Software To Stop Song Trading 595
Shippy writes "Palisade Systems is about to launch new software that can identify and block copyrighted songs as they are being traded online. However, the article fails to mention that it will also stop legal song downloads. The software blocks anything that's copyrighted, whether you already own the song in another format or not. Here's some snippets from the article: 'If installed in a university, for example, it could look inside students' emails, instant messages and peer-to-peer transfers...', and 'Jacobson said the identification process would not work on an encrypted network, such as is used in several newer file-swapping programs. However, the Palisade software could also act to block those applications from using the network altogether.' Great."
And, thusly... (Score:5, Insightful)
wouldn't it be simpler (Score:3, Insightful)
what about my copyright? (Score:5, Insightful)
MY Rights?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, on slashdot GPL violators are on step below Charles Manson, while copyright infringers of music, movies, and software are somewhere below jaywalkers.
Umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Will it look inside... (Score:3, Insightful)
so archive it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is needed.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stopping secure transmissions (Score:3, Insightful)
As for looking into email, sheesh! Public key encryption will avoid that, and any attempt to block those types of communications would be rather stupid and overreaching.
IRC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:5, Insightful)
interviewing for a tech-related position with
the head of dorm network-type stuff, I was told
that well over 90% of the internet traffic (barring worms and the like) can be attributed
to file-sharing. With the tightness of funds
that today's universities are dealing with,
maybe that bandwidth money could be better spent.
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And, thusly... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm probably talking out of my butt here, but what if, instead of the entire "stream" being encrypted, just the "content" was, with a one-time, mutually agreed upon key? How would their software know the difference? It would never have the same "fingerprint" twice. Would it just block any traffic that looked like random noise?
I can see this software pissing a lot of sysadmins off - could you ever be absolutely sure those "ghosts" you've been chasing weren't this software being over zealous?
The parent is right though. This will just prompt those who wish to trade on P2P to take it to the next level. Especially now that the "Big Five" labels are trying to force Apple to charge $2.50 per song! If that happens I will stop buying songs from iTMS and say "screw the bastards, release the hounds", P2P here I come!
Re:MY Rights?? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company puts GPL'd code in their (closed) product, they save the money they otherwise would have had to spend to pay programmers to write equivalent code. If you copy music, you save the money you otherwise would have had to spend to buy it at a store. These are more similar than you seem to be willing to acknowledge.
Legal P2P? (Score:3, Insightful)
All it would take is some authorizing legislation, and every time a P2P song passes through the toll booth, a few pennies (quanity specified in the law) get transfered to the song owner. Those pennies can either be asorbed by the ISP as part of their service, or they can pass it along to the customer as part of their bill.
There you go. If it can block it, it can log it too...
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Except of course, that if they did that, there's a danger that they'll become liable for the content of the information that's passing through. This arose before when it went to the courts as to whether ISPs are liable when their accountholders harbor kiddie porn on the ISP's computers.
If AOL/AIM had the ability to scan for possible terrorist actions, porn, or the next Columbine, and DIDN'T intercede, then potentially they would be open to enormous damages. If you were a 9/11 victim and you found out that AIM was the facilitator for planning an attack (and I absolutely am not implying that!), you can bet that AOL would become a lawsuit target after everybody realized you won't get a multi-million dollar settlement from selling the terrorist's apartment junk.
This issue of possible liability will probably prevent Palisade from getting anywhere. I'm sure that AIM reserves the right to scan your IM, but probably zealously makes sure that it's not doing that. Now, when they get a subpoena from the Justice Nazis, that's a totally different question.
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:5, Insightful)
Pointless so long as the RIAA refuses to sell anything except DRM crippled crap.
Even if the college did jack up their fees and force such a subscription on me, I'd still take free non-crippled files (P2P) in prefference to "free" (pre-paid) crippled files.
