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Safemedia's CEO Tells Congress He Can Stop P2P
palewook writes "Yesterday, Safwat Fahmy appeared in front of the House Science and Technology Committee. During Fahmy's testimony [PDF], he claimed Safemedia's "P2P Disaggregator" technology uses traffic-shaping systems and network-filtering systems that can destroy contaminated P2P networks. And their Clouseau product will make it impossible to send or receive any illegal P2P transmission on any installed network. However, Clouseau allows tunneling and SSH and never opens packets to determine file legality."
Awesome! When he's finished with that, he can stop the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and stabilize Iraq. Then maybe next summer he can finally get that space elevator built using all the energy from the fusion power plant his company has just finished perfecting.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Isn't lying to Congress illegal?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"Kato! Ze network is rrrrringing!" *thwack*
Clouseau was a terrible detective: any success he had was purely by chance. I can't help but wonder if this is a joke, just based on the name.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
How long after they conquer the internet with their traffic shaping devices until the company starts ransoming P2P media companies? What do you think will happen once they 'shape' a WoW patch and the entire world goes into catalytic convulsions pre-disposing a worldwide geek uprising?
the traffic shaping just looks for the 'Evil Bit' set in the TCP header
Everyone will DL the patch from file planet instead?
You mad
Looks like a good way to squeeze some decent money out of DHS.
I'd ask him if he can filter out TOR.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I think the likely hood of this is about the same as the spam companies shutting down spam for good, or the virus companies ending viruses, or doctors ending illness.
Basically, no chance in hell. The ingenuity of one little company pitted against every single person who wants them to fail? Look at AACS? Weren't they going to end movie piracy? How's that workin' for them?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
articulo dice: "..(it) will detect and prohibit illegal P2P traffic while allowing the passage of legal P2P such as BitTorrent."
So wait, it blocks P2P sharing, but not BitTorrent, or it only allows legal torrents? If I'm reading this correctly, it assumes all bitTorrent is legal, so therefore allows it to pass. Isn't BitTorrent that majority of file-sharing anymore? I can't see this tool being extremely useful.
What a crock. Even my mother knows that things can be distributed at different bitrates, different encoding and different formats. This has about as much of a chance of "solving" the vastly overstated p2p problem as I do of winning the lottery.
And how pray tell do you suppose fileplanet will handle the onslaught of millions of simultaneous ravenous geek downloads? It will be like the slashdot effect amplified 10 fold.
Peer to peer traffic isn't illegal, is it? File sharing isn't either.
File sharing of copyrighted works is. But how does he know which P2P traffic to stop without examining the content? What stops us from just encrypting everything anyway? Or it's just going to stop all P2P traffic without caring about its legality? Wouldn't that actually be illegal?
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
But as the URL is www.zeropaid.com/news/8825/Anti-piracy+company+ testifies+before+Congress+that+it+can+eliminate+P2 P+at+Universities I think the summary might have left out some important information.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Lying is. Making misleading statements (like say, "Iraq has WMDs and purchased Yellow Cake uranium to make nuclear weapons!") clealy isn't, as recent real-life examples have proven.
Snark aside, the same situation is happening here. He can destroy some p2p networks, at least temporarily. He's not perjuring himself.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I don;'t even download TV shows (timeshifting, a legal use, albeit an untested/alternative form of timeshifting). I definitely don't download any music whatsoever - Instead of try-before-I-buy, i simply do not tempt myself any more, so I don't download music, I avoid listening to top-40 stations, and I don't and won't buy new music, aside from a select few acts I go out of my way to follow.
However, I use P2P networks for downloading things such as Linux distributions, particularly opensuse and kubuntu. If P2P networks are broken up like this, they are interrupting totally legal activities and any ISP which engages in such traffic shaping should immediately lose their privileges/protections they enjoy as common carriers. By discriminating traffic they are no longer merely carriers deserving of protection against liability (for activities such as carrying terrorist communications, kiddie porn, and other illegal communications) because they are going out of their way to stop some illegal activities by blocking traffic, so they should immediately become responsible for blocking ALL illegal traffic. When a terrorist or pedophile or ebophile successfully sends illegal communications, the ISP should be held at the same level of responsibility as the purpetrators themselves.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
with the help of the United States CONGRESS.
Yours sincerely,
W.
Worrying about wars, Katrina or public infrastructure doesn't do nearly as much for the campaign war chest as worrying about business profits. I've said it once and I'll say it again (and again, and again...): if you want to know why things are the way they are in this country, follow the money.
Except that businesses don't like the civil courts. Civil courts cost them money. They are merely necessary evils. Criminal courts, OTOH, from the corporate perspective, are free. So why make laws like the DMCA, which, among other things, criminalizes some forms of copyright violation, within limits? Yup. Follow the money.
My blog
And their Clouseau product will make it impossible to send or receive any illegal P2P transmission on any installed network. However, Clouseau allows tunneling and SSH and never opens packets to determine file legality.
