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New Wave Of File-Sharing Embraces Secrecy
twin-cam writes "There's an article over at The Inquirer that software developers are designing secret file sharing networks that will make it harder for the music and file industry to prove cases of piracy.
According to Reuters, three file sharing networks are being planned which its users think will make it a lot harder for
music industry to track and charge people on their networks. The first is Optisoft which runs on Blubster and Piolet, music-only file-sharing networks. Only a matter of time before the RIAA requests a data dump from the ISPs or just sues everyone using their network."
This was only a matter of time, and really the RIAA's heavy handed tactics, and the goverenments complacency with them have forced developers to take matters into their own hands. Now they're really screwed.
It's pretty easy to design a network that will at least frustrate attempts to recover identities of sharers. Now if only freenet would stop sucking.
They better start building one heck of a computer cluster if they want to break the encryption. If anything, the RIAA/MPAA will give up the fight, and turn their efforts to getting Congress to pass some sort of tax on media, media players, your computer, your stereo, your car, your dog, your dinner, and anything else which could possibly be related to music or movies.
I've heard of this program a couple of years ago. That, and there will always be the file-trading madness at nearly every LAN party. If the recording industry sees this as breaking news, no wonder they're losing the battle -- they're about 5 years behind the rest of the modern world.
I don't know how long the original mp3.com was around, but it was probably less than 5 years, and it probably put up mp3's at a faster rate near the end than near the beginning. But even at a uniform rate over the whole 5 years, it sounds like one web site was distributing more songs per year all by itself, than the entire CD industry released put together (1.7 million songs / 5 years = 340,000 songs/year). Add to that the number of musicians who distribute their stuff through their own sites, and it's clear there's a heck of a lot more music being released as gratis downloads than as proprietary CD's.
Some people blame diminishing CD sales on unauthorized CD copying; others blame it on technological obsolescence (people buy DVD's instead of CD's now); still others say it's because poor artistic decisions by record labels result in releasing uninteresting music that people don't want to buy. I haven't yet seen a connection made with authorized, freely downloadable music, that people can listen to instead of buying proprietary CD's, just like they can run GNU/Linux instead of buying Windows, Apache instead of IIS, etc. Sure, a lot of mp3.com downloads are crap, but lots of commercial CD's are crap too.
Anyway, it seems to me that most of the music even on these "secret" all-music p2p networks is likely to be freely downloadable.
(Note: this post mostly rehashes an earlier comment of mine from that other thread, but the statistic is interesting enough that I felt it was worth posting again).
In light of the more secretive file-sharing networks, I think the RIAA's next strategy is just going to be to open up the phone book from every city, town, and village in the country and file suit against every single American citizen, nearly every one of which will have to settle with the RIAA for a few thousand dollars, because it will be less expensive than hiring a lawyer to prove, say, that one doesn't even own a computer.
It doesn't matter who's actually right in a legal case. It only matters who has the lawyers. And the RIAA has the lawyers.
After the music industry has made hundreds of millions of dollars from suing every single American, the MPAA will follow suit (no pun intended) with their own campaign of legal terrorism, and then the patent trolls will roll out with patent infringement suits against absolutely everyone.
Welcome to the Age of Lawyers.
Lawyers are the new American nobility. You are either a lawyer or a lawyer's subject. In the 21st Century, all Americans who are not lawyers will be forking over whatever money they have to pay for lawyers to defend themselves against other lawyers.
Lawyers will be living in mansions surrounded by the rest of us, who will toil endlessly, day and night, to earn our masters' legal protection.
Hooray!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
I've used WASTE for a long time. It has in interesting history....involving AOL and others. WASTE is a VERY secure private p2p network. It uses keys similar to pgp keys and can use over 4000+ bit encryption if needed. However, the network does seem to fall apart after about 50 or so people have joined. It is only good for small groups, imo. If you have a MAC, i wouldn't even bother was WASTE for now, it's current development stage give basically no functionality. For pc users who just want to trade files with their friends, etc, its a great alternative to other p2p.
I think the best way to keep the RIAA out would be to have filesharing networks based upon social networks (like orkut). You trade with your 'trusted' friends and their 'trusted' friends. You could set how many hops you were willing to spread.
... as far as I'm concerned, is the "VPN Name Resolution" service.
... I know of a fair few VPN's that are maintained with quite steady uptimes, all using plain ol' FTP as the internal-xfer-service of choice...
...
openswan and an IP address somewhere is all thats needed to 'bury a filesharing service'. It doesn't even have to be p2p
Its interesting that its come to this. Whats next - routers which won't route unless they know the protocols being encapsulated in the tund'd packets they're peer-transferring for? Sheesh, as if that will ever happen
(If anyone knows of some good VPN's, please share! heh heh...)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Blubster comes with adware (GAIN), Piolet doesnt, as long as you remember to deselect them during installation...
