O'Reilly Digital Media

I just got back from a great P2P
conference in the university town of Linköping, Sweden (27-29 August 2001). The flight was
long (18+ hrs) but the the city was beautiful and the weather was perfect, crisp,
kind of like Oregon; the light drizzle of rain stopped whenever we needed it to. The
building we were in seemed brand new and was immaculate. I wanted to move there,
it was clean, futuristic, and the cafe was in the center of the building, about
20 feet away from the many, many computer labs. Code, eat, code, eat…

The call for papers was my first clue that this was going to be a clueful conference,
a meeting of the minds and not fluffy marketing pitches. There were 1/2 hour
and 1 hour presentations, and almost all of them were technical. The only thing
I would have asked for was more time for Q/A on the 1/2 hour presentations.
The format was how I like it- one main track, not multiple parallel tracks (which
inevitably overlaps the only two talks you wanted to hear…)

This was a refreshing relief from past conferences I have attended, where P2P
companies would show up at conferences as a sort of roll-call, desperately pitching
solutions to each other (as if there were any customers there.)

As for attendees, it was about a 1/2 split between students and industry, but
the industry reps were all engineers. Sweden IEEE and several other IEEE members
were there. P2PWG was there in the form of
me.

Wireless was represented by Ericson, and a compelling speech by their Philippe
Charas correlated the end of the cold war with the rise of the Internet, social
and technical decentralization. He argued that the AAA (Authentication, Authorization
and Accounting) functions in wireless need to be moved into the end devices
because of the many different mobile end points a consumer may be using.

Gene Kan and Steve Waterhouse from Sun were there as well, and Gene must have
been awed to see students from around the world doing graduate work on the Gnutella
system and protocol. Ross Lee Graham (the
conference chair and a professor from Linköping computer science) pointed
out that his student, Eduard Turcan, had recieved his master’s degree in peer-to-peer!

Steve Waterhouse, Director of Engineering for JXTA Services and Applications,
gave an extremely comprehensible presentation on JXTA,
and I also really learned a lot from his explainations of decentralized search.
Coming from the earlier aquired Infrasearch, he certainly knows something about
the subject, and it is fantastic to recieve knowlege like that directly from
the source.

Oregon University was represented by Zary Segall, who presented his department’s
work on wearable computing
(which obviously involves P2P when they communicate directly.) He showed scenarios
where people interacted on campus, and their computers used XML to meet each
other and decide whether these people liked the same music, studied the same
subjects, or could run errands for each other by comparing their to do lists.
It made me think of specifying the PTBP or pass-the-buck protocol for pawning
off ("delegating") tasks automatically, wirelessly…

The event delved into the commercial realm just a bit on the third day with
a panel discussion on "P2P Business Models". The audience didn’t ask
that many questions but listened attentively as the discussion meandered into
more general business issues like venture capital and the pseudo-recession.
The sponsors of the event, QuickCom,
got a bit pitchy but to be fair they presented a rather novel P2P system that
runs on top of multicast, and they described it in technical detail, so the
in-depth quality of the conference was not compromised. A group of researchers
from Malaysia proposed the use of multicast protocols as a peer discovery system
("Purep2p") as well.

An interesting note is that in Europe, industry still funds university research,
whereas in the United States, research is "funded" by simply hiring
the student, cutting out the middleman. In a sense, one could consider that
research is now returning to its traditional realm, university, instead of being
funded at great risk and expense by a starry-eyed venture community.

Once the final copies of everyone’s presentations are collected, there will
be a final Publication of the Proceedings. I wish there could be more of these
technical, academic P2P conferences. No political wrangling, minimal sponsor
commercials, no careful company posturing, just a very educational meeting
of the minds. They plan to have another conference on P2P in similar style in
the coming year and with the quality of this one I will certainly be going.

Science Fiction Writer and OpenCola founder Cory Doctorow has written
an editorial about
how peer-to-peer applications and the realities of cryptography will inevitably transform the role of Copyright in the new millennium.
(The piece was published as a MiCro Editorial in Issue #17 of the Made In Canada newsletter.)

Here are some highlights:

“The problem lies in the assumption that the cryptography used to protect the ebooks (or emusic, or emovies, or ewhatever) can be relied upon. There are two things I believe to be true about cryptosystems. The first is that the only way to find out if a cryptosystem is really secure is to tell other people how it works and wait until someone comes up with a means of breaking it. The second is that, eventually, all systems are broken.”

