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BSA Reacts to 'New' BitTorrent
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the Business Software Alliance isn't afraid of the new, tracker-less BitTorrent beta. While it concedes it will have to 'regroup', Tarun Sawney, BSA Asia anti-piracy director, said BitTorrent files could still be identified. 'BSA has traditionally sought the assistance of those hosting the actual pirated files. With or without the tracker sites, someone still hosts the infringing files.'"
What bittorrent is about is being able to send very small but verifiably authentic parts of the file - but is that enough for them to prove the person has the infringing content?
My guess is that this is going to be made into law in the US in the near future - that if they get a single BitTorrent packet from you that belongs to an infringing file, it's enough to convict you of a crime and haul your behind in jail.
-- Arik
particular IP with that IP for disassembly at the other end. Whammo, proof of DMCA violation on the part of anyone who comes after your ass.
DMCA violation trumps copyright violation any day.
But what if you and your 500,000 friends stand in line and each hold a letter and each will show it to people for $12/500,000 per letter. Are you infringing on the copyright?
What if you and your 10,000 friends each stand a in line and each of you are holding a paper citing a line from the book. Are each of you just using your citation rights?
Suppose you downloaded a bunch of Blocks.
... ...
Each block is, say, 128 KB.
Each block contains bits that are indistinguishable from random noise.
Each block has a number, which is its hash. Block numbers are much longer than in the example below.
Each block may have come from a different IP address, indeed, even through a different network protocol (Gnutella, OpenNap, Mute, Http, etc.)
You obtain a list of reassembly instructions through another network and reassemble the blocks as follows. (Each block you downloaded is labeled with a B, and the content blocks of the reassembled result are labeled with a C.)
C1 = B224 xor B166
C2 = B287 xor B948
C3 = B569 xor B982
C4 =
C5 =
etc....
Blocks C1, C2, C3, etc. taken together form a copyright infringement.
Which IP address sent you the infringing work? Each block may have come from a different address? Each block is not infringing content.
Which block is infringing? The first block of the infringing reassembled file C1, was formed from B224 and B166. So was B224 infringing? Or was B166 infringing?
B224, when combined with a different block in the network results in a portion of The Declaration of Independence. B166 when combined with yet some other block from the network results in a portion of The Bible.
Maybe the infringer is who gave you the list of reassembly instructions that told you which blocks to obtain and how to reassemble them? But this information is not directly a copyright infringement. In fact, it may be a fairly short text file.
Note that I did use double the download bandwidth to obtain my copyright infringing material. But for that cost, I raised a whole bunch of questions about who to blame. And I did not suffer the horrible performance of Freenet. (I have not tried Mute.)
(This is an idea I read somewhere.)
Such a hypothetical Blocks p2p system could potentially be designed with the swarming advantages of BitTorrent. Each block could be available from multiple sources -- even multiple network protocols.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
We may disagree where the boundary between stealing and sharing is, but I think when it comes to major media, that cost many hundreds of people many years to create, you can share it on a small scale with a couple of people, but, for example, posting a torrent of Return of the Sith the day it hits movie theaters, stealing is, as Yoda would say.
If you don't like the price of a movie, don't pay it, but also.. don't steal it. There's people who make that stuff for their living. They spend lots of time and energy on it in the expectation that many people will be interested in buying a copy for personal use. It doesn't matter if you think that's a valid profession, or morally correct. it's their business. Their life. And if they wouldn't sell you the copy if they knew you were going to turn around and give it away for free to everyone you could, on a massive basis, on the world-wide internet, that means that if you do, you're lying and stealing and violating their trust.
Sharing can't happen without trust.
Now, if you give it to a friend, and that friend gives it to a friend, etc. etc. and it remains low-level, then it doesn't matter what they think. It's none of their business what you do with it as long as it's basically private to you and your friends and family.
Now maybe you disagree with the particular place I've drawn that line. You may see the line at a slightly different place in the sand. Or think it's blurry. Or gray, or not so gray. That's a whole other argument.
But I think we would all benefit us all to identify a community-determined middle area where we tread softly, and broad side areas where we firmly plant our feet. I think we should all preserve and protect the practice of small-scale sharing of everything in the world, even in the face of pressure against this by The Man. I also think we should all preserve and protect the expectation of honesty in a market transaction, even in the face of painful desire for the latest and greatest popular piece of culture.
you forget one thing, live shows, artists make most of their money on live shows
Evidence for this ? I used to think this till I spoke to people I know working on tours. The cost of touring is massive and the artists tend not to make huge sums of money so do still need recording revenue. Also how do you propose that you come up with the large deposits needed to secure the venue bookings and down-payments for the sound and lighting crews etc if they don't get paid for recordings.
I dont think the economics of the music industry are as simple or black and white as regularly made out here.
I am interested in other peoples views on this.