BitTorrent Gives Hollywood a Headache

fudgefactor7 writes "Although the MPAA and the RIAA, and practically anyone else who has an interest in protecting their intellectual property rights online, are fighting against P2P programs like EDonkey, Morpheus, and Napster, BitTorrent is coming under even greater scrutiny, albeit with less actual success so far, and that is giving Hollywood a headache, since they really don't know what to do about it and they can't go to Cohen and moan. Once he let the genie out of the bottle there was no way to put it back in. And with the likes of PeerGuardian, et. al., it only gets harder for the corporations to put the virtual, and legal, smackdown on file sharing."

Comments

Legally

[Omkar]

Are BitTorrent users more vulnerable legally (not practically) since they automatically upload? I'd think that makes them distributors, which presumably brings higher penalties than consumption.

Re:Legally

[Anonymous Coward]

probably, though I`m not sure. Bit torrent can be dangerous becuase its so easy to find out who all is downloading nad uploading one file(simple download the tracker yourself and double click the name in ABC to do it). I think you`re a lot more open to attack than others because you can be caught downloading it from another person. I`d be worried about being caught with bit torrent a whole lot more than other programs.

It`ll be interesting to see how they deal with it.

Re:Legally

[risinganger]

If you believe this will keep you safe from being prosecuted then you are nothing short of deluding yourself.

The likes of the MIAA have trouble shutting down certain file-sharing like Kazaa because they can't prove that the parent companies can control what is being served. That does not extend to you, you are making the copyrighted material available for others and you know you are.

The only reason all end users are not targetted so far is due to cost. If you keep yourself informed at all on this then you should already know that many people have been threatened with being taken to court over this and I really doubt you would win in such a case. Ignorance is not a viable defence and you can't even hide behind that as you know what is going on is wrong.

Your only hope is that the large suing syndicates don't believe you are a worthwhile target.

Re:Legally

[Porn Whitelist]

There is only one way to accurately track the use of a file on BitTorrent, and that is to have a complete block of data sent from your BT client to the intellectual property tracking company's BT client. As you start uploading straight away, there is a high probability that your client could send data to the "wrong person".

Since they're also uploading, they'd have a hard time arguing that you're breaking their copyright - they're helping distribute their copyright material ...

That's the real problem with going after torrent users. Unless the accuser actually downloads the file from the same torrent, they have no proof that the file is actually what it says. Once they do this, though, they are distributing their material knowingly.

So,

1. Movie studio downloads file using bittorrent
2. Accuses other torrent users of copyright violation.
3. Defendants show that accuser was sharing the file with them via bittorrent
4. Judgment for the Defendant

Re:Legally

[ichimunki]

Copyright law does not have any language regarding intent that I'm aware of. Anyway, if you are using BitTorrent to download copyright restricted works, I can't imagine how that's going to engender any sympathy on the part of your local judge or jury. There is already a prevailing feeling (among the people I talk to, anyway) that even downloading is not morally acceptable.

In this case, it would be wise to simply not use BitTorrent for sharing copyright restricted works without permission from the person or organization that has the copyright for the work. BT was never intended to anonymize users or be a one-way stream. The BT application works best when users share data and client and tracker software can accurately detect which IP is doing what. If no one shared while using BT, the whole process would be no more efficient than a simple HTTP or FTP transfer. Anonymity would interfere with the tit-for-tat algorithm that throttles upload and download to different clients depending on their own sharing practices.

Personally I'm done using BT for "sharing" copyrighted works. Too bad for the MPAA and RIAA, really. My latest discovery via P2P was "Penn and Teller's Bullshit!" After viewing several episodes downloaded via BT, I went out and bought the DVD set of the first season. A $45 purchase I would have never made otherwise. Oh well, there's still USENET. :)

Or for the same price I could just get cable and subscribe to a few premium channels and record all this stuff directly to digital (for now). You'd think the MPAA would learn from the RIAA and move quickly to get direct digital distribution going. I'd pay $2 for a commercial-free 1/2 hour show and $4 for hour shows. $5 or $6 for a movie. Skip all the useless DVD packaging. Of course, the files will need to be at least as good quality as the rips out there, and playable on GNU/Linux.

Re:Legally

[kryogen1x]

This is similar to leaving a photocopier running somewhere for other people to use.

Or a gun for someone else to use. Something to ponder about.

Re:Legally

[FHMyles]

I *was* going to say that here in Canada, (thanks to a supreme court ruling) placing stuff in a shared folder is legal (because it is) and doesn't qualify as distribution of copyrighted material. But then I stopped and thought for a moment and I realized that BitTorrent might not be protected by that. It could be said that an inherent function of the program is that when you run it you send material to other people, instead of just placing it in an accessible shared folder. I'm no lawyer, but I'd say us Canadians might have to watch out in the near future after all.

Re:Legally

[debrain]

Are BitTorrent users more vulnerable legally (not practically) since they automatically upload? I'd think that makes them distributors, which presumably brings higher penalties than consumption.

That depends on your legislation. In Canada, for example, you only infringe copyright if you intended to infringe it. The high penalties associated with infringement of copyright, ie. criminal sanctions, leads to a high burden on the crown to prosecute.

So if a tech-unsavy person is uploading while downloading as part of the protocol, s/he is likely not intending to infringe copyright in the uploading, and therefore likely not guilty of an infringement.

However, the downloading itself may be an infringement, and by virtue of clicking the link, you have shown intention (though shown, it's not proven; accidental clicking, etc.).

Incidentally, I do not know what would happen if you were downloading a copyrighted movie you already own (fair use/dealing), and you were aware of the uploading. In that case you may be infringing copyright, but at the same time exercising your right to a backup, though to exercise that right through the bittorrent protocol, the only means of acquiring a backup given the DVD copy protection, you must redistribute and inherently infringe portions of the copyright.

Re:Legally

[tylernt]

There are plenty of anonymous web proxies, I wasn't aware that proxies even existed for BitTorrent though? Anyways, they would soon be flooded with traffic. The reason BT is so fast it you're downloading and uploading in parallel. Send everything though a proxy and now you've got a choke point; kind of defeats the purpose.

Re:Legally

[poningru]

Its faster because the person you are uploading to is not downloading from the same source you are, which allows you to download from the server or a seed at a much higher speed than everyone downloading from the same source. Yeah I know grammatical errors etc etc.

Re:Legally

[debrain]

Copyright law does not have any language regarding intent that I'm aware of.

It is an infringement ... that the person knows or should have known infringes copyright or would infringe copyright (Copyright Act, s. 27)

Intent is codified in at least some statutes in this language or similar through the phrase "knows or should have known". That snippet is from the Canadian Copyright Act.

However, even absent the explicit statutory requirement of intention, in most civilized constutional legal regimes you cannot be imprisoned for absolute liability offences. In other words, if there is a threat of imprisonment, the prosecutor has to show intention. In the least, there is a defence in due diligence. You can't chuck people in jail for transferring something they didn't realize was copyright. The heavy penalties actually seem to work against the regime of copyright enforcement, in this respect.

Re:Legally

[Minna Kirai]

By what rational is it that "because you upload and download in parallel" that makes BT 'fast'.

On an individual basis when there's only one downloader, it's not. But given that many people will be attempting to get a file at once, it's faster because instead of ALL of them going to the original providers, they get some of their data from the other downloaders.

Specific example: You start to download, and get 50% of the file at 1 Mb/s (which is the provider's upload cap). Then a new person starts to download too. Under HTTP or another conventional method, your rate goes down to 0.5 Mb/s, because the provider is now serving double the clients. But with bittorrent, the new client can instead start downloading from YOU (on your unused outgoing bandwidth), instead of obstructing your connection to the original source.

Re:Legally

[Minna Kirai]

If you don't upload, nobody will upload to you. It's the inherent nature of the protocol.

If that were true, then the protocol wouldn't work. All downloaders would stick at 0%. In reality, there are many bittorrents that go for days with only seeds and no downloaders, and where new downloaders are immediately serviced at a high rate. (This tends to happen with Linux ISOs after the first week's rush to grab them is over)

You could use a client like Azureus to limit the upstream bandwidth used though.