I just spent half an hour removing all the spyware and adware that these programs installed.
DO NOT INSTALL PIOLET OR BLUBSTER.
--
More privacy can only be a good thing and I'm not about to launch into a rant about freedom vs. safety, but let's just look at some of the more ugly tactics people can use to subvert a P2P system.
/. one? Has anyone implemented anything like this? I don't know if it could be used alongside any privacy measures the designers implemented, but with enough work and balancing couldn't this be feasible? Imagine browsing limewire at a high threshold /. style and weeding out all those porn movies in disguise, incomplete files and mp3's with artifacts in them. There could be different ratings based on the node and the individual files and while the system could be abused I'm sure enough thought going behind it could make it fairly balanced and useful.
So anyone looking into stopping sharing of illegal material can't launch lawsuits anymore because they don't know the identities of the users. Fine, but they (or anyone malicious enough) can still flood the network with garbage and create so much noise that it will drive people away.
So how about a P2P moderation system similar to the
Just a though, slightly off-topic.
People toss the term "monopoly" around quite inaccurately, I think. I mean, of course record companies have a "virtual monopoly" on making records. But canned air makers have a "virtual monopoly" on canned air. Super glue makers have a "virtual monopoly" on super glue. So what?
Indie musicians release their music outside the traditional channels, and if you would like to make your own canned air, if you have the resources, no one is stopping you. But, if you want a piece of music (product) managed, owned, controlled by some major label, you have to give them what they want for it. It's their product; they manage it, own or manage the rights to it. They don't have to give it to you at all, if they don't want to.
If you buy a car off the lot, you don't tell the dealership what they are going to sell it to you for, they tell you. And, if you buy that car and start producing exact copies in your garage and distributing these copies, my guess is you will get a visit from a lawyer.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
--it's only been recently that music was purposefully made to not be recorded from. I used to record to reel to reel from vinyl and off the airwaves. As soon as the technology got there for joe home user, we could use it. What's different now is, these various industries want all the use of modern high technology to increase productivity and lower their expenses,to increase profits, but they don't want anyone else to have access to roughly the same technoilogy. And they most definetly COLLUDE to keep that in place, ie, "break the law".
Well, that just sucks. They've had years to adjust to changing times, all they have done is legislate away our rights to use technology so they can maintain a pricing schedule that reflects standards from years ago, and to keep it that way, forever.
Music and art used to be live only,and expensive, it was restricted to kings and such like that could afford to hire musicians and artists, or to people freely sharing with others, the local hoe down. Then it got to be recorded,first on paper rolls, then wax cylinders then vinyl, then tape now digital on hard magnetic media or plastic that is embedded, etc, and it's cheap beyond belief.
That's reality. But, it was expensive way back when it was first able to be copied for later use and didn't require the artists to be there to hear it (or view it), and they charged accordingly, but it was BECAUSE it was still difficult to make copies. It was more or less fair then, because it was still hard to do, it was expensive to make those copies.
Now, this isn't so, yet they still want the higher fees of yester-year, and, frankly, people revolted eventually. They revolted because the rip off prices were-revolting. Quite revolting.
The music and movie industry is going through changes, and they will NOT suceed in keeping technology away from people, so my best advice to them is to come up with a new way of doing things or get left in the dust.
Perhaps they may need to come to grips that there are so many people making music and art, that our society can't support those millions *just* doing that for a living, and if that is so, we will also no longer support an artifical class of music and art copier middle men.
It could be that the expensive media middlemen copiers and sellers are the buggy whip retailers of the 21st centyury, and their business is close to becoming completely obsolete, and they just can't stand the thought of having to go get another job after decades of some extraordinary fat city profits. Seems like everyone else around here is in the same boat, what makes them so special that it can't affect them as well? Joe rustbelt assembly line worker is told he's too expensive and tough crap, he can be replaced at a dime on the dollar, and gets replaced. Joe keyboartd banger is now being told he can be replaced by another person someplace else for a dime on the dollar, and too bad to him too. So what makes these music and art copying mechanics all that special? the answeer is NOTHING, they can be replaced, and quite easily, and for not dimes but PENNIES on the dollar, so tough crap to them, too, they are in the same boat everyone else is in now.
It looks to me more and more that what artists that are hip and honestly understand what is happeneing and are smart enough to deal with it and the various consumers of said art will get closer together, and just keep bypassing the middlemen, to the point of making independent studios and marketing concerns and professional copying mechanics massively and redundantly *unnecessary*. for most practical purposes, they are NO LONGER NEEDED IN OUR ECONOMY.
Maybe I am wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. The tools avaialable to both the productive artists and to the end users of that art are fantastic now, stuff that only the most wealthy of businesses could assemble and use just ten years ago. Well, it follows then then those specialty niche industries that used to be necessary in the middle are on the way out, they have been a