New Wave Of File-Sharing Embraces Secrecy 500
twin-cam writes "There's an article over at The Inquirer that software developers are designing secret file sharing networks that will make it harder for the music and file industry to prove cases of piracy.
According to Reuters, three file sharing networks are being planned which its users think will make it a lot harder for
music industry to track and charge people on their networks. The first is Optisoft which runs on Blubster and Piolet, music-only file-sharing networks. Only a matter of time before the RIAA requests a data dump from the ISPs or just sues everyone using their network."
Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's pretty easy to design a network that will at least frustrate attempts to recover identities of sharers. Now if only freenet would stop sucking.
Re:Good. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not. That's not what they are selling. Can I get just one section of that orange? And without the peel please. And instead of you, the seller telling me how much you want, I'll tell you how much you get...
Doesn't work that way in a Capatalist society.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that, sometimes, it does.
If enough people start clamouring for individual orange sections, there will be a vendor who appears to fill that need. Supply&Demand works two ways.
Now, excuse me while I got get the devil's advocate
Look. If people don't want to pay, they won't. If enough people want a different distribution means, it will appear. If people don't want to compensate artists, artists will stop making their product available for consumer consumption. It is blatantly obvious that there is a big enough group of people who don't want to pay, won't pay, and will use the means available to achieve what they want. There comes a certain point where people don't care anymore, the laws won't be able to keep up with them (can't sue everyone), and the market will be forced to change.
I'm not saying that's a good thing, mind you. Historical analogies: Prohibition in the United States, the illegal drug market, propogation of war
Now, someone please jump in and provide some positive examples.
Government control of industry and commerce is the first step towards fascism
--End of Devil's Advocate Transmission--
caveat: i'm not endorsing one view point or another, i'm not personally attacking you are anyone or anyone's intelligence or anyone's pet rock, free exchange of ideas is welcomed, flames will be ignored and taped onto my refrigerator.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Slippery slope arguments are not valid (as you probably already know).
Monopoly? Not. (Score:5, Interesting)
People toss the term "monopoly" around quite inaccurately, I think. I mean, of course record companies have a "virtual monopoly" on making records. But canned air makers have a "virtual monopoly" on canned air. Super glue makers have a "virtual monopoly" on super glue. So what?
Indie musicians release their music outside the traditional channels, and if you would like to make your own canned air, if you have the resources, no one is stopping you. But, if you want a piece of music (product) managed, owned, controlled by some major label, you have to give them what they want for it. It's their product; they manage it, own or manage the rights to it. They don't have to give it to you at all, if they don't want to.
If you buy a car off the lot, you don't tell the dealership what they are going to sell it to you for, they tell you. And, if you buy that car and start producing exact copies in your garage and distributing these copies, my guess is you will get a visit from a lawyer.
Re:Monopoly? Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
"People toss the term "monopoly" around quite inaccurately, I think."
Yes, people like you. I will correct your mistakes and misconceptions though.
"I mean, of course record companies have a "virtual monopoly" on making records. But canned air makers have a "virtual monopoly" on canned air. Super glue makers have a "virtual monopoly" on super glue. So what?"
Canned air makers do not have a monopoly since there is no barrier to entry, i.e. I myself can can air right now. Super glue is also not a monopoly since there are readily available alternatives.
In order for monopoly to exist you need: 1) Strong barriers to entry and no close alternatives.
The RIAA is a a monopoly in that they exert monopoly power like a cartel (e.g. OPEC). The blatent evidence is that the RIAA was recently fined for abusing their monopoly to gouge consumers and were fined under US anti-trust laws.
MAP (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Monopoly? Not. (Score:5, Informative)
Then there's also the consumer perception of the artists producing the music, let's face it, few of the major label acts are starving while many consumers are stretching their budgets and doing without some things they would surely enjoy.
A good example of giving it away exists for all in North America to enjoy, did you know that by installing a DVB-PCI card in your computer and then pointing an 18" satellite dish at Echostar7 you can listen to over 120 FREE audio feeds? In fact recently they added the 61 Sirius Satellite Radio music channels which are also unencrypted on the bird. You can also enjoy free audio feeds on several other satellites, these cost nothing beyond the initial purchase of equipment (less than $100).
So, consumers can listen to free music on the radio, they can receive free music via satellite and for some reason they are supposed to believe that downloading the song from the net is "theft"? I mean I could legally hit "record" on my DVB app here and get the very same song for free and at 192kbit as well!
