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The Internet The Almighty Buck

Next-gen Copyright-aware P2P System Whitepaper 280

Posted by michael from the p2p-stands-for-pay-to-play dept.
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?"
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Next-gen Copyright-aware P2P System Whitepaper More

Next-gen Copyright-aware P2P System Whitepaper

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  • Because here's a hint: make the protocol open, and people will re-write it to exclude the copyrights.

    Oh, it's server-based and not 'true' P2P...my mistake.

    No one will use it :P

    • Kinda sad... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rd_syringe ( 793064 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:26PM (#9963845) Journal
      You basically admitted that nobody will use it because copyrights are enforced. Heaven forbid people respect copyrights. You know, like we demand with the GPL. I actually got accused of trolling the other day because of my sig.
      • Not that i condone warezing ; Having id as your example of how warez are affecting the games industry doesn't really do any justice to the problem.

        At least change your sig in 'id Software lost $2.75 million to record-breaking piracy on the weekend before Doom 3's release ; And hauled in a few multi million licensing contracts of that same engine ; Thanks Guys !'

      • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rking ( 32070 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:33PM (#9963883)
        You basically admitted that nobody will use it because copyrights are enforced.

        Unless they can come up with a better selling point than "with added restrictions" then of course nobody will use it.

        People who don't want to infringe copyrights are entirely capable of not infringing copyrights. They don't need a system that prevents them doing it.

        People who do want to infringe copyrights also obviously don't want a system that prevents them doing it.

        Unless there's actually something they do BETTER than the competition then they aren't going to appeal to anyone.

      • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ScytheBlade1 ( 772156 )
        Okay then, re-phrase. Too few people will use it for it to stay up for long at all, unless given massive funding by the RIAA/someone.

        You can take it however you want to, but if you look at the growth of networks that don't care for copyrights (note I said "care", not "honor", since it's ultimately up to the person on the other end, not the means of obtaining it) compared to say, napster (really? does anyone you know use napster?)...what I said is more or less an educated guess on the future of it.

      • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Mateito ( 746185 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:38PM (#9963921) Homepage
        I'm guessing that dollar figure comes from 50000 lost sales at $55 a pop. The question that always needs to be asked is "how many of those 50000 wouldn't have bought the game anyway?" I'm not saying that they should have downloaded it... I'm no where near saying that id shouldn't be rewarded for 4 years of effort... but I do dispute the statement that id "lost" that amount of money. For the record, I haven't bought Doom III. I'm waiting for the Demo to see if it runs on my hardware, and to work out if the game justifies updating my video card.

        • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Sylver Dragon ( 445237 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:52PM (#9964017) Journal
          As an addition to this, how many of those 50,000 had already pre-ordered the game, and just wanted to get an early start? I know of at least 2 people who did this. Myself, I am in the same boat as you, wait for the demo, then buy it if I like it. Plus, I'll probably wait for it to hit about $30 before I shell out for it, I just can't bring myself to pay $55 for a game anymore.
          The dollar figure is just a made up number to throw around to make it sound like ID lost a bunch, there really is no way to know.

      • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:42PM (#9963951) Homepage Journal
        well, your sig is a bit misleading. at least the number is taken out of ass, since how can you LOSE money if you're not yet even SELLING anything(later release date for europe).. you're just guess-estimating the number on how many people will not buy it because they could download it with torrent - but since they weren't going to buy it anyways how it was loss is beyond me(they could just as well have calculated that OMG every chinese guy skipped buying this game because of bad crop - WE LOST GAZILLION BILLION DOLLARS. or that a million people will play it in net cafes: another 20 million 'lost').

        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.
        • 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.

          It's more than "a cent or two". Server bandwidth runs around $1/GB, so Doom3 would probably cost $1.50 to download.

      • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:50PM (#9964007)
        ID Software will not let you run the game on a computer with legal CD emulation software installed.

        Thus the only version of the game I can run on my system is a pirate version.

        Thanks, guys!

        • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Informative)

          by jparker ( 105202 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @07:03PM (#9964078) Homepage
          (Disclaimer: I don't work for id and don't know the details of their situation, but I do work in the game industry and am familiar with the practices in general.)

          In many cases, copy protection like this is forced on developers by the publishers. The devs usually have absolutely nothing to do with it, never even touching (or knowing) the copy protection software used. For all of us, it's very frustrating because we try to provide users with as bug-free an experience as we can get, and then publishers slap a buggy-as-hell copy protection system on and we take the flak. They're the ones who are all paranoid about pirates, while we mostly just want people to have fun playing our game.
          • I don't imagine ID had to go around begging for someone to take a chance on them and publish their little game, or that they are so ignorant of how the industry works that it took them by surprise.