Almost any bittorrent client can do that, including the original.

Re:Legally

[steve_bryan]

"By what rational is it that "because you upload and download in parallel" that makes BT 'fast'."

It makes file transfers faster for at least two reasons. You need to understand at least a little about how it works. The file is divided into a number of hashed chunks. The torrent file contains the hash information (and the IP address of the tracker used). The bittorrent client provides chunks to other clients randomly. So no matter how much of a file a particular client has it is likely to have chunks others need and they are likely to have chunks it needs. As soon as a client joins a torrent and has part of the file it can both upload and download.

A consequence of this is that as more clients are added you also get that much more upload capacity. It scales up nicely so transfers can be faster due to added upload capacity compared to centralized transfer protocols.

Another aspect is that even clients on slow links can contribute to making transfers faster for others. Somebody with a big pipe can get pieces from a number of others who only have a limited amount of bandwidth to use. This works also for clients that have limited time periods for being connected. A transfer can be stopped and started any number of times and the client makes progress and helps others when connected. Very beneficial robust behavior.

Notice that I mentioned hash values for these chunks. As a client receives each chunk it can compare the actual hash with the advertised value and accept or reject a chunk based on that. This makes it more difficult to spoof the network with bad data.

What's the problem?

[tesmako]

I really don't see the problem here, other P2P apps are tricky since the users themselves make the content available, but with BitTorrent it should be very clear-cut who to complain to if content you own show up as a download; the tracker.

The tracker is what facilitates the download, the person who runs the tracker has set it up with the intent to share the specific file being shared. The tracker site is typically also the root of all the sharing through being a base seeder as well. So, basicly this brings things back to the days of piracy over public FTP and HTTP download sites, just attack the one facilitating the downloads. While foreign hosting and such might make this trickier it sure is way simpler than trying to attack the typical P2P network where the users are also the ones bringing the content to the table.

Re:What's the problem?

[Fallen_Knight]

problem is with trackers outside of the USA...

Re:What's the problem?

[Myrmi]

Although with Exeem it looks as if they're hedging their bets for the moment over which system (P2P, torrents, or a combination of the two) is going to be the best. Even making the appropriate authorities unsure of which system to primarily target might help.

Re:What's the problem?

[Idimmu Xul]

The tracker is what facilitates the download, the person who runs the tracker has set it up with the intent to share the specific file being shared. The tracker site is typically also the root of all the sharing through being a base seeder as well. So, basicly this brings things back to the days of piracy over public FTP and HTTP download sites, just attack the one facilitating the downloads.

Man, you're so wrong. The tracker only hosts the .torrent files, if that! It's primary roll is to just keep a database of who is sharing what as that is the information the bittorrent client's request from it. This is why it's so hard for the MPAA to crack down on them, as it basically does the job of google but for a specific audience. It doesn't host or upload or share any copyright material, it just tracks those that do.

Re:What's the problem?

[tesmako]

Trackers typically have some initial seed locally arranged, needed to get the whole thing going. On most sites the seed also stays around to make sure that no fragment ends up lost.

Either way I can't say that I think it is obvious in any way that it should be legal to keep a tracker just because it does not actually hold the file. Its only purpose in existance is to provide access to the file, and also, the hashes that it keeps are generated from the file. While some people are tempted to compare the trackers information to plain linking I think it is a flawed argument. While the tracker only points out where each file fragment is available from the pointed to hosts are not there for any other purpose than to be pointed out by the tracker. They are if you will not really practically reachable in any other way. In that sense one can just as well see the tracker as an integral component in a system that as a whole is illegal.

Re:What's the problem?

[Ath]

Nice try, but that's essentially the same as what Napster was doing. Providing a central "database" where the material was linked.

The only defense here for such a website is that DMCA-style laws and even old copyright laws provide a safe haven clause. This means that the copyright holder must inform them that the content is copyrighted and unauthorized for sharing. If you check most sites that host Bittorrent links to copyrighted content, they always have some clear language saying "if you are the copyyright holder and this is your stuff, tell us and we will remove the link". Until that kicks in and the copyright holder informs them, there is no liability.

That all being said, the newer laws (like the one just passed in Australia) lets anyone notify the site and force a reaction. No longer is only the copyright holder themself required.

Re:What's the problem?

[grazzy]

Well i suppose sometimes it makes sense for the seeder to start a tracker on his own computer, thats not the recommended way.

A properly run tracker should never host any data. Just torrents. A torrent is merely a file with checksums + some info.

How do you think for instance, www.thepiratebay.org (swedish) can stay online?

Re:What's the problem?

[unixbob]

Even more to the point, what about the screeners that get released. Lots of these movies come from studios that have been sent the screener for translation or for post production work. If they get their own security in order first then they can start looking outside.

Remove the source of the high quality pirated material and you will inevitably reduce the interest in the illegal copies.

Re:What's the problem?

[91degrees]

I have to wonder how well that sort of disclaimer actually protects the owner. I mean, if it's quite clear that the site exists to facilitate copyright infringement (n.b. 'if'. I'm not saying it does), then I think that disclaimers not worth the paper it's not printed on.

Re:What's the problem?

[nr]

Uh no, that is not how it does work. I have created many torrents and shared them on SuprNova. My local machine at home have always been the initial seed for the .torrent, never the SuprNova tracker.

Re:What's the problem?

[nolife]

I agree with your point but not your wording.

There is more and more quite legal content on BitTorrent (though probably not a large percentage)

That statement is very misleading and will only confuse people or incorrectly allow them to directly associate BitTorrent with other P2P apps like KaZaa and old Napster. No one including yourself has absolutely no idea what percentage of what is being offered with BitTorrent. In fact, nothing is "on" BitTorrent at all as there is no BitTorrent network in any way shape or form. Anyone anywhere can run it and provide pointers to anything. BitTorrent provides no central point for people to connect and see what trackers are offering, other then the transfer method, BitTorrent is NO different then FTP. You can not log into an FTP server and see what other FTP servers around the internet are offering either. They are completely isolated and seperate from each other. I think it is important to have the those details correct to help people understand that BitTorrent is not central to the problem of copyright violations, it is what some individuals do with BitTorrent that is questionable but again, that can happen with any protocol.

Re:What's the problem?

[EpsCylonB]

Fucking AC and ./ grammar Nazis... If you understand the message, what else does it matter?

This isn't nam, this is slashdot, there are rules.

Re:What's the problem?

[bit trollent]

The thing that makes it hard to target bit torrent users for lawsuits is the structure of the bit torrent networks itself. One network, one file. They can't just search for "Britney Spears - Latest Heap of Crap" and sue people who are sharing it like on kazaa. They also can't just look for the person with the largest library available for dowlnoad like they did with kazaa and Napster because on bit torrent everyone is only sharing one file at a time. The best they can do is connect to as many trackers for their copyrighted material as possible which is complicated by the short life span of most of these trackers and that people may not leave them on for very long. In this environment the best they can do is throw darts blindly in to the network with equal probability of catching a curious first timer or a life-long pirate. hopefully be the time they get to me they will have sued all their customers and nobody will be left to buy their music.

I personally hardly ever get music or movies off bit torrent anymore. Most new music is crap anyway, so I only leach the occasional cool song off kazaa, and for movies netflix coupled with a dvd burner is better than any p2p network. The one thing that bit torrent is ideal for is downloading tv shows the day they air. I've noticed that The West Wing, The Simpsons, and South Park are usually available on suprnova.org they day they air. If the tv networks would just come to their senses and offer their own high quality copies of these shows with commercials included (like Jon Stewarts live televised bitchslapping of Crossfire) viewers (their customers) could use bit torrent like a free tivo.

I don't think BitTorrent will be much of a problem

[SimianOverlord]

I imagine the copyright holders will go after the people who index bittorrent seeds, rather than the people involved in the filesharing, for facilitating the crime. If they hit these people, BitTorrent will become less popular as it becomes increasingly difficult to find what you want. It probably won't even matter if this is dubious, legally, just look at the RIAA's actions. A few C&D letters will cool off most people who have neither the money or inclination to fight a protracted court battle.

What's the difference?