Re:Monopoly? Not. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not arguing against copyright here - just pointing out that there is an anti-competitive form of monopoly that exists.
Perhaps one solution would be to free the music in a different sort of way - change the copyright laws so that copyright cannot be transfered from the original author - and then outlaw licensing schemes that are exclusionary - that would help the artists and protect the consumers and make the labels actually compete with each other day to day for customers.
If you ever get a chance listen to John Perry Barlow talk about bthe history of music copyright .... there was none for the longest time - wandering musicians played music, learned songs from each other and played them live. No one ever paid royalties ... it was only when the rise of the victorian middle class put pianos in people's houses that sheet music became under copyright, and after that recordings did the current way of looking at music as being owned come about .... untill just over 100 years ago music was free
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, I can't let this slide - its nowhere near the equivalent of asking for one segment of an orange. Its more like asking for the one or two segments that aren't rotten or sour to the taste. And yes, if I want it without peel, then that is what I will pay for.
Because in a capitalistic society, demand drives production, not the other way around. The only situation where this is not true is where a monopoly controls the market, a situation which is -rightly- illegal. How it perserveres in the States is a
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually, they *will* bend to the consumer's will. We're just having to drag them there kicking and screaming, because they're children, and always want to have it their way.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
No peel? [dole.com]
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, let me tell you how it does work in a Capitalist society:
You either offer us what we want at a fair price, or we tell you to take that garbage and cram it up your arse. At that point, you go out of business, and someone else comes along and offers us what we want at a fair price.
Welcome to Capitalism 101, I'll be your instructor - my name is Reality.
Re:Good. (Score:3)
But it does.
Each consumer has his or her own value of the products that he or she wishes to purchase. Take, for example, a chocolate cake. I want a choclolate cake. I think that a chocolate cake is worth $6 to me. I go to a bakery and the bakery is selling a chocolate cake for $8. Will I buy that cake? No, because the price the seller wants is higher than what I value that cake at. So, I go to another bakery until I find a chocolate cake that is being
Re:Good. (Score:2)
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called a CD single. Look into it.
sure you do (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that just sucks. They've had years to adjust to changing times, all they have done is legislate away our rights to use technology so they can maintain a pricing schedule that reflects standards from years ago, and to keep it that way, forever.
Music and art used to be live only,and expensive, it was restricted to kings and such like that could afford to hire musicians and artists, or to people freely sharing with others, the local hoe down. Then it got to be recorded,first on paper rolls, then wax cylinders then vinyl, then tape now digital on hard magnetic media or plastic that is embedded, etc, and it's cheap beyond belief.
That's reality. But, it was expensive way back when it was first able to be copied for later use and didn't require the artists to be there to hear it (or view it), and they charged accordingly, but it was BECAUSE it was still difficult to make copies. It was more or less fair then, because it was still hard to do, it was expensive to make those copies.
Now, this isn't so, yet they still want the higher fees of yester-year, and, frankly, people revolted eventually. They revolted because the rip off prices were-revolting. Quite revolting.
The music and movie industry is going through changes, and they will NOT suceed in keeping technology away from people, so my best advice to them is to come up with a new way of doing things or get left in the dust.
Perhaps they may need to come to grips that there are so many people making music and art, that our society can't support those millions *just* doing that for a living, and if that is so, we will also no longer support an artifical class of music and art copier middle men.
It could be that the expensive media middlemen copiers and sellers are the buggy whip retailers of the 21st centyury, and their business is close to becoming completely obsolete, and they just can't stand the thought of having to go get another job after decades of some extraordinary fat city profits. Seems like everyone else around here is in the same boat, what makes them so special that it can't affect them as well? Joe rustbelt assembly line worker is told he's too expensive and tough crap, he can be replaced at a dime on the dollar, and gets replaced. Joe keyboartd banger is now being told he can be replaced by another person someplace else for a dime on the dollar, and too bad to him too. So what makes these music and art copying mechanics all that special? the answeer is NOTHING, they can be replaced, and quite easily, and for not dimes but PENNIES on the dollar, so tough crap to them, too, they are in the same boat everyone else is in now.
It looks to me more and more that what artists that are hip and honestly understand what is happeneing and are smart enough to deal with it and the various consumers of said art will get closer together, and just keep bypassing the middlemen, to the point of making independent studios and marketing concerns and professional copying mechanics massively and redundantly *unnecessary*. for most practical purposes, they are NO LONGER NEEDED IN OUR ECONOMY.