If they offered ordinary MP3's they'd attract more customers. The RIAA's refusal to sell a non-crippled product is purely self destructive. It's not like they've ever kept a single song from reaching P2P by refusing to sell MP3's. Using DRM only accomplishes one thing - driving away customers.
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cash in on the trends . . (Score:1, Insightful)
They know for sure no protection is fail proof. They just think of something that looks clever to the unknowing, and convince them that their software can really do what it claims to do.
Then it gets cracked in matter of hours, but the maker of the software has already made it's profit.
We see this all the time. We just hear about the really lame protections that can be broken by holding the shift key or using a common black felt tip marker.
Still, the problem is not with inventing new protections, the problem is inventing new protections that don't work but prevent legitimate users to fully enjoy what they paid for.
They are grinding the fair use to a point where buying a cd (or movie or else) will only be legal if you play it using a DRM enabled device with you locked inside a black box connected to the copyright holder's server with a secret password key they will have given you after they made you swear an oath in front of a federal judge.
Freedom? Yeah, you're free to get fucked.
Re:What is needed.. (Score:3, Insightful)
And it won't look the least bit suspicious when the host is connected to several other hosts, transferring encrypted data at full-speed 24 hours a day.
Re:MY Rights?? (Score:1, Insightful)
As long as no-one can clarify the platform from which we speak, meaningful dialog will be impossible.
FYI...
Re:So what happens when encryption becomes illegal (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What is needed.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Suspicious maybe, but surely this thing can't be designed to block anything that is remotely suspicious.. Maybe I'm wrong, but damn that would suck.
I guess uploading with it would be particularly suspicious and problematic though, given that the uploader would appear to be running a public webserver, which college campuses don't seem to like either.
Re:And, thusly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like this could be useful as something a college could threaten installing unless P2P violators knock it off... but would be trading off quite a bit of legit functionality to ensure zero violations.
Re:WiFi. The 3rd Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod the parrent down as a troll... nothing to see here.
I love it. Pure, honest intellectual fascism. Basically, you say "Your suggestion is impractical, so you should be modded down, and nobody should even see your idea."
I don't have any problems with your objections to his idea, but why insist that he should be modded troll for saying something that you disagree with?
What about fair use and off-site backups? (Score:3, Insightful)
So this software would make backing up your data illegal? I have all my CDs ripped, and I ftp them to another drive at another location frequently. This would stop any student from sending any of his MP3's to a computer at home for back up. That sounds fair.
This is a turn for the worse (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:5, Insightful)
Every college's Terms of Service says that their computer systems are for "academic use only" or some similar phrase, in part because they have to in order to get grant funding to pay for their bandwidth. You might not remember signing that TOS, but trust me, every student at a college has signed something when they accepted admission that basically binds you to everything the school ever puts out as a "rule" whether you bother to read it or not.
So, forget the dream that they have to give you totally unrestricted bandwidth as part of the price of your dorm room. They never promised that to you, so if it goes away, tough.
Colleges have mostly played dumb that P2P has been going on, trying to claim that they're just a common carrier that can't really coprehend what's fair and what's foul over their network. Once they start trying to block copyrighted content, they'll start becoming liable for whatever slips through their checkpoint.
So... that's why any blocks we're going to see going up are going to be whole-protocol blocks or bandwidth throttles. They won't be blocking in the name of copyright protection, they'll be blocking in the name of bandwidth protection...
how about... pu the tech to some good use. (Score:3, Insightful)
anyway, that's not my point, I think it would be good idea if people can change the software slightly so that it block different thing, *cough*spam*cough*, it might be more constructive than blocking `any` kind of copyrighted material. Well of course, it would be nice there is no censoring of information, but we are too far away from that.
if you like this, thank you. If you don't, sorry I took your time to read this.
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just going to become a cycle... (Score:4, Insightful)
Music is shared. The industry finds way to block it, but in doing so pisses people off. New P2P app. Random corporate ups ante, finds new way to find out identity of P2P user. New P2P program that blocks ID. People post about it on slashdot. People make funny comments, and get modded up. Piracy increases, RIAA makes new blocking program. Cowboy Oneal finally decides that he's sick of it all and declares a ban on P2P relating articles.