[pen]

Kazaa:

1. Run a modified client on a standard ISP address
2. Record IP addresses of everyone allegedly sharing your copyrighted material
3. Send out the DMCA notices to ISPs

BitTorrent:

1. Run a modified client on a standard ISP address
2. Record IP addresses of everyone allegedly sharing your copyrighted material
3. Send out the DMCA notices to ISPs

(The effectiveness and ethics of this method are a different story.)

Re:What's the difference?

[Sique]

With BitTorrent you are forced to share. So when you start downloading something you are also sharing copyrighted material.

You fell for a small but important trap. Just because you are downloading something doesn't mean you are downloading copyrighted material. And just because you are downloading copyrighted material it doesn't mean you are doing anything illegal. And just because you are downloading copyrighted material and at the same moment share it to other people interested in the same material you are still not doing anything illegal.

Many people distribute their own stuff with BitTorrent, because so they only need to seed the material and have maybe to handle the amount for two or three complete downloads from their site. All the other people get their data from those who already got the block in question. This is a huge bandwith saver for all involved parties. Mandrake Linux gets distributed that way for instance, and you can also get other distributions that way, completely legal.

So different than KaZaA or other file sharing networks where you have to look out to find some legitimate use, with BitTorrent it's easy.

On the other hand: The article especially points out that one of the counter technics employed by MPAA and RIAA is to put bogus files with an interesting file name up for sharing. So people searching for a special file may end up with a file with the same name but a different content. Centralized hosting of "proven" files like Napster did made them liable for copyright infringement. Calculating checksums would only help if you could compare the checksums with a trusted database, which is open to the same type of liability, because the database has to calculate the checksums by using the original files. So infecting KaZaA with bogus files and forged checksums is easy. And you know how many files everyone is actually sharing, because you can just query the client and ask. This makes KaZaA and similar systems vulnerable to two types of attacks: Tracking people distributing immense amounts of files, and poisoning the data pool with fake files.

With BitTorrent it's different. Everyone seeding a file is taking technical responsibility for the correctness of the file. But the actual data blocks are coming from other computers. The tracker keeps track of the different computers sharing exactly this file. For every other file there is another tracker. So with the tracker data you can actually find out who's sharing a specified single file, and because of checksumming you can be confident that all people listed in the tracker are sharing the same file derived from the same original data. But you don't know which files else are being shared on the same computer, because their trackers are being somewhere else. So all a copyright infringement tracking bot connecting to that tracker gets to know is information about this single file. Quite ineffective, and if you go to a judge with an IP address and tell them: "From this IP this one file was distributed" he'll probably tell you that he has more important stuff to do.

So people sharing large amounts of data don't appear any different to the bot than people just sharing a single file. And poisoning the data is also not easy, because you can't spoof someone elses seed and tracker. So you have to establish yourself as a second source, with your own seed and tracker, and if you don't provide correct data, your seed will die out soon. There may be an attack possible if you hack BitTorrent yourself (it's GPLed, after all), and if you take part of the actually ongoing BitTorrent sharing, but send fake blocks to every request you get. But then the checksumming will detect you quite soon, and you loose again.

So many legit uses

[Zorilla]

Perhaps the difficulty in battling BitTorrent is because it's harder to argue that its only purpose is to pirate material? We've seen plenty of good uses for it, such as alleviating the bandwidth pains of downloading Windows XP SP2, high demand game patches (Take THAT, Gamespy and your system of waiting behind 400 people in line!), etc.

Re:So many legit uses

[legirons]

Pretty interesting article, and it seems to show quite clearly that some people will stop at nothing to destroy large sections of the internet.

The article is full of quotes about film-industry people bitching about how difficult it will be to destroy bittorrent. "It's very difficult for an interdiction company to get in the middle of that system" ... "BitTorrent has proven to be resistant to some of the countermeasures the entertainment industry has taken to sabotage file-sharing"

Uh-huh. Yes, the internet is resistant to people attempting to destroy it, that's part of the design. The worrying thing is how many people are completely open about wanting to do so.

" [John] Malcolm of the MPAA declined to say whether the trade group intends to sue Cohen" - I think that says it all really, that such options are even being considered. You may as well sue the founding fathers for allowing people to speak in public.

As long as there is a legitimate use...

[darnok]

of Bittorrent (e.g. downloading Linux distros), the RIAA and MPAA have no legal way of killing it off. Bittorrent is outstandingly useful for downloading all sorts of large files, and not all large files are copy-disallowed material.

As the article said, the genii is now out of the bottle, and there's no way it can be captured and contained again.

Private Trackers

[Celt]

Even here in Ireland one friend of mine got a notice from his ISP saying he was downloading from suprnova and that Universal had tracked his IP.
So sites like suprnova are wayyyy to open and as time goes by the smart people have moved away from such sites.

But there are private trackers as well they have.
- Alot of people
- Alot of content
- Good ratios so speeds are good

Nothing like suprnova and they are monitored carefully by the owners, so how are the MPAA/RIAA going to monitor these?

Why don't they use it instead

[tero]

I'd be willing to pay for legal (non-DRM:ed) downloads of movies and tv-shows. Subscription or just per download, take you pick, I don't care.

I fail to see why Hollywood won't learn from RIAA's mistakes (and Apple's success) and start a service like this, the audience is global, there's tons of cash to make!

I live in a small nordic country (Sweden) where you have to wait 1-2 years for most "cool" shows (and even then they might get a timeslot around midnight) or get passed altogether (example, they just started running Angel Season 1, 01:00), so downloading series and buying them in DVD formats is more of a norm for me and many of my friends.

Now, a legal torrent.. that I'd pay for (and they'd even get my upload bandwidth for free).

Re:Why don't they use it instead

[alwsn]

Rather than fight BitTorrent, the networks need to realize the powere behind online distribution. Here is what a successful TV distribution system needs.

Light DRM

While DRM is disliked by end users, a DRM free system will never be launched. The networks wouldn't allow a DRM free system as it could, and would, be used to distribute shows to people who didn't pay. DRM should be in a similar style to iTunes, allowing a reasonable amount of use, while still making it very difficult for the casual user to instant message or upload a song over P2P to someone. Ability to play the show should remain for at least the length of the show's season.

Reasonable and Flexible Cost

Although many users enjoy shows, 'my cable bill' divided by 'number of shows I watch' will drive end user logic about perceived value of a show. $3 dollars per show is low enough to be reasonable, and hopefully high enough to generate revenue. Offer package deals, if someone is a fan of the show, offer the season at a 25% of 33% discount of all episodes are bought up front.

Marketed Well

DRM distribution of files would allow the networks to promote their shows. Sign up for the service, and get one free episode from each show on the upcoming fall lineup. This would help get potential new viewers to generate more income. Tie online season pack sales in with significant discounts on eventual DVD releases. This will help people feel they're actually getting something tangible for their money. Market internationally, as many countries don't have new shows promptly available.

Acknowledge the Inevitable

Thousdands, if not millions, of people are already downloading episodes. Many of these people would be happy to pay for these episodes and would enjoy the convenience and reliability of a legal option. Younger people are watching less TV and are spending an increasing amount of time on computers. Move the media to where people want to view it.

Re:Why don't they use it instead

[Vegeta99]

Your idea sounds great, but remember how cheap people really are.

$0.99/song to have it forever works great.

$3 for a show which, knowing how these things work, STILL HAS ADS THAT YOU CAN'T SKIP, won't.

Re:Why don't they use it instead

[One Childish N00b]

The BBC over here in the UK are already trying to implement a solution like this. I had a reasonably formal conversation with Matt Locke, the director of their creative R&D department, when he visited my college to give the kids a talk on careers in the BBC. We got onto the subject of online distribution - we discussed a closed online distribution method they were developing solely because Younger people are watching less TV and are spending an increasing amount of time on computers. Move the media to where people want to view it.

