Slashdot Mirror
Next-gen Copyright-aware P2P System Whitepaper
meier73 writes "A whitepaper has just been released detailing a secure (OpenSSL/digital signatures), copyright-aware P2P network. The paper claims that this system enables legal file trades, something that isn't guaranteed by Kazaa, Morpheus or eDonkey. The whitepaper goes on to state that the long-term goal of this system is to catalog
every human creation in existence that can be expressed by a digital medium. Project stats: a super-computing cluster that will scale to more than 900TB of storage, 300M transactions per day and trade music, television, movies and books.
Doesn't this constitute a responsible and legitimate use of P2P?"
Because here's a hint: make the protocol open, and people will re-write it to exclude the copyrights.
:P
Oh, it's server-based and not 'true' P2P...my mistake.
No one will use it
I see that BitTorrent wasn't listed along with Kazaa, eDonkey and Morpheus.
Strange, as it was recently used as an example of "a responsible and legitimate use of P2P" by distributing Microsoft's Windows XP SP2.
I don't suppose this has anything to do with the SP2 torrent seeds being 'pulled' from the organizer's website at Microsoft's request (read:order) ?
...and still no Metallica?
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I suspect we like our non-copyright aware distribution channels too much ;)
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Gnomoradio is also a legitimate use of P2P, though its catalog is much smaller at the moment...
A whitepaper alone doesn't say much. Trying to scale to that level hasn't been done before and is very ambitious for it to do. It could possibly be done but the better question is when.
My UID is prime is yours?
Why would I want to stop using current systems? FastTrack, Gnutella, and OpenFT let me exchange any files I want, and there just doesn't seem to be any reason I would want to switch.
This is great and all, but I think the stat we *really* want to know is... how many Library of Congress' will this thing hold?
OF course it won't fly... the good of mankind is dwarfed by the needs of a few to make and control trillions of dollars.
but mine is concentrated mostly on pr0n.
so what exactly is a copyrighted work? when i worked in a copy shop, we were told anything created (in our examples: photos) were automatically protected as property of the creator for such and such a time frame.... what then, would be able to be sent, besides GPL stuff?
I thought one of the main purposes of P2P was that it is decentralized. A supercomputer cluster is hardly decentralized.
Also, how will it "detect" copyrighted works? I can just zip up my favorite illegal MP3s and give them a name like "good.zip" and it would have to be manually flagged as "bad".
You basically admitted that nobody will use it because copyrights are enforced. Heaven forbid people respect copyrights. You know, like we demand with the GPL. I actually got accused of trolling the other day because of my sig.
http://www.bitmunk.com/images/tutorial/payment.png <-- That sums if all up right there.
/. geek in the bottom right-corner, left out.
=(
Note the
However, in addition to technical and scale issues mentioned elsewhere, I can see some points of controversy:
Hmm... Come think of it, there's something fishy here. Let's say I download the song and I get to play it as much as I want. Let's assume I can't share it over non-protected P2P, but hey, I can sell it again when I no longer want to listen to it (as if there's no way to copy to another, unencumbered format, but bear with me...) Why on earth should the artist get a piece of it every time the same copy is sold? I understand they are trying to appease to RIAA & Co with this but this is not fair. It's not like they get a dime if I re-sell my CDs.
Furthermore, it may well be that the label claims copyright over the songs, thus keeping any proceeds from methods like this and not really helping the artist.
Very interesting - I would really like to see it or some equivalent take off, but until then I'll wait with plenty of healthy skepticism.
The revolution will not be televised.
I would rather like to see every public domain human creation in existence that can be expressed by a digital medium to be archived. A Project Gutenberg so to speak, but for not just books but also images, audio and video as well. For example, there are veritable treasure troves of old films just lying around degrading and collecting dust in television archives around the world but even if they were all digitized (as is being done with some extra valuable movies in danger of degrading to unusability) I doubt we would see them offered for free to the general public. The bandwidth costs would just be too big for any company/state television attempting it. A distributed P2P system however would be ideal for this.
