The future is OFF
p2pnet.net News:- The copy fight has ended.
So states the Digital Douwd coalition of “of otherwise anonymous hacker ‘meets’, ‘cons’ and ‘orgs’,” saying it’s challenging the media giants with its Owner-Free File System..
“The new system is purported to be immune from the consumer lawsuits that have plagued previous P2P systems,” a Digital Douwd member tells p2pnet. “While the creators do not contend the fact that copyright laws exist, they do maintain that the users and operators of OFF System peers don’t actually break any of those laws.
“The OFF System does not require storing or transmitting copies of creative works.
“This simple bit of mathematical and computer science wizardry supposedly renders traditional copyright laws moot. The system relies exclusively on multi-use randomized blocks for its storage and transmission needs.
“Each stored OFF block is used to represents multiple works simultaneously. Interestingly, new meaning can be added to any stored block without needing to modify the block. This makes it impossible for anyone to ‘know what a block is for’ because every block can be used to represent anything.”
Meanwhile, Digital Douwd, “seeks an end to copyright lawsuits and a re-conceptualization of digital property laws,” it declares. “History has shown that current mechanisms are inadequate at preserving both consumer value and access to the public commons.”
Here’s what it says in its closing letter to the “Copyright Industry Associations of America”.
Attention:
Mark today on your calendar! You will need to write it in your post mortem. Today is the day our future began and your future ended.
For three years now you have pursued your lawsuit campaign. Twenty thousand plus consumers, a dozen companies, and several very prominent friends of ours have fallen victim to your charade. We hoped you would see the obvious foolishness of your ways. Now, however, it appears clear that your shenanigans have gone on too long—You have begun deposing bereaved families of the deceased.
This can not stand. This will not stand. You will not stand. And from this day forward, your manipulative copyright claims will have no standing.
Today is the day we end all of your problems with consumer copyright infringement. For from today forward, consumers have no need for copies, infringing or otherwise. One common copy is all that is needed. One copy for everyone. Accessible forever.
Today we announce a massively distributed copy-less file system. A place where all content is available instantly, anonymously and to everyone, without breaking any laws. Today we announce the Owner-Free File System. An island of sanity in your sea of madness.
Feel free to monitor OFF’s communications. You’ll find no copying. Subpoena a few servers. You’ll find nothing that belongs to you. Only bits of randomness. This new internet infrastructure is truly a place without ownership. Nobody owns the OFF System. Nobody owns bits of randomness collected in the OFF System. There is beauty in randomness. As with all things beautiful, randomness’ value lies in the eye of the beholder. There is no intrinsic meaning in randomness but an infinite amount of extrinsic value. And behold that value we will.
This is not a threat. This is not a negotiation. This is the future – A future with no one to sue.
Adapt or die.
The Digital Douwd
Go here for an overview and for now, definitely stay tuned
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss
Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
August 14th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
I always find some technical people amusing when they believe it is possible to author software to “route around” the law. When they are taken to court for facilitating infringement they’ll find out that judges don’t take to kindly to people who have that little respect for the law.
While there are major flaws in current copyright law, the solution is to work together to try to fix them, not pretend it is possible to avoid them.
For those who want to flame me for this, I have thick skin and will largely ignore you. I just wish everyone else would ignore you as well as we keep getting worse laws because far too many people attempt to flee rather than fight.
August 14th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
No trying to flame you.
“While there are major flaws in current copyright law, the solution is to work together to try to fix them, not pretend it is possible to avoid them. ”
That’s true. That’s the RIGHT solution. However, those in charge
have no interest in working together, and have shown outright
comtempt for any proposed solution that does not involve just
handing over the keys to the kingdom. More and more people are
finding it impossible to have faith in a system that is becoming
openly corrupt.
If people without means to fight are the ONLY ones interested in
a solution .. what is left, honestly.
Much respect,
Dreddsnik
BoycottRIAA
August 15th, 2006 at 1:14 am
I think we need to fight on all fronts. Once the battle is won… *then* we can fall on each other like dogs!
August 15th, 2006 at 1:35 am
But you are assuming that this will only be used for infringing copyrights. In reality, once you understand the concept, it can be used to build any file. You could generate your block cache from the binary code used to makevirus files, then use those block to generate the files needed to remove the very same virus.
The simplicity and logic of the concept can be used to generate any data and potentially -all- data in the universe.
You could create a cache of blocks from your recycle bin, or from a linux distribution, or from your web browser cookies or any other data. And you can create any data file from a single block, simply by applying logical algorithms to that block.
If I need a binary string such as this:
10011001011010110
I can generate that string from a calculation on -any- other binary string.