The plan is to have people pay a weekly flat fee (much like you would a cable bill) and have access to all the shows broadcast on the BBC-owned channels over the past seven days, as well as previews of new shows before they made it to the BBC's own channels. They, of course, would come with DRM - the shows would become unwatchable after seven days - but I thought this was a fairly reasonable trade-off. He also suggested (in an official BBC capacity, just for the record) that a distributed 'BitTorrent-like' download system could be used to take the load off the corporation's servers - he went to great pains to reinforce that 'the BBC did not support illegal downloading or filesharing' and that they would lock down their transfer method rather than just using BitTorrent, but he did say that 'the BBC supports the idea of using distributed downloads of legal material'.

I think this fills all four of your points, and it's nice to see a guy with a big position at a major broadcast corporation start seeing sense - not all people in corporations are evil, and Matt Locke is genuinely nice guy - if the BBC's idea works out it'd be nice to see some of the American networks follow a similar pattern, but to be honest I can't see it happening - you guys always seem to be a lot more 'closed' when it comes to distributable content, and I expect most broadcasters would still be too scared about people cracking into the system... I expect the BBC have less to lose financially if people do still get material illegally, as anyone with a TV is already paying them with our TV licence fees whereas most Americans could just ditch cable altogether if someone cracked a system like this, but that's no reason for a few not to maybe try it if the BBC gets this plan up and running.

And as for a similar style to iTunes, I got to see a mock-up of the client - brushed metal everywhere - seems everyone's taking a leaf out of Apple's style book ;)

Simple solution.

[X0563511]

Encrypt the file (breaking it would violate their own laws, should they pass), and give out the key in a special license, so that anyone/anycorporation/anyorganization that uses the key in any way forfeits all ability to punish anyone/anocorporation/anyorganization for it's contents.

Re:Simple solution.

[julesh]

Encrypt the file (breaking it would violate their own laws, should they pass)

No it wouldn't. It's only illegal to break encryption if it forms an effective copyright protection measure (I forget the exact terminology, but that's close enough). In this case, it wouldn't actually be protecting anyone's copyright, so they would be legally entitled to break it.

and give out the key in a special license, so that anyone/anycorporation/anyorganization that uses the key in any way forfeits all ability to punish anyone/anocorporation/anyorganization for it's contents.

The legality of such a license is questionable, at best. First of all, can an encryption key (a purely functional item, usually automatically designed) be considered copyrightable? If not, then you do not need a license to use it. Secondly, can a license take away a person's rights to their own IP? I wouldn't have thought so.

IANAL, etc.

Re:I don't think BitTorrent will be much of a prob

[mowler2]

In some countries, like sweden, bittorrent trackers are legal. Since they do not spread copyrighted material but just link to where one can find copyrighted material.

Also there is a court ruling from the BBS-time that says that the BBS administrators is NOT responsible for what the users do on the BBS (such as trading warez). It is argued that the same reasoning can be done for a torrent tracker. However if there are copyrighted material transferred without the copyrightholders approval, people that USE the tracker is still doing something illegal.

The industry has tried to remove torrents from piratebay.org, which is the biggest torrent tracker in sweden, with limited success. (they have even gotten calls from Microsoft when Halo 2 was up for downloading) :)

Peerguardian

[Idimmu Xul]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Peerguardian just stop incoming and outgoing connections to it's list of banned IPs? If so, how does this stop a member of the **AA from connecting to a tracker and simply receiving the list of all the IPs connected to that torrent... How does it make a difference?

Re:PeerGuardian

[TheRealJFM]

happily:

PeerGuardian is based around the idea of an open list of blocklists collected from known fake files/scaners etc.

The **AAs are not very sophisticated in their searching - man scans come from a very small number of ranges.

The ranges are found by:

1) Whois searching, If we know the name of the company we can easily find them by scanning whois databases. They *have* to give their company name (eg BayTSP) so they are easy to find.

2) Log comparison. PG collects a log of every ip you connect to against the time. If someone gets a letter we get them to cross-reference the time the infringement is said to be on the letter (this must legally be included) with the ips in their log. 9/10 it is an obvious IP doing the scanning that can be found.

see our forum on this topic here:
http://methlabs.org/forums/forumdisplay.php ?f=41

PeerGuardian is simply a low level firewall that blocks these ips. PeerGuardian 2 will be open source, and will update automatically.

We're also trying to make the database more open, by adding a system where all the ranges can be viewed on a webpage, and users can comment, report bad ranges, and vote on how useful a range is.

See the reviews of PG2 *closed beta* here:

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/peerguar di an_2_review.cfm
http://www.p2private.org/review/

I expect PG2 to be out before the new year, but it will be out when its ready, not beforehand.

Thanks :)

Joseph Farthing
Administrator & News Editor
Methlabs.org

Re:Newgroups?

[julesh]

Or is there some technical reason that they can't do anything about them?

I believe Harlan Ellison successfully sued somebody who was posting copies of his stories to alt.binaries.e-books (or similar). He also tried to sue AOL, who settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

See details here: http://www.authorslawyer.com/c-ellison.shtml

Re:Peerguardian

[TheRealJFM]

This is very simple:

collecting the IP addresses of people connected to a tracker does not ammount to proof of infringement. You have to actually recieve some data from them to prove they are illegally transmitting copyrighted material. :)

Joseph Farthing
Administrator & News Editor
Methlabs.org

Re:Newgroups?

[nogginthenog]

Perhaps because ISPs are unwilling to provide data on who downloaded what from Usenet? I know if my newsfeed did I'd switch.

Confusion on the tracing.

[Fussen]

I was explained to that torrents are not easily traced because all the data is sent in small packet chunks.. I think it might be in 256k chunks.
And that since all these data packets are being sent randomly from various sources, it would be much more difficult to actually point a finger at a source or destination.

It was described that sure you might be able to intercept the transmition of data, but you are not witnessing the transfer of a in-tact file.

So you could see that maybe it's some sort of mpeg stream or maybe part of a larger compressed archive, but it's just a piece of it. And once the next version of the torrent system comes along with the ability to transfer without use of trackers or servers, it becomes here-say on any legal action.

So does this packet chunk bit torrent stuff actually hold true? And if not, Why?

:)

Re:PeerGuardian

[TheRealJFM]

we do *check* ranges before they go in
if someone comes onto our forum and posts a range we don't just add it without any thought.

other lists may do this but we *don't*

Re:Peerguardian

[shird]

bah.. its proof enough. Its not as if the MPAA are downloading the entire file off of each client/IP to check they are sharing that particular file. They are just getting the hashes etc,. The trackers keep track of what the client has up'd and down'd, this will only be recorded if the correct bytes are uploaded to other clients and reported as such.

Re:Uhh..

[OAB_X]

Well, because your IP is being blasted around to trackers and users everwhere unhidden, the RIAA could track you that way. But the most effective way would be to just go after trackers themselves.

Various trackers a while ago came under a flood of DOS attacks. We dont know who, but that they did. 100MBS connections were maxxed out in minutes. The RIAA/MPAA could do something like this similar to Lycos (now scrapped) anti-spam screensaver. Just call it an "anti-piracy screensaver" and say that by using it you lower the cost of movies as they dont need to compensate for piracy in the price as much (note: I dont actually think that they would give a deal, let alone drop prices if it was effective).

For example, the MPAA/RIAA gets a few thousand people to download the screensaver, suddenly the Pirates Cove tracker goes way overloaded and you suddenly cant get listings for people anymore. Eventually they would be able to get around it (changing DNS/IP addresses and such), but not before it knocked thousands of people off their download.

Effective? Yes, legal? Probably not, but its not the goal to crash the server, only to "increase the cost of doing buisness". As far as I know TPC does not have advertisements (though its been a while since i have been there), so they would need to rely increasingly on donations and such.

Re:Peerguardian

[TheRealJFM]

to hold up a case in court they have to actually *prove* the person is sharing the file.

getting a list of ips just won't be good enough without some sort of evidence

then again we have seen some stupid occasions where stupid takedown notices have been given:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/20/ 23 51242&tid=188&tid=123&tid=17&tid=1 06

Legit uses

[knightrdr]

How many government snafu's will be revealed by file sharing? Look at some of the things published on P2P networks already, concerning prisoner abuse by the U.S. military. Some of the information was originally made public by more traditional means, but many hot stories have broke because of pics or videos from Iraq on P2P networks. Of course there is the flip side of beheading videos being published by terrorists or a meere "gore loving freak". I wonder how long until we hear about "those terrorist P2Pers". Don't think it can't happen...

