4 ms·

Something tells me this will lead to an increase in stealing open wireless connections, and more advance pirates using aircrack on their neighbors WEP encrypted

Something tells me this will lead to an increase in stealing open wireless connections, and more advance pirates using aircrack on their neighbors WEP encrypted wireless. They will either do this preemptively or after losing their own connections. Expect to hear sob stories about how a grandmother can't look at pictures of her grandkids because a pirate used her open WiFi to download gangsta rap and the ISP shut her off.

cabalamat 18y ago
Another counter-strategy would be if the next generation of P2P programs did two things: 1. use encrypted protocols that look like something else, e.g. email or http 2. only connect to trusted peers (e.g. the people on your email software's address book). That way, it would be very difficult for the RIAA or anyone else to know who's filesharing. And in five years time, hard disks will be big enough to store every piece of music that's ever been recorded; people will share the contents of their portable hard disks with their friends, copying music that way. In the future, anyone who wants to will be able to get any piece of music they're interested in, without paying anything. The RIAA cannot alter this (no-one can without banning the Internet) and everyone will have to adjust to the new reality. The RIAA will either get a business model that works, or die.
- mnemonik 18y ago
  People have been sharing files by swapping external hard drives for a long time, definitely nothing new there, but I doubt it will be the new big thing. One of the things private trackers like waffles.fm, what.cd, and OiNK cater to is people that want obscure things and these can't be had by calling up your friends for a hard drive party. There is obviously way more variety on the internet than what your friends might have. So, you are correct that there will be counter strategies implemented by the P2P community. This is the way it has always been. ISPs like Comcast started throttling torrents, so torrent clients started encrypting their transfers. Early on, when Napster was sued, new P2P programs emerged that lacked a centralized server, so you could never just shut down the community. I don't know if they will be able to encrypt and mimic http or mail protocols though, the volume and behavior of traffic just wouldn't match up. I'm not as sure about this so I might be wrong though, but wouldn't it be easier to mimic voip or some other streaming protocol?
  - cabalamat 18y ago
    > I don't know if they will be able to encrypt and mimic http or mail protocols though, the volume and behavior of traffic just wouldn't match up. You're right; traffic analysis would be able to tell between filesharing and typical use of email or http. However, traffic analysis wouldn't be 100% effective and there would be plenty of false positives -- particularly people who used email or http in non-typical ways. I doubt if ISPs would (a) want to write software that propabilistically catches p2p-over-protocol use, or (b) piss off their customers by falsely accusing them of illegal filesharing. And I doubt if governments would enforce cutting off people's internet access based on probabilistic traffic analysis. > wouldn't it be easier to mimic voip or some other streaming protocol? VoIP may well be easier, especially if it included streaming video, since there would be more bandwidth in which to hide stuff.
    - Xichekolas 18y ago
      > or (b) piss off their customers by falsely accusing them of illegal filesharing If the major ISPs cared about their customers this wouldn't be happening to begin with.

cabalamat 18y ago

Another counter-strategy would be if the next generation of P2P programs did two things: 1. use encrypted protocols that look like something else, e.g. email or http 2. only connect to trusted peers (e.g. the people on your email software's address book). That way, it would be very difficult for the RIAA or anyone else to know who's filesharing. And in five years time, hard disks will be big enough to store every piece of music that's ever been recorded; people will share the contents of their portable hard disks with their friends, copying music that way. In the future, anyone who wants to will be able to get any piece of music they're interested in, without paying anything. The RIAA cannot alter this (no-one can without banning the Internet) and everyone will have to adjust to the new reality. The RIAA will either get a business model that works, or die.

mnemonik 18y ago
People have been sharing files by swapping external hard drives for a long time, definitely nothing new there, but I doubt it will be the new big thing. One of the things private trackers like waffles.fm, what.cd, and OiNK cater to is people that want obscure things and these can't be had by calling up your friends for a hard drive party. There is obviously way more variety on the internet than what your friends might have. So, you are correct that there will be counter strategies implemented by the P2P community. This is the way it has always been. ISPs like Comcast started throttling torrents, so torrent clients started encrypting their transfers. Early on, when Napster was sued, new P2P programs emerged that lacked a centralized server, so you could never just shut down the community. I don't know if they will be able to encrypt and mimic http or mail protocols though, the volume and behavior of traffic just wouldn't match up. I'm not as sure about this so I might be wrong though, but wouldn't it be easier to mimic voip or some other streaming protocol?
- cabalamat 18y ago
  > I don't know if they will be able to encrypt and mimic http or mail protocols though, the volume and behavior of traffic just wouldn't match up. You're right; traffic analysis would be able to tell between filesharing and typical use of email or http. However, traffic analysis wouldn't be 100% effective and there would be plenty of false positives -- particularly people who used email or http in non-typical ways. I doubt if ISPs would (a) want to write software that propabilistically catches p2p-over-protocol use, or (b) piss off their customers by falsely accusing them of illegal filesharing. And I doubt if governments would enforce cutting off people's internet access based on probabilistic traffic analysis. > wouldn't it be easier to mimic voip or some other streaming protocol? VoIP may well be easier, especially if it included streaming video, since there would be more bandwidth in which to hide stuff.
  - Xichekolas 18y ago
    > or (b) piss off their customers by falsely accusing them of illegal filesharing If the major ISPs cared about their customers this wouldn't be happening to begin with.