If you are downloading from Napster or some other service, the RIAA is tracking you.

March 23, 2001 9:50 AM

If you are downloading from Napster or some other service, the RIAA is tracking you. Here's a screenshot of the Recording Industry's secret weapon.
posted by andre_111 (17 comments total)

All Your Hard Drive Are Belong To Us

sorry, it had to be said.
posted by bshort at 10:02 AM on March 23, 2001

All Your Ass Are Belong To Us
posted by Brilliantcrank at 10:16 AM on March 23, 2001

While the story is plausible, this 7am news thing sounds like the Matt Drudge of the IT world.
posted by rschram at 10:21 AM on March 23, 2001

i would love to have that software...i'd find people who download really bad music and mock them via email.
posted by th3ph17 at 10:21 AM on March 23, 2001

Wow. That actually looks pretty cool.
Since all the protocols are open or reverse-engineered, it would be too hard to make, either.
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:29 AM on March 23, 2001

"We will develop technology that transcends the individual user," [Sony Pictures Entertainment senior VP Steve Heckler] said. "We will firewall Napster at source - we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your [ISP]. We will firewall it at your PC."

This is just bullshit scare tactics. The record industry leaks this crap to get joe-average to stop using Napster. The truly scary part is that it will work, and joe-average will actually go running back to the Industry for his music.
posted by jpoulos at 10:50 AM on March 23, 2001

You can't track what people download; it's technically impossible. You can, however, track what people are sharing via Napster and what they post on their Web site and on newsgroups. Since in any forum roughly 90% of people are lurkers/leeches and only about 10% supply the content, it's much easier to go after the supply anyway, and just as effective.

There's really no way to stop anyone from snooping on what you post. If it's public, the record companies can see it as easily as anyone else, and using Napster they have to be able to get your IP address in order to download it, so they know who your ISP is and, as gsxl says, "All Your Ass Are Belong to Them." Fake clients can be designed in such a way that it is impossible to tell whether they are being operated by a human or by an automated "crawler." Gnutella, Freenet, doesn't matter -- as long as there's a client for the network, that client can be reverse-engineered and an automated snooper can be deployed on the network.

Napster and media piracy in general can, and probably will, be driven deep underground. Just like software piracy. As I've said elsewhere, the MPAA and RIAA know they can't stop savvy people from sharing (and they know that among these people sharing may actually increase sales); what they are afraid of is your mom using Napster or Gnutella to download music and movies instead of buying or renting them. In the near term (next 5-10 years at least) they will probably succeed in limiting piracy to the underground.
posted by kindall at 11:22 AM on March 23, 2001

Good point Kindall. and th3ph17, you can already mock napster users with bad taste via the hostlist and im...hell if it wasn't for that ability napster wouldn't be nearly so much fun!
posted by DiplomaticImmunity at 12:33 PM on March 23, 2001

ps no this isn't my napster id...i download only GOOD music :)
posted by DiplomaticImmunity at 12:34 PM on March 23, 2001

It looks like it's just a pretty interface for harassing ISPs (probably just european ones too). As far as the method in which this information is gathered, it's not all that impressive as kindall points out. But I also think that it's merely a scare tactic as well and isn't really going to go anywhere. Why? Mainly because of how it's interface resembles an end-user product (much like Napster's ease of use).

And as for music going underground...it always has and always will be as long as HTML, mIRC, FTP servers, and many alternative community sharing utilities are available....however its right in assuming that these are for the media savvy. The main limitation, which I find amusing, is that most ISPs don't really care what their users are doing anymore....and will more-than-likely disregard the boiler-plate e-mails this thing shoots out...might even put a block on it too ;-)
posted by samsara at 12:40 PM on March 23, 2001

Absolutely correct, samsara. Both of the major, international ISP's that I've worked for would consider anything sent out by this thing (or sent by the RIAA at the behest of this thing) to be spam, pure and simple. Probably block it within a day, and get an injunction against the record weasels to prevent further abuse of the ISP's mail system.
posted by Optamystic at 1:48 PM on March 23, 2001

I thought Freenet was designed to make it impossible for anyone to tell who was storing what files on what servers, even the server owners themselves.

It is. But if you get a file, you can tell what upstream site you got the file from, and go after them. This'll probably have to be decided in court, but you could make a case that if you intentionally allow people to use your site to store files (even if you remain studiously unaware of what files they are) you remain at least partially responsible for the content if you know large amounts of illegal traffic is moving over the network in general.
posted by kindall at 3:33 PM on March 23, 2001

And as for music going underground...it always has and always will be as long as HTML, mIRC, FTP servers, and many alternative community sharing utilities are available....

God bless HTML, that wonderful community sharing utility. Er…
posted by gleemax at 7:22 PM on March 23, 2001

Software piracy is underground?
posted by fullerine at 2:41 AM on March 24, 2001

Of course software piracy is underground. Nobody dares talk about it in public, and if you put up a Web page to distribute pirate software you'll be shut down in short order. My mom has no idea how to pirate software. If you know how to pirate software (a process that involves numerous obscure programs and navigating circuitous routes to the places where the files are) you simply are not a mainstream user.

Now, software piracy is established enough that it's far more prevalent than music or video piracy is. I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA hope to be somewhat more successful than the software industry has been, but I'm also sure they're prepared for the scenario where music and video piracy is about as widespread as software piracy. They certainly are in a better position to combat the problem than the software industry was when piracy started becoming a serious issue.
posted by kindall at 3:45 AM on March 24, 2001

God bless HTML, that wonderful community sharing utility. Er..

Heheh. I meant since it is used as a method of distributing music, not because it's stringed in with the functionality of a utility :) However some programs I've seen use HTML parsing to find and download files, so it's not too far off. God bless parsing...amen.
posted by samsara at 10:00 AM on March 24, 2001