Maybe I am wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. The tools avaialable to both the productive artists and to the end users of that art are fantastic now, stuff that only the most wealthy of businesses could assemble and use just ten years ago. Well, it follows then then those specialty niche industries that used to be necessary in the middle are on the way out, they have been a
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Until you try to play it on your computer or car CD player as it's not `fair use' to use an audio CD in a CD-ROM drive according to the RIAA.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad that was moderated as funny.
When you hear a song you want, go to the store or whatever source, and buy it.
- You may get a CD that fails to play in your computer.
- You may get a CD that fails to play in your CD player.
- You may get a CD with tracks that can only be accessed using Windows Media Player with DRM downloads.
- You will get a CD that scratches easily, and which you can't make backups of.
- You will get a CD at a price which was found to be illegally high by the EU.
- You will get a CD that was deemed "popular enough" by the record store. If you want a CD by an independant band, you will go to the store, ask them whether they have the CD, and they will say no. They could order it electronically and have it delivered in a few days, but then so could you.
MP3.com had the right way to buy music. Until there's another site like MP3.com, there's not really any suitable way to buy music. Sure, Amazon is good when you know which music you want, but how do you preview it?
Sure, band websites are good when they work, but Mp3.com (a) got people to use a simple website that worked, (b) used a standard uncrippled music format, (c) put everything in one place with links, and (d) showed artists how to make money by making tracks available for free download. If there's nobody to do that sort of thing, then band websites become flash-laden WMA-format crap that nobody can use, just because the people writing band websites don't know how the web works.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel your pain. Have you checked out the iTunes Music Store? It's pretty popular, and they have a much wider selection than the typical record store. Plus, you can preview music.
They do not allow you to download music in an MP3 format for convenient dumping into your Kazaa directory, but life is full of compromises. The attitude of many slashdotters is that the evil copyright holders are making it so that good, honest people are simply forced to pirate music, but it's not the case. If folks want to
Re:Good. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, iTunes is known for being even more expensive than albums on CD, so anybody coming from a "saving money" point of view might not be so impressed with it.
It also has a reputation for DRM, which emotion aside, is still a barrier for people who value the ability to play the music they have. Yes, it may have lenient restrictions compared to other formats, but still, it's very difficult for most of us to manipulate iTunes files on our computers. For example
Buy it? (Score:4, Insightful)
And buy it each time the media its stored on goes out of date, and buy it each time you want to listen to it since the future of DRM is that you will only rent the information, and buy it each time anyone other then you wants to listen to it (i.e. your friends over for a party).
Why stop at music too? Every time you want to read something you'll have to 'buy it', no more Havens of Copyright Infrindgement and Free Information (A.K.A. libraries).
You may like this information consumerism future, but I don't and will fight against it.
Re:Good. (Score:2)
Good, yet more tools to make it even harder for authors to make a living?
Imagine a post-RIAA world, do you still think it's perfectly cool to copy their stuff and give nothing in return?
fwiw, I've been putting some work into what I think can be a new approach to the file-sharing situation, I call it DRUMS [turnstyle.com].
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if it puts the RIAA "out of work" it'll put independents "out of work" too.
That's the problem here -- cheering on file-sharing just because "the RIAA sucks" is *also* going to wind up having a similar impact DIY independets.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
It would appear that all these "anonymous" peer-to-peer networks just make all users infringe rather than just those who choose to.
When I run a FreeNet node, items of data from other people are placed, in part, on my hard drive. If one of these items is part of a copyright-protected work, then the original distributor has committed copyright infringment. However, that is only the first copy. Any time someone else retrieves that item there is a chance that my PC will now supply some parts of the item, making another copy and thus infringing copyright.
Essentially any FreeNet user has a high probability of committing copyright infringment and cannot control this as he or she has no idea what data is all hashed up and encrypted in the data store. By this reasoning, it could be argued that it is in fact illegal to use FreeNet. I don't necessarily agree, but the fact that this possible argument exists could cause problems for anonymous peer-to-peer networks in the future.
This is sad, because anonymous networks have other uses beyond covert distribution of material protected by copyright, such as bypassing censorship.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's still contributory and vicarious infringement liability to worry about, but at least if you join a network with
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's not that easy. The only way to do it is to forward the data via some intermediate node(s). That's what Freenet does, and it's really hard to make that work right. It makes data transmission tend to be really slow, which is one of the reasons Freenet sucks. I have yet to see a large scale network which forwards data like this that doesn't suck.
