Using YouTube For File Storage

First time accepted submitter ememisya writes "Ever thought it might be a good idea to store encrypted data in a QRCode video? Using this technique one could easily store 10GB of data to be available anywhere in the world, and completely free."

Comments

Ever thought it might be a good idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever thought it might be a good idea to store encrypted data in a QRCode video?

Not even a little bit. Now that you mention it though, it does sound like possibly one of the dumber ideas I've heard in quite some time.

Re:Ever thought it might be a good idea?

[ememisya]

Ever thought it might be a good idea to store encrypted data in a QRCode video?

Not even a little bit. Now that you mention it though, it does sound like possibly one of the dumber ideas I've heard in quite some time.

So considering a scenario like a student posting Iron Man 3, camera rip and the encryption key as another video onto YouTube, and the links in another forum. Who would be responsible for this copyright infringement? YouTube for having encrypted video data? It could be argued that YouTube is only carrying gibberish video data. The forum? The forum is only containing links to YouTube which is perfectly free to do. Could it be the software for putting the key and the data together? I wouldn't think so, because then any encryption library is responsible for its resulting data. It could be argued that it wouldn't be illegal until the user started writing the actual video onto his/her harddrive, at which point there will be no internet connection to detect anything unusual. Now, I'm a person who believes copying something and taking that copy is different than taking that thing itself, but I know how copyright laws are touchy about these scenarios :) My guess is they would put the pressure on YouTube to detect videos with too many QRCodes in their frames and remove them and it will soon be in their Terms of Service. If enough people abused this method anyways, writing a browser plugin to detect YouTube and offer file uploading options will fire this away to the spiral of doom, sort of like FireSheep and facebook https.

Re:Ever thought it might be a good idea?

[nabsltd]

I said that the student is responsible for the infringement. I never said it would be proven in court.

Even if it could be proven in court, that would set the precendent that any file of exactly the right number of bytes could be called "infringing".

This is because for any given set of bytes the same length as copyrighted content, there is some transform that will convert the bytes into the copyrighted content. Even if you really did start with the copyrighted content, until you perform the transform, there is no infringement.

As an example, if I encrypted the image of a commercial Blu-Ray disk with a random key that I do not know and then posted it to someplace that anybody could download it, I have not infringed, since all I did was post some bytes. If somebody guesses the key and posts it, then they are also not guilty of infringement. The only people who might be guilty of infringement would be those who use the key and decrypt the bytes into the copyrighted work.

Re:Ever thought it might be a good idea?

[Tom]

You still think on the wrong track. Really.

People thought they could do the same thing with basically any crime in the books - make some changes to the way it is done so that it isn't recognizable anymore and get away.

Surprise, the law doesn't care about the way you do it. If you kill someone, that's murder (or any of a related, bla) and it doesn't matter if you used a gun or a knife or an orbital laser array that you programmed through a Tor network and accessed over an encrypted botnet controller interface with a hundred other layers of indirection. It'll make proving that it was you who pushed the button more difficult, but if that can be done than it's still murder, plain and simple.

Same thing with copyright infringement. You take a copyrighted work, apply any number of whatever operations on it, make a copy and distribute it and you're in violation of copyright, plain and simple. The number and kind of operations in the intermediate step don't matter one iota. And as long as you don't get that into your head, you'll be laughed at when they slam you. Do you think the judge will be the smallest bit impressed by anything you said above? He'll have one question and one question only and that is: Did you copy a copyrighted work without authorisation, yes or no?

And no, that is not something that is unique of this new digital world. That's techie bla bla. You can say the same of paint or letters. No, the book sellers don't have a copyright on the letters A through Z, but they do have a copyright on a specific number of them in a specific order, otherwise known as a novel, or a poem, or a drama or whatever.

No, the movie industrie does not have a copyright on 0 and 1, yes it does hold the copyright to specific collections of 0s and 1s in specific orders. Or more specifically: To the content of what these numbers represent.

Copyright is not a mathematical concept. You can't "defeat" it with mathematics. For all the law cares, math is a tool to apply transformations on content, but that doesn't change the fact that the content is copyrighted, end of story.

Re:Ever thought it might be a good idea?

[nabsltd]

If you make your copy available online, you are guilty. Encryption doesn't matter. It's just a reversible transformation. That the downloader can't use it without the key doesn't matter.

So, if take output of /dev/urandom that's the same number of bytes as Blu-Ray movie image, XOR it with Blu-Ray movie image, upload it and announce to the world that it is an encrypted version of Blu-Ray movie image, then I'm guilty of infringement? It's just a "reversible transformation"..all you have to do is guess the 40-billion byte key.

You are thinking like a geek, not like a lawyer or judge.

This is one of the many problems with lawyers and judges...they are making and enforcing rules about things that they don't comprehend. Regardless of the length of the key, distributing an encrypted version of a copyrighted work isn't copyright infringement.

Lolzers.

[RightSaidFred99]

I'm sure Youtube will _never_ notice this and your foolproof plan will be good for all time.

You might be OK with some steganography, but otherwise they will thwart you if more than a few people do this.

Re:Lolzers.

[Cenan]

The fact that you can have the "super smart encrypted content" taken down with a moments notice by serving a bogus DMCA never entered the submitters mind.

right...

[Ian 0x57]

sure..until they compress it for you or change formats or ..... and screw it up.

Re:Wow... worse than old usenet binaries.

[i_ate_god]

what ever happened to the hacker mentality these days?

they would do it, BECAUSE THEY CAN. A reason so valid that it I shouldn't have to be here telling you about it.

Re:Great! Now Al-Qaeda has YouTube technology. :-(

[Cenan]

First of all, what the fuck is up with using the subject for half the reply? Seriously, cut it out. You people look like retards.

Hiding stuff in plain sight has never been very hard, you don't need youtube for that. Anything connected to the 'net is pretty much hidden in plain sight, no need to involve a millions-of-users-per-month website, when a simple IP distributed would do the trick just as fine.
Encryption is no secret, no matter what the feds tell you, the ban en exports of encryption algorithms has not made the rest of the world go sans encryption. The example in the article is about the dumbest security idea since, shit i don't know... ever?

This is like

[meerling]

Using Youtube to store your files is like using your neighbors car for storing you beer without asking. Odds are that one of these days it won't be there when you really want it.

Re:Wow... worse than old usenet binaries.

[Psyborgue]

Because it's not a particularly clever or interesting "because we can".