The concept extends far beyond “copyright infringing” uses. People with a 2400 baud internet connection could potentially build an entire linux distribution from an image of their all or part of their existing file system, which has been converted to blocks. That person would then not need to download many if any data in order to build that linux system.
It is a balance of resources, if you had a super computer you could generate anything from anything, the more blocks you already have in your cache, the less you need to generate through processing power. Alternatively, if you have a fast internet connection, instead of generating the blocks using your own processing power, you simply download them from anyone else who gives you permission.
The scope of the system goes beyond the bounds of anything previously put into practise.
Are we all then to be prosecuted for infringement? For example, your 10GB cache of blocks could contain -all- the binary strings needed to build a dvd of a movie that has not even been written yet, let alone filmed, marketed and released. You cannot sue people for having zeros and ones and you can’t sue them for something that doesn’t even exist yet, let alone have a copyright attached to it.
My webcache from Firefox potenitally already contains all the sequances of 1s and 0s needed to make the next blockbuster release.
Garbage In no longer means garbage out.
The theory of placing 100 virtual monkeys in your RAM with cirtual typewriters, does indeed allow for those monkeys to eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare.
Open your mind to the concept, instead of looking at it as something infinitely smaller than it is. This concept could and SHOULD revolutionize data to benefit the entire world.
August 15th, 2006 at 1:39 am
Hell I like the letter they sent to big music!!! Hope what their doing is legal Ha. This letter has the ring of the Matrix to it!!! Now if I can just figure out how their system works???
August 15th, 2006 at 4:52 am
The solution is to ignore them, subvert them, & ignore people like you. You can follow the laws if you want to sucker.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:06 am
You are absolutely correct. The confusion is about which data contains the information. The information is not in the data blocks per se, but in the way to arrange the data blocks to form the final output. This information (i.e., the “descriptor blocks” and the information which blocks are descriptors for what) is transmitted, therefore copyright infringement occurs just as much as if you didn’t go through all those hoops.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:33 am
The argument may make sense to a mathematical mind, but it is unlikely to sway legal grey matter. The software developed for the OFF System is available for download, but it is more of a proof of concept than a legitimate P2P software solution at the moment (the program is currently at version 0.10.18, which gives you a bit of an idea how far anong things are). Some drawbacks to the system include the reliance on an ever-increasing cache directory full of tiny 128 kilobyte files, and the usual problem with any new P2P system, namely, the lack of enough other people using the system to make it worthwhile for content searches. The idea that using such a system will protect you from RIAA and MPAA lawsuits is dubious at best—for that kind of protection, a better idea would be to utilize something like a darknet—but beyond the mathematical trickery and the grandiose statements provided by the Digital Douwd press releases lies an interesting question for our digital age. When content can be stored so easily in digital form and then manipulated in any way the user pleases, do copyright laws that date from the Age of Sail still make sense?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060814-7500.html
August 15th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
there have been many cases all over world that proves a law is not just the black and white on paper, but the interpretation thereof. Lawmakers aim to formulate the wording to represent, as accurately as possible, the essence of what they intended to accomplish with the law. Clearly this is not possible (as we see with all these record industry suits lately) and hence, a judge’s job (or the whole bench if its still unclear) to interpret the law and determine what was it that the policymakers intended. So, “Yawn” is correct. We tend to think the law is ’stupid’ as its written down, then we find a ‘clever’ way to try bypass it, and then we get pwnd in court because its the ‘essence’ of the legislation that matters. I do NOT want to be a judge that has to determine these things… can you imagine how hard it must be (since morals have nothing to do with law)?
in ESSENCE this is nothing different than any other p2p network. if you look at a high level then the process is like this:
1. i do not have a song i want
2. i dont want to pay for it, so what are my options in obtaining it?
3. ah, i can use OFF to get it. good thing it doesnt break any laws since the data is garbage by itsself, spread over many computers etc etc (go read how it works… very cool idea)
4. i run OFF, i click this n that, getting all the different parts etc which are recompiled on my computer, effectivelycreating the song.
5. i have a the song, free of charge.
The thing here is, without OFF i would not have been able to get the song without paying (let’s disregard the other networks for now, for argument’s sake). So even if OFF is not distributing the ’song’ as a package, it is as a result of using the program that i am able to get the song.
A few other things the courts will consider in this case, is that the example on the site demonstrates that the program is for music downloading (billy joel etc example). Furthermore, the letter which the guys from OFF sent is very threatening in tone… even challenging, and aimed a the record labels. these thigs combined suggest that the aim is to spread music, deliberately trying to circumvent the legal system in the process.