          • why don't you.... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by zogger ( 617870 )
            ... just publish it and release it yourself? It's digital, it doesn't get much easier than that to publish, and you can contract dvd or cd burning and packaging yourself, or even do that yourself.

            To me, and I'm not a downloader of anything that is gray market, music movies or games,so I got no dog in this fight, I just wonder why they charge those ridiculous prices, when they could severely drop the prices to very cheap and make it on volume sales. Like today, there's no reason music cds couldn't be 3 buck

            • Unfortunately, very few developer groups out there have the a good enough financial position to do something like this. Paradox Entertainment [paradoxplaza.com] and a few others that hava a loyal fan base are starting to do this kind of thing, but most other studios are either owned by a big media conglomerate [www.blizzardcom] or just sold out to a big publisher [poptop.com]. id is one of the few developers that has the power to do something like this and is not even trying.

              I don't plan to buy the game until id releases the obligatory official patch th

        • Id's Doom3 (Score:3, Informative)

          by zoloto ( 586738 )
          That's a mistake, really. I bought D3 when it came out and love playing it. While you can't use CD emulation cd software to pretend the cd is in the disk is a moot point, even trying to copy the cd doesn't work. {I've tried this with several programs and in linux using bit-for-bit copies, still never worked- let me know if i was doing something wrong.)

          So I found a tutorial on the internet on how to effectively use a HEX editor on doom3.exe to essentially remove the software protection, or copyright (whate

          • Re:Id's Doom3 (Score:5, Insightful)

            by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @08:47PM (#9964656)
            I don't think you understand. even with a real Doom 3 CD in the drive you cannot run the game if you have drive emulation software installed on your computer.

            there have been other games (e.g. Painkiller) where you cannot run the game if you have CD writer software installed on your computer.

            I'm not talking about actually using the emulation /writer software. If it is simply installed you cannot get the game you paid for to work.

            This is like not being able to play DVDs if you have video codecs installed, just because some dumbfuck company thinks having codecs installed mean you will rip, encode and pirate.

            P.S. I don't have to justify anything - since I cannot run the software I don't. I have not pirated the game, or any other game. I have no problem paying for software, but if the software will mess me about and try to say what I can and cannot have installed on my own computer, then I simply take my business elsewhere.

      • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sweetshark ( 696449 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:55PM (#9964027)
        id Software lost $2.75 million to record-breaking piracy on the weekend before Doom 3's release. Thanks, guys!
        The number you show in you sig was never claimed by id software, it was done by some BBC journalist. The id officials never used it - because it is nonsense. The news about "losses by piracy" alone probably were PR (concidering ids cool statements in the same article) worth 2.7 million in sales. And thats not just multipling supanova-downloads (before release) with the game prize. Without a estimate on how many users would buy the game when it hits the stores this number is utterly worthless.
        Link to the BBC article about "lost sales" [bbc.co.uk] for reference.
        I actually got accused of trolling the other day because of my sig.
        well, you are.
        You basically admitted that nobody will use it because copyrights are enforced.
        No. He says that nobody will use a network which relies on central servers and a registration. Maybe because of:
        • fear they will start to charge fees
        • because it is clumsy to register every little poem or pic you made
        • because central servers are easy to watch (collecting spam targets and what not)
        • other p2p networks dont have these problems and are more popular
        • .... (many other reasons)
        • copyright issues
      • Really? They lost money to piracy? Did the ships carrying copies of DooM3 get boarded and looted? Oh, your just spewing corporate spin, never mind.

      • Re:Kinda sad... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jrockway ( 229604 ) *
        id software lost money from me too. You know why? Because I didn't buy Doom3. It doesn't run on my Powerbook so obviously I stole the money from them right?
      • I downloaded D3 'cause I was unsure whether I'd like it or not. Turns out, it's a piece of shit not considering the "pretty graphics." Therefore, I shall not go out and buy it. Hooray for the warez community! Saved me a small chunk of change!
    • Even better, make it open standard, mix copy righted and non-copyrighted material, and allow people to purchase copy righted stuff for a small fee. Really, who doesn't download their favorite show when they miss them these days? Hell, even my mother who's 3 thousand away is asking me how to download her favorite show. She would pay for it too.
      • Personally, I think a subscription idea would be perfect for that sort of thing. Either pay $X per episode, X hopefully being lower than, or very close to 1; or, you pay $Y per month for access to all episodes of a large variety of shows. (Best if you get to pick the shows)
        Now here's the hitch, once you download a show, you should be able to burn it to a DVD and keep it. Ideally, the quality should be high enough that you can burn several episodes to a DVD and watch them on your TV, and not notice that t
        • My folks got into 24 recently. I downloaded the first and second seasons for them and feel not at all bad about it, because they should have been able to see them broadcast before seeing the second half of the third season, to get an idea of the angst that Jack Bauer experienced through the death of his wife and kidnapping of his daughter, prior to watching her work at the same agency as him.

