Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 12:55:28 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Is digital copyright soon to be made unworkable?

Started by session9, February 29, 2004, 11:13:28 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

session9

This website here contains some interesting stuff to those people who use P2P software to leech warez and the like.

The basic idea that they are proposing seems to be a way of sharing files by breaking them down into random blocks, which are then distributed around the net.

Each of these blocks is multi-use: that is, the same block might be used to reconstitute holiday snaps, some dodgy prog rock mp3, or a DVD-rip of the latest Hollywood bollocks, depending upon the way it is combined with other blocks.

"Popular" blocks (i.e. those that can be used in generating multiple files) could be cached locally or nearby (on big webcache servers).

This would seem to offer the benefit of reducing overall network load, and would have the interesting by-product of the end user being able to recreate any copyrighted material you want, providing you have the list of block ids and the recipe to use when rebuilding it, without anyone but you knowing what you are downloading. This recipe would take the form of a simple URL.

I'm not sure how well this would work in practice, but it seems relatively sane. I suppose if you gave everyone a "1", a "0", and a long enough recipe, you could recreate any file, but I think this is a bit different. They've supposedly got a CD for download which demonstrates the technique with some non-copyrighted media of various filetypes, all recreated from the same basic blocks using different combination formulas.

(Broadband users might be able to check this out, I'm on a crappy dialup so I can't be arsed)

Anyway... do you think this is worthy of discussion?

(Intellectual property rights experts are especially welcome)

By the way, hello.

Alberon

I did a quick search of the site and didn't find the bit in question, but I'll have a closer look tomorrow.

It sounds sensible enough in principle, whether it could ever work is debatable, but it just goes to show that the more the RIAA and others try to smack P2P networks out of existance the more that more difficult to track networks will evolve.

I'm not defending the theiving of copyrighted work, but if the music companies had just sat down and worked with Napster back in the beginning, they might be making a lot more money and losing less in lost sales.

The copyright status of generic bits of zeros and ones is something I'm not going to get deeply involved with, but I think it would be hard to justify. It would be like trying to copyright the word 'the' simply because it appeared in a book I wrote.

session9

One thing about their plan is that these blocks could be disseminated via all the standard P2P programs, since they use the same hashing algorithms. Also,  only one copy of each block would need to be online at any one time, and you could swarm the total download from multiple sources just like bittorrents.

The unique hash ids could be used to search for the blocks you require, and then you just run the software to reconstitute the file you were after.

I'm fairly sure that this will be a technology to watch out for... I can see it having some benefits to businesses that transfer large amounts of data.

With enough blocks stored on regional cache servers, it might be possible to define files simply by the block hash IDs and the generative formula, without having that many blocks stored on your own machine...

You could possibly store small lists of "formula" URLs on the system as well, each one linking to the next list, and then you could offer easy searches like on current P2P software.  So all you'd need to start would be the software, a few random blocks of data, and a single URL. Not much more than current technology...and infinitely less likely to result in the copyright police having a case against you.

Sorry to sound like some sort of software evangelist (and I'll be doubly sorry if it turns out to be an elaborate hoax), but it sounds like something that would be a kick in the teeth for the media conglomerates.

Edit: This probably explains the basic concept better than me.

Gazeuse

I'd just like to point out (Again) that it's not just the big record companies that'll be hit...It's the small bands and businesses that will suffer the most.

Neil

It's interesting, this.  I bet some bastard will come along and say it's only being developed to make porn quicker to send though, nnnngh.  

Quote from: "Gazeuse"I'd just like to point out (Again) that it's not just the big record companies that'll be hit...It's the small bands and businesses that will suffer the most.

Just wondering Gaz, but what's your reaction to the typical argument given by the folks who want to burn down all the record compaines?  It goes thusly: "Artists should be making their money by putting their tracks up for download on the web, and having a tipjar system where people can give money if they like it, or just charge a quid for each song downloaded.  They should be playing live to supplement their income."

jutl

Quote from: "Neil"It's interesting, this.  I bet some bastard will come along and say it's only being developed to make porn quicker to send though, nnnngh.  

