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Here's a startup idea: A background service that runs on a PC/IPad/Phone, checks for new media files (pictures/mp3s/videos) and automatically re-encodes them, s

Here's a startup idea: A background service that runs on a PC/IPad/Phone, checks for new media files (pictures/mp3s/videos) and automatically re-encodes them, such that the quality, etc. is preserved but the file hash changes and cloud services can no longer deduplicate it. It will be quite valuable for users of services like Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Player, etc.

evan_ 16y ago
Why would that be valuable?
- dude_abides 16y ago
  Because it gives the user "plausible deniability" in case RIAA/MPAA serves him a notice.
derefr 16y ago
Why bother re-encoding the whole file? Changing a bit or two would be sufficient.
- wulczer 16y ago
  Yeah, and also reencoding from a lossy format always leads to quality loss, that's why the format is called lossy.
  - tedunangst 16y ago
    There are nonlossy transforms that can be done even with lossy formats, e.g., rotating a jpeg. ok, that's not reencoding.
bigiain 16y ago
Here's another idea: a service that identifies hash values for popular-but-copyright-encumbered files, which you can feed into your (patched copy of) Dropbox client and pretend you're about to upload it. Bam, it appears in your Dropbox account! And sneakier still, a remote hosted bit torrent client that automates that process for you in a way that can provably show you never downloaded the copyrighted file, you just had a number on your drive, which if interpreted as a SHA256 hash key happened to identify a duplicate of the copyright file on Dropbox... (I'd be spectacularly impressed if someone managed to make _that_ trick fly on court in a precedent setting manner!)
- TillE 16y ago
  That's wonderfully devious. And probably quite straightforward to implement. I hope it doesn't happen, because that'd be a bit of a nightmare for Dropbox. They could blacklist known pirate rips of movies and the like, but what do you do when you receive a takedown notice for DRM-free content that some users are legitimately storing, but Dropbox is now (accidentally) illegally distributing? Could be the end of global de-duping.
  - shasta 16y ago
    If this really became a problem for Dropbox, one response would be to have the server issue random challenges to clients that purport to have the file.

evan_ 16y ago

Why would that be valuable?

dude_abides 16y ago
Because it gives the user "plausible deniability" in case RIAA/MPAA serves him a notice.

derefr 16y ago

Why bother re-encoding the whole file? Changing a bit or two would be sufficient.

wulczer 16y ago
Yeah, and also reencoding from a lossy format always leads to quality loss, that's why the format is called lossy.
- tedunangst 16y ago
  There are nonlossy transforms that can be done even with lossy formats, e.g., rotating a jpeg. ok, that's not reencoding.

bigiain 16y ago

Here's another idea: a service that identifies hash values for popular-but-copyright-encumbered files, which you can feed into your (patched copy of) Dropbox client and pretend you're about to upload it. Bam, it appears in your Dropbox account! And sneakier still, a remote hosted bit torrent client that automates that process for you in a way that can provably show you never downloaded the copyrighted file, you just had a number on your drive, which if interpreted as a SHA256 hash key happened to identify a duplicate of the copyright file on Dropbox... (I'd be spectacularly impressed if someone managed to make _that_ trick fly on court in a precedent setting manner!)

TillE 16y ago
That's wonderfully devious. And probably quite straightforward to implement. I hope it doesn't happen, because that'd be a bit of a nightmare for Dropbox. They could blacklist known pirate rips of movies and the like, but what do you do when you receive a takedown notice for DRM-free content that some users are legitimately storing, but Dropbox is now (accidentally) illegally distributing? Could be the end of global de-duping.
- shasta 16y ago
  If this really became a problem for Dropbox, one response would be to have the server issue random challenges to clients that purport to have the file.