Can P2P Filter Copyrighted Content? 373
scubacuda writes "DRMwatch reports that technologists acting on behalf of porn publisher Titan Media reported to Congress that P2P networks could (if they wanted to) use "fingerprinting" (aka "hashing") to detect copyrighted works and then filter them with the "spyware" installed on all nodes in the network."
Doomed to fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Did common sense go on holidays?
Load a fingerprinted file.
Change one bit.
It has a new fingerprint.
The eDonkey/eMule network already identify files by an MD4 hash to ensure you get what you ask for. For instance: if a file has many sources then that means they have the same hash, you can be quite sure that it isn't a bogus loop of a pr0n flick when you really wanted that latest DVD rip.
If this goes through you'll see a new kazaa-compatible P2P client appear that pops a few random bytes into the ID3 tag of an MP3, the comment section of a JPG or in the headers of a video file. Each one will then have a new hash. Oops.
Oh, the new KazaaDRM(tm) ignores comments & tags and only looks at the actual data? OK, the new client toggles a bit that won't cause any visual or audio degradation of the file. Oops.
That all said if 100 people rip an MP3 or DivX file they won't generate the same byte-identical file. This is doomed to fail at the expense of your computer's CPU cycles as it generates these useless hashes.
Fuzzy Fingerprinting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the vast amounts involved... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice try- better than most, actually... But it still doesn't resolve the real problem which is that most of what the labels are selling is crap and grotesquely overpriced at that. People swapping all of that music is more a response to that than anything else.
too easy to defeat (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they could try.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, watermarking? Well, so far all watermarks that have been tried have been broken, and it would be much easier to figure out how the watermark worked if you had a binary file sitting on your computer that checked it. Just disassemble to find out how it's checked (and once one person does, this everyone will be able to). Plus, you could always just zip+password any file anyway, to prevent watermark checking.
Of course, that doesn't mean they wouldn't try to include this stuff, but why would anyone ever download something so restrictive in the first place?
It'll never work (Score:5, Insightful)
Checking (Score:2, Insightful)
Easily Defeated (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also predicated on the idea that the hashes exist. Taking the first example of encoding at different bit rates and using different formats. Who's responsible for providing a reasonably exhaustive and authoritative list of the hashes? If Sharman et al. implement these schemes do they get bullet-proof immunity from criminal and civil liabilities?
Also, who says users will continue to use these "spyware" enabled P2P products once it becomes widely known that blocking has been enabled?
There are just too many excpetions to this idea to be really workable.
Two "Duh" Fallacies (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two fallacies with the proposal:
Spyware on the nodes? Even if you could somehow ensure that all compatible clients comply with the spying requirements, how long will those clients be left unmolested? Any P2P "server" is really just a client of many other "servers."
This depends on a mathematical hash performed on a given rendering of a copyrighted sample. Resample and the hash is broken. Hell, even a second-rate email spammer knows how to avoid hash detection: just tweak an unused ID3 field.
This... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is to say, not effective at all.
User hostile software... (Score:5, Insightful)
Peer to peer networks that control what people communicate are possible. As are ones that control who talks to whoom, that people really allow the uploads they purport to, etc etc. As is any software that acts against, rather than for, the person that is running it. We just need to get Palladium in place first. What are you waiting for Microsoft!!!
Re:Doomed to fail. (Score:3, Insightful)
Load a fingerprinted file.
Change one bit.
It has a new fingerprint."
Actually, no. Changing one bit should affect a uniqueness hash, but not necessarily so a fingerprint.
As a simple example, think of the little logo that you sometimes see down in the corner of a video as a fingerprint -- changing one bit of that doesn't remove the fingerprint.
Again, you'll change the hash but not necessarily the fingerprint...
Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Considering the vast amounts involved... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If it was truly peer-to-peer... (Score:5, Insightful)
I do that very same thing here. The internet connection comes in, goes through a firewall and then to snort both of which squeeze off peer to peer connections. This is to reduce bandwidth consumption and to make the boys over in legal happy.
The software might be independent but the pipes it travels across are not. Lessig's book goes into this in great detail.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kazaa is just the current filesharing stepping stone. If you look back you'll see a great deal more stones sunk behind you. And if you look ahead there are a great deal more being built.
Nothing can stop these new stones from bubbling to the surface. They cam destroy old stones, but We will build new ones. And the 'idiots' will just follow the path, as always.
Re:This... (Score:3, Insightful)
Shutting down napster was very effective. It was effctive in turning in a hard to control problem into an uncontrolable one...