          Yeah, they're available for purchase, but they were broadcast for free previously. This is simply time-shifting.

      • My Comcast cable subscription comes with something called OnDemand and it allows you to watch numerous shows at your convenience, many of which are free. I don't use it myself but there it is, a legitimate subscription based service that lets you watch TV programs at your convenience.
        • I have it too. While it nice, it doesn't have nearly enough shows and episodes to select from. What I am talking about is a system that will allow you to watch any episode of your favorite show any time and OnDemand. OnDemand can do this but will require massive storage and probably fatter pipe.
    • A "real" P2P client is in the works, one that is both a download client and sales server, much like you'd use with any other P2P service.

      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 :).

    • Re:Wonder how long that will last. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dmayle ( 200765 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @07:23PM (#9964221) Homepage Journal

      make the protocol open, and people will re-write it to exclude the copyrights.

      And well they should. I'm not saying that copyright should go away, or anything quite so dramatic, but as soon as you have a system whereby it's possible to physically limit free speech, you no longer have free speach. (Yay free speech zones!). Let the judicial system do what it's supposed to do, prosecute those who deserve to be prosecuted, and stay away from any new forms of enslavement like this...

      • OT: free speech zones (Score:5, Insightful)

        by edalytical ( 671270 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @07:40PM (#9964303)
        Nothing quite pisses me off like the so-called free speech zones. I thought this whole country was a free speech zone. Didn't you?

        • I thought this whole country was a free speech zone. Didn't you?

          It's been obvious for some time now that this is no longer the case. I've moved out of the country because of this. I still keep up on politics, and vote to try and make a difference, but, at this time, I have no desire to live in the country I grew up so proud of.

    • Well, true P2P or not, it was my impression that networks that can have a few central users on very fast connections (e.g. the original Napster) can perform much better with many people using them, for one thing because each search only has to go to the servers and not through every node. Which is probably (at least one reason) why the old Napster used to work so much better than Gnutella did not long after. With the introduction of supernodes in most P2P schemes, this is probably mitigated somewhat, but

    • screw how long it lasts, I'm wondering how exactly it works? You only share with other people that already own the software or music? If they already have it, why would they need to download it again over the network? If they lose the original for whatever reason (virus, etc) how do they prove to the network that they owned it before?

      Seems like a p2p network that would have lots of clients (pretty much everybody) but few trades because, after all, you can only download what you already have on your PC o
    • I don't know if you are trolling, or just haven't read through the site yet. I am the CEO/President of the company that put this technology together - so let me try and summarize what we're trying to do.

      The system described in the whitepaper has been implemented - its purpose is to enable anybody on a P2P network to support the artist while trading files legally with their friends and other people on the net. We have a very difficult balancing act to perform: help the artist and fan without removing any o

  • BitTorrent, Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animaether ( 411575 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:16PM (#9963774) Journal
    I see that BitTorrent wasn't listed along with Kazaa, eDonkey and Morpheus.

    Strange, as it was recently used as an example of "a responsible and legitimate use of P2P" by distributing Microsoft's Windows XP SP2.

    I don't suppose this has anything to do with the SP2 torrent seeds being 'pulled' from the organizer's website at Microsoft's request (read:order) ?
    • Strange, as it was recently used as an example of "a responsible and legitimate use of P2P" by distributing Microsoft's Windows XP SP2.

      Didn't Microsoft send a DMCA take-down notice to someone disbributing SP2 with BitTorrent?

    • Also, strange because Kazaa's "Gold" or whatever they called it downloads are a quite effective channel for distribution of legal software.

      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 copyr

      • "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.

        Their language is misleading. How do you "enable" legal file trades? Simply enabling *any* file trades automatically enables legal trades to happen. They happen all the time. [Un]fortunately, so do illegal file trades which also are enabled by enabling file tra
    • I don't know why aren't more sites using BitTorrent to deliver software and media.