Anyways, sorry to go on about this like that, but i find it really stupid when people think the law is just the words written on paper. I should add that my exeprience with law making is in an australian context, and we draw it from the british system. US might be different, but i think it would be stupid to try run a country if your law is to be taken in its utmost literal sense. surely no-one can be that dumb…
August 15th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
While Lawrence Lessig said “Code is law”, it is important for technical people to realize that “Law is not like code”. While law and code both regulate our lives, they are not interpreted the same way.
A computer is a binary dumb machine. It doesn’t do what we want it to do, but what we tell it to do. If you find a bug in the program there is no way for the computer to “fix the bug” and do what you intended it to do even if the code was written wrong.
While the law has some code written by authors (parliaments), it also has laws written by the interpreter (As if the CPU in a computer could patch the code as it ran it). Caselaw is not only a history of what happened in the courts, it is a series of patches.
Copyright law in the USA did not explicitly state that devices such as the VCR was legal. In fact, copyright law was written long before devices like the VCR were possible. Copyright law regulated the unauthorized making of copies, something the VCR was clearly doing. It was the courts interpreting and patching the law that legalized the VCR in the USA.
This same way of courts interpreting the law that made the VCR legal will make “OFF” illegal, regardless of the wording of the current law.
August 15th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
This is nothing really new — the same debates happened years ago when people asked the question of whether compressing and/or encrypting data before sending it over the wire changed its status as it related to copyright law.
If what goes “over the wire” is not recognizable as bits relating to a song, have you “communicated a song by telecommunications”?
The answer is not a technical one, but a legal one: If you didn’t have the file before, and you do now, then it was communicated/distributed to you in some way. Copyright law doesn’t care about the mathematics or other “technical” issues, but the fact that you now have a copy that was somehow communicated/distributed to you without the authorization of the copyright holder.
While this mathematics is interesting, and has many useful purposes, I do not see how it relates to copyright law at all. There is utility in protecting anonymity and privacy, but not copyright.
It’s the DRM debate all over again — people thinking that technology can “solve” non-technical questions such as copyright. I doubt the “OFF” folks realize they are effectively arguing on the same side of the debate as the pro-DRM folks from the major studios and labels.
August 16th, 2006 at 2:18 am
See, there are a lot of doubters to this system because you are reading the purpose all wrong. The off system dosn’t make or even attempt to make downloading a copywrited file legal. What it does is shift the ‘blame’ from the uploaders to the downloaders. (ie so the people who are getting the gains take the risks) Because the blocks are multi use, the uploader has no way to know if the downloader is using it to make a cracked windows XP iso or an open source linux iso.
To prove infringment by a downloader is far harder than for an uploader. The system itself is lawsuit proof because the system itself is legal. The illegal behaviour takes place off the network by users retrieving files to which they dont have the permission to access.
Its not so much an attempt to destroy the riaa or copywrite; you are reading too much into the fiction that birthed the idea, the only thing the system attempts to change is the tactics that the RIAA must use in order to go after dead people, grandmothers and 5 yr old kids in an attempt to save their flagging busniess model
August 16th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
“This is nothing really new — the same debates happened years ago when people asked the question of whether compressing and/or encrypting data before sending it over the wire changed its status as it related to copyright law.”
Actually the same debate was possible whn the phonorecord was invented. At the time music travered through sheet music. Surely the ups and down on the record ridges that cause the needle to vibrate could not be visually recognized as music.
I do not know if there was a debate as to wether records copied songs or not but if there was, we know the results. Records were a reproduction of the music and the law was changed accordingly.
I agree, it does not matter how music is delivered. Surely the bigger question here is if sharing and copying for personal use is both infringement and stopable. I think not, and the people should tell their governments to stop the harrasing of the people by the music and other cartels for sharing works with others on a non commercial basis.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas
August 16th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
But if I compile a file of useless data(or record myself speaking) and simply call it “madonna – like a virgin” , madonna wont hold the rights, right?
So, for it to actually be determined to be a breach, someone needs to raid my house, check the physical file on my computer, listen to it, confirm its actually madonna, and then make sure I dont own the album.. or that I havent bought it on an online MP3 store..
August 17th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
As this enlightened person said, the project purpose is not bypassing copyrights or laws, it’s just a matter of technical ways to determine who downloads protected material.
With other p2p nets everyone could be able to “sniff” packets through the net and see what the heck you were downloading, now sniffing is useless , or, at least, can’t prove any illegal act.
Eventual illegal acts can be done even with your network cable detached.
It’s perfectly legal to store those blocks, so the only way to prove you did something illegal is seeing the result of a reconstruction of a file.
This is CLEARLY explained in the homepage of OFF, everyone should read that stuff before saying something senseless