Anyways, down to real business: The more people try to stop people from downloading files, the more it becomes damaging to themselves. Not only are they blowing money on quick fix solutions that do nothing but piss people off and force them to resort to other methods, but in the end their problem is that people are going to download their crap no matter what. If they stop them from downloading, they sure as hell won't buy it, so they might as well let them be.
Now, I'm not saying that's the right solution, or there is a solution, but I think trying to stop it and potentially messing people up all over the board is just a haphazard and dangerous way of doing things. Go back to the drawing board... And as much as I hate to admit it, but I feel by the time they solve P2P, Mac will be in control of the market, we'll be insectoid alien slaves, and Elvis will have returned, and will have posted a story on the truth about aliens here.
Didn't they raise a stink about.... (Score:3, Insightful)
FUD off
At least not going to college anymore, I don't (for now) have to worry about this. What I can see is this software is automaticly presuming you are guilty of music swapping, and searching your e-mail without due process (BTW, IANAL)
If the courts want to use an e-mail as evidence, do they not have to get a warrant? Why should this be any different?
harumph.
Jason A.
Privacy Issues (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MY Rights?? (Score:3, Insightful)
When did trading copyrighted music online become one of my "rights"?
I think the fair question is, when did you lose the right to trade copyrighted music online? Especially under circumstances that are already allowed by Fair Use?
Re:'finger print' (Score:3, Insightful)
Supossidly it uses a technique called, Mel-Filtered Cepstral Coefficients to look for patterns in the audio output of the file. that is they dont check-sum the file, they play the file, and use there fingerprint technology on the way the file sounds when it is played.
This still has many problems. As other posters already pointed out, encrypting, archiveing, or simply renaming the extension of the content, would make it difficult to find. Unless of course, they plane on playing all the data on people PC's via every known music codec in existance.
Im assuming they actually look at peoples PC's as the problem of reasembling the packets would require identifyingm, emulating, and extending every p2p protocall known to man.
Of course, they probably figure they can find most stuff by focasing on kazaa and mp3's.
As another poster said. this might work. for about 10 whole seconds.
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And, thusly... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:easily beaten (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume a more complex system involving actual analysis of the sound would be necessary in order to detect illegal audio files.
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:3, Insightful)
We've moved beyond the "you can only use the computer network in your residence hall for academic purposes." Internet access is an expected utility for today's students, not a generous gift from the university or a special privilege. It's no different than electricity or telephone access. We don't place ridiculous limits on those services (imagine if we only let students talk to the their professor or advisor over the phone!) and we shouldn't (and many don't) place them on Internet access. Besides, how in the hell do you define "academic use?"
You're absolutely right that most universities block P2P and similar due simply for economic reasons. Many universities tried to increase bandwidth to keep up with student demand but it's proven impossible. And none of us want to play copyright cops. It's not our damn job to protect someone else's copyright.
the death of a thousand cuts (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything, I think more people need to get more upset over it, because a too-casual outlook towards this whole... creeping big brotherism and being a serf in your own nation afraid to enjoy life won't be stopped by ignoring it.
I don'thave a dog in the file sharing fight, don't do mp3's or movies, but I can smell a conjob when I see one, and the record and movie ghouls been pulling a rip of massive proportions for decades now. There's laws on the books and then there's laws that beg to be broken. Prohibition was one that went on way too long until it was a national embarassment. They started another stupid buncha laws, and not enough people spoke up and fought to stop it,so now we have the war on some drugs, that got us 1/2 way to a full-bore police state.