      It has all the advantages of P2P, combined with the fact that, if you set up the tracker, you know *exactly* what's being distributed. You take load off your servers, users get files faster. Everyone wins. The client is small and has been ported to a gazillon systems aswell.

    • Re:BitTorrent (Score:2, Interesting)

      by iive ( 721743 )

      I see that BitTorrent wasn't listed along with Kazaa, eDonkey and Morpheus.

      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 s

  • All This (Score:4, Funny)

    by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:17PM (#9963779)
    ...and still no Metallica?

  • It'll never work :) (Score:5, Funny)

    by dan dan the dna man ( 461768 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:17PM (#9963784) Homepage Journal
    I suspect we like our non-copyright aware distribution channels too much ;)

  • more legitimate uses (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Gnomoradio [gnomoradio.org] is also a legitimate use of P2P, though its catalog is much smaller at the moment...

  • Whitepaper (Score:4, Interesting)

    by r2q2 ( 50527 ) <zitterbewegung&gmail,com> on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:18PM (#9963796) Homepage
    A whitepaper alone doesn't say much. Trying to scale to that level hasn't been done before and is very ambitious for it to do. It could possibly be done but the better question is when.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:19PM (#9963797)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cinematique ( 167333 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:19PM (#9963798)
    This is great and all, but I think the stat we *really* want to know is... how many Library of Congress' will this thing hold?

  • An honorable goal for the good of mankind (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:19PM (#9963799) Homepage
    OF course it won't fly... the good of mankind is dwarfed by the needs of a few to make and control trillions of dollars.

  • I have a similiar project.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:19PM (#9963801)

    but mine is concentrated mostly on pr0n.

  • detect copyrighted works? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:23PM (#9963828)
    so what exactly is a copyrighted work? when i worked in a copy shop, we were told anything created (in our examples: photos) were automatically protected as property of the creator for such and such a time frame.... what then, would be able to be sent, besides GPL stuff?
    • Just because something is copyrighted doesn't mean that it can't be shared. The GPL and the Creative Commons and pretty much every other license depends on you owning the copyright to the work that you're licensing (otherwise, how can you say who can or can't distribute it?). Not all copyrights are bad.
    • when i worked in a copy shop, we were told anything created (in our examples: photos) were automatically protected as property of the creator for such and such a time frame.... what then, would be able to be sent, besides GPL stuff?

      Stuff from outside that time frame, obviously. Unless the time frame is 5000 years or so, I'd say the majority of "stuff" people have created is not under copyright.

  • Idiotic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:25PM (#9963841)
    I thought one of the main purposes of P2P was that it is decentralized. A supercomputer cluster is hardly decentralized.

    Also, how will it "detect" copyrighted works? I can just zip up my favorite illegal MP3s and give them a name like "good.zip" and it would have to be manually flagged as "bad".
    • Also, how will it "detect" copyrighted works? I can just zip up my favorite illegal MP3s and give them a name like "good.zip" and it would have to be manually flagged as "bad".

      Hey, I think you just violated the DMCA!

  • http://www.bitmunk.com/images/tutorial/payment.png [bitmunk.com] <-- That sums if all up right there.

    Note the /. geek [slashdot.org] in the bottom right-corner, left out. =(

  • It is an interesting idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by r.jimenezz ( 737542 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <hzenemijr>> on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:35PM (#9963900)
    You have to give it that. Personally I think this is what the music industry should have done a long time ago.

    However, in addition to technical and scale issues mentioned elsewhere, I can see some points of controversy:

    • Associating a digital certificate with a real life identity. How are they going to check this? Also raises a lot of privacy issues and so on
    • Micro-payments. Remains to be seen whether that's going to work. Will it use a credit card? A custom system? Has Bitmunk got enough of a name for people to trust them?
    • Minimum price. One has to assume that the system won't allow transactions where the artist's (and Bitmunk's!) share is not covered...

    Hmm... Come think of it, there's something fishy here. Let's say I download the song and I get to play it as much as I want. Let's assume I can't share it over non-protected P2P, but hey, I can sell it again when I no longer want to listen to it (as if there's no way to copy to another, unencumbered format, but bear with me...) Why on earth should the artist get a piece of it every time the same copy is sold? I understand they are trying to appease to RIAA & Co with this but this is not fair. It's not like they get a dime if I re-sell my CDs.

    Furthermore, it may well be that the label claims copyright over the songs, thus keeping any proceeds from methods like this and not really helping the artist.