Quote from: "Gazeuse"I'd just like to point out (Again) that it's not just the big record companies that'll be hit...It's the small bands and businesses that will suffer the most.

Just wondering Gaz, but what's your reaction to the typical argument given by the folks who want to burn down all the record compaines?  It goes thusly: "Artists should be making their money by putting their tracks up for download on the web, and having a tipjar system where people can give money if they like it, or just charge a quid for each song downloaded.  They should be playing live to supplement their income."

Not sure about Gaz's view of that, but I'd say it's self-serving pseudo-socialism spread by selfish cunts.

Also, on the technical issue here - intellectual property law is robust enough to check this kind of activity, in theory at least. The act of knowingly accessing the 'recipe' URL and proceeding to reconstruct the file is a violation of copyright. Sites that host the recipes are aiding that violation. It's another wayy to share files which is difficult to police, but it's no more so than standard p2p, I'd have thought.

Gazeuse

Quote from: "jutl"
Quote from: "Neil"Just wondering Gaz, but what's your reaction to the typical argument given by the folks who want to burn down all the record compaines?  It goes thusly: "Artists should be making their money by putting their tracks up for download on the web, and having a tipjar system where people can give money if they like it, or just charge a quid for each song downloaded.  They should be playing live to supplement their income."

Not sure about Gaz's view of that, but I'd say it's self-serving pseudo-socialism spread by selfish cunts.

Hehe...Not a bad summing up Jutl!!!

Well, the problem with that argument is that it's very difficult for an individual artist/band to make money selling CDs on the internet. I've had a website for giving out info on my commercial releases for about three years now and I've never sold a single album through it. The thing is, nobody has heard of me, so their not driven to visit my site. I haven't got the money to promote myself on order to get the traffic through there.

I've had a couple of recording contracts, but was never happy with them...I was with a major for a while and they spent 50 grand making my album and then didn't release it because of 'corporate restructuring.' So what I do now is license music to record labels mostly on compilations, because it's in their interests then to sell and promote their album. These generally tend to be small labels who really feel a drop in sales, because they can't drop acts or close down depeartments to compensate. What big companies can do though is raise artists profiles which then enables them to flog CDs.

The other problem with the argument you gave is that I'm really a composer, not an artist, so I can't play live.

I'm very lucky though, because I make most of my money out of TV commissions, library music and royalties and the commercial releases are a bit of a sideline. However, as the majors see CD sales falling, they're trying to make up the shortfall by doing things like getting their music played on TV and films, which means that less commissioned and library music is generally used.

It concerns me that music is increasingly seen as something of no 'worth' as it has become computer files that can be copied and distributed so easily. The fact is that somebody took some time to make that music and if it gives pleasure to others, it has a value and should be paid for.

Neil

Thanks for the replies, very interesting stuff.  To give some background, the chaps I'm thinking of who always cite the above have a real thing about copyright.  They are big advocates of the free software movement and so I suppose they think that free music is the logical next step.

Gazeuse

Well, I'm not a big fan of the majors labels/publishers anyway...You only have to see how many skint ex pop stars around to see how they do business. However, they've got the cash to promote artists really well.

On a smaller scale...Did you know that when a composer writes some music for TV, he'll/she'll nearly always be asked to have that music published by a big publisher who is 'afilliated' in some way with the TV company. This means that they take half of your royalties...Often not giving anything in return.

It's scandalarse.

king mob

Quote from: "Neil"Thanks for the replies, very interesting stuff.  To give some background, the chaps I'm thinking of who always cite the above have a real thing about copyright.  They are big advocates of the free software movement and so I suppose they think that free music is the logical next step.


Free music would end up killing the industry as a whole as nobody would be making any money from it.
Who would market new music, Gaz has mentioned he's had his stuff up for ages but made no sales?Its only through record companies thats its realistically gong to happen, now they do need to adapt that a large section of people are downloading but its nonsense to want to do away with them forever.
Its easy to say "well without the companies its fair ground for all" but its still a case of whoever has the most money & abilty to market music to the vast majority of people.