In the meantime, there are a few sites attempting it on a smaller scale - the Prelinger Archives over on archive.org are definitely worth a look for anyone interested in old American war, educational and propaganda films for example (like the (in)famous "Duck & Cover" movie)...
Guess which P2P no one will be using? ;)
First: This ain't a whitepaper - it's a sales pitch.
Second: How is this P2P when there's a big centralized "Authorization service" in the middle?
And guess who is supposedly running that service? Why the paper's authors..
So, what about public domain works? They have no copyright to sign them, and it is impossible to sign and register them all -- can they not be distributed by such a system?
If not, then it will create a situation in which only works approved (directly or indirectly) by a cenralized signing authority can be distributed. Bad if such systems become legally mandated.
On the other hand, if unsigned PD works can be distributed, then there's not much point -- you can (via analog holes if nothing else) strip the signature from a copyrighted work and distribute it that way. So there wouldn't be much point.
DNA just wants to be free...
What's the point of this? First, its not true P2P if a central server is involved. It has been proven that no watermark system can work no matter how much funding is pumped in. It has also been shown that any watermark can be detected and stripped out, even if it is encrypted, due to the nature of how watermarks actually work. All DRM will fail in the end as will DMCA and any other laws trying to protect it. Forget it.
Most people will pay for something they really want anyways. Most 'pirated' matterial is ditched. There are cryptographic methods to make micro-payments that don't require a 'bank'. This whole method may look clever to some, but absolutely __nothing__ is new! Don't forget the rule is "try before you buy". This is a general principle of copyright law (fair use) and its not likely to change anytime soon. Internet is 'airplay', 'airplay' is good advertising. When did that change?
Probably because it is based on/inspired by BitTorrent. Look at the diagram on page1 (introduction).
The "System load balansers" ARE trackers. The clients can share content, but only under the control of the tracker. What is new is that all connections are encripted.
You can see that if you want to distribute something you should make contract with them (probably not more sophisticated than eBey) and upload the content on their server. Probaly they will water_mark it.
I must say that I admire them. They are willing to support all platforms and that is already good start. They are more probably not going at the BIG FAT movie and music distributors. Instead they will collect more copyrighted works from individuals or smaller entitels that are ready to take risk. If they keep the prices low and deliver content fast, they may succeed. Wish you luck boys.
And something more - 900TB are good start but are not enough. The local content server of my ISP is about that size and it is still growing. I'm sure you guess i'm not from US and i'm not going to tell you more. Taina maina.
... just publish it and release it yourself? It's digital, it doesn't get much easier than that to publish, and you can contract dvd or cd burning and packaging yourself, or even do that yourself.
To me, and I'm not a downloader of anything that is gray market, music movies or games,so I got no dog in this fight, I just wonder why they charge those ridiculous prices, when they could severely drop the prices to very cheap and make it on volume sales. Like today, there's no reason music cds couldn't be 3 bucks retail at the store, they don't need to be 10 to 20 dollars. The companies would most likely even make more money and there would be less pirating/copying/trading going on if they had kept dropping prices as the technology let them. Instead, the rest of humanity noticed that "copies" were extremely cheap, that the technology had arrived and was universally avaialable, then they looked at the rip off prices still being charged, got pissed off, and went "screw it, they want to rip me, I'll rip them back first" and this stoopid digital war started. That's exactly what happened, and it never had to happen in the first place.
Now, it's up to the content producers to take charge of their own productions and start to cut the middleman skimmers out of the deal and go direct to the end user with your product, at very reduced rates. It has to be cheap enough and clean enough to let people get the content they want, yet still make ya'all a few coins. Seems like a happy medium would be possible, as long as you cut the middle man profit skimmers out of the transaction. IMO, that's about the only practical way this dilemma will be solved, unless we go to a totally regulated internet and a bunch more stupid draconian laws applying to everyone and with future hardware and software.
Isn't that what Lenin said? Or was it Trotsky?
Anyway, I hope the Big Corporations ARE able to control p2p so that copyright material cannot be traded (even though I am a world-class Kazaa and usenet binaries dog myself). Because they once the corporate capitalists have it rigged so that distribution of audiovisual entertainment is all done by networks, client server and p2p, then that will set them up for a Big Fall.
