Next-gen Copyright-aware P2P System Whitepaper 280
meier73 writes "A whitepaper has just been released detailing a secure (OpenSSL/digital signatures), copyright-aware P2P network. The paper claims that this system enables legal file trades, something that isn't guaranteed by Kazaa, Morpheus or eDonkey. The whitepaper goes on to state that the long-term goal of this system is to catalog
every human creation in existence that can be expressed by a digital medium. Project stats: a super-computing cluster that will scale to more than 900TB of storage, 300M transactions per day and trade music, television, movies and books.
Doesn't this constitute a responsible and legitimate use of P2P?"
Whitepaper (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:BitTorrent, Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
This article sounds like more like FUD to distract from the existing file-sharing networks to me. Specific examples of lameness in the article:
"The paper claims that this system enables legal file trades, something that isn't guaranteed"
Their system doesn't "guarantee" it either -- for example even "copyright aware" tech can't know if Linux is covered by SCO copyrights without help.
"that the long-term goal of this system is to catalog every human creation in existence that can be expressed by a digital medium"
Absurd. Personally, I wouldn't want to give them a license to distribute all my copyrighted works; and I doubt Enron would use them to share internal memos. And wonderful human creations like sandcastles and orchestral productions and a good meal have their beauty in their transience.
Re:Wonder how long that will last. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just a big number they invented for some pr.
but it is true, if I was _paying_ I wouldn't want to bother with p2p since I'm already _paying_ for it I could easily pay the cent or two that would go into the necessary bandwith to get it from the centralised server and certainly wouldn't bother with donating bandwith to their business volunteraly.
if the material were legal(licensed with $$) and there were a working micropayment(hell, it's not going to be micro when the mpaa/riaa gets around) there wouldn't be need for p2p since you could finance the fat pipes and buying the bandwith from akamai with the money.
Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus the only version of the game I can run on my system is a pirate version.
Thanks, guys!
WRONG (Score:1, Interesting)
Furthermore, there are a heck of a lot of applications for such a system in the commercial art & design world.
Re:BitTorrent (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably because it is based on/inspired by BitTorrent. Look at the diagram on page1 (introduction).
The "System load balansers" ARE trackers. The clients can share content, but only under the control of the tracker. What is new is that all connections are encripted.
You can see that if you want to distribute something you should make contract with them (probably not more sophisticated than eBey) and upload the content on their server. Probaly they will water_mark it.
I must say that I admire them. They are willing to support all platforms and that is already good start. They are more probably not going at the BIG FAT movie and music distributors. Instead they will collect more copyrighted works from individuals or smaller entitels that are ready to take risk. If they keep the prices low and deliver content fast, they may succeed. Wish you luck boys.
And something more - 900TB are good start but are not enough. The local content server of my ISP is about that size and it is still growing. I'm sure you guess i'm not from US and i'm not going to tell you more. Taina maina.
Re:Wonder how long that will last. (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, clients must be registered with us to be used on the network. We give each piece of software a private key to sign with -- and we won't be giving any keys out to software that violates copyright :).
How Bitmunk makes its money (Score:3, Interesting)
In addition to a per-transaction fee (a sample one is given as $0.15 on a song perchase), there is this paragraph at the very end of the How It Works Seller [bitmunk.com] document:
You can use the money you earn on Bitmunk to buy digital files that you want, or you can transfer the money in your Bitmunk financial account to a banking institution of your choice. It can take anywhere from two days (if you're a highly trusted seller) to one month (if you're new, are selling newly registered creative works, or have complaints logged against you) to withdraw your money to a banking institution.
So Bitmunk also makes money on interest. Not unreasonable in principle. For example, it defeats the purpose of micropayments if someone's credit card is hit on each purchase. On the other hand, 2 days to 1 month sounds long to outrageously long for a modern system. And much like a brokerage account, one might additionally expect interest for funds held there over some length of time.
great timing (Score:2, Interesting)
A proposal for a collective licensing scheme, complete with technical infrastructure.