Plus, i
Re:Good?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think RIAA is very close to losing the ability to use that argument and be taken seriously. P2P, notably bit torrent, is being used increasingly by producers who can't afford a fat pipe for the whole world to download their stuff and by consumers who are tired of waiting in line at fileplanet.
The lion's share of P2P traffic is still illegal stuff, but if it can be shown that there are legitimate business models built using P2P for file distribution, RIAA's argument is effectively muted.
Re:Good?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, as far as I recall, the only two cases that have gone to court in the States from the RIAA's lawsuits against P2P users were both no-shows where the defendants lost by default for failing to appear in court. The interesting part hasn't even started and that will be when people go to court and plead not guilty. Even if they lose, it's still just the beginning because the appeals courts are where the RIAA is going to be getting real nervous. The DMCA is known be problematic. That's why Congress is looking to cut it back before the courts do it for them.
Check Wikipedia for some great Bush quotes.
"There are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq."
George W. Bush
o 2004 April 30, welcoming Paul Martin to the Whitehouse
Re:Good?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yeah, because we all know that p2p is a technology that is either used by music and movie thieves, pedophiles and perverts, or the Osama bin Ladens of the world. Give me a break.
Re:Good?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure - let's set up the association that file sharing=kiddie porn=terrorism
You end up trivializing the others...
Re:Good?? (Score:2)
Data dump? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Data dump? (Score:2)
Re:Data dump? (Score:2, Informative)
What about p2p networks outside the US? The DMCA might be far reaching, but it still has limits. Most other jurisdictions don't have anything like the DMCA, yet...
Anonymous file sharing already exists... (Score:4, Informative)
FreeNet is a nice idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Anonymous file sharing already exists... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Anonymous file sharing already exists... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anonymous file sharing already exists... (Score:5, Informative)
The Freshmeat description says....
One key concept seems to be that all nodes are assigned a virtual address. Files are then sent from node A to node B. Packets from A to B are routed through the virtual network. But A and B's actual IP addresses are not known to any other nodes in the network, and thus not to any RIAA nodes.
Re:Anonymous file sharing already exists... (Score:4, Informative)
MUTE [sourceforge.net] OTOH is newer, and seems to be much better suited for the job.
Freenet (Score:4, Funny)
DMCA to the rescue! Yes, that's right.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Protect your network communications under provisions of the DMCA. Obviously if the DMCA knows what you're trading then THEY are violating the DMCA because the only way they would know is if they somehow got on and broke encryption.
Someone more technically more adept should be able to figure out how to pull this off but there HAS to be a way to establish a peer to peer network (which is still legal) and protect it via the DMCA.
Re:DMCA to the rescue! Yes, that's right.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But who needs that if you can download a free application to access the network?
And even better, if the project is OpenSource, they don't even have to hack the application. They just write some additions to the code and voila (fr).
I think you need to re-read the parent... (Score:2)
Whether it's practical to keep RIAA agents out of the network is another question.
Sean
I'm not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll notice that these DMCA cases are never seen through to the end. The little guy runs out of money, has to give up, and the big corps get their way.
Re:DMCA to the rescue! Yes, that's right.... (Score:5, Informative)
DMCA Title 17, Chapter 12, Section 1201 (a) (1) (A) states " No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." If your network communictions is not protected under the copyright law, then it is not protected under the DMCA.
If you want to make statments of the DMCA, then you should at the very least read the appropriate Section [cornell.edu] before providing a layman's opinion, and back up your claim. While you're at it, you might as well read the entire section and get a complete understanding of the law in question.
If you want to really know how the DMCA works, then either consult a lawyer or enroll in law school yourself.
Peer-to-peer networks are legal - however, illegal activities performed on them are not. Even if the DMCA does protect all forms of encryption, it only takes a few sessions of a government comittee to change this.
Re:DMCA to the rescue! Yes, that's right.... (Score:2, Insightful)
From the article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:From the article (Score:2, Funny)
Perhaps they used the...
...calculation?
Re:From the article (Score:2)
WASTE (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:WASTE (Score:5, Insightful)
I've often wondered why this isn't more extensive. I think it's just a matter of convience. With MP3s, you could have your whole collection on a small hard drive, but people don't tend to share musical tastes, so there would be maybe 5 people in each musical group, sharing with each other, assuming a good 40 people or so. So the trading isn't exactly massive.