And what if it _is_ possible in one scenario ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would that then ruin the argument that "P2P should not be shut down because there are plenty of legitimate uses" by countering with "there is an equally efficient P2P architecture that brings all the same functionality to legitimate uses without hurting copyright law" ?
By doing that, wouldn't they change the issue of whether or not to allow P2P into one of which P2P can be allowed ? (or what is required of a legal P2P ?).
Just wondering...
Do you really mean what you wrote? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your company is free to establish whatever policies it chooses on your internal network. But I think it is very dangerous to suggest that we create laws that require the providers of public networks to filter content. Have you really considered the implications for free speech and privacy? Who controls the list of banned materials? Who controls the controllers?
And the false assumption is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Haven't we seen a plethora of P2P protocols developed precisely because someone we don't trust controls the older protocol? The reality check on this clearly bounces. Even if Microsoft, er, someone did manage to grab a monopoly on the US network's P2P population, which is VERY unlikely, the REST of the world would definitely not play along with those American imperialists. Scheme fails, game over.
Filter Away! (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, P2P users will just scramble the content in some ridiculously simple way that will invalidate the filters and they'll have to go back to square one. Ig-pay atin-lay anyone?
Xesdeeni
Re:Victims of porn (Score:4, Insightful)
but if you're addicted you'd probably be better off without. It's such a marketting gimic to disregard the posibilities of addiction. Then there's the fact that he posts anonymously, how hard is it to sign up.
** back on topic ** There's no way the porn industry could do anything about "copyrighted" material being distributed cause all it takes is a slight change in the archive to change the hash and blow the system away. The only way it would work is if the porn industry started setting up tons of high traffic nodes distributing all sorts of stuff just to block some porn on some searchs, but they'd just get blocked anyways.
censorship as damage (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of MP3s were shared via FTP in the past, until the RIAA began a campaign to root out and shut down pirate MP3 servers. Then people jumped to Napster, but were eventually frustrated first by the forced filtering of some searches and then the service's discontinuation. Now supernode-based P2P networks like Kazaa are being used, and the central company can't be sued Napster-style because they never see any search data. When they are forced to change their code to allow searches and data to be filtered, users will jump to another service designed to avoid the law.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Short of locking down every computer in the world, there is no way of preventing the digital trading of copies of information. Entities like the RIAA, MPAA and MPA know this. They may try having everything locked down via Palladium or something similar, but knowing they may not succeed, they are trying to fight a holding action, to keep the cash flowing in as long as is possible.
The music and movie industries didn't exist a hundred years ago; I sincerely doubt they'll exist a hundred years from now, no matter how hard they try.
THe Obvious Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is totally nuts. (Score:3, Insightful)
So the "content" industry would want operators of P2P software to store 100 MD5 hashes of EVERY PIECE OF COPYRIGHTED WORK IN DIGITAL FORM, and compare EVERY SET OF THEM against EVERY FILE TRANSFERRED.
That is just wacko.
For starters you'd requre every peer machine to have a copy of all those hashes and/or every indexing service to actually transfer the indexed files to compare them. How big would that be? How much bandwidth would it take to update it, or to do an extraupload of everything that gets indexed (possibly by many indexers)? WHO PAYS FOR THE BANDWIDTH AND STORAGE? Note that the BENEFIT goes entirely to the copyright holder, not the P2P user.
The onus of detecting copyright violation and proving their case is, and properly should be, on the copyright holders, who are the recipients of the benefit.
Yes, it's hard. Which means that the copyright holders only catch a few of the violators. But it's ALWAYS been that way. That's why the copyright law provides draconian penalties for the ones they DO catch - to balance the equation and deter violators.
(And THAT'S why you see hundred grand fines laid on little old ladies whose underage grandkids used their computer to download some MP3s.)
Re:It'll never work (Score:3, Insightful)
2) When money goes from A to B, B has a greater interest in protecting the financial data after the transaction than A does.
3) Creative works exchanges are rarely done in secret. Especially not on P2P networks. Or on web sites. Even most providers of content take no measures to secure the transfer of said content (i.e. ever heard of an adult site using only HTTPS from the login page on in?)
4) When creatives works go from A to B, B almost never has any interesting in protecting that data after the transaction.
Not that your conclusion isn't possible or likely, just that it relies on assumptions which are hard to agree with (because financial transactions are fundamentally different than selling creative works).
Re:It'll never work (Score:3, Insightful)