I think BitTorrent users are harder to sue

[swilver]

"Anyone who uses BitTorrent and is under the illusion that they are anonymous are sorely mistaken," Malcolm said. "There is no reason why those lawsuits wouldn't include BitTorrent" users.

Actually, there is a reason why the lawsuits wouldn't include BitTorrent users. It is much harder to sue BitTorrent users for multiple infringements at once, which (I think) is what makes the current lawsuit approach cost effective.

When you find a BitTorrent user participating in a big swarm, you can only sue them for that single infringement, not for sharing hundreds of movies or music files via programs like Kazaa. In order to make it cost effective they would have to keep track of your online BitTorrent activity for quite a while to collect multiple infringements.

Re:I think BitTorrent users are harder to sue

[snark42]

they would have to keep track of your online BitTorrent activity for quite a while to collect multiple infringements.

They also need to:

• Make sure your dynamic IP doesn't change.
• Monitor a LARGE number of torrents without being blacklisted for being with the RIAA/MPAA/etc.
• Not engage in sharing the said copyrighted material themselves which would make the download a legal one.

I think many of these are the same reasons IRC and Usenet can go along without being bothered too much, plus the critial mass of people aren't there, but that's how a lot of the files get out to FastTrack or BitTorrent I'm sure.

Re:I think BitTorrent users are harder to sue

[kenthorvath]

What I'm curious about is if they can sue you for sharing half a movie.

Just consider that it is within fair use to distribute brief quotes and excerpts. Not that I would expect that half of the movie would count as such, but if there were a system whereby 100 users were each responsible for 1 minute of a movie and some index told them where to get each minute then I'm not sure that there is anything illegal being done by the uploaders, nor is it clear that the downloader is doing anything illegal. If bit-torrent can faciliate this sort of defense then I'm sure that bigbiz will have a much harder time attacking it.

Re:PeerGuardian

[swilver]

Unless of course the tracker is running PeerGuardian...

File Sharing Will Kill CD/DVD Maeket

[reallocate]

Logically, file sharing will eventually destroy the CD and DVD market. Why try to sell something people are just going to steal? So, ironically, no one will have anything to share anymore.

Personally, I don't believe anyone has a right to "share" the data on a CD or DVD unless that right was passed to you by the person who created the data. (I put quotes around share because use of that word is a deliberate attempt to whitewash what's really going on.)

If I don't own all rights to something I make (which , of course, I do, since it is impossible for anyone else to own those rights unless I transfer them), then I can't benefit from its production and reproduction. If I can't benefit by selling some of those rights, I'm likely to quit making things. So will almost everyone else, contrary to the naive opinions often expressed here that legitimate artists just want to give it all away and don't care about making a living.

Re:File Sharing Will Kill CD/DVD Maeket

[incal]

If so, why CDs/DVDs sell so well, especialy before Christmas? :) Would you give your mother as a gift ripped album of her favourite artist, burned on cheap CD-R?

Look, if nice stuff, in nice boxes would be sold on reasonable prices - reasonable to payments in our countries, there would be no problem with so called "piracy". In Poland, I earn maybe 300-400 USD monthly. New game cost here from 30 to 50 USD. New audio CD - 15.

Isn't this ridiculous? Hardware guys are happy with coming 3-5% over their costs. Why RIAA/MPAA/whatever shall get more? Why do they have to ride in silly, costly limos?

We gave our culture to corpocracy, and now they're responsible for bringing it to masses. If they failed us in this job, we can replace them. With p2p networking, for example.

Re:File Sharing Will Kill CD/DVD Maeket

[reallocate]

Cute, but no sale.

Cassette tape didn't destroy the recorded music or movie business because it was a recording medium, not a distribution network. One person copying an album onto a tape poses no threat. One person copying a CD onto his server and offering it up to anyone with Internet access is a distinct threat.

I am not equating illegal copying with "zero legit sales". I am saying that, left unchecked, illegal copying will make it unprofitable to stay in the recorded music business. It is not necessary to reduce sales to zero. It is only necessary to reduce sales to the point at which it becomes more attractive to engage in another kind of business.

Re:File Sharing Will Kill CD/DVD Maeket

[reallocate]

As I said elsewhere, sales and, hence, profits, only need to be reduced to the point that other lines of business become a more attractive investment. At that point, people will stop trying to sell CD's and DVD's because they can get a better return on their money selling something else.

And, no, it isn't ridiculous that the price of CD's and DVD's is more than the 3-5% you say the "hardware guys" accept as their profit. No one is interested in the hardware. A blank CD is no more attractive than 400 blank pages bound together as a book. It is the data and information, not the hardware, that people want. Would you by a DVD player if no DVD's were available?

I disagree that we gave "our culture" to corporations. Pop entertainment isn't much of a culture in the first place, so, even if your assertion was correct, I would not lament that fact.

It is not the responsibility of any corporation or other business to bring to the "masses" products you, or I, believe the "masses" ought to purchase. It is the responsiblity of businesses to try to sell, to as many individuals as possible, as many products as possible. If people don't like the affect of buying those products, then the blame rests with them, not the corporations.

private communities

[tolonuga]

private ftp servers with a few hundered users - there are still lots of them with lots of warez.
but they can be found, and it easier who has access to them, and all the warez is in one place, so you can sue each user to a huge amount.

now with bittorrent, it is quite easy to setup a private webserver with a forum, torrent files, and a tracker rejecting unknown users. that does not create much traffic, as most data flows between the members directly. if the site is found and the server is taken in: it only has .torrent files. those alone are not illegal.
also downloading torrent files is not illegal.
and I hope nobody is stupid enough to have tracker log files, so there is not very much evidence for legal battles.

even more important is that with bittorrent a
hundret people with everyone only donating small resources (dsl line, one central server) can have a huge impact.

Re:PeerGuardian

[TheRealJFM]

the fact that most of us don't live in the US?

I don't know... no one has ever tried to collect logs from us - we don't keep them

its our users who have the logs.

Legal Threats

[Zedrick]

There's some funny examples of various copyright holders' cease-and-desist-mails (and the replies they got) to a Swedish torrent site on: http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/

One they day will get a clue and start hunting down the users instead.

Think about this...Bootleg quality SUCKS!

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is that the MPAA and RIAA are all being lazy.

Think about what happens when you download music, I'd say 40% of the time. You find that there's a click or a pop or an early cutoff in the song. Not 100% recording studio quality, or maybe even the encoding rate is less than 128k.

Also, anyone who has ever seen a bootleg knows that even TELESYNCS are of worse quality than that old TV that used to be in the garage with the aluminum foil on the antenna, and whose antenna was actually a coathanger.

The answer is to make reasonable quality movies available easily to people. TiVO has the right idea, and this idea may just bury the whole theatre industry (or set it back hundreds of paces).

I've bought bootlegs on every corner of NYC, and they all SUCK, and I'm not just talking about quality. Same has been said about the quality of the music that is being released these days. The RIAA is mad that we're downloading music that isn't worth even a legit 0.99 cent download. The answer? GET MORE TALENT ON THE LABELS!

Same is true for movies. Let's do a brief history of movies that have come out recently, shall we?

Lady Killers - I fell aasleep, personally. Horrible.
Van Helsing - PUH-LEESE. Should have ended 45 minutes before it did.
White Chicks - umm...right. White Chicks.

So one could argue that buying/downloading bootlegs is really just saving us from having to spend $10 now on a crappy movie. 10 BUCKS! Maybe there wouldn't be so much downloading if tickets were still reasonable. $10!

When I buy/download a good movie, I go to the thetre and see it.

SAW is a perfect example. GREAT MOVIE, new, fresh, original. Bought a bootleg, watched 15 minutes, and went to the theatre. They DESERVED the price of the ticket.

Spiderman 2 also....downloaded it, watched it, and went ot see it 3 times in the theatre.

My advice to MPAA/RIAA...better product. Make it so that we're foolish to try and get a cheap copy of your product. Nobody is out there manufacturing BMW knockoffs, are they? THey'd be FOOLISH to.

Take a lesson, and stop complaining.