As for movies, you can't really fit your whole collection on a single hard drive, and I'm sure nobody wants to carry around a rack stacked with jewel cases. So, people may meet, share 50GBs of movies on their removable HDs, but that's usually files they both downloaded off of P2P anyhow, and there just isn't enough floating around on removable hard drives to cover all the movies people want to get.
802.11 networks might just change that. You could have a neighborhood of 1,000 computers, all with wireless cards, all sharing massive numbers of audio/video files at speeds an order of magnitude faster than the fastest consumer broadband connections. And all of this is happening with a local scope, so the RIAA would have to have to go war-driving over every mile of the entire country to find these hotspots. It would make prosecution unprofitable, to say the least.
Re:WASTE (Score:3, Interesting)
First, it's not even anonymous. You know the IP of the person you're getting data from.
Second, it's safe IF AND ONLY IF *you* personally know everyone on your node and are 100% sure they won't tell the authorities. As soon as your friends invite friends who invite friends, you never know who they work for and who they are. A potential law enforcement agent, RIAA employee, or flat out rat could screw you up just as bad as the RIAA doing scans of public IPs on pop
A Bad Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
this is a bad thing because they're playing up to the role of "the evil pirate" though since their aim to protect copyright infringers I doubt they could care less about hurting supporters of legitimate p2p.
Re:A Bad Thing (Score:2, Interesting)
These guys just f**k up the internet for the rest of us.
What will happen is that the entertainment industry will leverage its weight to justify the broadcast flag and banning of "unauthorised" encryption for this reason, effectively painting any "encryption user" as being suspicious and illegitimate, and exerting greater control and oversight over legitimate users - leading to all sorts of privacy and data protection issues.
Isn't it about time that we all stopped stealing content from poor business models
The first rule of file sharing (Score:4, Funny)
The second rule of file sharing is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FILE SHARING.
More new music is freely downloadable than cd-only (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how long the original mp3.com was around, but it was probably less than 5 years, and it probably put up mp3's at a faster rate near the end than near the beginning. But even at a uniform rate over the whole 5 years, it sounds like one web site was distributing more songs per year all by itself, than the entire CD industry released put together (1.7 million songs / 5 years = 340,000 songs/year). Add to that the number of musicians who distribute their stuff through their own sites, and it's clear there's a heck of a lot more music being released as gratis downloads than as proprietary CD's.
Some people blame diminishing CD sales on unauthorized CD copying; others blame it on technological obsolescence (people buy DVD's instead of CD's now); still others say it's because poor artistic decisions by record labels result in releasing uninteresting music that people don't want to buy. I haven't yet seen a connection made with authorized, freely downloadable music, that people can listen to instead of buying proprietary CD's, just like they can run GNU/Linux instead of buying Windows, Apache instead of IIS, etc. Sure, a lot of mp3.com downloads are crap, but lots of commercial CD's are crap too.
Anyway, it seems to me that most of the music even on these "secret" all-music p2p networks is likely to be freely downloadable.
(Note: this post mostly rehashes an earlier comment of mine from that other thread, but the statistic is interesting enough that I felt it was worth posting again).
Re:More new music is freely downloadable than cd-o (Score:2)
Well, you can't forget that many artists in the "CD industry" release a handful of songs on sites like mp3.com anyhow, so there's plenty of overlap.
Additionally, the number of songs is an arbitrary, weak comparison. If you want, I can whip-up a shell-script that will create more songs in a week than there are songs on CD-releases in a year. It will just sound like random noise
your maths is flawed (Score:3, Insightful)
CD's released in the US - erm.. US
So the RIAA will just go ahead and sue everyone. (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't matter who's actually right in a legal case. It only matters who has the lawyers. And the RIAA has the lawyers.
After the music industry has made hundreds of millions of dollars from suing every single American, the MPAA will follow suit (no pun intended) with their own campaign of legal terrorism, and then the patent trolls will roll out with patent infringement suits against absolutely everyone.
Welcome to the Age of Lawyers.
Lawyers are the new American nobility. You are either a lawyer or a lawyer's subject. In the 21st Century, all Americans who are not lawyers will be forking over whatever money they have to pay for lawyers to defend themselves against other lawyers.
Lawyers will be living in mansions surrounded by the rest of us, who will toil endlessly, day and night, to earn our masters' legal protection.
Hooray!
Re:So the RIAA will just go ahead and sue everyone (Score:2)
Remember, lawyers work for clients; it's their professional responsibility to represent them fully and by every legal means possible. If the client (here, the RIAA) wants to stop filesharing and they want to take a course of litigation, the lawyers must serve or quit (and even that's difficult
Re:So the RIAA will just go ahead and sue everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
They effectively already did this - in Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't blame lawyers per say, but I do think that if political parties take coporate cash (Liberals in this case) you can expect that they are going to return the favor to their benefactors.