The true innovation here is clear. Their product has the psychic ability to determine what is legal and illegal without actually inspecting the traffic. With a little tweaking of this psychic software they can finally create computers that do what we mean and not what we say.
If you go to the website of the people making the claim they can erase internet piracy you'll notice a few fun things.
y -Little-Secret.asp
:=)
http://www.safemediacorp.com/Internet-Piracy/Dirt
Basically it seems they are mostly targeting the mostly obsolete networks like Kaazaa, iMesh, Limewire and eMule. The fact that internet piracy has since moved on to the mostly legal bittorrent network seems to be lost on them.
They also spout strange things like that the 2 billion songs sold on iTunes are being traded over P2P. I thought the point of iTunes was that it was heavily DRM'd?
Read and enjoy
I heard that during his testimony Fahmy's left eye kept blinking uncontrollably and that at one point, while raving about Clouseau, he absentmindedly amputated his pinky while toying with his Leatherman.
No kidding. I also find the irony of naming a tool for stopping copyright infringement after a fictional character from a movie/cartoon series which I'm surprised isn't trademarked in some way somewhat delicious.
I guess it's a better name than Dreyfus though?
Typo in parent:
Isn't lying to Congress illegal?
It's a French word, easy to misspell. The correct spelling is, "de rigueur."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The title is a little bit misleading; they're not talking about eliminating P2P altogether.
The technology this fellow talks about in his testimony is pretty clearly intended to primarily protect users from doing things like sharing their entire hard drives (he names one example of a woman who shared a directory containing credit card information) and thereby becoming unwitting contributors to copyright infringement and identity theft. He comes right out to say that it doesn't target BitTorrent (even though everybody knows BitTorrent is used primarily for "piracy") at all, nor does it block tunnelling or encrypted traffic.
Anybody who was trying to crack down on piracy in general would make a box that would effectively unplug the internet connection by blocking everything suspicious in the least. This is about curtailing inadvertent contributions to piracy and identity theft, to help better target the willing contributors (as he says, BitTorrent peers require identification and consent before participating in a network).
Programs like Kazaa (I haven't used any of those for a while, so please forgive the lack of examples) often take users through a wizard to find things they want to share on the P2P network, or have a default of sharing all media files found, or worse, sharing the entire hard drive or user directory. Uninitiated users won't realise this, and might just want to download one or two songs -- they end up sharing their music collections with the world.
This is about making it easier for the {RI,MP}AA and their government helpers to target the "problem users," and helping their image by cutting down on litigation against six-year-old kids, stay-at-home moms, and dead people.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
technology which is designed to destroy contaminated P2P networks by draining the illegal content of those networks
How is it going to detect 'contamination' by copyright material? AFAIK there's no watermarking yet. Maybe something like a signature database (ala anti-malware scanners?). Yup, I'd love to see the footprint of that little file.....
Users simply plug it in the subnet as a bridge and it goes to work without altering their network topology."
Without changing the logical topology perhaps. The physical topology is altered by introducing a whopping great single-point-of-failure and potential bottleneck.
will detect and prohibit illegal P2P traffic while allowing the passage of legal P2P such as BitTorrent.
...
"That is why our P2PD implemented in Clouseau never opens any transmission packets. Rather, we monitor the ever-changing and adapting myriad of illegal P2P protocols/networks and continually update our systems to block only these illegal transmissions."
So... BitTorrent P2P good, other P2P bad?
It must be using the Evil bit (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3514)
That's not their product.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
If you buy this, I'd have this lovely bridge for sale, great view on the skyline of San Francisco included...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Deleted
that all contaminated mp3s,movies etc have their evil bit set ???
Catching the consumers is easier. Catching a producer takes a lot more effort because you're usually dealing with people that are adept at avoiding being caught. However, you can catch a few consumers, splash it on the front page, and people think you're actually solving the problem. See also: drugs, child pornography.
Here's a link to RFC 3514, for those wondering about this.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Considering the implications, I'd say yes, far better.
Then again, considering the way the mafiaa works...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ed Felten wondered the same: see is Safemedia a parody?
Seriously... read his freaking testimony... Some highlights from it. Our nation is in trouble. Regarding Clouseau's features o Network Invisibility - Clouseau operates in a stealth mode when performing P2P filtering. This feature allows the appliance to be completely invisible to attacks that may be launched on the device. (uhhhh Sony Rootkit part 2?) How does Clouseau work? I will do my best to explain in layman's terms the following technologies utilized by Clouseau: Adaptive Finger Printing and DNA Markers - SafeMedia's filtering system utilizes proprietary finger printing techniques to identify specific P2P clients/protocols. By using these DNA markers, Clouseau is able to uniquely identify whether a packet is part of a P2P transaction or regular internet traffic. By studying the details in-depth, SafeMedia is able to avoid false-positives. Adaptive Network Patterns - Not all protocols can be easily identified with single packets. As such, Clouseau® is able to monitor packet flows and adapt its filtering based on what it has already seen and now sees. This extensible system utilizes a technique called experience libraries. Experience Libraries - P2P clients and protocols will change every day. The process of adapting to this change and constantly being updated with the latest knowledge of such clients/protocols is the responsibility of the experience library. SafeMedia's network operations trains these libraries with new patterns and DNA markers and push these new libraries to Clouseau" units out in the field. Update - No P2P filtering appliance will function without constant updates. All of the methods described above are constantly evolving and SafeMedia utilizes the Akamai network to push new updates through the internet Using a highly scalable network such as Akamai allows SafeMedia to offload the deployment of updates to a well-established content-distribution network.