This is a Intellectual property issue though & as Neil says some people do have a thing about copyright but its a bit complex to outline during lunch so i'll update how important Intellectual property is to P2P downloading later.

jutl

Quote from: "Neil"Thanks for the replies, very interesting stuff.  To give some background, the chaps I'm thinking of who always cite the above have a real thing about copyright.  They are big advocates of the free software movement and so I suppose they think that free music is the logical next step.

I think you have to draw a big line between the value of Free Software, in a Richard Stallman sense, and a removal of all copyright. For a start, free and open source software only works because creators of copyright works can license them as they see fit. If I write a new piece of software and GPL it, the only thing stopping Microsoft from stealing it and capitalising it is my IP rights, enforceable if necessary in court. Software authors choose to license their works under the GPL because they get a big return on it - not necessarily a financial one, although that it certainly not out of the question. They get help and support in developing their project, and they get respect from other geeks...
The chances are that if they can program sufficiently well to start a successful OSS project, they can also earn a living too besides their OSS work. Musicians are not in that position, necessarily.

Anyway, if artists want to free their work in this sense, they should look into Creative Commons:

http://creativecommons.org/

which is a method of easily licensing your work in such a way that it is widely disseminated and enjoyed. It relies on existing IP law to work...

Nearly Annually

Quote from: "Gazeuse"I can't play live.
You are the alive one out of Milli Vanilli and I claim my Marcel Marceau album.


Yes it's the first throwaway silliness in an otherwise spotlessly informative thread, and it's all mine. But at the same time, allow me to be the first to say "Hello" back to session9.

Hello, session9.

Is it like WD40, ie: the first 8 sessions were rubbish?

session9

No, you've got it wrong, it's as in "free the session 9"...I'm one of nine session musicians unjustly imprisoned for playing cover versions by overzealous copyright police. Or else it's our band's name, taken from a film that was discussed here recently.

Gazeuse

Quote from: "Nearly Annually"
Quote from: "Gazeuse"I can't play live.
You are the alive one out of Milli Vanilli and I claim my Marcel Marceau album.
If only I had his pecs...But I'll keep my own shoulders thanks!!!

king mob

Link


This link gives a pretty good rundown on IP & how it pertains to P2P.

Its hard going but it gives you the idea, theres more i can list but i'm supposed to be working;)

blue jammer

Session9, hello (great film btw)

I'd agree with Gaz up there, it's hard when you are 'small time' and don't have the backing of a large label, as a lack of promotion can be soul destroying. However, I do think the internet does help;

1/ You can put up 30 second clips of your tracks for people to 'try before they buy' which has led to sales for me which is good, also there are plenty of online promotion companies, I use one called CDBaby which are quite well known (mainly in the States, where a lot of my sales are at the moment) they also put up clips of *some* of your tracks (you nominate 4 or 5 and they upload them, saves you the bother)

2/ p2p I have found to be a good way of exposure too, I have in my shared files my own stuff marked at the top (using exclamation marks to ensure my own music files are first on the list) whilst a lot of people have just grabbed the albums, a few have sent me a message asking where can they buy the albums, so it's not everyone using p2p that are just out for free music, as I myself have heard many albums that I've really liked and gone out and bought them.

An mp3 file is nice, an album is better, own the product ;)

king mob

Quote from: "blue jammer"
2/ p2p I have found to be a good way of exposure too, I have in my shared files my own stuff marked at the top (using exclamation marks to ensure my own music files are first on the list) whilst a lot of people have just grabbed the albums, a few have sent me a message asking where can they buy the albums, so it's not everyone using p2p that are just out for free music, as I myself have heard many albums that I've really liked and gone out and bought them.

An mp3 file is nice, an album is better, own the product ;)


Thats the problem though, you or i may download a few tracks then buy the CD but far too many people download entire CD's & never spend any money to support the artists they enjoy & thats where you can see the problem lies.

It would help if new CD's were cheaper, £13 on average is too much & you can see why people have been driven to P2P for their main source of music.
But theres always cheap CD sales in the major stores so theres plenty of chance to pick up something you'll like cheap.

Gazeuse

Thanks for the link to CDbaby...Looks interesting. I've got a stack of CDs here that are going nowhere at the moment...I can think of another VerbWhore who has a pile of CDs too!!! :-)

However, I can't help feeling that it's not going to bring in much cash, but I'll give it a go.