Re:So the RIAA will just go ahead and sue everyone (Score:2, Interesting)
W.A.S.T.E. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:W.A.S.T.E. (Score:3, Informative)
In my experience, this isn't true. The WASTE client [dnetc.org] (for Linux, at least) is still at an early stage of development. In fact, there only seem to be operational WASTE clients available for Microsoft's Windows right now.
Social Networks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Social Networks (Score:2)
If that gets changed to a user defined value, with restrictions on the order of nodes, not only will the network become more congested by orders of magnitude, but you will either have a) everyone set their hop limit low so that files will be impossible to fin
Re:Social Networks (Score:3, Insightful)
Or even more likely, what's to stop the RIAA from paying somebody a few bucks to hand-over their username/password to the network? Or maybe one person gets busted, and the cops can get the info off his computers. One weak-link and the whole network is wide open. You can revoke access, but not until you know something is wrong, which may be too late.
Mute-Net (Score:2)
Mute is an encrypted filesharing system that has actually worked for me and although a little slow, it IS anonymous.
Hell, the new p2p app ... (Score:5, Interesting)
openswan and an IP address somewhere is all thats needed to 'bury a filesharing service'. It doesn't even have to be p2p
Its interesting that its come to this. Whats next - routers which won't route unless they know the protocols being encapsulated in the tund'd packets they're peer-transferring for? Sheesh, as if that will ever happen
(If anyone knows of some good VPN's, please share! heh heh...)
Re:Hell, the new p2p app ... (Score:2, Interesting)
An Easy Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
I proposed this solution about 4 years ago to one of the gnome-vfs guys at a Helixcode party in San Francisco "back in the day".
Basically you have a section of your local storage that is specifically set aside for this purpose, say a 5gb slice of your partition. This storage area is strongly encrypted with hashes that only you know (Blowfish, AES, whatever), via your own passphrase or private key.
When you send a file "to the network", that file is split into blocks, and encrypted with your public key, and those blocks are dispersed to everyone else on the network, in that encrypted fashion, and the "map" to reassemble them is dispersed likewise.
Every node with block #1, has a map which tells them how to get block #2, but not block #3. System with block #2 (which knows that block as block #1 to itself), knows how to get block #3, and so on. Sort of like the "Triad" mob system in Japan.
Your system requests a file, which is dispersed as a series of encrypted blocks, across hundreds, thousands, millions of other systems, and those blocks are reassembled, using those systems to find "The Next Block", and send it to you. You could also arrange it so that each "node" could know about the next 5 or 10 or 20 blocks, etc.
It is sort of a mesh between PKI + BitTorrent (which didn't exist when I came up with the idea), and the methodologies of common peer-to-peer networks.
You could further strenghthen the network by only accepting blocks from nodes you "trust" (via your own public keyring). Facilities to "swap blocks" across systems on a regular (or irregular) schedule, to keep the network "self-healing" would also be a good idea.. or keeping duplicate blocks in different parts of the "storage slice" for redundancy, etc. Storage is cheap.
In the end, this means that nobody can be accused of having "the full file", nor can anyone figure out what is in those encrypted blocks. Even if they had 1 block, there is no way to get all of them, or to accuse someone of distributing the material, since it would be moved around at irregular intervals.
What do you think?
Re:An Easy Solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, what worries me is that the RIAA/MPAA could try to cite that all private encryption are being used to infringe on their copyright, therefore making non-corporate encryption = evil. Then again, I'm paranoid about shit like that, so take this with some salt on the slippery slope.
Re:An Easy Solution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An Easy Solution (Score:2)
Re:An Easy Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Seems to me like it would perform horribly.
Re:An Easy Solution (Score:3, Informative)
Also, to those naysayers: try to keep up with the latest Freenet/ENTROPY builds.
Re:An Easy Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
So, did he answer "been there, done that" or "that's dumb"? Or did he just nod politely and suddenly act like he was being hailed from across the room? Only about a thousand people have had variants of the same idea; the two closest would be Farsite [microsoft.com] or SFS [fs.net], but there are many others. One thing that's unique to your proposal, though, is the idea of sending every block to every node - creating a system that cannot possibly scale beyond a trivial number of nodes.