“Maintaining the security of publicly distributed ciphertexts of copyrighted works is a fool’s errand. Laws that try to do it end up bent and schizoid. The US’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), for example, makes it illegal to publicly discuss the means by which a copy- protection scheme might be compromised, to circulate tools for this purpose, or to link to places where people are doing these things.”

“This is meant to secure our works — but it has the opposite effect. When our publishers’ encryption schemes and their flaws remain secret, it means that we’re entirely dependent on the word of our publishers’ technologists when it comes to evaluating the security of the locks they intend to place on our works.”

“We can’t depend on the law to keep cryptosystems from being compromised. Such laws only serve to permit bad cryptosystems from being undiscovered by the people who rely on them most: artists and their publishers.”

“Nor can we pretend that electronic circulation of our work can be prevented. Our readers are demanding it, and voting with their scanners. “

“How, then, do we earn our living off of our work? When publishing inevitably includes an electronic edition, when unprotected copies of our work circulate freely, how do we compel readers to pay for our time and so keep a roof over our heads? There are a couple possibilities…”

“Meanwhile, we need to take a stand. Researchers are being jailed, professors are being sued, and millions of dollars are being funneled from technology companies into publishing companies in the form of legal settlements — all on *our* behalf. We need to speak up for ourselves, whenever and however we can, speak up in favor of the future.” - Cory Doctorow

Resources

• Science Fiction, Copyright, Natural Law, and You - A Made in Canada MiCro Editorial
  (http://www.geocities.com/canadian_sf/Newsletters/newsletter17.htm#MiCro)

• Cory Doctorow’s Website
  (http://www.craphound.com)

• OpenCola
  (http://www.opencola.com)

• Boing Boing (A Directory of Wonderful Things)
  (http://www.boingboing.net)

What do you think?

So I’m browsing through Yahoo! news today, and upon clicking on one of the links the page begins to load… then my computer freezes up for about 10 seconds. Thankfully I didn’t get the ol’ blue screen, and I was able to resume what I was doing. Then all of a sudden I hear this horrific sound coming out of my headphones, and upon scrolling down the page just a bit more, I saw it…. an embedded video stream advertisement for Pringles of all things (a joke was made in the office that Yahoo! must have my profile on hand).

Now I think pop-up banners are the most annoying thing in the world, especially when they tie up my computer trying to load (can you say X-10 spy camera?). But this streaming video ad is much worse, because it crashed my browser, not once, but twice (I had to get a screenshot). And I’m on a T1… what happens to those who are using a modem? How long will their browser be tied up trying to serve this intrusive ad?

Now I think the new Absolut Flash ads that also show up on Yahoo’s site are pretty cool; they don’t tie up my computer and they are interactive. I’ll stop going to Yahoo if they continue with the embedded streaming media though. I usually have many windows open at once, and I really don’t feel like crashing my browser everytime I visit their site. If video advertisements on web pages are the wave of future, I might reconsider this whole web career I’ve got going on, for fear of guilt by association.

Related link: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,45807,00.html

While Napster was easy for college campuses to block, this years crop of students will have easier access to file-trading as the variety of Napster clones may prove to be too difficult to police.

I wrote up a weblog a few weeks back asking “Was Napster Actually the Answer?“, which follows this same thread. Morpheus and AudioGalaxy seem to be the heir apparent right now, and Gnutella seems to be scaling quite nicely as well. From what I’ve found through my own studies for articles like alt.napster, some of these file-sharing programs are even easier and faster than Napster ever was. Add in that college kids tend to have a bit of spare time, can find their way around a computer, and have the college-provided bandwidth, and members of the RIAA are going to need to visit the drug store, as their headache is about to get much bigger.

Note to RIAA: Napster was easy to squash, you ain’t seen nothing yet…

Related link: http://www.uplister.com

Uplister has started sending out mail to users. You have to provide a working email address to install their software, there was no opt-in to get on their list, and there’s no working opt-out once you’re on their list. Never mind the spam, the uninstaller is broken, so once you install their software getting rid of it requires you to hand-delete their working directory, pick through the registry for any Uplister-related settings, and leave any DLLs they may have dropped into the Windows System directory.

The mail they send lists upload statistics for any playlists you may have created. I have never created any playlists with Uplister, so I am getting notices of 0 uploads of 0 things.

