Reporter looking for input on file sharing

[hgreen]

Hi,


I am a reporter for Business Week and am interested in talking to people about the state of file sharing nowadays. I spoke with Jack Spratts already and he suggested this would be a good way to reach out to forum members.

Please either call me or write during the next couple of weeks at 800-489-0563 x.14029 or heather_green@businessweek.com.

I look forward to chatting!

[Dawn]

I would think that most of us here are a bit nervous about talking publically about file sharing.

[Mazer]

But this is a public forum and we talk about it all the time here. Although, with Jack talking to her we've already put our best foot forward. This is a good chance for jcmd62 to put his money where his mouth is. I think I'll go ahead and email her just to see if I get interviewed.

[multi]

were you the same reporter from BW that was asking at the str8dogs forum about waste?
cause i never found an article about that after?

[Dawn]

Originally posted by Mazer
But this is a public forum and we talk about it all the time here.

I don't.

[the hunter]

Quite right Dawn, and anyone that knows my posts from any forums knows I never share any great detail on programs used, or files shared. Cant be too carefull.

[hgreen]

I was the same reporter who posted at Str8Dog.

Here's the article I did. (Sorry, can't link to it because the site is for registrants only)

The Underground Internet
Members-only "darknets" are popping up to protect file-sharing from prying eyes


Around the time the Recording Industry Assn. of America said this spring it would start tracking down individuals who were trading pirated music on the Internet, Trader X, a 17-year-old U.S. high school senior who declined to provide a name to avoid prosecution, hightailed it over to a service for swapping music and other digital files called Direct Connect (DC). Trader X had used other file-sharing services in the past, but chose DC for two simple reasons: privacy and plenty of movies. In most file-sharing services, millions of computers swap files with millions of others openly online, in plain view of the RIAA and others. DC's free software lets individuals set up a password-protected, members-only network that relays music and movies among a closed group of people. "Frankly, as long as the Internet exists, file trading can't be stopped," says Trader X.

This is just one glimpse into the world of darknets -- gated communities that run on the Internet but are open only to those who belong to the private network. These mini-networks are gaining appeal among more than just teenagers looking for a free copy of rapper 50 Cent's 21 Questions. Political dissidents from China to Iran, as well as civil liberterians in the U.S., are interested in avoiding the prying eyes of government authorities and reestablishing some privacy on the transparent Internet. Even well-respected corporations, including Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ ) and Siemens, are turning to darknets to allow them to share sensitive data with outside partners while protecting the data from rivals and restricting the partners from burrowing into the corporation's own intranet.

How do darknets work? Typically, people who want to build a darknet will start by installing on their computers specialized software, which they can buy or often download for free from the Internet. Then individuals who want to form their own group swap passwords or digital keys so their computers can communicate with each other. The data shuttling between computers often are encrypted, a security feature similar to that used for online credit-card transactions. This makes darknets more secure than typical corporate intranets, since companies usually don't encrypt data. Anyone tracking the private networks could monitor the traffic, but wouldn't know what information was inside the encrypted packets. And gaining entry to a group of, say, college kids swapping music is no easy feat: Prospective members often need recommendations from friends to join.

It's a sweeping revision of the notion of the open Internet. Netizens are walling themselves off for certain activities like never before. Darknets are very different from the typical corporate networks, monoliths built to last for years. These networks are designed to be put up and taken down quickly and easily, so they can be used for a week or a year. Teenagers could establish a darknet to trade music -- and take it down as soon as they feel pressure from authorities by simply removing the software from their machines. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK ) PLC is using a darknet so chemists, biologists, and others in-house and at some universities can share information for the development of an obesity drug.

Innovation in darknet technology is coming from many different directions. independent developers are giving away freenet and invisibleNET, software that allows dissidents in countries where censorship exists to get information from the outside world and speak more freely among themselves. A free program called Waste, designed by America Online's Nullsoft division, showed up on the Web four months ago and is catching on among pirated-music dealers. BadBlue and Groove Networks Inc. are among the companies trying to make money from darknets. They sell collaboration software that permits a company to safely share sensitive documents or financial information with partners.

Trust among members is the critical ingredient for certain darknets, including those using technology from Waste and DC. DC is less secure than Waste because the software giving access to the main computer that runs the network is simply password-protected. If someone infiltrates a group, that person can track everything that's going on within the hub. Waste is more secure. It uses encryption to protect files and messages sent among the members of a private network, called a mesh. To join a mesh, a member exchanges encryption keys with someone in the network. Although AOL quickly yanked the software off Nullsoft's site, programmers with copies downloaded from the Web are busily enhancing it. Devotees predict the technology will blossom. "Waste will only improve over time as more users and developers adopt it," says Tom, a 22-year-old programmer who has set up one mesh for family photos and news and another for software development.

Freenet's emphasis is on anonymity through technology, not trust. The brainchild of Irish programmer Ian Clarke, Freenet works by tying together computers around the Internet through strong encryption. Freenet organizes a bucket brigade of computers that dedicate a portion of their hard drives to encrypted data and only talk to their nearest neighbor on the network. When a request for some bit of information is made, each computer queries its neighbor to determine if it has that information. If not, the request is passed to another neighbor that the first computer doesn't know about. Freenet-China, a Mandarin translation that has been up for a year and a half, publishes news that the Chinese government would censor and allows dissidents to read banned sites, such as CNN.com. "The Internet doesn't really have all that much anonymity now," says Clarke. "People are looking for ways to share information without being watched."

