3 ms·

I've got a theory about this, maybe you can enlighten me. Suppose that the movie/song/whatever being downloaded is actually wrapped in a ZIP or RAR -- even bet

I've got a theory about this, maybe you can enlighten me. Suppose that the movie/song/whatever being downloaded is actually wrapped in a ZIP or RAR -- even better, suppose that it's encrypted (granting that the downloader would have the decrypt key). And suppose that somebody downloads a chunk of it (say 10%) from me. That 10% chunk alone is absolutely useless. As it stands, it's effectively random data that cannot be used to recover any of the intellectual property that's inside the archive. One might claim, then, that I did not actually give the downloader any copyrighted materials. It's only his action, in combining it with the other chunks, that allows the IP to be extracted. Thus, neither I nor the 9 other people who hypothetically provided chunks of the file could be blamed individually for providing copyrighted materials to the downloader. At most, each of us aided and abetted the downloader by providing a necessary but insufficient piece. Obviously IANAL, but those are my thoughts. How do they strike you?

ErrantX 16y ago
This is actually a pretty common "idea" (not a bad one, just it comes up a lot :)) that an accused comes up with when I meet them. The same argument, really, applies to anything transmitted over P2P - you usually only download a small chunk from one person, encrypted or not. My response is usually: "were you uploading copyrighted stuff?". Answer: "yes". Me: "well then..." Saying "but I only gave him a small piece of data - what he does with it is his own business" doesn't stand up because clearly your intent was to give him part of the file so he could construct the file (this argument has been used for centuries to try and get out of things and almost always fails :P) Seriously? I think people should just suck it up, admit they did something wrong (currently wrong anyway...) and then fight the idiotic fine. Ultimately the law is not really about the exact bits you exchange (one of the few things I agree with, actually) but about your intent and facilitation of the shared file. EDIT: to clarify/extend something. I think it is a dangerous road to bring the idea of what the individual bits you send mean - because that starts to open up the idea the a certain ordering of bits could be illegal (take a CP case - if a certain ordering of bits makes up the left breast of a child if interpreted as part of a Jpeg is that illegal if randomly occurs within a music file you own. Or perhaps the bits in an MP3 appear by random occurrence in a video file you own. This is a dangerous weapon to hand people :P)
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Upvoted because you partially answered my question -- but I'm not quite satisfied. My point isn't that "it's just a little piece". Like being "a little bit pregnant", I don't think that "infringing a little bit" could amount to much of an argument. It's that with certain methods of encoding, a piece is entirely worthless without the rest of the file. That is, I could give a chunk to the IP owner to inspect, and there's no way that he could tell me if it represented a part of his work. if a certain ordering of bits makes up the left breast of a child if interpreted as part of a Jpeg is that illegal if randomly occurs within... This makes me think of the Judas Priest "back masking" trial way back when [1]. The wikipedia article notes "The case was dismissed by the judge for insufficient evidence of Judas Priest's placement of subliminal messages on the record", and that's a little ambiguous: do we read that to refer to the existence of the message, or to the intent to put the message on the record? Anyway, for the danger that you outline, I would think that if it's possible to transform a data stream into a different context in which it could be construed as illegal, then the evidence would also need to include possession of, or access to, a means of accomplishing that transform. Without some kind of consideration of this, steganography would throw a wrench into everything. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking#Court_cases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking#Court_cases
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    It's that with certain methods of encoding, a piece is entirely worthless without the rest of the file. That is, I could give a chunk to the IP owner to inspect, and there's no way that he could tell me if it represented a part of his work. Surely, even without encoding, the piece is pretty worthless without the remainder of the file. But I see what you mean though (you couldn't even reconstruct a portion of the file). Im not sure it matters; the point is definitely the intent to supply the copyrighted media in whatever form. It's similar to the persons idea not long ago of supplying obfuscated MP3's by encoding them as Tweets and then supplying the code or algorithm to recover and reconstruct the file. It's all part and parcel of the same thing. It's just obfuscating the delivery method not the actual package/intent. More importantly I don't think the court will be sympathetic to the idea; and if that is the case it risks invalidating other arguments you may bring. (there is a similar thing in money laundering; many launderers try and get away with it by rotating very small parcels of money from lots of different batches through legitimate transfers. The idea is twofold; it's difficult to reconstruct the original larger packets of illegal money and b) they can claim, for various reasons, they had no idea of the origin of the money. This argument, as you can imagine, doesn't last long in court :)) I think, ultimately, it is not currently possible to fight the idea that distributing copyright materials in any form could be legal (or at least not illegal).
roel_v 16y ago
Your zip or rar or encrypted form or whatever of the IP is directly derived from the original, and as such it is still subject to the same restrictions as the original. Derived material is protected in the same way as the original. If you ROT13 a book, and upload one chapter, is that infringing? Answer: yes, because it is distribution of a work derived from a protected work. Does it matter if the original is recoverable? No. If the receiver of the ROT13 version doesn't know about ROT13, it's still infringing. If it's even technically impossible to recover the original (because it's part of a larger encrypted file, because you don't know the password/decryption key, ...), is it still infringing? Answer: yes.