Sometimes ya just got to say no to stupid stuff. I walked with people who got refused service in restaurants because of their skin color,and it was "legal" for that to happen to them at the time. I took the gas when we tried to stop a stupid war that wasn't legal and was a scam based on a whopper lie, yet they called it "legal" and killed millions of people over it, both "our guys" and some other people, and they didn't care. And on and on, stupid things big AND little, but they all add up, and they all apply to everyone sooner or later. Even when you think this latest stupidity don't apply to you, eventually it will, because their job is to think of stupid things to make life more complicated and to make it harder to avoid "offending" them so they can "crack down" on you for..whatever. Just think of all the things they are gonna "crack down" on. Believe me, they won't run out of nouns to target. Eventually they'll get to something really important to you, "general you' I mean.
Now we got all sorts of stuff like that going on, PLUS we got this cyber world to deal with, and some things are just as stupid as the others. I say it's righteous to say NO to obviously stupid things. And the deal is, with government and their corporate pimps, it's the death of a thousand cuts with those people,they just keep coming and they ain't got no pity, you got to say "NO! quit cutting me" everytime they try it,no matter how small the cut is, and be quick with the bandaids and iodine.
If you keep taking the little cuts, because "oh well, it's just one little cut", pretty soon it adds up to be the equivalent of a meat cleaver in it's effects. It's like, what's the line, how far do you eat it when they are trying to make you eat it constantly?
In short, it's not tin foil hat if it's real,and if you can step back and look at the bigger picture and not get hung up on minutiae, and realise that they WILL cut you as often as they can think of a new way to do it.
Scare Tactics (Score:2, Insightful)
It's kind of like shopping at a place like Walmart. They have those stupid little detector things at the doors that go off and are supposedly to catch shoplifters. The fact that they are there is the deterrent. I have yet to see one person caught shoplifting, but have seen countless people doing some shopping, pay for the item(s), and walk out the door. Everyone stops and looks.
The music industry is doing much the same thing. They don't really think they are going to catch anyone doing serious damage, they just count on the deterrent factor, and they count on publicity. We need to stop making such a big fucking deal of everything the RIAA, et. al. does. It only empowers them.
Re:wouldn't it be simpler (Score:3, Insightful)
Return of binhex. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What is needed.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes you can. You can't win, but you can drive them bankcrupt trying to defend themselves.
It isn't about justice, it's about extortion.
Re:Steganography (Score:1, Insightful)
Fingerprint will then be useless.
Re:Steganography (Score:5, Insightful)
Except pot smokers aren't being sued by large corporations for failing to bogart and the DEA isn't blowing the heads off of neighbors of file traders by mistake.
and people thought GMail was bad for "Privacy" (Score:2, Insightful)
Damn, someone comes up with a piece of software that will snoop into your e-mails, im's and p2p, violating your privacy in an even bigger way than GMail and not a single person even mentions the fact that this program could be hijacked to snoop for things such as credit card numbers, passwords, etc. Atleast with GMail you have a choice whether or not you use the service. The people this software would effect don't exactly get the choose whether or not they participate in it's use.
Re:Illegal search and seasure? (Score:2, Insightful)
Quite aside from the insulting and inexcusable assumption that is at the root of such a program ('guilty until proven innocent'), what reassurances do people have that this capability will not be abused? For instance, it's quite easy to destroy someone's reputation by planting child pornography on their hard drive, then 'anonymously' tipping the FBI...
Re:What is needed.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Heheheheheheheh....do do
Re:How will this work any better than spam filters (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds familiar... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's kinda like the "war on terror" Really it's a never ending escalation, because as soon as one side shuts down one mode of operations, the opposition evolves and comes up with something new. This will only be a hiccup in P2P - formats will evolve to produce inconsistent signatures on the exact same music, or encryption will save the day. If you really want to end piracy, it's a matter of creating a climate where users don't want to pirate - they'd prefer to buy, because they feel like they're getting something for their money. It might also have something to do with treating the customer like a customer and not like a criminal. Perhaps acknowledging that they have rights would be a first step, MPAA / RIAA.