The only reason that America is in the grip of corporate capitalism is that mass media has been able to propagate top-down, business friendly memes into American living rooms. Their community has become hollowed out, and is the domain of the corporations. THat is why we work like dogs compared to citizens of the other western nations.
But when the p2p networks cannot be used to trade copyrighted material for free, then that vacuum, that demand for free movies, documentaries, sitcoms will be filled by "amateurs". And ya know what? With a little practice, and using cheap digital cameras and editing software, and free music, amateur actors, we leftists can crank out entertainment with leftist, bottom-up memes, anti-corporate sentiment, and toss it out on the p2p networks at very little cost.
You think 200 channels of cable tv is a lot? Wait until there are a million channels on the net 4 years from now, when wireless broadband has forced broadband prices down to where 70% of America has broadband.
Steven Spielberg on the upcoming changes:
"Steven Spielberg has forecast that the Internet will eventually become the primary source for entertainment. Appearing on NBC's Today show on Thursday, Spielberg told cohost Katie Couric: "I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we're all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines." When Couric remarked, "Great, I'm gonna lose my job," Spielberg interjected, "We're all gonna lose our jobs. We're all gonna be on the Internet trying to find an audience.""
Give Americans a few years where they are not subjected only to top-down corporate memes, and then see where the political direction goes. I think we will head in Sweden's direction....and the Big Corporations will have brought it on themselves through their own greed....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Nothing quite pisses me off like the so-called free speech zones. I thought this whole country was a free speech zone. Didn't you?
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
That's a mistake, really. I bought D3 when it came out and love playing it. While you can't use CD emulation cd software to pretend the cd is in the disk is a moot point, even trying to copy the cd doesn't work. {I've tried this with several programs and in linux using bit-for-bit copies, still never worked- let me know if i was doing something wrong.)
= 9&t=4091 or you can search google for that tutorial that allows you to play w/o the cd in the drive. (sorry I couldn't find a link for it, could someone kindly post it for me?)
So I found a tutorial on the internet on how to effectively use a HEX editor on doom3.exe to essentially remove the software protection, or copyright (whatever it was called, I cannot remember)
You can learn how to run Doom3 on Windows 98 Systems (which is something you can't do normally) using this tutorial: http://www.flexbeta.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f
Anyways, just because _you_ can't run the game without the CD in the drive is your own shortcoming and not the reason for pirating the software. It's just a justification for your act of piracy and don't try to delude yourself or others into believing that this is in any way a correct cource of action.
Besides, this is a minor annoyance to have a cd check of any kind. But havn't ID in the past, provided a patch that removed the cd check as a convienence factor for us? Come on.. just lighten up a little and do some hard work by hexing it yourself, or finding someone who can do it for you.
p.s. I've scanned those doom3.exe no-cd cracked files you can download, and they're almost all serial stealers that use a quick hash and send it off to somewhere on the net. Especially off p2p networks; they're usually worms etc.
--zoloto
As I understand it, the system is not designed to emulate physical sale transactions. When a seller sells a song, for example, the seller is not then deprived of that song. In other words, the seller is not selling the song, but rather their time and bandwidth. This gives users of the system the insentive to continue using the system and help to distribute media because for every song they download, they can make money back on it by selling it to others. If a song only costs $1.00, for example, and a seller can get $0.10 every time someone buys from them, then they only have to sell the song 10 times to break even.
Also, a lot of people reacted by saying "It has a centralized database and transaction system! That's not P2P!" That's a non-thought-out reaction, if I've ever heard one. P2P networks work well because digital media is very large. In this system, the transmission of the media itself is still done from user to user, thus preserving the important part of P2P networks. The comparitively small data exchange between user and centralized system is negligable. Therefore the creators of the system have thought out a rather well balanced system topology.
