That assumes that ??AA would use it as described... on their pieces of
plastic, which would of course shift responsibility for the pollution. The
fact that they are already polluting the system with crap tends to indicate
to me that they will likely use it as a tool directly on the networks.
For FastTrack and Gnutella networks, maybe. Actually it's not just a
'maybe', they ARE polluting the network with random junk results
returned for all searched, as are spammers, viruses and porn sites
(mostly this can be filtered easily in much the same way that spam can
be filtered, though I have encountered a few problematic files).
However Bittorent is not the same sort of network and they would have
to specifically target a given file rather than trying to pollute the
whole network. Since Bittorent doesn't search a network itself but
rather runs as a seed from the originating website, they would need to
either hack into Mandrake's website or purposely create a false hash
for a specific file (which would still be detected, it would just make
downloading of that specific file a bit of a slower process). Not
only would either of these methods be illegal, it would also be a huge
waste of resources since neither would do ANYTHING to prevent illegal
copying of files.
Now, creating false hashes of files that ARE being illegally copied,
well there's another possibility. However for Bittorent it is FAR
more effective just to go against the websites that were distributing
the seeds for music, movies and such. I saw "were" because the **AAs
have already taken down the big ones.
There has to be an answer to all this copy confontation, though I have to
admit I don't see it myself yet but then I'm no expert in encryption. Then
again, the MPAA et.al. seem to have employed the wrong "experts" when they
came up with CSS, which is not a cipher at all - what a blunder.
The blunders of the MPAA are so numerous that they're impossible to
name, and they go all the way back to trying to make VCRs illegal back
in the early 80's. Why motion picture companies even still bother
with such an inept organization is beyond me. They're spending
millions upon millions of dollars and all they've ever managed to
accomplish is to piss off the motion picture industries customers.
Same goes for the RIAA, and a LOT of music artists HAVE realized this
fact. Interestingly enough, through all this talk about the music
industry losing so much money to illegal downloads and copyright
infringement, the independent record labels are seeing somewhat of a
golden age with revenues and profits surging forward.
There is also apparently a positive side to the P2P "illegal" copying,
where it has actually increased sales of disks... and books, as mentioned
here:
http://janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html - well worth the
read. It's also worth quoting a sentence from that site: "Again, from
personal experience: in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+
albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that
didn't show I owed them money."
Yup, this story has been echoed by others in the music industry. In
fact, even some fairly big name recording artists have found that they
really aren't making any money from record sales anymore. Instead
they use their record sales almost like a marketing tool to sell their
music in other ways. Take someone like Moby, who has several platinum
selling records to his name. He's become the master of licensing his
music into commercials, movies, TV, etc.
That's a hazy area - AIUI there are countries where they are not obliged to
label their copy-protected disks as "non-archivable". If not enough people
know or care about copy-protected Audio CDs it just won't matter anyway -
that's a number which is not clear to me right now. It *is* worrying that
they have managed to get the media to regurgitate the idea that the sales
are down because of copying... when in fact, IMO, the real reason is that
the content is crap.
What worries me is that not enough people know about the problems
associated with copy protected CDs NOW, and will just go right ahead
and buy them only to find out that 2 or 3 years down the road these
same CDs will no longer play in their stereo system. Even when these
CDs ARE labeled as having some sort of copy protection, it's usually a
VERY small and hard-to-find label.
