The record, movie and software industries have long pursued a controversial campaignthat identifies people trading large numbers of songs though services suchas MusicCity, OpenNap or Gnutella. Once the people are identified, the groups attempt to persuade Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down those individuals' Internet connections.
But copyright holders, including record labels, are now experimenting with new ways to cut down on copyright infringement.
As described by sources at the RecordingIndustry Association of America (RIAA), one method uses software to masquerade as a file-swapper online. Once the software has found a computer offering a certain song, it attempts to block other potential traders from downloading the song.
Already a potentially contentious plan, the recording industryinadvertently sparked a further wave of criticism last week with plans to protect its strategy from being undermined by a pending antiterrorism bill.
RIAA lobbyists sought a provision to the bill thatwould shield copyright holders for any damage done to computers in thepursuit of copyright protection--a goal that critics charged was too broadand might even give the group the ability to spread viruses in the pursuitof pirates.
"We referred to it as the 'license to virus,'" said one congressionalstaffer. "It would have given them the incentive to employ lots of hackerstrying to figure out how to stop (MusicCity), Morpheus or Audiogalaxy."
An RIAA spokesman said the group was simply trying to protect its existingtools, not expand them.
"We have a legitimate concern that the measure currently being debatedcould unintentionally take away a remedy currently available to us underlaw that helps us combat piracy," said RIAA spokesman Jano Cabrera.
The direct approach
Copyright holders have been struggling for years to put the brakes onaccelerating online piracy of music, movies and software, now centered inpeer-to-peer services that have replaced Napster. Lawsuits filed againstNapster, Scour, Aimster, MusicCity, Kazaa and Grokster have shut down someof these file-swapping gathering points, but the practice remains aspopular as ever.
This is the first evidence of a technological campaign by copyright holdersthat would mount a direct technological counter strike on the file-swappersthemselves.
The new strategy would take advantage of file-swapping networks' ownweaknesses, amplifying them to the point where download services appeareven more clogged and slow to function than they are today. Because mostpeer-to-peer services are unregulated, the quality of connections and speedof downloads already varies wildly based on time of day and geographiclocation.
The software technology, according to industry sources, would essentially act as a downloader, repeatedly requesting the same file and downloading it very slowly, essentially preventing others from accessing the file. While stopping short of a full denial-of-service attack, the method could substantially clog the target computer's Internet connection.
Record labels hope to make the point that subscription services such asMusicNet or Pressplay, which will launch on Yahoo, America Online, MSN andRealNetworks by year's end, will not be subject to the same doubtfulquality of service.
It's unclear yet how much time and money any record label or industry groupis willing to devote to the project. Given the huge number of file-swappersonline, using this kind of direct-action technique against even a smallpercentage of song-traders could quickly soak up technical and financial resources.
Appetite for more?
According to industry sources, the technology is being provided by outsidetechnology companies and has not yet found its way into wide use. But theWashington battle indicates that the industry is willing to protect itsability to use its own technological tools against its high-tech adversaries.
A copy of the legislation proposed by the RIAA last week would appear tohave given the group broad latitude to attack file-swappers' computerswithout suffering any civil liability.
No civil liability would result from "any impairment of the availability ofdata, a program, a system or information, resulting from measures taken byan owner of copyright," the proposed text read.
That language never made it into the antiterrorism bill, however. Severallegislators of both parties objected, and the RIAA's text was dropped.Industry lobbyists are pursuing a different tack that they say would stillallow them to pursue the current technological plan, however.
The new technological techniques, which would essentially hog afile-traders' Net connection so that genuine song-seekers couldn't get in,are expected to be taken up across the copyright holder community.
Arepresentative for the Motion Picture Association of America, which hasalso aggressively pursued online pirates, declined to comment on thatorganization's plans.