. Re:Bypass fingerprinting using.... by localhost00 · · Score: 1

      What the hell is stenographic merging?

      --

      Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.

    2. Re:Bypass fingerprinting using.... by RoadWarriorX · · Score: 1

      The term might be a little confusing or slightly misrepresented, but stenographic merging is the process where one will use stenography to embed the infomation in one file into another file. For example, I can encode bits of a secret message into, let's say, a JPEG. The merging of the file into the JPEG, ideally, is not suppose to interfere with the original function of the file. So if you have a knowledge of the encoding, then you can retrieve the bits from the picture and assemble the message. I can write a quick program to secretly embed an MP3 stream into a home-video AVI by XORing the first pixel in each frame of the video with sequential bytes of the MP3 stream. Not that hard to do, really. However, in order to have decode, you will need to have knowledge of the method I just described a priori. Again, not a very difficut means of obsuring fingerprint, but my not be feasible on a grand scale. But as the old saying goes, "good enough for government work."

  208. Thus. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You stop buying the product.
    Seriously, the last time that I bought a CD it was used. The last time that I bought a movie it was from overseas. I find that small independent labels tend to turn out better music anyway.

  209. *We are headed to a whitelist-only information age by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    The worst is coming.

    This software can not hinder swapping:

    We can reverse the media.

    We can swap blocks in the media.

    We can divide the media into parts.

    We can distribute the media in small enough segments (e.g. 0.5-5 seconds) such that it will be computationally infeasible for them to maintain a block list - a single whole of media would be distributed in hundreds or thousands of parts with no one system sharing more than 5 seconds of any single whole media - i.e. "splitting" files, as in usenet.

    We can setup adhoc wifi networks.

    We can distribute content parts embedded in MS Office documents, in PDF documents.

    We can use the mail system.

    Don't you see, there is no way short of exhaustive whitelisting and mandatory palladium that they can stop this, or even significantly hinder it.

    It simply can't be done.

    Mark my words: We will have whitelist-only ISPs and policy making non-palladium computing devices illegal in 10 years unless we take a stand now and reverse course - by mandate, by policy, by the power of the people.

    This is a legitimate rebellion. It is not "consumer" rebellion. "Consumer" is a term of the fascist jack-booted thugs who are trying to crush the rebellion. It is a rebellion of the people.

    Downtrodden and oppressed peoples of the world unite!

  210. Useless by nnet · · Score: 1
    This software is pointless. It reminds me of when Napster started blocking copywritten material, including my own original material. Emails to Napster techsup went unanswered after a few weeks, then I just said fuck it, and went to gnutella to distribute my own material.

    Besides trying to block RIAA affiliated music, it also blocks non-RIAA affiliated music, like my own, which is still copywritten, but permitted for free download and dissemination.

    Boycott RIAA affiliated music, don't download music that wasn't granted permission by the copyright holder. Let your dollars (or lack thereof in this case) tell the RIAA that you won't tolerate their draconian attempts at control, or their antiquated business model.

    Support Indie artists/labels by purchasing their music. 9 times out of 10 the music quality is better, with more variety, and no DRM bullshit.

  211. Relax.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just because they've announced they're rolling it out, doesn't mean anybody thinks it'll actually work without breaking the rest of their network.

  212. Re:*We are headed to a whitelist-only information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seems to me, this country (USA) was at one point a democracy. Basically, I seem to remember that 'what the people want, the people get' was the official policy.

    So far, I haven't see one, even ONE, petition outside of a mall or on a college campus that has to do with this specific issue (of limiting free speech by requirung license fees and royalties).

    In my opinion, only the original work, or the production therof, should be the source of income for an artist, not copies as well. This copyright thing is fairly new. I'd wouldn't like to think of what would have happened if copyright existed back when the only photographs were those made with paint and canvas. I seem to recall seeing many duplicates of famous paintings made by different artists without them paing royalties to the original artist.

    You're welcome to correct me if you think I'm wrong...

  213. Re:How will this work any better than spam filters by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

    is your CD available on Amazon.com? I would recommend doing whatever is needed to get it up on Amazon. People don't like to put credit card info into random sites. But people trust amazon to handle orders and private info properly.

    --
    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  214. Re:*We are headed to a whitelist-only information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I agree.

    It does not take selling a CD to express yourself. Copyright does not support the right of the artists to express themselves, but rather it supports some imaginary right to profit, whether for the artists themselves or the labels they willingly and knowingly sign big money deals with.

    I can't say it enough: there is no right to profit.

    If you want to be a musician, fine, work a day job and purchase yourself a guitar and an amp, and get together with a friend who can sing and a friend who can play the drums.

    I do not listen to commercial music. And I mean commercial in the broadest sense. I do not listen to any music that it sold as a product, music that is not available under terms as free as the GPL. I will not do it. It is a matter of conscience.

    Consumerism is destroying our culture - has destroyed our culture. And now it is spreading to the rest of the world.

    We, who have seen its effects, have an obligation to turn the tide of things now. The hour is late.

  215. The primary difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is that SPAM filtering technology is initiated by the user of the service; this is implemented by the network provider. A user can opt out of SPAM filtering, but a user's ability to opt out of network filtering is severely curtailed. This is either turned on for all or none; if the majority wants this kind of filtering, they can effectively preclude a "free" internet from being used by even the minority.