Sorry if I'm coming across as a bit of a breadhead here...It's just that I went through quite a lot of shite to be able to make a living out of music and I don't want to have to give up after all the effort I, Mrs. Gaz and my family put in.

That's why it annoys me to see people who consider 'sharing' music to be not only a victimless crime, but some sort of protest against big record companies.

gazzyk1ns

I'm not sure what I think about all this, I love sharing music (and all types of digital file) but I do it because it doesn't cost me anything and I can get it quickly, if I'm honest. That and there's no chance of being prosecuted for it.

I certainly don't do it because I think it damages the record companies and  that they deserve it, and sometimes I feel guilty about smaller artists like Jammer and Gazeuse there. Having said that, I don't really tend to download anything that (relatively) obscure as I'm not "into" music that much.

It also has largely to do with the amount of money I have, if I had more of it I would buy lots more music. But even then, because of my tastes and my buying habits, I'd only buy things like Coldplay/Radiohead albums... and then download the more obscure artists as I'm not sure I'd like them. If downloading them wasn't an option, then I would simply leave it in 99.9% of cases. Surely that's worse than just downloading both? i.e. buying Coldplay/Radiohead and downloading little-known artists just creates a Premiership/Division 1 style gulf, which only serves to promote already rich/famous artists further, and make smaller artists struggle for 'proper' recognition even more?

Still Not George

Look, it's simple. One day the record companies will charge a sensible price for CDs. (The royalty percentage for most artists is desultory anyway, IIRC)
Then CD sales will increase.

As long as they keep charging the earth for small bits of aluminium surrounded by plastic that cost pence to produce, their sales will continue to decease.

Then, once the record companies have gone bust due to selling overpriced shite to teenagers, we can all take over the biz and produce decent music for a few quid.

*wakes up* Shit, was I asleep? I was having such a wonderful dream...

session9

Thanks for those comments that pertained to the initial post.

As regards the issue of sharing in general, I don't see anything wrong with it. My brother downloads plenty of music, but he's bought lots of albums that he simply wouldn't have thought about without access to free mp3s. Lots of people I know are similar in that regard.  (I realise that's not exactly a scientifically-sound method of gathering evidence to support my opinion, but it's all I have.)

I also use P2P, mainly for getting bootlegs and live stuff, but I have widened my boundaries to include stuff by artists I've heard of but never actually heard, and that has caused me to buy CDs. So I think it probably helps CD sales in a lot of cases.

If you enjoy an artist's work enough, you'll want to reimburse them for the effort they went to in order to give you that enjoyment, and you'll probably be tempted to go and see them live.

Sure there's plenty of people who burn mp3s and never buy a CD, but they probably wouldn't buy much anyway, and would probably just have taped stuff off the radio in the past.

(edit: typos)

gazzyk1ns

Quote from: "session9"Thanks for those comments that pertained to the initial post.


Oooooooooooooooooohhh!, handbags, etc etc.

Not much you can say to your original post really, without being an expert in MD5 sum/hash creation and the like. Apparently it works, it sounds similar to Bit Torrent which is great, so... yeah.

Only issue I can imagine which might cause probelms... or at least not be beneficial over single-use block share systems like BT is how many different files one block is useful for. Presumably if they make each block very small, only a few K, then they'll all be useful for a few files at least. That probably has issues of its own though, presumably remotely constructing a file comprised of tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of "generic" blocks is not a simple task.

session9

Quote from: "gazzyk1ns"
Quote from: "session9"Thanks for those comments that pertained to the initial post.


Oooooooooooooooooohhh!, handbags, etc etc.

The reason for that snide comment was that seeing as this is a bit different from the p2p stuff around now, I wondered what the legal implications were for those people who wished to run a node. In any case, it soon turned into that same old W@r3z d00ds mass-debate.

Quote from: "gazzyk1ns"
Not much you can say to your original post really, without being an expert in MD5 sum/hash creation and the like. Apparently it works, it sounds similar to Bit Torrent which is great, so... yeah.

It's not exactly like BitTorrent, because the file blocks bear no resemblance to the final file you are after, so there is no illegal data passing hands. The only piece of data (apart from the end product) that might be classified as illegal is the "recipe", and I can't  really see that argument being likely to succeed.

