|
|
ONLINE FEATURES
Book Reviews
BW Video
Columnists
Interactive Gallery
Newsletters
Past Covers
Philanthropy
Podcasts
Special Reports
BLOGS
Auto Beat
Bangalore Tigers
Blogspotting
Brand New Day
Byte of the Apple
Economics Unbound
Eye on Asia
Fine On Media
Green Biz
Hot Property
Investing Insights
Management IQ
NEXT: Innovation
NussbaumOnDesign
Tech Beat
Working Parents
TECHNOLOGY
J.D. Power Ratings
Product Reviews
Tech Stats
Wildstrom: Tech Maven
AUTOS
Home Page
Auto Reviews
Classic Cars
Car Care & Safety
Hybrids
INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | |
JANUARY 27, 2004
By Alex Salkever Big Music's Worst Move Yet The RIAA's newest legal assault on file swappers is pushing them to encrypted networks, where the damage could become catastrophic The music file-swapping masses got a fresh jolt of fear on Jan. 21 when the Recording Industry Association of America filed 532 lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers for downloading or sharing pirated tunes on the Internet. The suits made good on the RIAA's promise in December not to skip a beat in its legal war against music piracy. That promise came after a U.S. Appeals Court in Washington, D.C., in December found that the RIAA could not use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force Internet service providers to cough up the identities of alleged file swappers without notifying them beforehand. The DMCA is a law designed to help copyright holders protect their intellectual property. The court ruled on a technicality but used strong language to underscore that the RIAA had clearly overstepped its bounds. In response, the RIAA shifted its attack to a more cumbersome form of lawsuits. In these so-called John Doe suits, RIAA lawyers file against an Internet protocol address (an ID that every computer connected to the Net has) that they believe is attached to a computer engaged in illegal file trading. Should the court deem the suit worthy of consideration, then the ISP used by that computer to access the Net could be forced to reveal the subscriber's identity. LOST WAR. This is more time-consuming and costly than the procedure the Appeals Court shut down, which allowed any copyright holder to demand the identity of an ISP's customers without any proof of wrongdoing or any sort of due process. Even in the John Doe suits, it's not clear how much support the RIAA will get from ISPs already furious with it for earlier tactics that spooked subscribers and resulted in suits against clearly innocent parties. One has to admit: The RIAA sure is tenacious in pursuing its strategy. What it doesn't seem to realize, though, is that it has already lost the war (see BW Online, 1/16/04, "Did Big Music Really Sink the Pirates?"). The recording industry's hardball tactics have fueled a technological shift that'll make it nearly impossible to pursue file swappers in the future. How so? The culture of fear and loathing that the RIAA has created is starting to put encryption on the must-have list of every Joe and Jane Internet user. The results will be wide-ranging and will pose a threat to the movie industry, the software industry, and just about any other industry involved with the creation and sale of intellectual property. TREADING LIGHTLY. The often-made argument that RIAA pressure would push file swappers to adopt more and more drastic means of evasion has been borne out over time. First came Napster, a system of centralized servers envisioned by Sean Fanning. U.S. courts easily identified it as an enabler of copyright infringement due to the manner in which Napster's servers willingly facilitated illegal music file trading. The next generation of file-swapping setups eliminated central servers and built peer-to-peer networks that directly connected file sharers to each other. These networks have proven far more impervious to lawsuits. The companies that make the software used to build these networks have had some success in arguing that they only build the tools and play no direct role in copyright violations that occur on these networks -- which could just as easily be used for legitimate purposes such as sharing personal photos, computer files, and other forms of noncopyrighted content. Reluctant to toss the baby out with the bathwater, courts have tread lightly since file swapping is a new technology that could provide a useful service to society in the future as a venue for sharing and even selling information. OBVIOUS FINGERPRINTS. That forced the RIAA and other copyright holders to go after the weak link in the chain: individual users. It did so with great gusto in the spring of 2003, unleashing a torrent of lawsuits and a fearsome public relations campaign. This offensive against file swappers, however, hinged on a simple fact. The current generation of decentralized file-swapping networks makes little or no effort to mask the digital fingerprints of individual users. Researchers working for the RIAA can easily log onto the networks, download pirated songs, and note the IP addresses of particularly egregious file sharers. The RIAA defines those as anyone offering 800 or so songs for download. By ripping off the thin veil of anonymity and hitting hundreds of users for thousands of dollars per case in settlement costs, the RIAA has inspired the most tangible fear yet seen among Web users -- something neither credit-card thieves, nor hackers, nor even the U.S. government has managed to inspire.
BW MALL
SPONSORED LINKS
Buy a link now! | | |
 Copyright 2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.Terms of Use | Privacy Notice |
Printer-Friendly Version
