Aug. 05, 2005
Darknets rising to expand file sharing
NEW SEARCH TECHNIQUE COULD BE BOOST TO PIRACY
By Dawn C. Chmielewski
San Jose Mercury News
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/12309492.htm
Fresh from its victory in the Supreme Court Grokster case, Hollywood faces
a new Internet threat -- the rise of ``darknets,'' or private, encrypted
networks that allow the anonymous exchange of music, movies and other
digital files.
The entertainment industry has dismissed these hidden networks as a risk
because they lack the massive reach of a file-swapping service like Kazaa,
which has been downloaded 378 million times and enables the exchange of
billions of songs, movies and software.
But a new search technique, unveiled at a hacker's convention in Las Vegas
last week, could dramatically expand the reach of these darknets beyond
small groups of trusted friends to potentially millions of people.
The technology is the brainchild of Irish programmer Ian Clarke, the
creator of one of the earliest anonymous file-swapping networks, Freenet,
and Swedish mathematician Oskar Sandberg. They set out to build a global
private network that would be impervious to government or corporate censorship.
Work on the new darknet was prompted, in no small part, by the Supreme
Court's June ruling in the closely watched Grokster case. The court ruled
that file-sharing companies can be held liable when they induce people to
engage in piracy. That created risks for anyone operating a peer-to-peer
network and prompted Clarke to recast Freenet as a trusted network of friends.
Expanding the network
The challenge was overcoming the traditional limitations of darknets, which
tend to be small and isolated because only people who know each other form
the network.
Clarke's new Freenet is different in significant ways. It is rare in
allowing people to invite their friends to join the private network or to
connect to others who are already online. Friends tell friends, and the
network grows, not unlike Google's Gmail.
This addresses the key limitation of other encrypted networks, which
traditionally dead-end with groups of six or 10 people. Sandberg and Clarke
developed another innovation to promote the growth of their private network
-- a search tool that would bridge these online islands. It would allow
anyone to find any file -- even if it resides on the hard drive of a
complete stranger.
``It will be impossible for anyone to find out who is exchanging what,''
said Clarke. ``Even your friends won't know what you're doing. You only
have to trust your friends to the extent that they won't turn you in to
the'' Recording Industry Association of America.
Clarke and Sandberg said their work is motivated by the desire to preserve
computer networks as a forum for free speech. But neither hides their scorn
of U.S. copyright laws, which they view as the antithesis of free speech.
``The type of users we spend most of our time thinking about are not
American high school kids trying to download the latest Eminem album,''
said Clarke. ``Our concern is for dissidents in countries like China, where
the Internet is heavily censored.''
Darknets are nothing new. Even before Napster popularized Internet
file-sharing in the late 1990s, people traded files through Internet relay
chat channels and early electronic bulletin boards of the Usenet, which
predated the World Wide Web.
The recent court rulings prompted the creators of file-swapping networks to
go back underground.
``In that sense, it's a continuation of what the Internet has always been
about,'' said J.D. Lasica, author of ``Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the
Digital Generation.'' ``You can today trade files over e-mail or over
Instant Messenger or any number of ways. Short of re-architecting the
entire Internet, there's no way the authorities are ever going to stop this
completely.''
For now, at least, those involved with monitoring and combating Internet
piracy express little worry about Clarke's work.
Debating the risk
Mark Ishikawa is chief executive of BayTSP, a Los Gatos company that tracks
the illegal distribution of copyrighted works on file-swapping networks. He
said darknets pose little a threat to his clients -- so long as they remain
isolated groups of hard-core downloaders.
``The minute you get to the point where you draw attention to yourselves,
we're all over 'em,'' said Ishikawa.
Adam Gervin, senior marketing director for Macrovision, which makes
products to combat digital piracy, said such darknets tend to be magnets
for child pornographers or terrorists -- those who place a premium on
private, encrypted communications. The architecture of the network, which
deposits files on people's computer hard drives, would put people at
``significant risk.''
But Clarke said members of the network won't know what's stored on their
computer -- therefore they would have a reasonable defense.
``In essence, it's about deniability,'' Clarke said. ``The second thing is
we don't want our users censoring information. We don't want our users
saying I don't like that and that and I'm getting rid of it.''
The recording industry dismissed the threat of a global darknet.
``We have always understood that there will be ways people acquire music
illegally online, just as there has always been piracy on the street,''
said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of
America. ``The key is to bring piracy under control so that legitimate
online services can have the chance to compete.''
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post.
_______________________________________________
MEDIANEWS mailing list
medianews@twiar.org
To unsubscribe send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