ErrantX 16y ago

This is actually a pretty common "idea" (not a bad one, just it comes up a lot :)) that an accused comes up with when I meet them. The same argument, really, applies to anything transmitted over P2P - you usually only download a small chunk from one person, encrypted or not. My response is usually: "were you uploading copyrighted stuff?". Answer: "yes". Me: "well then..." Saying "but I only gave him a small piece of data - what he does with it is his own business" doesn't stand up because clearly your intent was to give him part of the file so he could construct the file (this argument has been used for centuries to try and get out of things and almost always fails :P) Seriously? I think people should just suck it up, admit they did something wrong (currently wrong anyway...) and then fight the idiotic fine. Ultimately the law is not really about the exact bits you exchange (one of the few things I agree with, actually) but about your intent and facilitation of the shared file. EDIT: to clarify/extend something. I think it is a dangerous road to bring the idea of what the individual bits you send mean - because that starts to open up the idea the a certain ordering of bits could be illegal (take a CP case - if a certain ordering of bits makes up the left breast of a child if interpreted as part of a Jpeg is that illegal if randomly occurs within a music file you own. Or perhaps the bits in an MP3 appear by random occurrence in a video file you own. This is a dangerous weapon to hand people :P)

CWuestefeld 16y ago
Upvoted because you partially answered my question -- but I'm not quite satisfied. My point isn't that "it's just a little piece". Like being "a little bit pregnant", I don't think that "infringing a little bit" could amount to much of an argument. It's that with certain methods of encoding, a piece is entirely worthless without the rest of the file. That is, I could give a chunk to the IP owner to inspect, and there's no way that he could tell me if it represented a part of his work. if a certain ordering of bits makes up the left breast of a child if interpreted as part of a Jpeg is that illegal if randomly occurs within... This makes me think of the Judas Priest "back masking" trial way back when [1]. The wikipedia article notes "The case was dismissed by the judge for insufficient evidence of Judas Priest's placement of subliminal messages on the record", and that's a little ambiguous: do we read that to refer to the existence of the message, or to the intent to put the message on the record? Anyway, for the danger that you outline, I would think that if it's possible to transform a data stream into a different context in which it could be construed as illegal, then the evidence would also need to include possession of, or access to, a means of accomplishing that transform. Without some kind of consideration of this, steganography would throw a wrench into everything. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking#Court_cases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking#Court_cases
- ErrantX 16y ago
  It's that with certain methods of encoding, a piece is entirely worthless without the rest of the file. That is, I could give a chunk to the IP owner to inspect, and there's no way that he could tell me if it represented a part of his work. Surely, even without encoding, the piece is pretty worthless without the remainder of the file. But I see what you mean though (you couldn't even reconstruct a portion of the file). Im not sure it matters; the point is definitely the intent to supply the copyrighted media in whatever form. It's similar to the persons idea not long ago of supplying obfuscated MP3's by encoding them as Tweets and then supplying the code or algorithm to recover and reconstruct the file. It's all part and parcel of the same thing. It's just obfuscating the delivery method not the actual package/intent. More importantly I don't think the court will be sympathetic to the idea; and if that is the case it risks invalidating other arguments you may bring. (there is a similar thing in money laundering; many launderers try and get away with it by rotating very small parcels of money from lots of different batches through legitimate transfers. The idea is twofold; it's difficult to reconstruct the original larger packets of illegal money and b) they can claim, for various reasons, they had no idea of the origin of the money. This argument, as you can imagine, doesn't last long in court :)) I think, ultimately, it is not currently possible to fight the idea that distributing copyright materials in any form could be legal (or at least not illegal).

roel_v 16y ago

Your zip or rar or encrypted form or whatever of the IP is directly derived from the original, and as such it is still subject to the same restrictions as the original. Derived material is protected in the same way as the original. If you ROT13 a book, and upload one chapter, is that infringing? Answer: yes, because it is distribution of a work derived from a protected work. Does it matter if the original is recoverable? No. If the receiver of the ROT13 version doesn't know about ROT13, it's still infringing. If it's even technically impossible to recover the original (because it's part of a larger encrypted file, because you don't know the password/decryption key, ...), is it still infringing? Answer: yes.