sandra_dee-ga:
You have asked a very important question, one that many people in the
United States have been arguing over ever since the RIAA began their
copyright enforcement investigations and lawsuits.
First, please read the following article:
RIAA Discloses Some Methods of Tracking - Computercops.biz
http://computercops.biz/article2915.html
From the article, you will note several important points. First, the
RIAA is not monitoring the traffic entering or leaving your PC. You
are absolutely correct in that it would be a huge undertaking to
attempt to monitor and analyze all of the traffic going to and from
your computer, along with the traffic going to and from the computers
of every single other person in the US (not to mention the world). As
it is, the FBI's evolving Carnivore e-mail monitoring system can only
monitor the communications of a targeted individual; the RIAA
certainly cannot afford technology superior to the federal government!
See this article for more information about Carnivore.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,69662,00.asp
Now, all of the techniques described in the first article require that
the RIAA's agents have access to the music files stored on your PC.
How is this possible? Well, actually, if you are running any
file-sharing software on your PC and you have your music files shared,
then you are basically inviting anyone on the Internet to 'inspect
your files', simply by downloading them from you.
You ask "How is that even legal", in comparison to a police search of
your home. In the case of a search of your home, the police indeed
require a search warrant, issued based on probable cause, as the
sanctity of your home is protected by your Constitutional rights.
However, if you make your MP3's available for downloading by others
through a file-sharing network, then all the RIAA needs to do is look
at the files you are sharing, analyze them (by downloading them
first), and determine the legal status of the files. They do not need
any warrant as you are freely allowing them to inspect and copy the
files. They do not need to prove that anyone has actually downloaded
the files from you, since the fact that they themselves were able to
download them means that you are 'guilty' of illegally distributing
copyrighted material.
The techniques used by the RIAA to confirm that the material
downloaded from your PC is indeed truly violating their copyright are
quite advanced. At the same time, they are very similar to the
techniques that file-sharing networks themselves operate with. For
example, the digital 'hash', or signature, is similar to the approach
used to group together multiple users with the 'same' file available
for sharing. This is what allows parts of a file to be downloaded from
multiple sources at the same time, then reconstructed into the
complete file on your PC.
If you wish to protect yourself from the possibility of prosecution by
the RIAA, then the best thing you can do is to discontinue using the
popular file-sharing networks. The RIAA's agents troll the popular
networks constantly, searching for users sharing popular music. They
target random users that come up on searches, and use the capabilities
of the file-sharing applications to request a list of all files shared
by that user. They then analyze those files for evidence of copyright
violation. If you break any part of this chain, even by simply not
sharing any files, you will make it much more difficult for the RIAA
to gather enough evidence to back up any claim that you are committing
copyright violations.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher |
Clarification of Answer by
aht-ga
on
22 Feb 2004 18:16 PST
If you mean, does the RIAA look at binaries posted in Usenet, no one
can say for sure other than the RIAA themselves... and so far, they
aren't telling. However, it is safe to assume that, since the
investigative agents working for the RIAA are so technically competent
as to be able to use the file-sharing networks to their own advantage,
that implies that they have the knowledge and skill to realize that
binaries are being shared over Usenet as well. If you are simply
downloading from Usenet newsgroups, then the only way they can collect
enough evidence on you would be to force your news server operator
(with a court order) to let them install monitoring software on the
news server, monitor the download of a complete set of posts to form a
binary file, THEN identify beyond a reasonable doubt that you have
indeed recombined those posts into an MP3 on your PC. Since this is so
much more work than simply viewing your shared files through whichever
file-sharing network you may use, the likelihood is lower.
Please note, however, that if you are the one POSTING the binaries to
Usenet, then the situation is different. Every post in every newsgroup
on Usenet has enough identifying information in the message header to
point an investigator back to your news server operator, who in turn
could be required by the courts to point the finger at the user who
uploaded the original post.
Hope this helps!
aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher
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