Just my .02.

Re:Think about this...Bootleg quality SUCKS!

[Mr2001]

Think about what happens when you download music, I'd say 40% of the time. You find that there's a click or a pop or an early cutoff in the song. Not 100% recording studio quality, or maybe even the encoding rate is less than 128k.

Hey, 1998 called. They said it's time for you to move out.

Really.. clicks and pops? No one uses analog ripping anymore, and jitter correction is a problem that was solved long ago. Bitrate less than 128 kbps? Haven't seen that for years. Even 128 is getting hard to find these days; most of what I see is 192.

The Stuff You Can't Get

[josefek]

I receive tons of hits from various groups sniffing about while I'm d/ling via BitTorrent (I run PeerGuardian) and I often wonder how culpable I am. While not all of my downloads are technically "legal," it's all stuff I'm pulling down because it's the only way I can get it.
My most recent downloads, for instance, have been copies of Sifl & Olly (which hasn't been released on DVD) episodes of the BBC's Spaced (which, while released on DVD, is only available in the UK on region 2 media, and I'm in the states), and the Drive-By Truckers Pizza Deliverance, which is woefully out of print. In the case of the Truckers, I already own a copy of the record, but it's beat to shit. Supposedly they'll be re-releasing it sometime in 2005, and I'll undoubtedly be buying myself a new copy. In the meantime, however, I'd like to be able to listen to it.
I'm one of those folks who would happily purchase the stuff I pull via BitTorrent... if I could. It irritates the shit out of me to be snooped online, and to read article after article about the RIAA and MPAA pissing and moaning over downloading, when they don't really seem to be paying attention to what is being downloaded.
Sure, there's a shit-ton of folks dealing in warez and publicly available media, but there are also tons of sites dealing specifically with stuff people seek that can't currently be purchased legitimately (I don't understand downloading a crappy boot of a movie destined for DVD release, or downloading a movie that can be purchased for a few bucks online or rented. Frankly, it's a waste of my bandwidth). You'd think they'd look at the popularity of, say, Sifl & Olly torrents and say "Well shit, there's a market. Maybe we should release a DVD of that stuff."
And hey; how about not pricing it outlandishly (a la Carnivale or Six Feet Under)? Nothing makes me consider downloading more than knowing that, by purchasing it, I'm voluntarily allowing myself to get screwed.

Re:I don't think BitTorrent will be much of a prob

[maskedbishounen]

Been there, done that. And I still miss my indexer.

Let's make a little example:

• An author uses someone's licensed content, say a picture, in their book.
  
• The publisher prints the book, and a bunch of copies end up at your local library.
  
• Your library freely loans the book with infringing content to all to see.

Now, in torrent terms:

• The author is the creator of the torrent. They are, originally, at fault for the incident.
  
• The publisher is the tracker. Their only job is to distribute content, not check for validity.
  
• Finally, the library, is the tracker; they freely make content available to the general public.

BigCorporation1267 comes along and sees the library has InfringingBook612. What do they do?

Instead of going to the source (author), or having the distribution of the book pulled (publisher), they go to the library (tracker). "You're aiding in the distribution of infringing materials! Stop or we'll sue!"

The library itself has neither the funds nor manpower to take this to court; if anything, they would likely win a case. Yet, they have to roll over to the big guys.

It's a great plot, at that. Make the library the scapegoat when the book publisher is truly at fault for distributing infringing materials. Of course, the blame should really go to the author, but it's quite hard on the internet. So, take down the library, annoy a bunch of people, and the corporations win. In their own minds, of course; they're not stopping the content, so they can still play victim later. Marketing brilliance, really.

TV

[nns6561]

Why haven't TV stations decided to offer up torrents of recent shows? By including ads, they should be able to achieve similar levels of profit as broadcast TV. The bandwidth should not be a stumbling block if torrents are used. It might even increase revenues by exposing their product to a larger market.

Re:TV

[The_Spud]

The bbc was considering doing something like this but they ran into problems with the amount of money they would need to pay the actors. I think equity kicked up a fuss about 'residual' payments.

Not!

[Mistlefoot]

And the Movie studio states clearly that they only uploaded '30 seconds' worth of the information before disconnecting from the torrent.

It is incredibly common for studios to offer samples of their work without compromising their rights to to it.

Re:Not!

[Minna Kirai]

There's a big difference between a suspicion and proof.

True. Serious suspicion is what makes the police smash down your door to take your computer, and on it's hard drive they find the proof.

There are so few other explanations of what you could've been doing connected to that bittorrent that they've easily got justification for a search warrant.

Additionally, that 30 seconds of material isn't fair use anyway- the quantity is sufficiently small to be fair, but the manner in which you use it is not.

This PeerGuardian bs again?

[Jugalator]

And with the likes of PeerGuardian, et. al., it only gets harder for the corporations to put the virtual, and legal, smackdown on file sharing.

OK, can someone once and for all tell me how PG makes it more difficult for corporations to track down file sharers? All the have to do is use a public network, right? I just don't get it. Do some think they'll sit behind a special kind of RIAA network to scan people and have totally missed the news of PG mentioned everywhere?

Have we got any data on blocked RIAA connections?

People mentioning PG is always talking about the software like it efficiently blocks the organizations you've picked. :-S

Re:This PeerGuardian bs again?

[TheRealJFM]

see my other post (click my username and look for the first post I made in this thread) for info on how PG works.

as for the effectiveness of PG:

http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?from=f&Artic le ID=2016

"Indeed, Akshay Patil, a student at MIT, whose paper, Identifying Sources of Spoof Files and Limiting Their Impact in the FastTrack Network, discusses the phenomenon, notes that spoofing has become a considerable problem for the FastTrack network - the network used by Kazaa - with downloaders of popular songs finding a spoof rate of 50 per cent of tracks." ....

"As the spoof files come from a fairly small set of IP addresses (the record companies or anti-piracy firms, obviously), a filter that blocks files from these addresses produces, according to Patil, a *75 per cent reduction* in spoof files. PeerGuardian is a small firewall application available for download that blocks and logs connections to these addresses. The block list is maintained by users and updated daily."

a link to the MIT paper:

http://web.mit.edu/patil/Public/805project/

Lets make this clear:

1) Spoof files are used to catch sharers on kazaa, and to generally annoy people.
2) In tests an MIT student found that he was getting 50% fake files on some hits, all from a small number of IP addresses.
3) By using PeerGuardian with these addresses (long since added to the db, this project is out of date) he was able to get a 75% reduction.

Sound ok?
We never said it was 100% but 75%+ (we've improved a lot since 2003) reduction is pretty good, no?

If anyone has any problems please come on IRC and myself of someone else will be glad to talk to you!

irc.methlabs.org (port 6667)
#methlabs

(or click the irc link from methlabs.org)

Thanks :)

Joseph Farthing
Administrator & News Editor
Methlabs.org

http://digitalpanic.org :-0 :-) ;-P

[puzzled]

I love bittorrent - I have about forty full length jam band shows that I've obtained over the last couple of months from www.digitalpanic.org.

I have an office cable modem, a home cable modem, a girlfriend's house cable modem, a mom's house cable modem, and most of them have BSD boxes for firewalls. I'm working on a method to automate the three home boxes participating in torrents I seed so when I start distributing shows I'll come with a megabit of bandwidth. Once the process is 'cooked' I have a couple of customers that probably won't mind some torrent activity on their network, so long as I keep it between 9:00 PM and 6:00 AM.

If you worry about the RIAA the solution is simple; get interested in bands that *promote* your right to copy their live work - Widespread Panic, Grateful Dead, Phish, Moe, Jerry Joseph & Jackmormons, String Cheese Incident, Government Mule, Drive By Truckers, Southern Bitch, Star Tangled Angel Revival, and a hundred other, less famous acts I've haven't listened to yet. There *is* something there for everyone :-)

Re:Peerguardian

[Jugalator]

to hold up a case in court they have to actually *prove* the person is sharing the file.

But aren't RIAA getting a lot of their money from lawsuit by out-of-court settlements? I mean, few people have the lot of money they wish to spend on getting a lawyer and fighting in court.