    Very interesting - I would really like to see it or some equivalent take off, but until then I'll wait with plenty of healthy skepticism.

  • Well, sounds nice but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by __aagctu1952 ( 768423 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:36PM (#9963904)
    I would rather like to see every public domain human creation in existence that can be expressed by a digital medium to be archived. A Project Gutenberg so to speak, but for not just books but also images, audio and video as well. For example, there are veritable treasure troves of old films just lying around degrading and collecting dust in television archives around the world but even if they were all digitized (as is being done with some extra valuable movies in danger of degrading to unusability) I doubt we would see them offered for free to the general public. The bandwidth costs would just be too big for any company/state television attempting it. A distributed P2P system however would be ideal for this.

    In the meantime, there are a few sites attempting it on a smaller scale - the Prelinger Archives over on archive.org [archive.org] are definitely worth a look for anyone interested in old American war, educational and propaganda films for example (like the (in)famous "Duck & Cover" movie)...
    • This would be a free as in speech versus free as in beer issue. You would be free to redistribute public domain works from such a massive online catalog of things, but you would probably have to pay a per download fee or a monthly fee or something for access to such a resource.

      I've bought quite a few public domain movies on DVD. They cost me $5 each. That's to cover the dvd, printing and distribution costs. Which seems fair to me. What I'm interested in is that I can now make a copy of the films on these D
      • A small fee would be alright with me. The big problem with that kind of material isn't the cost of distribution anyway - it's the availability and source format. Digitizing into a proper (open) format takes care of the latter. The former however is where a global database would really shine... imagine being able to get archive footage from say, the Russian state television's archives just as easily as downloading a movie from Kazaa - private interest aside, just imagine what it could do in research and educ
    • The problem is that, in America, no work is going to enter the public domain at all for another twenty or so years, thanks to the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. And when they do, they will be stuff that was copyrighted in the 30s. I agree there's a need for projects such as you describe, but it is also crucial to ensure that they remain viable. Current American copyright law -- and we've seen how America influences countries to "harmonize" stuff with them -- poses a great danger to organizations trying to

  • Hehe (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:38PM (#9963922)
    Guess which P2P no one will be using? ;)

  • "P2P whitepaper" indeed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:47PM (#9963992) Journal
    First: This ain't a whitepaper - it's a sales pitch.

    Second: How is this P2P when there's a big centralized "Authorization service" in the middle?

    And guess who is supposedly running that service? Why the paper's authors..

  • What about the public domain? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MenTaLguY ( 5483 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:49PM (#9964004) Homepage
    So, what about public domain works? They have no copyright to sign them, and it is impossible to sign and register them all -- can they not be distributed by such a system?

    If not, then it will create a situation in which only works approved (directly or indirectly) by a cenralized signing authority can be distributed. Bad if such systems become legally mandated.

    On the other hand, if unsigned PD works can be distributed, then there's not much point -- you can (via analog holes if nothing else) strip the signature from a copyrighted work and distribute it that way. So there wouldn't be much point.

  • Flawed: Wont work. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by billsf ( 34378 ) <billsf&cuba,calyx,nl> on Friday August 13, 2004 @06:53PM (#9964024) Homepage Journal
    What's the point of this? First, its not true P2P if a central server is involved. It has been proven that no watermark system can work no matter how much funding is pumped in. It has also been shown that any watermark can be detected and stripped out, even if it is encrypted, due to the nature of how watermarks actually work. All DRM will fail in the end as will DMCA and any other laws trying to protect it. Forget it.

    Most people will pay for something they really want anyways. Most 'pirated' matterial is ditched. There are cryptographic methods to make micro-payments that don't require a 'bank'. This whole method may look clever to some, but absolutely __nothing__ is new! Don't forget the rule is "try before you buy". This is a general principle of copyright law (fair use) and its not likely to change anytime soon. Internet is 'airplay', 'airplay' is good advertising. When did that change?

  • How about anonymous P2P instead?
  • There were other compressed audio formats, and even if they weren't as good as MP3 they were good enough... the problem was that any of them (including MP3) needed a faster computer to decode in real-time in the background than most people had. MP3 happened to come on the scene at the right time to take off... or MP3 happened on the scene because it was the right time.

  • Capitalists will sell you rope to hang them with (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cryofan ( 194126 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @07:30PM (#9964248) Journal
    Isn't that what Lenin said? Or was it Trotsky?