To stop the mailing you apparently have to go to their web site, log in and select some kind of preference. I say apparently because the log in doesn’t recognize my password (as I remember it, which must be wrong) and there’s no way to have a password reminder sent, so I can’t log in at all. This means that I’m stuck with the spam.

True to form, the reply-to address on the mail is invalid, so you can’t be manually removed from the list.

I then attempted to uninstall Uplister, but the password problem again stopped me. You can’t run the uninstaller without logging in, and if you forget your password, there is no way to get a reminder. Big mistake: lose your password and you can neither stop the spamming nor uninstall the software.

Once you install Uplister, you may not be able to get rid of it.

According to an August 20th RIAA Press Release pre-recorded music sales are on the decline, and the RIAA is blaming CD recordables (CD-Rs).

Being able to make mix tapes is one of the nice things you can do for friends these days, when no one can really afford to buy retail recordings. However, to say that such recordings are cutting into commercial record sales would be jumping to some pretty hasty conclusions.

The RIAA needs to remember that the entire economy is in a slump, and that most people can barely pay rent and feed themselves right now much less spend $20 on a CD, no matter how much they’d like to buy it.

Here’s a quote from RIAA President Hilary Rosen on the subject:

“Many in the music community are concerned about the continued use of CD-Rs (compact disc recordables) and we believe this issue deserves further analysis. A preliminary survey of tech savvy online music enthusiasts recently conducted for the RIAA showed that nearly one out of two consumers surveyed downloaded in the past month and nearly 70 percent burned the music they downloaded. All of this activity continues to show the passion of the consumer for music and the need for both legal protection and legitimate alternatives.”

Resources

• Recording Industry Announces 2001 Mid-Year Shipments
  RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) Press Release (August 20, 2001)

• RIAA To Target CD-R
  Slashdot article (August 23, 2001)

What do you think?

Related link: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/23/pirate/index.html

Should Hollywood have the right to dictate who the ISP’s can give service to?

Post your comments

The basics of the story are as follows: A couple goes out and celebrates the 4th of July, and come home to find that their ISP had cut them off, citing a report from the MPAA that accuses this customer of illegally distributing copyrighted material. The ISP can be held responsible for the infringement due to a clause in the DCMA, so if the MPAA says it happened, they cut off the customer before any proof can be given, or before they hear the customer’s side of the story.

I ask myself, how does this happen in this country? One of the fundamental ideals that gives the U.S. it’s identity is our idea of innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. The DCMA obviously needs to be re-written for this case alone. Apply the same rationale to an everyday necessity: electricity. What if the police think you are growing pot in your house… is it not the same thing if they tell the eletric company to cut off your power supply?

The DCMA was drafted long before these issues could even be thought of, and desperately needs a revision.

Should Hollywood have the right to dictate who the ISP’s can give service to?

Related link: http://wired.com/news/school/0,1383,45862,00.html

As Microsoft shows how much they care about the general community by stepping up efforts to stop license infringement in schools, some districts are starting to cut thousands of dollars from their budget by implementing Linux.

As the article points out, the move to Linux makes perfect sense, as many schools rely on older machines incapable of running Windows, and everybody can copy the system, modify it to suit their needs, and download free software.

The public’s choice of digital audio formats is about to become quite a bit more interesting. Ogg Vorbis has just hit beta with “Release Candidate 2,” likely to be the last test version before Vorbis comes out with an official 1.0 release. Timely indeed, as we’ll soon be seeing the launch of three subscription-based digital download services, each using their own proprietary format. Add in the other major players, like Windows Media and RealAudio, and you’ve got yourself a mess of formats that do the same basic thing, but no standards.

We all know the standard for file-sharing is MP3, which became possible because the Fraunhofer Institute made it freely available from the get-go (they will now be charging royalties and licensing fees for the use of the technology), so developers were able to tinker around and experiment with the technology, sharing their ideas with other developers in a non-proprietary environment. Companies like RealNetworks and Microsoft had restrictions on how outside developers can employ their technology, which in turn stagnated their own technologies.

Ogg Vorbis may pull off the exact same feat as MP3 did in its infancy, but one must wonder if the public will want to deal with one more format, especially when they’ve already got hundreds of MP3’s on the computers. It will be very interesting to see how this unfolds….