Not in any particular order, lots of blah cut out:
Virtually everyone who uses file sharing programs appear to use them exclusively to download infringing files.
The only solution to making this free, copyrighted material unavailable to these masses is to eliminate peer-to-peer file sharing programs altogether.
There is not and will almost never be a legitimate business or governmental justification for use of file sharing programs.
Mission Statement
SafeMedia's Coalition Against Internet Piracy (CAIP) is committed to increasing the understanding of the negative impact of Internet Piracy and advocating for the successful implementation of "Clouseau(TM)" by working with Congress and the administration; Departments of Justice, Commerce, and Education; and Copyright Holders and their Associations, Unions, and Organizations to drive greater government-wide efforts to address the serious issue of Internet piracy and the violation of the copyright laws and to recognize that there is now a solution (Clouseau(TM)) to the serious unresolved issue of Internet Piracy.
Mmm... RIAA shill? Just block everything that it can't recognize? Basically a way to push their personal firewall application to have it installed by law? They can't sell enough of their product by themselves?
Coalition Goals
As Congress and copyright holders are in a stand-still watching the erosion of copyright laws, SafeMedia product solutions must emerge as the technological solutions to a political, legal, and social problem created by technology advancement.
Somehow, those persons sound a lot like Hitler. The erosion of copyright law is not in the consumers advantage. With the current status of DRM, DMCA etc, the spirit of the copyright law does indeed get eroded and congress doesn't do anything about it. We as customers are duped by stupid businesses that don't want to change the way they work.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"Clouseau was a terrible detective"
I thought the same thing. It's like using the Rocky theme "Gonna Fly Now" during a sporting event. Rocky lost that one, folks. Playing that song in support of your team is the musical equivalent of loser talk.
I Can Stop Democracy
If you can't have democracy without a free press, the above is correct. Destroying the internet won't stop "piracy", kiddie porn, or any of the other horsemen of the infopocolypse, it will only protect the corrupt from the truth. "traffic-shaping systems and network-filtering systems that can destroy contaminated P2P networks" are all the rage in China, and they could care less about music and movie sales. The free flow of information on the internet is starting to take it's toll on government and corporate propaganda. That free flow is the target of this and other attacks on the internet, because it makes corruption harder.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In Congress, P2P could mean Pay to Play and is an integral part of many gov't subcontracts.
Have gnu, will travel.
The folks over at Freedom to Tinker seem to think Safemedia is an elaborate hoax.
On the other hand, its CEO is testifying in front of Congress...
I think you will find a genetic connection between P2P users and Swedes, to some extent, since a lot of people ... err, chefs? ;) .. up here, happily ignore peer to peer filesharing prohibitions, and they also aren't afraid of having FBI agents knocking on their doors if they do it, because:
A) there are no FBI agents knocking on people's doors here
B) if there had been, they would be sliced in a claim of self-defense by the almighty chef's kitchen knives
C) knocked down on the floor by blue-eyed women's big natural boobs
Remember, resistance is futile! Borg, the tennis player, will defeat the agents!
Swedes aren't crazy.. wuhahahaha! Vi är inte galna, vi är smarta människor med högt intellekt!
Okay, sorry. Couldn't resist. Mod me down all you want *hides in the corner of shame*
"People are stupid. Persons are smart" -- Agent K, MiB.
I was under the impression that people who testify in front of Congress are authorities in their field.
...
So one may think that this Safwat Fahmy is an authority in the field.
Absolutely not. This person has not published a single document in any single respectable publication venue (including academic ones).
A simple google search reveals that he has not been involved in any important project and his only previous experience in Information Technology was founding an utterly failed company called WiZnet. That company produced nothing but a site which is nothing more than an electric-electronics product.
Hey Congress, what about inviting people like V. Cerf, D. Clark, and tens of others successful academics and businessmen to clarify to you how the Internet and its tubes works? Even Bram Cohen would be a much more appropriate person for the task.
And we expect this bunch of amateur, gullible, uninformed, corrupted bunch of representatives to solve the much more complicated Middle Eastern problems? sigh
Good thing, the US was not governed by such an incompetent bunch in the second half of the 20th century, or we would all be dead or forced to be Nazis of Stalinist Communists by now.