Inevitably, as the pressure mounts on illegal copying, people interested in pirated-file trading are seeking out private networks. Since the RIAA started targeting individuals who are sharing files, monthly revenues of BadBlue's software designed for small-scale use, which costs between $30 and $60, have increased about 50%, says Doug Ross, the company's chief technology officer. Moreover, Clarke says that Freenet downloads have tripled during the past four months to a total of about 2 million. "As soon as [the RIAA] laid down those individual subpoenas, we started seeing posts from people looking for private networks," says Chris Hedgecock, president of Zeropaid Inc., a site where about 160,000 file sharers discuss news and exchange tips.

The entertainment industry says these digital versions of Prohibition-style speakeasies are of little concern. Since darknets typically include no more than 50 or 100 people because of technology limitations or security concerns, music and movie companies think they can't do much damage. "If they are using private networks, there is very little risk of being caught, but there is very little risk of them really doing much harm to the entertainment companies," says Randy Saaf, president of MediaDefender Inc., a copyright-protection security company.

The debate over whether limits should be put on private networks is only beginning. Just as darknets provide room for free speech or the exchange of data from pharmaceutical trials, they can also be used for black-market trading of pirated music. It's too early to tell how popular these darknets could eventually be, but the groundwork is already being laid to welcome those fleeing the public networks -- for all kinds of reasons.

By Heather Green in New York

[JackSpratts]

just about sums it up, (although i’m less than thrilled with the pejorative “darknet”) it’s a nice piece heather. in their enthusiasm to trample individual rights the riaa and other copyright extremists have done what no amount of heavy handed government actions or script kiddie’s gleeful hackings have been able to accomplish so far, and that is to get people to take their own computer security seriously. were it not for the uneasy feeling that someone who means you harm may be actively monitoring your internet activity, most people would have been happy to continue using the net in much the same way they’ve been using it since the birth of napster.

at the end of the day there is only one riaa. there are six billion people. the birthrate alone dictates the outcome of this contest.

- js.

[Malk-a-mite]

Originally posted by hgreen
Here's the article I did. (Sorry, can't link to it because the site is for registrants only)

Article is available online from BW themselves:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...9089_mz063.htm

[TankGirl]

Hi Heather, and a warm welcome to P2P-Zone!

Your article is excellent, both insightful and technically accurate. It is a pleasure to see a mainstream media reporter with a clue on p2p!

Private networks have indeed become an important part of the p2p ecosystem. Especially WASTE is gaining popularity due to its encrypted communications and good decentralized implementation. The setup and key management are easy enough for today’s savvy p2p users, and a handful of active members are enough to make a solid and reliable mesh. Invisible as they are, it is hard to estimate the total number of meshes – my guess is that there are already thousands of them around. As typical 20-30 peer meshes might have 1-2 TB of shared content each, the total shares may already be in the petabyte range.

As the number of meshes keeps growing, an increasing number of p2p users will inevitably come to touch with at least one of them. The savvier users are already getting multimeshed: they routinely run a number of separate WASTE instances on their computers to be simultaneously present in a number of independent meshes.

The direct obvious benefit of multimeshing is having more content available from a larger source pool, but that’s only the download side of things. On the sharing side multimeshing empowers the user to share selectively to different interest groups and control the flow of content between the meshes. As each WASTE instance can have its own independent shares and downloads, the user may keep her meshes fully separated or she may share everything to everybody or do anything from between. This kind of flexible redistribution scheme allows the formation of complex and intelligently adaptive distribution chains on the emerging mesh-to-mesh macrolevel.

Another benefit is the resulting redundancy in connectivity. One mesh may go down without affecting the others in any way. And as the meshes depend on IP numbers and routing only, they will remain functional even if services like DNS go down, making them rather resilient beasts in the restless Internet.

So even if WASTE itself does not offer any group-to-group integration tools the smart users are already bridging the cap manually and – given enough time – they will be able to build a sort of supermesh, still very private and trust-oriented in nature, but tunnelling content effectively among large user populations.

- tg

[multi]

I was the same reporter who posted at Str8Dog.

Here's the article I did.

thanks for that ..heather

i also remember a girl at the morpheus forum that did a story once..that may have been nyt

i remember some people were a bit jumpy about talking there as well...

im sure there no pressure for real names or even locations...

theres certainly enough opinions on most of the p2p forums about the way file sharing is going...to write several small books

i dont think the idea of virtual private networking is all that new..maybe the government and business never thought it would get sophisticated enough to be worry about, outside of the corporate uses i guess it was designed for..
i like looking at the way that the whole
internet grew through out of the 70's
hosts =119 or something when the @ for the email was decided around 72....
later on more and better networking..
the 3 big business that started at your princeton uni on different floors there..ect
billion dollar .coms now but the uni got nothing? out of it..!
(sun,novelland the other escapes me..)
so this triggers all sorts of things
but most of all it inspired people from all over to get networked.. get on the big network..
you pay your isp and away you go..internet explosion
12 truths of networking
there was some freedoms that this new internet enjoyed a short while..but it is all so about big business and selling and credit cards...its losing out badly to a corporate overkill for the average user that just want to get some worthwhile use from their sometime costly connection
..sometimes i feel like the p2p filesharing networks,encrypted VPN's..ect is like a network that has grown within the internet to escape the overkill
or may be as a reaction to it..

i guess im saying the whole thing is about networks..and they are always getting better

the idea of people using future technolgy like wireless networking..etc that might create their own huge community seperate from the internet intrigues me

[pod]

Originally posted by multi
thanks for that ..heather

i also remember a girl at the morpheus forum that did a story once..that may have been nyt

That would be Amy Harmon for NYT

[multi]

Originally posted by pod
That would be Amy Harmon for NYT

thats the lady!
thanx pod
~merry xmas!~
to all the p2p forum people!