Related link: http://www.cyveillance.com/web/us/newsroom/releases/2001/2001-08-14.htm

Invisible Data-Collection Tool Poses Threat to Established Brands
Arlington, Va., August 14, 2001 - Cyveillance®, the leading provider of automated Internet intelligence, today announced the results of a study revealing that the use of Web bugs, or online hidden information collectors, has increased 488 percent in the past three years. The results indicate that, on average, a Web page is nearly five times more likely to contain a Web bug today than in 1998.

or visit the NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/14/technology/ebusiness/14WEB.html

Related link: http://www.grokster.com

Another FastTrack licensee, Grokster, has emerged, showing that Morpheus/KaZaA growth is continuing.

I haven’t yet found any features that distinguish Grokster from other FastTrack projects. On the whole the only difference between the various FastTrack projects is quality of GUI, I believe.

The installation program attempts to also install “HotText, a partner plugin to give Internet Explorer quicklinks.” This is annoying but you can opt out. (Bearshare also sells hitchhiker rights on its downloads.) There is an opt-out to auto-start Grokster at boot time. There is an opt-out to subscribe to their newsletter. The installer didn’t autofind my MP3 directory and didn’t ask where it was.

You are required to give an email address, but the address isn’t validated. Something about having to establish yet another user account first thing in the morning bugged me, so I decided to share this one. Username blablabla, password blablabla, email address blablabla@grokster.com.
Think of this as the categorical imperative at work — if everybody shared their dummy account data, we’d all have fewer dummy accounts. Dummy accounts are the dark matter of the Internet!

The FastTrack network under Grokster appears, as always, healthy. A search for “Sonny and Cher” found a zillion entries, with about ten coming back within 30 seconds, and about 30 swarmable holders of the same version of “I Got You Babe”.

Related link: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010808S0042

“Given this attack, we believe that 802.11 networks
should be viewed as insecure. We recommend the following
for people using such wireless networks:

Assume that the link layer offers no security.“

EE Times story

The original report

Thanks to Sergei Osokin for these bits.

Related link: http://www.clip2.com

According to their homepage, Clip2 is in the process of curtailing normal business operations and seeking buyers for its assets.

The company was a highly disciplined and productive group that contributed a great deal to the development of fully decentralized networking in the first year of P2P. Its signature product, the Clip2 Reflector, had the potential to make a huge improvement in bandwidth use by Gnutella users at universities and ISPs. At the same time, running the Reflector could have opened up universities and ISPs for contributory infringement charges.

Related link: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2001-August/002801.html

Give this post from the FoRK list a good long think. Brief synopsis: about using a passive data-oriented model, as with the classic Linda/tuplespaces project, for node binding across networks as diverse as the Internet, rather than RPC.

A big idea.

The crackdown on file sharing at the office has claimed yet href="http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_0-1005-200-6775251.html"
target="cindy">another
victim.

If you’ve been swapping MP3s or running distributed computation
software over your employer’s network, now would be a good time to:

• remove all traces of any installed software from your work station and
  anywhere else on the network.

• gather up all of your “personal data”.

• take it home and keep it there.

Oh yeah, one more thing: make a mental note to remember to forget
that any of it ever happened.

If you think I worry too much, just read href="http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_0-1005-200-6775251.html"
target="cindy">Fired over MP3s
, an article by CNET’s Evan Hansen that ran in today’s New York
Times.

These days, most employees should know better than to trade MP3
files over their employer’s network, but if you’re not already in the know, know
now: it’s time to clean off your work station and start off with a
clean slate, so to speak, or you might be the next legal guinea pig.

In fact, the
real panic probably hasn’t even kicked in yet. Just ask href="http://www.freemcowen.com/" target="david">David McOwen, an IT
Administrator who was picked up, taken to jail and charged by his former
employer with committing a felony act (worth 15 years in the slammer) that resulted in over $400,000 worth of damages (.59 a minute x 500 computers x Winter Break).

This
all took place despite his former employer’s original assurances from over 18
months ago (when the incident originally took place) that David’s
resignation would be a sufficient resolution to the matter.

Too bad there’s no statute of limitations on hysteria.

Resources

• Fired over MP3s

  
  By Evan Hansen, CNETNews.com
  The New York Times
  (August 6, 2001)
  (http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_0-1005-200-6775251.html)

• The debate over distributed computing
  By Lisa M. Bowman
  CNETNews.com
  (August 1, 2001)
  (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6740797.html)

• Free David McOwen Website
  (http://www.freemcowen.com/)

Good advice? Or am I the one who’s hysterical?