Criteria:
1. minimizes the changes required to existing and future software
2. capable of being securely implemented in software released under open-source licenses.
3. runs on existing hardware and networks without modification
4. preserves the capability to innovate new software and hardware
5. provides consumers with the digital content access to which they have become accustomed with file sharing
6. provides publishers and artists with the access to consumers and promotion to which they have become accustomed (whether they admit it or not).
7. fairly compensates publishers and artists for providing digital access to their works based on popularity of the works.
8. does not interfere with consumer's established fair use rights, including those of first sale, or the abilty to make copies for purposes of research, education, citation, review, format, device- or time-shifting, or data backups.
9. is reasonably robust against technical attack.
Send me some feedback.
Watermarking vector graphics? (Score:2, Interesting)
How would one watermark vector graphics, MIDI files, XML files, or any other file containing discrete expression rather than expression derived by sampling a signal?
Bit torrent meets Napste v1.0 (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps files could be submitted to them reviewed and then authorized to enter the network. If it really took off they wouldnt even have to host much on their servers after the initial seeding was completed
Re:Answer: Is this FUD? (mod up) (Score:1, Interesting)
C'mon. Let's take a concrete example:
- How will your system (both techcnology and human processes) know if it's "legal" to distribute the kernel today?
Hint, the best IP lawyers in the country don't have an answer for that question yet." You're making the false assumption that we use some sort of file detection software to figure out if something is copyrighted or not - which is not the case (you might want to read over our website before making statements like this). "
Sorry, no such assumptions were needed. The only assumption is that it's difficult to track down and verify the copyright holders involved in many if not most works.
"We clear each and every creative work on the network. When you select a creative work (such as The Beatles, Penny Lane) and associate it with a file (such as an MP3) - that creative work has been cleared for sale on the network by the artist. "
Clear with who? The Beastie Boys, or James Newton [corante.com]? SCO or Novell or Linus or IBM? The author of this work, or the Tolkein estate [canoe.ca]. Don't tell me you'll be the courts, juries, and judges who will define the outcome of such cases. Or that you'll have psychic powers to guess when such cases will come up.
I don't doubt that your technology (as well as Kazaa's) could choose not to distribute some works; but to track down and maintiain the moving target of what's owned by whom is not "guarantee"able by encrypted tunnels and supercomputers. Unless you can answer the manual processes about keeping up with the legal system, I'd stay away from the word "guarantee" unless you have pretty deep pockets to fullfil the guarantees you offer to people like SCO who might expect billions for their disputed copyrights.
Re:great timing (Score:2, Interesting)
1. It does not allow the consumer and artist to decide how much a work is worth. Instead, the total amount of money given to a network that supports this schema will be divided up according to the work's popularity.
2. It is incredibly easy to cheat the system for a particular artist; just set up a bunch of machines to download the artist's work to make it more popular. Or, if the popularity is decided by search queries, just create a script that will search for it a million times.
3. Makes Beethoven's work worth less than the latest "guy gets hit with shovel, so funny LOL!!1!" video just because everyone's got to see that video, but not everyone is a Beethoven fan.
4. Porn will get the most money because it is the most popular.
5. There is room for huge and unfair financial disparities: two people can both pay $5 to use a service, and one guy downloads a few songs, while the other guy downloads every song available for a measely $5. It is hardly reasonable to say that someone only needs to pay $5 to download thousands of songs.
Collective licensing unnecessarily cheapens the artist's work -- just because an artist only gets 10 downloads, doesn't mean the artist should only get 10 cents. If the artist's fans think the music is worth $10 a download and would therefore pay that, the artist should get paid $100, not 10 cents. Collective licensing is yet one more scheme that strips the artist from being able to choose his own prices and get paid what he's really worth. Its another scheme that simply hurts the artist and therefore hurts the rest of us as well.