Re:'finger print' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Copyright-status repository? (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot doesn't mirror anything, it just links to the article at source. The reason for that is copyright - slashdot doesn't have permission to mirror the article. Stuff published on the net is still copyrighted unless specifically mark as being public domain.
Linking to an article in no way copies it, and so cannot be prevented by copyright law. There is no inconsistency here - if slashdot copied the article verbatim and hosted it on their own site, then they'd be infringing copyright.
True, people do sometimes copy articles into comments here, in case the server is slashdotted. For what it's worth, they are in fact commiting copyright infringement, and are opening themselves (and potentially slashdot) up to legal proceedings. I don't suppose it would ever come to that, but the copyright holder would be within their rights to sue.
(Disclaimer: IANAL, etc)
Re:MY Rights?? (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends on what you mean by "trade". If you're talking about allowing anonymous strangers to make complete copies of songs from your computer that are copyrighted and not authorized for this kind of distribution by the copyright holder, then you never had that right. There is no such right. The rights belong to the copyright holder, except for fair use. Allowing unlimited copies to be made for free and given to anonymous individuals is not fair use.
Maybe the song is copyrighted, but the copyright holder has authorized free online copying of the song. Maybe you know the person you're giving the copy to, and you know 100% for sure that they have a legal license to that song, such as from owning a CD. Those are mitigating circumstances.
Just because it's easy to commit a crime doesn't make it not a crime anymore. Little old ladies don't fight back as much big beefy ex-cons when you try to mug them, but that doesn't make it less illegal, or less wrong. It just makes it easier.
Re:What is needed.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why bother with encryption? Just set up some phony malformed files (and keep your mp3s rared whatever) and share all your bandwidths worth.
The system is supposed to work on audio-finger printing. I can imagine how easy a system like this could be DOSed. Now imagine all P2P users worldwide doing this (P2P-app prepares this stuff). It'd be the biggest DDOS of all time.
This censorship mayhem is so ambitious it's bound to fail.
Re:Encrypt everything (Score:0, Insightful)
And you can see where it's going, too (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you've got the problem absolutely right. This is a direct consequence of two things: big media business abusing its monopoly, and a certain type of Joe Public breaking the law. In both cases, these are not good things, but they are done because the perps think they can get away with it.
As has often been said (but rarely heard) in these parts, the correct solution to this situation is to fix the problem, not to try to circumvent it by ever more devious means. The music industry should be compelled by the legal system to stop its price fixing practices, under the threat of having its business made seriously unprofitable by the courts. That will lead to reasonable competition in the market, and fairer prices and better distribution methods will naturally follow.
At the same time, I have no sympathy for the song-swappers who have been taking the piss for years because the tech was ahead of the law. You brought this upon yourselves. Copyright law is there for a reason. If you don't like the law, the solution is to seek to have it changed. If as many people agree with you as you think, that shouldn't be difficult, now should it? Of course, in this case, the widely-flouted law actually is reasonable, it's the failure of the authorities to enforce the flip-side of the law and smack the media outfits down that is causing the problem.
By carrying on with the current approach, all the oh-so-clever, we'll-just-use-encryption song swappers in this thread are simply inviting the inevitable: legislation to ban encryption in electronic transmissions, together with draconian enforcement rules and mandatory monitoring. This is a fight you cannot win. Wake up and start fighting the fight you can, or the world will be a worse place for your selfish actions.
Re:What is needed.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MY Rights?? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is not similiar. If I downloaded copyrighted music, and then incorporated that music into my own music for resale, then I would be committing an equivalent violation. Using downloaded music as an 'enterainment tool' is comparable to a company downloading GPL software for internal company use.
It's just a bad analogy, either way.
===---===
Dead already (Score:0, Insightful)
When will these fools ever learn? This is already dead technology before it hits the streets. They kill file sharing apps such as kazaa people will just move on to something else. They still haven't even address the old techonologies yet. You can still download shit from usenet all day long.