At my home, with 5 fixed IP’s on Pacbell DSL, I have 1.5Mbit downstream but a meager 128k upstream. Recently, I installed Morpheus on my Win98 box and, predictably, with my fixed IP and always on machine, I guess I became a popular and high-reliability supernode.

I also began, predictably, to notice that surfing the web on this machine could be slow and painful. That shouldn’t be a problem- I have 1.5Mbit down- but the 128k up was so full that the small HTTP GET requests that my browser sends had to wait in line to get out. So it was really a problem of latency, not bandwidth, and anyone with wireless 128k from the dying Metricom will tell you, they’d sometimes rather surf the web with (relatively) low latency modem than a high latency wireless.

Single-Machine Bandwidth Balancing

Now, this problem could be solved with software. All that would be necessary is if my P2P app could tell that I was clicking a link in my browser client, and it could hold off, for just a moment, on sending any data until the tiny request could go out, get established, and then the p2p upload could resume.

From the perspective of the P2P app, we are limiting it’s bandwidth. From the perspective of the Web browser, we are guaranteeing that it will have a minimum amount of bandwidth and delay. So throttling or shaping can be used to implement “QOS” or Quality of Service.

Servers, routers, gateways, cable modems, server apps like FTP, Apache, and even OS’s like linux have throttling, allowing you to set exact limits for how much bandwidth should go through. This is how web hosters make sure one website doesn’t hog the machine from all the other hosted sites, or how Cable modem operators (attempt) to keep the bandwidth fairly spread to the users.

Back to me: I have a Linux box on this LAN said, “Why was my site so slow the other day?” The reason was, of course, that the Win98 machine was using all the bandwidth uploading the Phantom Edit and/or 40’s jazz music to others, and my wife’s attempt to view her own page was inhibited by this.

In this case, the problem was indeed that there was too much upstream traffic, which directly blocked the outgoing traffic of the webpage. But another factor existed as well: even if there had been some system-level software on the Win98 box to detect web browsers on that machine, Morpheus couldn’t possibly know that my linux machine on the same network was trying to serve!

Home Network Bandwidth Balancing

This could be solved in two other ways: One, if there was some sort of two-way protocol between Morpheus and other bandwidth hungry apps, such that apache could send across the network (quickly enough):

Apache: “Hey, Morpheus, I need to send a web page, hold off for a second”

Morpheus: “No prob.”

Apache: “Ok I’m done”.

Of course this conversation would be very rapid and happen many times per second.

Another solution (more likely) is that the techniques migrate down to the gateway or DSL router and some application toolkit goes to the OS level. Then, some local reservation of service would go like this:

Apache: “Hey, gateway, I’m on this linux machine and I’m a service app. I am HTTP, tcp, short connection oriented- I need pretty low latency because there’s a lot of disconnect/connect. I’m the most important app on this network. I don’t want to drown out other apps however.”

Gateway: “Ok lemme see… ok, Apache.”

Morpheus: “Hey, gateway, I run all the time. I have fairly long connection periods compared to connects… but I’m lower priority. Don’t let me mess up the web services.”

Gateway: “Ok gotcha.”

Now, if the website is a bandwidth intensive site and the P2P app is very web-serverish with many small transactions, these profiles are not always correct… the point is, it would be nice if the various apps settled into a rhythm and worked together, if not perfectly, in the optimal way.

I always compare the bandwidth problem to the world hunger problem: Given the proper distribution, there is enough grain to feed everybody. The problem is getting it there. Similarly, there is always unused bandwidth somewhere on the Internet. Even on your home LAN, there is often enough bandwidth, if you distribute it right.

It took years for OS’s to multitask smoothly and balance interactive (user) response with computation and disk use. We now need to see it happen for network applications, and get that multi-tasking effectiveness for our bandwidth.

Some potential solutions (and these have all been invented hundreds of times, they just haven’t trickled down to the end user machine) are:

• System-wide bandwidth reservation, a software API for accessing it, allowing one machine to make the best use of it’s bandwidth.
• Centralized (on a small lan) reservation of bandwidth, perhaps centered around a gateway device or DSL/Cable access point
• Peer-to-peer cooperative reservation of bandwidth, where apps sort of work it out amongst each other (on a network) how they will share the bandwidth

Related link: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45870,00.html

Dmitry Slkyarov, the Russian coder who has been sitting in a Vegas jail for three weeks, was just released on $50,000 bail, Wired reports. He has to remain in Northern California until the trial. Used to be Russians who got to visit the U.S. made a beeline to apply for asylum. Now the U.S. seems like the asylum and Russia the land of the free.