Lol doofus

[SmallFurryCreature]

That is exactly the problem, the tracker is blameless. The tracker is google. That is the whole legal problem. All the tracker does is give you some adresses where a certain filename might be. Prostitution is illegal in some places but giving people directions to the red light district is not. Well not in free countries anyway, the US might be another matter.

So basically your entire argument is wrong. Only the actual filesharers can be held to blame in bittorrent not the central tracker.

Re:But.. Question ..

[lessthanjakejohn]

No it doesn't always point to you.

After someone else downloads and seeds you can leave and the other person can start seeding...

THere is tracker software that is being run on the servers though. It announces who is seeding and who the peers are. When you build a .torrent file you add a site with an announce.php to it.

Re:So many legit uses-Barrel Spoling.

[legirons]

"And you haven't made the case yet that P2P is "large sections of the internet"."

If you wanted to do so, you could cite the percentage of internet traffic which bittorrent uses, some figures were even in the article.

Some people estimate 800,000 copies of bittorrent might be running at any one time. Download.com estimates that 1.5 million copies of the standard BitTorrent client have been downloaded from their site alone (more than firefox). I think the claim of "large sections of the internet being affected by someone trying to fuck-up BitTorrent" is justified.

"Copyright violations aren't a free speech issue"

Indeed. Wasn't suggesting they should be. But trying to shut-down whole systems of communication for fear that copyrighted stuff might be transmitted on them is a free-speech issue.

My analogy was with speaking in public. You can read a copyrighted book in public. You can sing a copyrighted song. But restricting the ability to speak in public is not a valid solution to either of those problems. Similarly, restricting the ability to use BitTorrent is not a valud solution to the problem of people using it to share other peoples' video.

Or to use a more specific example, I don't want MPAA-funded vandals interfering with my Debian and Mepis downloads, then claiming that what they're doing is legitimate.

They cheated the system

[Migraineman]

(with a US bias ...) The file sharing backlash is, IMHO, an example of civil disobedience in response to the **AA organizations cheating the system. Copyright and Patent structures are a *temporary* monopoly granted to the author (and enforced thorough the legal system) in exchange for incentive to expend resources and take risks for the creative process. When the Copyright/Patent period expires, the work is supposed to fall into the public domain for the benefit of society. So, exactly when do the authors make good on their end of the deal? The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension-to-Infinity Act distills down to "effectively, never."

There are two paths to changing the law - pursue it through petition to representatives, or pursue it through civil disobedience. Since the congresscritters appear to be bought and paid for, disobedience seems to be the only reasonable choice that remains. The file sharing folks aren't making a buck doing so. In fact, it costs them time and resources (electricity, disk space, bandwidth, etc.) to participate in the activity. The pirates who sell the materials are a different matter ...

Wrong

[Q2Serpent]

You aren't allowed to upload 1 second of the material, since you don't own the copyright!

Is it that hard to understand? They can distribute as much of it as they want, because they OWN IT. You, however, do NOT.

Re:Wrong

[dissy]

> You aren't allowed to upload 1 second of the material,
> since you don't own the copyright!

> Is it that hard to understand? They can distribute as much of it as they want,
> because they OWN IT. You, however, do NOT.

Actually, you are allowed to quote/use up to either 30 seconds or 10% of the original work under fair use laws.

While there is no way to assure this in bittorrent, it goes to show even the pro-IP like yourself also seem to find copyright hard to understand...

An additional point to be made, if the copyright holders intent is for their copyrighted work to be distroyed or become lost, then their copyright claim is invalid, and a criminal act as far as private contracts go.

Thusly, the copyright holder can not simply do 'anything they want' with it just because they hold the copyright.

Re:About naive, short-sighted, idiotic people

[antiMStroll]

An interesting perspective: it's the general population's fault the legal system is being distorted to support an outdated business model, and if they keep it up corporations will send more armies of lawyers and lobbyists to attack the very core of a nation's right to exchange information, effectively legislating federal regulation of all information transactions. So stop it because you want to play CDs in your car? And use the internet the way corporations tell you to use it? That low, omnipresent thrumming you hear is the millions who died for your nation's freedoms roto-tilling their graves.

"Copyright law is there for a reason..."

That reason is solely corporate lobbying. There was no public interest in or demand for changes like a 70 year extension.

RE: hashes

[King_TJ]

Hmm.... that's an interesting argument you have there. I've actually never heard someone make that statement before, that a hash is a "derived work" of the original software.

Might have some validity, but I think it's still a stretch. The original point (legally speaking, anyway) of concern over "derived works" was focused on people doing slight modifications to existing code and attempting to resell it as something new and original. (EG. If I have access to the source code to Outlook Express email for Windows and I change the screen colors and default fonts, some of the wording and dialog boxes, and put the folder list on the right instead of the left, I can't run around selling it as a new email product called "MailMaster 5000 Pro".)

A hash, in and of itself, is a very small chunk of alphanumeric data that doesn't contain enough code to conclusively prove it was only able to be created by using a specific original work. (After all, I could write a small program to generate random hashes all day long and theoretically create one that happens to be identical to one made the "proper way", by generating it based on a specific file.)

How to poison BitTorrent for Dummies

[davidwr]

How to Poison BitTorrent for Dummies

Target audience: RAII, MPAA, BSA

Step 1:
Get a DSL or cable account on every major ISP.
Step 2:
Join the torrent for every movie or song you want to poison. Repeat this for each ISP.
Step 3:
After you've downloaded the file, alter a few key bits every few dozen KB. You may need to use sophisticated methods so checksums match.
To throw people off, host a few non-broken files of stuff that's legal to freely share, e.g. Linux distributions.
Step 4:
To fool technology like PeerGuardian, change your IP address every few days at random intervals.

The end result:
People unlucky enough to grab a segment from you will probably get at least 1 altered bit, resulting in a broken download. In the case of sound or video, it may not make it unplayable, but it will mark it as a bootleg copy.

Step 5:
Pay your ISP bills and compare this cost to the net increase in revenue, and realize you are in the hole.

Re:How to poison BitTorrent for Dummies

[Lehk228]

step 6:
discover that BT uses SHA-1 and not MD5 so you wasted all that time trying to corrupt peoples downloads while only forcing them to redownload a few hundred K at most.

Hollywood & this article misses the point agai

[OneInEveryCrowd]

Here are some questions I wish the author of this article and some of the people he interviewed would address.

Why can't "Hollywood" adapt to technological change instead of fighting it ? Why can an unemployed programmer sitting in his apartment out-inovate a handful of multi-billion dollar corporations ?

Why do these wealthy CEO and entertainer types think they're immune from change ? I used to be a high paid COBOL guy, I had to adapt. Do any of these people expect me to feel any sympathy or support for them ?

Why would people want to download in the first place ? Is it because ticket prices are too high, and the cost of soda and popcorn is almost offensive ? Do people in one country want to see the movie as soon as people in another country ?

Is the loss of revenue real or imaginary ? Is their existence really threatened ? Are movie industry profits really sliding ? Are American high school kids really going to start staying home instead of going to the theatre ?

Sorry if this sounds like a bit of a rant. I'm really tired of the pro-CEO slant in the mainstream media. If any journalists are reading this I hope you address these questions in your future articles. It would really make me alot more interested in what you do for a living.

Re:Wrong? Or right?

[Commander Trollco]

How do they own something that is merely a duplicate of something they own? That is what is messed about copyright, patents, and any sort of IP.

* The claim of financial losses or damage is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copyist would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
* The claim of loss or damage is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
* The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" got paid. That is based on the assumption that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.

* Originally written by Rolloffle (British Douchebag)

Defeatist?

[Famatra]

"No, not the MPAA, the illegal file-swappers."

I got an idea then, change the law so that personal noncommerical use of copyrighted material is allowed to be coppied and the 'il' will drop out of illegal. It is the peoples' law, and it will be changed if the majority of people are 'criminals' under it.

"they will simply push for still more draconian legislation"

What is your arguement, that we give in to the harm done by the idea monopolists because they might do something worse in the future? Well, Neville, I have no doubt they are heading there anyway since their goal is nothing but the total control of information and ideas, so I suggest we not roll over but fight them instead.

