The new threat to Hollywood: Darknets
PRIVATE, ENCRYPTED FILE-SHARING NETWORKS SET TO GROW.
By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Mercury News
<http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/12306819.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.
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.
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 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.''
Contact Dawn C. Chmielewski at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
(800) 643-1902.
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