Gnutella blocking by an ISP
 

I read an article in CNET mentioning that the RIAA is talking to ISPs to shut down Napster like services specifically OpenNap in the US and abroad. They suggest that Gnutella is next in their list. I'm fairly technical but I do not know if Gnutella can be shut down/blocked trough an ISP. This highly concerns me since I use Gnutella a lot.

Is this true? What are your thoughts?.

I believe that link is <A HREF="http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4925360.html?tag=cd_mh">http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4925360.html?tag=cd_mh</A> They're only trying to shut down systems that run like Napster there, with a central server, but if you read my other thread that no one has yet responded to you will see that I am also concerned about these rich *******s screwing with Gnutella. I would hope that if they start giving ISPs people that use Gnutella and demanding that they terminate their service or something the ISPs would tell them to go screw themselves, since eventually the ISPs will find that they have many, many less customers if they start kicking Gnutella users off. Furthermore, Gnutella has many, many possible uses besides transfer of copyrighted music, so hopefully Gnutella doesn't have to go through Napster's crap. If ISPs or whoever were to start using these programs I posted about in my other thread to cut off people's downloads, I'm not sure what to do, I guess start using encryption and let the programs try to figure out what an encrypted file sounds like. And if the RIAA starts using them to cut off peoples' file transfers, they need to have their sorry rear ends sued to the ground, because the last I knew neither the Internet nor the phone networks belonged to the RIAA for them to cut off people's transmissions. In any case, those more knowledgeable than me (like Gnutella developers) should begin planning to get around this bullcrap. I sent an email to the developers of three Gnutella-compatible program Thrusday morning and am yet to receive a single reply. I just hope the record labels don't get their way. Someone has to eventually tell these idiots to go fuc# themselves, times change and those that don't change with them do so at their own cost.

Thanks for your reply.

I thought about what you mentioned about complaining to your ISP if this happens but we must keep in mind that in the US there are only 3 ISPs that matter. AOL (Time Warner), Earthlink, and Microsoft Network. These guys probably have 90% of all US accounts and all the RIAA have to do is contact these guys and it could spell trouble for US Gnutella users.

JEG

And if they want to keep 90% or whatever it is of all U.S. accounts they had better not start kicking Gnutella users off. Even though they are the main ISPs, they are not the only ones. If people are no longer able to use them since they are being kicked off for using Gnutella, we can turn to any number of other ISPs, including local ones, and these three you speak of begin losing millions of dollars a year for being the RIAA's patsies. They may be the biggest three right now, but you don't remain big by kicking off your users left and right. Hopefully they realize that, but if not I guess they too will have to learn the hard way. This would seem to be common sense, but common sense seems to be a hard thing to come by these days. What worries me more is that there are less high-speed options available (for example, the only two cable modem services I have heard of are @Home and RoadRunner, and as far as I know most places only have one or the other available). The RIAA can give the main ISPs the people they want kicked off, and the ISPs can be stupid enough to do it, but until they become the only ISPs there will be plenty of other options, and they will only hurt themselves. And as to the high-speed thing, I believe that if they were to start kicking off everyone using Gnutella their numbers would shrink even faster than would regular modem-based services, since there is a higher concentration of people using Gnutella on high-speed connections, because of that very fact that they are high-speed. In any case, whoever starts kicking off people that use Gnutella will hurt their own business, at the same time that said users turn elsewhere and are able to continue. If these three ISPs want to shoot themselves in the foot for the heck of it, so be it. But notice one thing, they have either not contacted the ISPs about shutting down Napster users, or they did and the ISPs told them to go screw themselves. Hopefully that's good news on this front. The other thing I worry about is what I posted about in my other thread. Every time a new technology comes along, and I mean any technology, it cuts into the profit margin on whoever did things the old way. That's just life, how it is. Electricity, cars, boats, planes, refrigerators, video game systems, computers, absolutely anything. I don't know why the judges in this country have to be such @$$e$ in this case just because the RIAA is bi+ching louder than anyone has before. Progress was held back for a thousand years thanks to one Catholic church during the Middle Ages for the benefit of a select few, and look at what that cost us. Can you imagine if that hadn't happened, where we would be today with another thousand years of technological progress under our belts? The RIAA seeks to yet again stop technological progress for their own wallets' sake (as if there wasn't enough in there already), and someone has to put a stop to their crap.

I think you're making a dangerous assumption here; that assumption is that the RIAA will be asking the ISPs to kill *all* gnutella users. They 1) Can't do that, and 2) Probably won't try. The way the law works is that in order to get someone's internet access yanked, you have to show that they are posting copyrighted material.

That's the next step folks. If the RIAA is serious about shutting this kind of thing down, they'll do what Metallica did to Napster a few months back. They'll pay people minimum wage to sit in front of a computer and download copyrighted material from the gnutella network. They'll then pay some other people a dollar or two more than minimum wage to track down the isp'a and file complaints on their behalf.

Encryption won't save you. That's because if you are sharing files with the public, they have to be able to be unencrypted on the other end, and that unecryption key has to be public. If you want to be able to share a file with Joe Sixpack in New York, then you'll also be sharing with Joe Blow in the RIAA. Once Mr. Blow has your IP addy and has successfully downloaded copyrighted material from you, he can have his minimum wage workers contact your ISP. Your ISP will likely do one of two things: 1) Contact you and ask you to promise never to do it again, or 2) Pull your connection. If they do anything else, they open themselves up to liability for aiding you in your effort to illegally transfer copyrighted material.

