Brain Candy #44 - The Napster Controversy

Napster and its brethren make it simple for computer users to share files freely, utilizing something called peer-to-peer sharing (P2P). These files can be any type of computer file - don't think "music" just yet. Napster itself works by keeping a central directory of files. It will tell you where to go to get what you want. When you make a search request using Napster, it searches this directory and if it finds a match, it tells your computer where to go to download the file. The file itself is not in Napster; it is on someone elses' computer, another Napster user who has agreed to share the file. Napster just keeps the list of what is where, and provides the mechanism to get it from wherever it is located.

There is an alternative approach to solving this need with a very important difference; programs which follow the Gnutella protocol eliminate the central directory. Using Gnutella, each computer (called a peer) can link directly with other peers and trade search requests. No central directory is needed. When a match is found, the files can be shared directly. So, while Napster, with a central directory, can fairly easliy be subjected to the whims of courts and laws, reining in something like Gnutella is much more of a problem. I'll mention some "solutions" for Gnutella control later in the article.

The illegal transfer of music files under copyright protection is the main issue creating controversy. Music can efficiently be converted to digital data. Rapidly increasing bandwidth (the ability to transmit data) and compressed storage methods have made it practical to transmit such data quickly. A five minute song, properly compressed as an .mp3 file, can be transferred in well under a minute. For comparison, the capability of transmitting books in this fashion has been available for quite some time. I recently bought an electronic version of a technical book directly from the publisher. It had all the content of the original, including full graphics, stored as a .pdf file. The download, at cable modem speeds, took less than ten seconds. There isn't much profit lost to the illegal transmission of books, so this has been a relatively minor issue. Illegal music transfer, however, promises the loss of large amounts of money. Videos are a bit too big for this to be common - now - but soon they too will be trivial to share. If we haven't resolved these issues by then, things will really heat up.

Napster has been under legal attack for distributing copyrighted materials, mostly music. The reason that Napster hasn't been shut down completely is that Napster itself isn't breaking the rules. It is a neutral tool that makes legal information transmission - and copyright law violations - very simple. The recent ruling that Napster must rapidly make an effort to block requests for copyrighted materials is an interesting attempt to solve the problem, but will probably not work perfectly for several reasons. We've already seen an alternate protocol that can't be centrally controlled in Gnutella, so even if Napster dies or falls into complete judicial compliance, music traders can still do pretty much whatever they want. Napster users haven't surrendered yet, either. There is some talk about Pig Latin becoming the lingua franca of Napster, effectively bypassing the filters (until the courts, or the filter makers, act again). Napster-like servers in intellectual property unfriendly countries would also provide pathways for bypassing any legal restrictions on such file sharing.

I mentioned that some ways might exist to combat decentralized Gnutella-type P2P file sharing systems. One company with the rights to Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" recording has created a robot program to search out shared versions of the song. When they find one, they do their best to contact the service provider of the sharer. Typically they ask the service provider to terminate the service of the sharer, at least until the shared song is withdrawn. Service providers are typically quite risk-averse, and will usually honor such requests. Gnutella sharing schemes also consume considerable bandwidth, often in violation of the terms of use the provider requires the user to adhere to.

A more violent way of tackling the issue is by use of a Gnutella virus. In the past few months, the first major infection began. A peer with an established virus infection receives a search request and crafts a virus file with the details of the query followed by ".exe". Let's say that you are looking for a recipe for "Fireball chili". If you search for "fireball" and "chili", the virus will create a file called "fireball chili.exe", which shows up as a hit for your search. If you download it and run it, you're just been infected. This virus is known by a number of names - the most descriptive is the Gnutella Worm. It wasn't designed to be too stealthy, or do any significant damage, but as a proof of concept, it was a shocker. In the future, a company could commission an enhanced version of this program to actively combat piracy. The government might even sanction such remedies. The reasonableness of this might hinge on what the virus would do if it thought it found a violation.

In a future issue, I plan to discuss why so many people are so interested in violating the copyright laws lately, and what might be done to improve the situation.