Comments on: Audible Magic’s ’silver bullet’

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:12:07 +0000

The issue here is that it is an Irish ISP, and they dont necessarily have the same safe harbor protections that ISPs here in the US have. If we didn’t have safe harbor laws here, we would see plenty of this.

By: Matt Harrigan

Matt Harrigan — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:33:03 +0000

Why anyone would install software provided by the RIAA, or use an ISP that will, is completely beyond me.

By: blacke4dawn

blacke4dawn — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:44:50 +0000

Hmmm, one thing that hits me here is that it doesn’t seem to have any method of seeing if the copyrighted content is legally owned in the first place, i.e a digital download from an online store. Identifying copyrighted material in general is one thing, identifying illegally transfered copyrighted material is something completly different.

If this software will try to interupt every download that is copyrighted then it will interupt legal downloads much more than illegal ones. But it wouldn’t suprise me if this part of there “plan” to get people to buy more hardcopies, since it seems these types of companies have a very hard time to adapt to the digital age and are clinging to an old (and hopefully soon deprecated) distribution method of entertainment content.

By: Lerris

Lerris — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:33:46 +0000

Wait Wait… the sheer idiocy of this made my head hurt.

The RIAA is suing an ISP because they are not installing the RIAA’s software filter of choice?

I see a number of things wrong with the but primary among this is that its the RIAA’s job to defend its own copywrite, not anybody elses. Just as ma bell is not required to make sure no criminal activities are planned on its network the ISP’s have no obligation to do anything to their networks, certainly not at the behest of a third party, and most definitely not to help said third party stop a civil offence from occouring.

The other big one here is that you cant sue someone into using a specific product, even if a judge went so far as to mandate that the ISP must cooperate with the RIAA (lord knows why) they cannot mandate what program to use to do it.

By: mockTurtle

mockTurtle — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:33:42 +0000

In theory, it could unzip or otherwise analyze files on the fly, but would require
a) significantly more resources to do so in realtime
b) a very large library of possible compression algorithms, and methods to reverse them
c) the ability to constantly update that library as new algorithms and obfuscations methods change.

In similar fashion, the p2p networks could XOR the files, flip all the bits, or otherwise obfuscate them. In practice, it’ll just be easier for us to encrypt our sessions, and there is nothing they can do about it.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:02:47 +0000

I wonder what it would do with zipped files. Seems to me compressed and zipped would stop the analysis as well.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 17:42:38 +0000

“…will simply encourage people to migrate from the vulnerable protocols to the secure networks.”

absolutely, proof is already there, just look at the flight from Kazaa to other P2P apps when it was under siege, principle is already proven.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 05:05:06 +0000

Most of the newly developed P2P protocols and those still in development employ some type of encryption. One of them, P2Pnet.net sponsor Blubster, will soon release a fully encrypted new version (currently in beta testing) due out this summer.

P2P will always continue to adapt and evolve to fight any threat against it. The effect of anti-P2P weapons such as Audible Magic will simply encourage people to migrate from the vulnerable protocols to the secure networks.