XplanaZine

The war over file swapping and privacy is heating up just in time for the start of a new school year.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has subpoenaed Loyola University Chicago and obtained the names of several students at Loyola, alleging that the students are involved in illegal file trading. Making good on its promise to pursue individuals for copyright infringement, the RIAA said it is using provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to discover identities of students at several colleges and universities. The RIAA has also sought names of individuals accused of violations from other Internet service providers.
At the same time, popular P2P or file swapping application developers are working overtime to allow greater privacy and protection for their users.
Yahoo News reports that two Kazaa derivatives are now offering features that allow users to block RIAA tactics. Kazaa K++ and Kazaa Lite, two very similar modifications to the Kazaa file-sharing system by Sharman Networks, now contain new extensions designed to defeat the RIAA’s scanning efforts, which the agency reportedly began at the beginning of this month in an attempt to discover which users are illegally sharing copyrighted files. Once the RIAA matches IP addresses to individual users, the agency will begin filing copyright infringement lawsuits this fall.
These new versions contain several features designed to foil scanning attempts. PeerGuardian attempts to catalog a range of IP addresses used by or suspected to be used by labels, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and other agencies. Users of the latest versions of Kazaa Lite and Kazaa++ also have the option of disabling a function that allows remote users to see what other files the user has. The two P2P updates allow users to block port 1214, used by the Kazaa program, for additional security. In addition, the two programs do not save a user’s search history in the registry, and Kazaa Lite also allows the option of erasing the search history automatically after exiting the program.
If you’re looking for more information, Slashdot has a great conversation today both on the new privacy technologies developing in P2P as well as the philosophies behind them.
Here are the things you should know for the moment –

1. The battle has just begun. P2P developers have begun focusing their considerable programming resources on privacy and encryption while the RIAA is working hard to track users. Expect to see many small developments by the P2P people over the next year and just as many development by the RIAA to stop them.
2. RIAA is not going to back down. They are committed to a strategy of prosecuting individuals and demanding records from ISP’s and Universities. People who continue to participate in the illegal downloading of copyrighted music will be at some risk.
3. All of this will change in approximately 12 months as new technologies take hold.

My money says the RIAA will stop Kazaa but they will not be able to stop the next generation of P2P. This, of course has implications way beyond music. On the one hand it is about the boundaries of intellectual property and free enterprise, while on the other it is about privacy and individualism. In the United States, that is the same as pitting the irresistible force against the immovable object.

Further Reading

1. Hot Spots Elude RIAA Dragnet
2. Corporate P2P Use is Common, Study Says
3. RIAA Threat May be Slowing File Swapping