i think you underestimate the opposition
first, it won’t be necessary to check all of every file on every p2p machine. all they have to do is snoop enough to determine whether further checking is warranted
like they find 1 hit on 1 of some selected hot titles. based on the 1 hit they can then launch a more thorough analysis
second, pattern matching software has already been built that can identify tampered copies of copyright works
and this has nothing to do with whether the anti-piracy techniques worked. none did, we know that
what is at issue is: how much piracy is going on and what will be the collateral damage to our freedom of speech as a result of the reaction?
i could care less if pirates swipe all the music in china
but if they make us all register ADK keys with our ISP that will be a very serious concern because those ADKs would mean encryption software would not provide us with privacy
botnets are used to launch phishing attacks and they could launch a scan of p2p systems in the same way although likely using a lot of machines legally enlisted
or just use a battery of the new SUN/SPARC machines
Once the files are downloaded a couple days later, and digital fingerprint checking is done, it’s identified that one of the mp3 files was one ripped by a known pirate in Milwaukee seven years ago, and thus a ‘known’ pirated copy of copyprotected works. Now what? This is what the RIAA faced, and their answer was shotgun lawsuits of John Does, and the courts went along with it for a while, then the judicial system turned a closer eye to what the RIAA was doing, their chain of evidence, their methods, and it brought up whole new legal questions.
Meanwhile, while the RIAA was examining one flavor of P2P networking, fourteen new versions popped up, all of which the RIAA didn’t have the time nor energy to follow up on. Time from file discovery to lawsuit filing? 279 days.
Total cost to the music industry and artists for RIAA’s witch hunt? 43 million dollars. Net total of collected ‘fines’ from ‘music pirates’: $279,000.
So now the thought is, AH HA! We’ll cut his off at the network interface between the user and the Internet, we’ll have providers be responsible for scanning and collecting information. The only problem with that theory is that it fails under the common carrier definition of a network provider. They’d have to strip that designation from network providers, and the network providers want nothing of it. They’re willing to let sniffers scan for open text keywords for national security concerns, but extending that to protect copyrighted works won’t fly with them, and no matter how well financed the MPAA or the RIAA are, they’ll never defeat the lobbyists and lawyers for the information networks.
So, no, your thoughts of the public networks becoming huge big brother eyepieces, sifting through everything, using alternative decryption keys, will not happen. Once an encryption scheme is thought to be vulnerable, three more are developed by independent developers which takes at most days to spread and use.
There was a proposal floated to require digitally signing every packet on the net, but was discarded as being unfeasible as just too many devices on the net today would be disabled by this requirement. Just remember; there are literally close to 80,000 law enforcement agents who are out there trying to stomp out child predators and the exploitive videos and images they share, have near universal cooperation in this effort from network operators, and yet, still, it goes on.