Anonymous Servers - New File-Sharing Techniques Are Likely to Test Court Decision

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New File-Sharing Techniques Are Likely to Test Court Decision

Zerra

2005-08-01, 5:47 pm

Thought this might be of interest despite the reporter's technical
cluelessness so common in the mainstream press writers.

Note how the Times tries to frame the issue in an RIAA-friendly
manner, e.g. all who seek anonymity are copyright infringers,
evil-doers who populate Darknets, secret networks that could be used
by... wait for it... TERRORISTS.

New File-Sharing Techniques Are Likely to Test Court Decision
August 01, 2005
By JOHN MARKOFF
New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO, July 31 - Briefly buoyed by their Supreme Court
victory on file sharing, Hollywood and the recording industry are
on the verge of confronting more technically sophisticated
opponents.

At a computer security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday,
an Irish software designer described a new version of a
peer-to-peer file-sharing system that he says will make it
easier to share digital information anonymously and make
detection by corporations and governments far more
difficult.

Others have described similar efforts to build a so-called
darknet that aims to shield the identities of those sharing
information. The issue is complicated by the fact that the
small group of technologists designing the new systems say
their goal is to create tools to circumvent censorship and
political repression - not to abet copyright violation.

Such a stand is certain to test the impact of the Supreme
Court ruling in June against Grokster and StreamCast
Networks, publishers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software,
a number of legal specialists and industry executives said.
The court ruled unanimously that the publishers could be
held liable for the copyright infringement that their
software enabled in the sharing of pirated movies and music.

The Irish programmer, Ian Clarke, is a 28-year-old
free-speech advocate who five years ago introduced a
software system called Freenet that was intended to make it
impossible for governments and corporations to restrict the
flow of any kind of digital information. The system
initially used a secure approach to routing between users
and employed encryption to protect the information from
eavesdroppers who were not part of the network.

Unlike today's open peer-to-peer networks, the new systems
like Mr. Clarke's use software code to connect individuals
who trust one another. He said he would begin distributing
the new version of his program within a few months, making
it possible for groups of users to establish secured
networks - available only to them and those they choose to
include - through which any kind of digital information can
be exchanged.

Though he says his aim is political - helping dissidents in
countries where computer traffic is monitored by the
government, for example - Mr. Clarke is open about his
disdain for copyright laws, asserting that his technology
would produce a world in which all information is freely
shared.

Mr. Clarke lives in Edinburgh and is employed by a music
recommendation site, www.indy.tv While Freenet attracted
wide attention as a potentially disruptive force when he
introduced it in 2000, it proved more difficult to use than
file-sharing programs like Grokster and Napster, and did not
achieve the impact that he envisioned.

Now, however, Mr. Clarke is taking a fresh approach, stating
that his goal is to protect political opponents of
repressive regimes.

"The classic use for Freenet would be for a group of
political dissidents in China, or even in the United
States," he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. But
he acknowledged that the software would also surely be used
to circumvent copyright restrictions, adding, "It's an
inevitable consequence of our design."

Industry executives acknowledge that even with their Supreme
Court victory, peer-to-peer technology will continue to be a
factor in illicit online trading.

"Everyone understands that P-to-P technology is, and will
remain, an important part of the online landscape," said
Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry
Association of America. "But the Supreme Court's unanimous
decision in the Grokster case will help ensure that business
models won't be based on the active encouragement of
infringement on P-to-P or other networks."

Initiatives like Freenet are certain to complicate industry
and government efforts to restrict the digital sharing of
proprietary data.

To join a darknet, a potential user must be trusted by one
of the existing members. Thus such networks grow as part of
a "web of trust," and are far more restricted than open
systems.

In June, Ross Anderson, a prominent computer-security
researcher who was a pioneer in developing early
peer-to-peer networks, published a technical paper detailing
how it was possible to resist industry attempts to disable
such networks.

He also published a second paper trying to anticipate the
market reaction to curbs on file sharing like the Grokster
ruling. The paper, "The Economics of Censorship Resistance,"
predicts the emergence of closed networks like the new
Freenet, as well as "fan clubs" focused on specific digital
content, which would be more difficult for the industry to
combat.

Mr. Anderson, who traces peer-to-peer networks back to an ad
hoc networking system called Usenet pioneered over telephone
lines in 1979, said his research group was collaborating
with computer scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology on a next-generation peer-to-peer network, to be
unveiled in a few months. Like Freenet, it is designed to be
impervious to censorship and to permit secure communications
in potentially hostile environments.

He said that his own early development work in peer-to-peer
networks, known as the Eternity Service, had been inspired
by a legal battle between the Church of Scientology and
Penet, an Internet operation based in Finland that was known
as an anonymous remailer.

In that case, an Internet user was using the remailer to
post church documents anonymously on online bulletin boards.

"I had not the slightest idea back in 1996 that music would
be an application," he said. "I was motivated by the Penet
case and by the fear that some of the freedom we'd got from
Gutenberg's invention of cheap printing might be lost."

Legal skirmishes over anonymous peer-to-peer networks have
already taken place in both Europe and Asia.

In Japan last year, Isamu Kaneko, the developer of a
file-sharing program called WinNY, was arrested after two
users of the program were charged with sharing copyrighted
material through the system. The Kaneko case is pending.

After Mr. Kaneko's arrest, development of the system was
continued under the name Share by an anonymous programmer,
according to information posted on the Web.

Share uses encryption to hide the identities of users and
the material that is being exchanged, in the manner of the
new Freenet that Mr. Clarke described.

On a separate front, the recording industry has sued users
of Blubster, a peer-to-peer network designed by Pablo Soto,
a Spanish programmer, who built privacy features into his
system.

Currently Freenet is being developed by a group of five or
six volunteer programmers and a single full-time employee
who is paid by donations that Mr. Clarke has obtained.

He said that despite concerns that tools such as Freenet
might be used by clandestine organizations intent on
political violence, Mr. Clarke said he believed that the
benefits of such anonymous means of communications
outweighed potential harm.

"I think things like terrorism are the result of the absence
of communication," he said.

He acknowledged that his system would not be infallible, bu
neither would it be as transparent as popular peer-to-peer
systems like Grokster and Gnutella.

Open file-sharing networks like Gnutella can be joined
simply by obtaining a software program. The program connects
a user to the file-sharing network and allows the user to
publish content.

Computer researchers say that the term "anonymous
peer-to-peer," when applied to darknets, is actually a
misnomer, because the networks must exist in the open
Internet and thus must have identifiable addresses where
they can be contacted by other nodes of the network.

As the legal consequences for file sharing become clearer,
there will be a proliferation of systems with features
similar to Freenet, according to a range of industry
specialists. In Silicon Valley, start-up companies like
Imeem and Grouper are already making it possible to create
groups to share digital information.

"Darknets are going to be with us," said J. D. Lasica,
author of "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital
Generation" (John Wiley & Sons, 2005). "Serious file traders
have been gravitating toward them. There is just this
culture of freedom that people feel they're entitled to, and
they don't want anyone looking over their shoulders."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Thomas J. Boschloo

2005-08-01, 5:47 pm

Zerra wrote:
<s>
> Mr. Clarke lives in Edinburgh and is employed by a music
> recommendation site, www.indy.tv While Freenet attracted
> wide attention as a potentially disruptive force when he
> introduced it in 2000, it proved more difficult to use than
> file-sharing programs like Grokster and Napster, and did not
> achieve the impact that he envisioned.

I can't find Espra anymore.. Not on SF, not on espra.net. Espra was a
P2P program based on Freenet..

Thomas
--
Life is like a videogame with no chance to win - ATR