In addition to a per-transaction fee (a sample one is given as $0.15 on a song perchase), there is this paragraph at the very end of the How It Works Seller document:
You can use the money you earn on Bitmunk to buy digital files that you want, or you can transfer the money in your Bitmunk financial account to a banking institution of your choice. It can take anywhere from two days (if you're a highly trusted seller) to one month (if you're new, are selling newly registered creative works, or have complaints logged against you) to withdraw your money to a banking institution.
So Bitmunk also makes money on interest. Not unreasonable in principle. For example, it defeats the purpose of micropayments if someone's credit card is hit on each purchase. On the other hand, 2 days to 1 month sounds long to outrageously long for a modern system. And much like a brokerage account, one might additionally expect interest for funds held there over some length of time.
The system described in the whitepaper has been implemented - its purpose is to enable anybody on a P2P network to support the artist while trading files legally with their friends and other people on the net. We have a very difficult balancing act to perform: help the artist and fan without removing any of their rights.
The protocol is open because we want to enable software interoperability (we don't want to lock anybody out of the network using special file formats or nasty DRM - we believe in protecting fair use).
Here is how the system works, in a nutshell:
- Artists register a creative work for sale on Bitmunk - they set a royalty, each time a file sale happens, a royalty is distributed to them. Lets say 30 cents (almost 3 times as much as the artist gets from iTunes or similar services).
- Somebody comes along and has an MP3 or FLAC or OGG of the creative work registered by the artist and wants to provide it on the network. They setup a sales server and want a cut of the sale whenever somebody buys it from their sales server. Lets say their cut is 20 cents. Bitmunk's cut is 15 cents (for providing the service).
- Somebody searches the network and finds the seller and the creative work they are selling and buys it for 65 cents.
- The person that just bought the file can then turn around, set their own sales server up and (since they like the artist, and also have a slower connection) charge 10 cents for re-distributing the song on their sales server. Now people have a choice between buying the song for 55 cents or 65 cents.
What incentive do people have for using such a system? Here are a couple:- Its legal - you don't have to worry about a lawsuit.
- You can support the artist more directly, and make money doing it. You can then use that money to buy other stuff off the network, or transfer it directly to your bank account.
- We don't use DRM for copyright enforcement. The system doesn't treat you like a criminal.
- The financial aspects of the network operate on efficient market theory - it is incredibly efficient at finding the perfect price for the artist and the buyer (this means cheaper music, with more money going to the artist). If you look at a supply/demand curve - the network finds the equilibrium point very quickly.
None of the online music stores do this. In the iTunes world, it is a corporation selling to you. On Bitmunk, it is your peers selling to you and vice-versa with most of your money going to the artist.Bitmunk is a network where you are (along with the artist) in control of setting the prices. We're not trying to emulate a "true P2P" network as you put it - we're trying to do something that is far more important - help artists and fans. This isn't marketing BS speaking - we are putting everything we have into making a system that works for everybody.
If you would take the time to look over the site, you would see that we are making a very serious attempt at solving the current problems with digital media distribution. Go to the forums, ask some questions - I guarantee that we can answer them.
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
It would not run for me while I had cloneCD's cd emulator or cloneCD installed. Needless to say I was a bit irked by this.
Why don't we try this instead?
A proposal for a collective licensing scheme, complete with technical infrastructure.
Criteria:
1. minimizes the changes required to existing and future software
2. capable of being securely implemented in software released under open-source licenses.
3. runs on existing hardware and networks without modification
4. preserves the capability to innovate new software and hardware
5. provides consumers with the digital content access to which they have become accustomed with file sharing
6. provides publishers and artists with the access to consumers and promotion to which they have become accustomed (whether they admit it or not).
7. fairly compensates publishers and artists for providing digital access to their works based on popularity of the works.
8. does not interfere with consumer's established fair use rights, including those of first sale, or the abilty to make copies for purposes of research, education, citation, review, format, device- or time-shifting, or data backups.
9. is reasonably robust against technical attack.
Send me some feedback.
How would one watermark vector graphics, MIDI files, XML files, or any other file containing discrete expression rather than expression derived by sampling a signal?
Perhaps files could be submitted to them reviewed and then authorized to enter the network. If it really took off they wouldnt even have to host much on their servers after the initial seeding was completed