Quote from: "gazzyk1ns"
Only issue I can imagine which might cause probelms... or at least not be beneficial over single-use block share systems like BT is how many different files one block is useful for. Presumably if they make each block very small, only a few K, then they'll all be useful for a few files at least. That probably has issues of its own though, presumably remotely constructing a file comprised of tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of "generic" blocks is not a simple task.

It may not be simple, but it's suposedly very possible, and not as slow as you might imagine. Most of the block operations are seemingly of the XOR variety, so there's not much to do.

If a block is useful for many things, it'll find it's way onto many nodes, and won't disappear easily. Eventually (so goes the theory) you'll have enough blocks in your local region of network that you don't need to open connections all over the net to download the file you want, becauise the vast majority of the blocks will always be close, and the ones that aren't can be swarmed while the local ones are being funnelled to your node.

gazzyk1ns

Hey I wasn't trying to belittle it, I think it sounds good. I was just surprised about your comment that not many people had commented on it, as it's fairly hard to offer anything but speculation unless you know about the technicalities of hashes etc. Still I know what you mean, same old convo about the implications of filesharing. When you've got lots of people like Jammer and Gazeuse who are themselves artists, and then lots of us who download shitloads of files, it should be an interesting debate at least, though.

QuoteIt's not exactly like BitTorrent

Well, I said "it sounds similar to Bit Torrent", so we're in agreement there.

I was just thinking about what the implications would be for poeple downloading child porn... if they could download it in this way and then securely erase the data from their hard disk, then even if the authorities spotted them doing it, presumably they'd be safe; they've not downloaded anything illegal and there is no recoverable evidence of anything illegal on their PCs. Come to think of it, it would be hard for the authorities to even "spot them doing it" by that method, I suppose.

Maybe that'll be the next line the RIAA etc will take, i.e. "this new software encourages paedophilia so it must be stopped"...

session9

I suppose free communication for all means hearing the occasional load of bullshit shouted in an annoying voice though, doesn't it?

gazzyk1ns

Well yeah, I have a mate who recently attended a presentation by one of the guys who works for FA©T. Apparently instead of saying anything about poor quality CDs/Videos/DVDs, artists' rights, etc... the main line he took was that copyright theft funds terrorism.

session9

So yeah, on your other point,  you could conceivably have an app in the near future that generates and streams small sections of media files to your player (via localhost) on the fly, having first securely disposed of any "formula" data on the hard drive. So even if the copyright police came to batter your door down whilst you were playing the movie/music, you could just switch off the PC and there would be no evidence to suggest that you had been flouting copyright laws.

That might be seen as a minor problem for the media industry.

The "copyright theft funds terrorism" argument doesn't really apply here - what are you buying from pirates in this case? Nothing. If anything, you would be taking away from them, because they couldn't sell their dodgy CDs if you have easy access to whatever you want to watch for free (or for bandwidth costs anyway).

(edit: typos and other stuff)

gazzyk1ns

Oh no, I agree, I was just pointing out that I find it ridiculous that this guy was trying to put people off "copyright theft" by trying to convince them that they'd be responsible for funding terrorism - relating to the fact that I suspect the next line the authorities (such as FACT, the RIAA, etc) might take would be to say that it encourages paedophiles. Even though it's missing the point completely I think they could pull it off. They managed to associate the word "Napster" with "Piracy" for the general public, who had never used a PC, let alone Napster. I think they could associate whatever this new software will be called with "Paedophilia", so that you'd be hesitant to mention you used it (at least without a lengthy explaination) to anyone except your mates.

The 'authorities' will love inventing the lie and the media will love spreading it, as we are saying in the other thread I started yesterday...

session9

Yeah, but that would only work for a little while. Eventually the penny would drop, even amongst the plebs:

"U meen I cn get flims & stuff for 3? LOLz!!1!!"

jutl

I don't understand the argument that this method somehow gets around current copyright law (or indeed any other law outlawing certain kinds of material)- could someone explain this? Thanks...

(edit to remove word 'circumvent': wanker vocabulary)