"Copyright law is there for a reason..."

Yes, the reason was to promote the creation of new ideas. Now copyright has been perverted to stifile new ideas, and it appears to be getting more draconian every day. ...you are not allowed to copy music, films, etc"

The law tells you we are 'not allowed' to copy and share information, and then the law must be changed to reflect our new digital age.

"The more arrogant you become the harder you will get slapped in the end"

You try the being meek and subserviant method while idea monopolists create a world in which information is despensed like gasoline, and you pay by the letter. I think i'll try fighting for the right to information ;).

WiFi Drive In Warez!

[telemonster]

I had this idea a while ago, it brings back the BBS community style.

Hardware is cheap, people could build a box with a 200gb disk and 802.11g card and hide it on top of a large building or structure. Maybe a pay phone booth, or in an attic of a house. A high gain antenna could be used. These "nodes" could communicate host to host using internet (or another open wireless link, highly throttled).

The clients would be anyone with a notebook computer and a directional antenna. Depending on the city, all one would have to do is point their directional at the site, and wala, warezsite! Think of it as pirate radio with a studiotransmitter link.

Granted the nodes could be DOS attacked, or stolen, but people used to rm the stashes on the FTP servers in the golden days.

In an office park, you could end up wtih "drive in warez" ... the downside is if the clients are in close proximity to the host, then license plates and physical busts could ruin the joy of having the latest crappy Eminim album. (Having seen Oceanse 12 yesterday, I was horrified to see Ice Cube in some new kids movie. WTF? From gats and crack to the next kids movie star, sheesh. I can see the two pack of DVDs in the bargain bin now, "A kiddie christmas comedy" and "Friday").

Tune in next time for "slow bitrate warez trading via Shortwave radio"

Re:WiFi Drive In Warez!

[P2Powah!]

Good idea, build cheap computers with solar pannels and hide them on the top of trees and you can trade warez secretly :)

Re:About naive, short-sighted, idiotic people

[cheekyboy]

The fight will happen forever until either side dies or admits defeat, and people doing it for love and freedom will do it forever, people doing it for a weekly pay check will do it only 5 days a week until they are sacked.

Trust me, when the world gets to a massive Depression Mark II, (C) will be the least of concerns to both sides, FOOD will be #1.

Now back to copying music, kids did it in the 80s, swapping mix tapes, did that hurt the industry? The industry doesnt deserve 500 billion status, they made the fake distribution model in such a way that it would maximize profits (like the mafia does), so they have no intention to switching to a zero cost model to give music to the people for 1/10th the price. Uber greed is uber greed, they had their 5 trillion $$$ worth of money for the last 50 years, time to give some back.

Message to musos, make your money on concerts, not CDs, CDs are a free method to 'advertise' your concerts.

Off Topic: grammar critique discussed

[Changa_MC]

Although I dislike drawing this thread farther from the topic at hand, I feel compelled to continue on with this dicussion. I'd like to begin by pointing out the fact that this corrective post consisted entirely of fragmented quotes interspersed with sentence fragments, and quotation marks were used inversely from their indications; around original text rather than cited materials! Let us illustrate instead some proper corrective techniques.

We can start by breaking down the original essay, to wit:

"Man, you're so wrong."

In my classroom this contraction would be inappropriate, but in an informal letter, it is acceptable.

"The tracker only hosts the .torrent files, if that!"

This is acceptable, since the suggested usage, "tracker hosts only..." implies that nothing else is on the server at all, whereas the original more correctly implies that the tracker does not host any other part of the specific transaction that interests us.

"It's primary roll is to just keep a database of..."

This is actually a mistake; "it's," is always a contraction for, "it is." What was meant here is ownership, so "its" is correct.

The use of primary is admittedly confusing, since it implies secondary roles. Perhaps our author includes maintaining DNS position and such in the server's secondary roles. Certainly, the actual error in this sentence is the incorrect use of, "roll," where, "role," was intended. Perhaps our self appointed grammar expert could expand to definitions of common words as well?

"...The information the bittorrent client's request from it"

Similar to another mistake made previously. The use of, "client's," is incorrect since it implies ownership. Perhaps if we reworded the sentence this way: "the bittorrent client's request is only for the database of who is sharing, so that is the tracker's role."

" ...Any copyright.."

As was pointed out, this ought to be in the past tense, since the copyright in question would have already been issued.

"...material, it just tracks those"

A travesty of modern education is the use of commas where semicolons are more desirable. This is a typical example, and is common worldwide. Even the highly educated tend not to use semicolons where such items technically ought to be used.

But again, our young grammar nazi^H^H^H^H expert failed to point out the most critical error here, which is the ending of the sentence.

Overall, the English usage here was excellent although obviously informal.

I am drawn to conclude that the original author's grasp of English is acceptable for a native speaker, whilst quite impressive in any other case. Whilst the individual writing the critique, in contrast, is simply an ignoramus with a giant lump of coal wedged up his sorry little ass.

Thank you for your time and consideration, I hope we have all learned something here today.

Why BitTorrent is Fast

[billstewart]

The reason it's fast is that _everybody_ who is using BitTorrent to download a file is also contributing their upload resources to the community of people who want to download that file, and if people leave BitTorrent running after they've finished downlading they're also contributing. This means that you're not limited by the bandwidth of a single server like you are with FTP/HTTP, and you're not limited by the bandwidth of a single peer like you are with Napster, and because you're downloading from multiple peers, you can take advantage of the fastest peers as opposed to just the average or slowest peers.

There are times that single-stream downloads can be faster - if you're downloading from a fast lightly loaded server that has more bandwidth per user than your Internet connection, that's as fast as it gets, while if you're running BitTorrent on an asymmetric connection like ADSL or cable modem and the community of people who want the same file is still mostly downloading, then your download speed ends up limited by your upstream bandwidth until lots more people have the file. But it's pretty common for BitTorrent users to leave their clients uploading after they've finished downloading, particularly for big downloads that run overnight (because if it finishes before you get up in the morning, it keeps running.) There are exceptions - not just greedy leeching downloaders, but also people who download when the community has a lot of spare capacity and low demand, but that's when it's really not a problem.

Because BitTorrent doesn't need a fast server to support a lot of downloaders, there's also more material that can be published. If you're running your own tracker for the material you're publishing, that does take some bandwidth, but it's a lot less than actually downloading the file to lots of people.

if you suppress upload your download suffers

[SethJohnson]

Bittorrent is fast as hell because it spreads big data like a virus. If one person were to offer a DVD rip of Spiderman2 on Kazaa or Limewire, how many people are going to really be able to download a 1.5 gig file before the original person decides their bandwidth would be better used by gaming or some other activity? Of those people who successfully got the original file, how many are going to also allow uploads of it and so on? Probably not a lot. In the Bittorrent model, the original host for the file only needs to send the 1.5 gigs of data out a single time. If several other people download it at the same time, then they take the place of the original host and provide peices of it for download. And so on. It's a pyramid scheme that actually works.

At least it works when people aren't throttling their upload speeds, which is what you are seeking to do. In fact, if you examine your logic, you'll recognize that you are self-defeating in your quest to suppress your upload transmissions. If everyone does that, then your original complaint of slow download speeds will only be exacerbated.

'Light' DRM is only a temporary respite

[gidds]

While 'light' DRM is obviously far more useful than the heavier kind, it's still not a solution, and can't ever be.

AISI, there are essentially two kinds of DRM: one that allows you to do specific things, preventing everything else, and one that prevents you from doing specific things, allowing everything else. Now, the specific things are arguable in each case, but it's that 'everything else' which ends up causing the biggest problems.

'Everything else' includes all the changes in technology which will occur in future, the great new killer apps and uses that haven't been invented yet, along with progressive improvements to existing apps uses. But it also includes all the tricks and loopholes that we, er, sorry, naughty evil hackers can use to bypass the DRM. So you can't allow free access to 'everything else' for future-proofing without also allowing it for evil hackers.

The upshot of this is that DRM will only allow specific things and prevent everything else, and in doing so, ensures that even if it's not a huge nuisance now, it will be in the future. All DRM ends up being heavy eventually.