There's nothing wrong with blue-sky thinking, but when the sky is already crowded with planes and helicopters and blimps you should take some time to study them before repeating the mistakes their designers made ten years ago. It's also good to get the basics working or at least decently thought out before you start speculating about what extra buzzword-compliant ideas you can throw into versions two through ten. We already have Freenet to show us what can happen when people don't heed either of those lessons.
Suggestion for anonymous sharing... (Score:5, Interesting)
All you have to do is allow the source of a file transfer it to the client without the client knowing the source's IP address. To do this, you simply have the server sending files with UDP and a spoofed source IP address. Since few networks have any egress filtering, this should not pose a problem.
Now, the client has to be able to tell the server to send packets faster/slower, and which packets didn't get through. Well, first you must have a huge window size (TCP term, but applicable) so that the server will send a massive ammount of packets before the client has to send back any responses...
When the client does eventually have to send a few packets to the server, it does so by broadcasting them to all-nodes (just as searches are handled). So, everybody gets them, and everybody but the server involved can just ignore them.
I left out some details, like all servers generating a random 32bit Unique ID every hour or so, and sending it instead of their IP address with search results.
Now, that's only the anti-RIAA anonymity. It'll make things 99% more anonymous, but any foe with the ability to monitor the network will be able to see what is happening. To combat that, you could just have search queries include the client's public key. The results can include the server's public key (encrypted with the client's public key) in addition to the search results... That would keep you completely anonymous, even from resourceful snoopers that can eavesdrop on your own network.
The best thing about this is the speed compared to other anonymous networks. No longer would it take an hour to download a small MP3, because you don't need any intermediary nodes (except for small-message-passing), direct from source to destination, at full-speed.
A few issues... (Score:5, Informative)
The second thing this network doesn't provide is any incentive whatsoever to share files or bandwidth. Networks that rely solely on the honor system doesn't get much (one of many reasons Freenet is slow).
Third, it's trivial to disrobe which server is sending you what. Instead of sending "to all nodes like searches", a hostile client would try them in order. Servers could tell eachother, but the server might be hostile too.
Fourth, the entire network sounds like a DDoS waiting to happen. I flood the network with UDP packets telling them to all hit one server. That server has no way to tell them he doesn't want those packets, since he doesn't know the network.
Hell, since you installed it voluntarily (as opposed to getting a DDoS trojan) they might even sue the network nodes for DDoS'ing them. Nothing like a little legal liability too. Not to mention the good press you'd get.
Kjella
Re:A few issues... (Score:3, Interesting)
Forget Freenet. Both Kazaa and Gnutella work on this priciple, and they are going strong. Bittorrent just isn't a system that can be applied to real file-sharing networks.
Who? (Score:2)
Piolet vs Blubster (Score:5, Informative)
If they didnt know then... (Score:2)
Come again? (Score:2)
And if I don't download MP3s, dont have any on my boxes, just WTF am I being sued for?
What law have I allegedly broken?
And will any law enforcement agencies even be involved in such a privately organized dragnet?
And when the RIAA does come after me, only because I happen to be a customer of the same ISP that someone else is downloading stuff, and finds out that I am clean (i.e. have no
Wrong direction for p2p (Score:3, Interesting)
By this I mean, if your looking for a old Micky Mouse (copyright symbol) cartoon, you go into the Disney (copyright symbol) 'channel', search through their offereings and download what you want... except since you are 100% positive what your downloading is what it says it is... you are willing to pay a small fee (how about $1 dollar a download, size independent... or some sort of subscription service... I pay Disney Inc. directly to be able to download their verified and authenticated content).
This would elminate 'piracy' on the 'overground' network because why would you need to go 'underground' if you allready have access to all the content you wanted through a minimal monthly (or per download) basis (instead of cable telvision... we pay the content creators directly for their shows). This will greatly help artists... because they will be able to market and sell directly to the 'listener' (or viewer)... and bypass the recording industries web of middlemen.
Now ofcourse the underground will still exists, but there will be no point going there... unless your looking for illegal (not pirated) content like child porn (and other nasty stuff). The bandwith costs of being a content producer are augmented through some sort of bittorrent like swarm download... where you are downloading parts of your content from other people who have also downloaded it. This will open up a whole new way to access media, eg. what if instead of going to the shitty theater (and paying a shitty price for shitty sugar water and burnt corn) you can wait until the release day... download a HD stream of that movie directly to your home theater. And since you have 24/7 access to all the content you want (and the downloads are fast because everyone has broadband or better (idlealy fiber)) there is no point of 'hordeing' all the content on your 400gig drive.