Dmitry Sklyarov has been released on a $50,000 bail bond put up by his employer, Elcomsoft.

The links below to a Wired News article and an Electronic Frontier Foundation announcement provide more details about the release:

• Adobe E-Book Hacker Released (Wired News)

• Dmitry Sklyarov to be Released on Bail
  (Russian Programmer Will Not Have to Remain Jailed
  Pending DMCA Trial)
  (EFF Advisory)

There’s a scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” where this tough guy with a sword puts on a big scary show with the sword, twirling it around to show what a master he is, and Indiana Jones just pulls out his gun and shoots the guy. What makes the scene work is the contrast between a master with a old weapon and an average schmoe with a new weapon. AOL’s recent moves against .NET are like the guy with the sword.

The company announced an identity initiative codenamed “Magic Carpet” and promoted as “Screen Name Service” that would compete with Microsoft Passport. It would allow web users to sign on to multiple websites in one step, and to use their AOL username and password for access to third party sites like eBay.

AOL has also announced that technology to allow other IM providers to interoperate with AIM will begin testing soon. In a July 23 progress report to the FCC on making AIM interoperable with outside vendors, the company stated that third party IM vendors would be able, on a technical level, to interoperate with AIM.

However, neither of these is much of an alternative to .NET. Passport’s roots are in single sign-in for web sites, but its importance now is as an identity technology for all Internet software; Magic Carpet/Screen Name Service is strictly about web sites. Similarly, Messenger’s literal focus is on chat, but its importance is as an interchange for messages of all kinds. The open AIM initiative allows third party chat messages, and only chat messages, to leverage AIM’s presence stream.

These two attempts to protect its turf are about identity and presence, but only address market needs from a year or more ago. Single sign-on for web sites is an old battle, as is IM interoperability that doesn’t allow for events to be hooked on the client side. Generic identity and presence are the current battle; AOL’s leading edge initiatives fail to address either.

On the identity front, AOL needs to make it possible for all kinds of software to use AIM screenames for authentication, not just IM. Groupware apps, for example, should be able to ride on buddy lists and IM identities.

On the presence front, the action is client side. It should be possible for external software to send an event on the AIM stream, have AIM map the message to a local handler, and have the handler receive the event. For example, a market data service should be able to send an alert about a drastic price drop to an AIM user, then have AIM activate custom software that opens a dialog box with a blinking red light.

That’s how the sword/gun thing comes up. AOL is fighting with out of date weapons. Even if they do a great job, it doesn’t matter.

Related link: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT34WCBIVPC&live=tr…

The movement to build a new-generation internet through a global computer “grid” will receive a big boost on Thursday when International Business Machines, the world’s largest computing company, commits itself to the new technology.

Related link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/20766.html

Two weeks ago I scribed a weblog regarding the record labels shipping copy-protected CD’s without letting consumers know of the change, and how this was a blow to the ideas behind fair-use.

While I still believe fair-use has been compromised, it’s good to see that there is a way around this absurd scheme by the record labels thanks to a few hackers out there. The bypass, explained on CD Freaks, converts the disc tracks to .wav files in RAM and mounts them as readable volumes. At that point any .wav app can handle the rip.

Now of course you could’ve bypassed the watermarking before the crack by simply connecting your headphone jack to your audio card’s input jack, then recorded the audio as a .wav file (and subsequentially created an MP3 from that). The problem is that’s a lot of work if you’re trying to get ready for a quick jog around the block with your MP3 player.

This new crack isn’t something the general public will catch onto; only a niche crowd will use it. The fact that the CD’s were cracked is a surprise to no one either, including the RIAA. They know the mass majority of the population won’t know how to use the technology to work around these new CD’s, just like the cable companies know a minor segment of the population has descramblers.

While the RIAA may bank on the majority of people not ripping their CD’s to MP3’s, they may not be taking into account that this may push these same people to alternative file-sharing networks, where they can get an MP3 from a more computer-savvy person. As the network propegates and the number of files increase, it becomes much easier and makes more sense for consumers to visit Morpheus and get an album in the MP3 format then it will be to subscribe to one of the record labels subscription services and pay for a format they can’t use outside of their PC.

On a side note. RIAA president Hillary Rosen was on my TV last night. Now I have to go buy a new TV, mine has spoiled…..

Will P2P networks become the fair-use savior?