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.
it is certainly true that the network operators will resist efforts from the music/entertainment industry. in fact the DMCA has already made law that the network operators are to be held harmless for transmitting copryright material posted by their users — unless they receive a request from a copyright holder asking them to obtain compliance from one (or more) of their customers
this thread wasn’t really meant to pursue the copyright enforcement aspect of this issue but rather to explore the implications to the use of encryption software,— particularly PGP{GPG}
but, since we have touched on the question I would add a couple notes,—
first, the music industry could hire some geeks to pose as kids and hang out in the chat rooms looking for messages related to places to get copies of music or video. and it would be easy to follow up on the leads obtained that way. the problem with a public sharing system being simply that it is very easy for moles to infiltrate such systems
another avenue would be to assemble a battery of hunting computers. a very powerful SUN/SPARC station can be set up for something like $5,000 and with a budget of $50mm quite a few such computers could be put to work, — each searching for LimeWire or other sharing systems — and each would be capable of checking the content of a number of P2P clients concurrently — rendering the slow speed of such clients un-important
these hunters could operate 24x7. if web crawlers can index the content of the internet these hunters can surely search for copyright music files.
it’s not really clear how the P2P client would use PGP to disguise content intended to be shared publicly and the hunter computers would obtain necessary access codes in the same way that other P2P participants worked
it is certainly the case that individual transmissions could be encrypted and sent and if these were negotiated in the various chat rooms this activity would be caught by the hired geeks in addition to essentially negating the use of the p2p concept
if I were a betting man I’d wager copyright pirates are on rather thin ice
i certainly agree that it isn’t practicle to require a digital signature on all packets, — but I think we are going to see changes in eMail real soon ( see HR 964 and 1525 )
as this concept spreads we may soon see a requirement for all web sites to have certificates with the web site operator responsible for content. all content with executable code need to have signatures as well as it is necessary to put a stop to all un-authorized programming.
fun chat