Computers slim back down in terms of hardware, and start to act more like what they should act like (for a typical consumer) vcrs. You turn on your fluxbox (I would like to call the system the 'flux') and on your screen is a list of stuff to watch, read, or listen to... and all you pay is a minimal monthly fee... (less than $50, and or pay per download)
Thanks Slashdot! (Score:5, Informative)
DO NOT INSTALL PIOLET OR BLUBSTER.
--
A P2P moderation system? (Score:5, Interesting)
So anyone looking into stopping sharing of illegal material can't launch lawsuits anymore because they don't know the identities of the users. Fine, but they (or anyone malicious enough) can still flood the network with garbage and create so much noise that it will drive people away.
So how about a P2P moderation system similar to the
Just a though, slightly off-topic.
Secrecy, Closed source,Encryption and File sharing (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead, now is a very good time to move away from labels and move to indi music or simply those that support downloads. Kill RIAA's power by simply not buying from them anymore.
Spyware (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, it can't be about download speed. I've used Bittorrent before. It's slow. Unless the file you're trying to get is very popular, your download is going to be stalled for a long time, after which you'll be pulling a whopping 3KB/sec for hours on end. Maybe you'll top out at an underwhelming 40KB/sec. Color me unimpressed. Why anyone would want to download a Linux ISO using Bittorrent or Freenet (now THAT'S what I call agony) is beyond me. Just a few weeks ago I downloaded two FreeBSD ISOs at a consistent speed of approximately 500KB/sec from one of FreeBSD's FTP sites. No muss, no fuss, no "more sources needed" messages. Remind me again why I should have preferred using a P2P app to grab those ISOs? Remind me again why anyone would want to grab a Linux ISO from a P2P app when there are plenty of fast FTP sites where the ISO can be downloaded? This is why I roll my eyes when I hear people on Slashdot talking about how P2P apps have revolutionized their Linux ISO (for example) downloads. No one would put up with greatly reduced download speeds and file availability when nine times out of ten the file can be found on much faster non-P2P sources. On the other hand, when someone is trying to obtain files that cannot be freely distributed, they're willing to put up with awful download speeds and, of course, desire having unbelievable encryption on everything they do on the network.
What P2P advocates need to do -- and I've said this many times -- is create a self-policed P2P network where the sharing of files that users DO NOT have the right to redistribute is strictly prohibited. Users report violations they've found, and the offending user is banned from the network, perhaps reported to the authorities if the people in charge of the network -- NOT the RIAA -- determine a legitimate case of copyright infringement has occurred. Before any user creates an account on the network, make them aware of this fact. It's simple, and while nothing can be done to stop the network being used for copyright infringement entirely, I'm sure such measures would greatly reduce the amount of piracy that would occur. This would finally create the P2P utopia I've been hearing so much about on Slashdot.
Hmm both are closed source? (Score:4, Interesting)
Neither facts instill confidence in them, that there isn't anything evil hidden away ( anyone remember earthstation 5? ), or its actually anonymous and hard to break its encryption.
Not ranting about 'everything needs to be open', but with stuff like this, it is important to know what you are dealing with. Before the man comes knocking on the door ( or you start broadcasting spam like crazy )
Canadians beware! This stuff's coming north (Score:3, Informative)
Now it looks like things are going to change, and soon we will have the same situation as there is in the United States. The recording industry lobby, spearheaded by Canadian Recording Industry Association, CRIA [www.cria.ca] is pushing our legislators to overhaul Canadian copyright law. The model for the changes is WIPO [wikipedia.org], which is implemented in the United States as DMCA.
Dammit, doesn't this look familiar? Are you scared yet?? The corporate lobby is rewriting laws that our courts have already decided are fair. Please speak up! Sign our petition for user's rights [digital-copyright.ca], if you're Canadian. Sign it, mail it to us, and we'll take them all to Parliament. We need to show parliament that we have demands as users of media, and that we will exercise our votes.
What about? (Score:3, Informative)
my website has a waste network for those who want to give it a try.
Re:is this making it easier for peadophiles? (Score:2, Insightful)
BUT, you take the bad with the good, and fully anonymous P2P is a good thing for folks who need it. People in countries where freedom is a dirty word, for example.
I doubt the music/general folks will let these freaks on their own networks, but if pedos start using this kind of thing the Police (or whoever monitors this shit) will step in and shut the affected network
Bring it on! (Score:2)