It's true that they can't get every gnutella user ... there are ways to set up private networks (but that also limits your audience), and there are probably way too many gnutella users to go after them all.

However, if news of people losing their cable modems starts rippling through the community, it's very possible that you'll see fewer and fewer people interested in running the risk. And let's face it, cable access is the lifeblood of file sharing communities. Few people can afford T1 or faster connections, and those who have them are probably connecting from their place of employment. I seriously doubt that they'll be willing to risk their jobs to share files if the RIAA starts using the tactic described above. That leaves 56k modems. Yes, you can access the net for free from multiple ISPs using a modem, and if you pay, you can access the net from an almost infinite list of ISPs. But I remember trying to d/l mp3s over my 56k modem, and it was a real pain. If the cable and dsl users get shut down, the whole network goes to crap.

The question is really whether or not the RIAA feels that the expense of going through this effort is worth whatever rewards they might receive from doing it. And that remains to be seen. But there's only so much we can do. Encryption isn't really a useful weapon in this battle. Private networks show more promise, but then you're placing a severe limitation on the audience you reach, and on the number of files available to you. Maybe the answer is offshore servers that people upload their files to. There are plenty of "pirate" countries out there where these things could be set up. But what kind soul is going to go through the expense of purchasing, maintaining, and upgrading these offshore servers if they're not making a buck on it?

In the end analysis, those who use file sharing software to obtain and distribute copyrighted material are pirates, and will ultimately be running the risk that pirates face in any other medium. This is not a value judgement ... I happen to like pirates. Still, no matter how anarchistic and annonymous the net may seem at times, I assure you, it is NOT annonymous, and the anarchy that used to reside here is being erroded by the rule of law. You can whine and moan about it all you want, but that's the facts, Jack.

Here I am running a automated client, it chooses files by their popularity and holds them for a while so others can download them.

How can I control that? How can you expect me to watch it all the time. Yea, some copyrighted files will pass by, but there is lots of other stuff so how can you shut me down?

You want me to monitor it all the time, well then you pay someone to sit there and do it, I don't have time.

What about servers like free web site places, people put up a site with copyrighted stuff on it, and till it's found, it stays up. You don't see them shutting down the whole place.

Yes, the RIAA will try to scare everyone, how do you think the IRS keeps people paying? every time the 15th comes up, you hear more and more stories of people getting "busted" for "evasion". Fear works real well, look at churches.

I don't expect you to do anything but breath. The rest is up to you. However, the law says you are responsible for the material you provide to others via the internet. If you don't like it, don't whine to me. Take steps to change the law.

Again, I don't want you to do anything. Well, it would be nice if you didn't take my posts as a personal attack, but hey, it's a free country. Buy you should know that legally, whether you can monitor it or not, you're responsible for the material.

No, but the particular web site becomes a smoking hole in most cases, or at least is ordered to remove the material or become a smoking hole. That's because the folks providing the server space are required by law to shutdown accounts of customers who use their accounts to violate US copyright law.

Your ISP is required by law to shut you down if you use your DSL, Cable, T1, T3, or 56k connection to violate copyright law. True, you have to be caught first, and then someone has to go through the trouble of complaining about you. And in all liklihood, your ISP will give you a warning before they terminate you. But, again, this is the law.

I'm not trying to scare anyone into shutting down their Gnutella clients. I personally detest the RIAA, and all it stands for, and I hope MP3's of cutting edge music remain an internet staple for a long long time. What I am trying to do is to make sure that people are informed about the risks they are taking. Only an informed citizenry can protect our privacy rights. An uninformed or misinformed citizenry can only do themselves and the rest of us great harm.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE LAW, CHANGE IT. A LITTLE REVOLUTION EVERY TEN YEARS OR SO IS A GOOD THING.

But, just as the revolution won't be televised, it isn't going to happen on this message board. It's one thing to say "Gee, that sucks" and another thing altogether to actually DO something about it.




[This message has been edited by Maxim (edited 03-09-2001).]

I admitedly know very little about encryption and how it works and so forth, besides having written a little text encryption program for a friend a few weeks ago, but if anyone can read your encrypted traffic, what's the point of encrypting anything? I don't mean the RIAA hiring a bunch of hussies to sit around and download your crap all day and decide that it's copyrighted, since I'm yet to see a "Disable downloads by the RIAA" feature on any Gnutella client yet, but I was referring more to something like the programs I mentioned in the thread I created that go through traffic automatically and when they find that something sounds like a copyrighted song they terminate your transfer or do anything else they feel like. If encrypted traffic can just be intercepted and read by whoever wants to, what's the point of encrypting anything? I'm not here to hear something I like, because I always want to hear it like it is. I just don't know why anyone would encrypt anything if anyone, even someone that the file is not intended for, can decrypt the information.

ideally with encryption you would search for something to download, then send a public key to the source and he would encrypt it with that key, and it can only be decrypted by your private key. he could also sign it with his private key, etc. Just that its extra work, and has to be done for every download, but compared to bandwidth encryption cycles are cheap, I mean AES Rijandael (sp), one of the best codecs out there, is pretty fast.

tommenstein is correct in that encryption does not help people who are sharing data. the riaa could do a search and download stuff from you, get your ip, sue you etc. I know, me and some guys got a letter from the RIAA when we were in school http://forums.gnutelliums.com/smile.gif

encryption (via public key for each client) helps riaa from seeing who _else_ is downloading material, but they could still set up a 'sting' server that has songs and try to bait you that way. but thats what you get on a public network, too bad.