    Anyway, I hope the Big Corporations ARE able to control p2p so that copyright material cannot be traded (even though I am a world-class Kazaa and usenet binaries dog myself). Because they once the corporate capitalists have it rigged so that distribution of audiovisual entertainment is all done by networks, client server and p2p, then that will set them up for a Big Fall.

    The only reason that America is in the grip of corporate capitalism is that mass media has been able to propagate top-down, business friendly memes into American living rooms. Their community has become hollowed out, and is the domain of the corporations. THat is why we work like dogs compared to citizens of the other western nations.

    But when the p2p networks cannot be used to trade copyrighted material for free, then that vacuum, that demand for free movies, documentaries, sitcoms will be filled by "amateurs". And ya know what? With a little practice, and using cheap digital cameras and editing software, and free music, amateur actors, we leftists can crank out entertainment with leftist, bottom-up memes, anti-corporate sentiment, and toss it out on the p2p networks at very little cost.

    You think 200 channels of cable tv is a lot? Wait until there are a million channels on the net 4 years from now, when wireless broadband has forced broadband prices down to where 70% of America has broadband.

    Steven Spielberg on the upcoming changes:
    "Steven Spielberg has forecast that the Internet will eventually become the primary source for entertainment. Appearing on NBC's Today show on Thursday, Spielberg told cohost Katie Couric: "I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we're all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines." When Couric remarked, "Great, I'm gonna lose my job," Spielberg interjected, "We're all gonna lose our jobs. We're all gonna be on the Internet trying to find an audience.""

    Give Americans a few years where they are not subjected only to top-down corporate memes, and then see where the political direction goes. I think we will head in Sweden's direction....and the Big Corporations will have brought it on themselves through their own greed....

    • But when the p2p networks cannot be used to trade copyrighted material for free, then that vacuum, that demand for free movies, documentaries, sitcoms will be filled by "amateurs". And ya know what? With a little practice, and using cheap digital cameras and editing software, and free music, amateur actors, we leftists can crank out entertainment with leftist, bottom-up memes, anti-corporate sentiment, and toss it out on the p2p networks at very little cost.

      I'm left with only one question: what is sto

    • This post was particularly interesting to me so rather than mod, I'd like to respond.

      I'm going to be a senior at an art college and for my senior project I'm considering starting an online tv network of sorts. The way I see it now, my main competition are sites like atomfilms.com, etc.

      I'm curious what business models people think will work for this sort of thing. I was thinking of embedding short, TASTEFUL (think cartoon network style) ads, about 10 seconds or less into the episodes of shows, and maybe at

  • "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."

    This is being done to squeeze yet more money out of "consumers" for the copyright creators.

    I don't overly fault the creators for doing this. I do fault ourselves for not finding a way to do something similar, although for different ends.

    Specifically, referencing page 126 of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture [free-culture.cc]...

    "Perhaps the single most importan
  • I doubt this system will fly, but I'd like to point out that a lot of the above comments seem to misunderstand some of the major concepts in the system.

    As I understand it, the system is not designed to emulate physical sale transactions. When a seller sells a song, for example, the seller is not then deprived of that song. In other words, the seller is not selling the song, but rather their time and bandwidth. This gives users of the system the insentive to continue using the system and help to distrib

  • How Bitmunk makes its money (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Flexagon ( 740643 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @08:18PM (#9964486)

    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)

    by bitspotter ( 455598 )
    Why don't we try this [r30.net] instead?

    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 accu
  • What if they used the old napster system of all the computers reporting to the central server what files they have to upload and then using a bit torrent like process to make it easier to d/l large files. While initially al the files would have to be hosted on servers controlled by the P2P owners as more people d/l the files they would be able to take the load off their servers and put it onto others.

    Perhaps files could be submitted to them reviewed and then authorized to enter the network. If it really t

  • Did I just read 900TB of storage, 300M transactions per day and trade music, television, movies and books?

    Makes me want MULTIMEDIA WIKI NOW. Edited / uploaded by everyone, for everyone. Like the articles on the normal wiki, just with image, sound, videos and everything else.

    All we need is some geek to setup one of those popular wikis with a donate now button. I'm confident donations would pay the bandwidth..
  • current copyright law tends to protect the corporations that collect, hoard and exploit information of any kind. This kind of protection inevitably leads to monopoly control and abuse of this power.

    There must be a balance against information monopolies currently protected by government.

    The reaction could be:

    -complain loudly enough so the goverment changes law to greatly limit the period over which a corporation can expoit information. ha.

    -throw the tea back. Don't drink the tea, or download the tea and

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