Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 17:44:37 -0400
Subject:  Web Piracy-Crackdown Spawns Stealth Platforms
From: Richard Forno <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]


I wonder when Big Business will really understand that their
stranglehold
over the consumer is rapidly eroding despite their best efforts to limit
the
spread of knowledge. What's next in the continuing saga of King Jack and

Queen Hillary?  :)

rf


Web Piracy-Crackdown Spawns Stealth Platforms
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010430/wr/media_web_piracy_dc_1.html

By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A giant game of cat-and-mouse has emerged on the

Internet between the entertainment industry and Internet-savvy users who

keep finding new ways to foil efforts to crack down on piracy.

With the movie industry joining the record labels in a bid to police the

file-sharing that has proliferated in the wake of Napster (news - web
sites), new stealth platforms are emerging that promise to hide
communication between Web surfers.

``It's like walking around the street with a cloud around you. Everybody
can
see the cloud but can't see what's inside of it,'' said Aram Sinnreich,
a
Jupiter Media Metrix analyst.

Organizations developing platforms for anonymous activity include
Havenco.com, Zero-Knowledge Systems and FreeNet, according to Sinnreich,
who
said the platforms ``hide'' online data collection and transfer by
scrambling information.

``The worldwide developers' community is getting on the stick because
there's so much concern about Internet service providers cracking down
on
users' behavior and government and private organizations spying on
consumers' online activities,'' he said.

The goal, he said, is to make it impossible for Internet service
providers
(ISPs) to police the activities of their users, the very step that the
entertainment industry is demanding.

THE NEXT BATTLE FRONT: ISPs

Reigning in online piracy has become a crusade within the music and film

industries due to the explosion of file-sharing services like Napster,
which
is currently operating under a court-ordered injunction.

Napster's service attracted about 60 million users with its program that

enabled fans to swap songs for free by trading MP3 files, a compression
format that turns music on compact discs into small digital files.

The world's biggest record labels -- including Vivendi Universal's
(EAUG.PA)
Universal Music, Sony Music (6758.T), Warner Music (NYSE:AOL - news),
EMI
Group Plc (news - web sites) (EMI.L) and Bertelsmann AG (news - web
sites)'s
(BTGGga.D) BMG -- sued Napster in December 1999, claiming it was a haven
for
copyright piracy that cost them billions of dollars in lost music sales.

Shortly after an appeals court ruling in February that paved the way for
the
injunction against Napster, the Recording Industry Association of
America
(news - web sites) (RIAA) sent out dozens of legal notices to ISPs
providing
connections for ``Open Napster'' servers. Those computers run
Napster-like
software, but are not associated with the Redwood City, California-based

company.

Fearing a Napsterization of the movie industry, the Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA), a trade group for the major studios, also

began sending hundreds of letters to ISPs earlier this month, warning
them
some of their users were violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(news - web sites) (DMCA) by trading movies through the Gnutella (news -
web
sites) file sharing system.

Several of the ISPs, like ExciteAtHome (NasdaqNM:ATHM - news) have
responded
by sending e-mails telling Gnutella users their services will be
terminated
within 24 hours if their alleged movie sharing continues.

``We have seen some positive reactions by ISPs. They have notified their

customers and are informing them'' to stop the illegal activity,'' said
Ken
Jacobsen, senior vice president of worldwide anti-piracy for the movie
trade
group.

Jacobsen said the trade group is hoping to inform the movie-enjoying
public
of the legal ramifications involved in trading material without
copyright
authorization.

Noting that all the studios are working toward a business model for
secure
Internet distribution of movies, he said, ''We're hopeful that people
will
enjoy movies on these services instead of stealing product.''

The movie industry has also sued several companies, including Scour,
iCraveTV.com and RecordTV.com, accusing them of copyright infringement
by
allowing people to copy and swap copyrighted material.

But Gnutella systems have been immune to legal action because they lack
central servers. Gnutella systems pass along files through a chain of
individual computers. So the movie industry must rely on ISPs to help it

hunt alleged infringers.

Jacobesen said the MPAA employed Canadian-based Ranger Online to probe
the
Web and find cases of copyright infringement.

Unauthorized swapping of movies has not reached the levels of music
because
films require much more bandwidth, in some cases taking many hours to
download.

Christian Hansen, a legal representative for EarthLink (NasdaqNM:ELNK -
news) said the company has received letters from the RIAA asking it to
cancel subscriptions of people that run alleged file-sharing lists
similar
to Napster.

``We haven't canceled any subscribers based on letters from RIAA or
MPAA,''
Hansen said.

``When we receive a letter of that nature, we would not cancel a
subscriber
based merely on a letter. They would have to come back with some
corroboration that could prove to us that the subscriber is a repeat
infringer.''

Several analysts feel that the RIAA and MPAA's approach risks a backlash

among Internet users.

``What those letters are doing is bringing forth technologies that allow

people to hide downloading, to cloak their location on the network,''
said
Bruce Forest, executive vice president of Sapient Corp., an Internet
consulting firm.

``The stronger the protection, the stronger the attack,'' he said.

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