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p2p, anonymity and security



On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 01:57:48AM -0500, Greg Rundlett wrote:
> Derek Martin wrote:
> 
> >I feel obligated to point out that you are basically advertising in a
> >relatively public forum your intention to violate Federal law.  This
> >is rather a bad idea, particularly in today's climate.
> I am not advertising any intention to violate any law.  

Maybe, but it certainly does read that way...  Note that I did not
write in order to attack you; I was only trying to offer you some
friendly advice.  As you say, you're not a lawyer, so you may not be
aware of the potential trouble you may cause yourself.  FWIW, I am not
a lawyer either, but I have actually studied law with real lawyers in
an actual university law course...  That said, please preface any
legal point I make with an implicit "IIRC."

Note also that I said "basically" -- perhaps my choice of words was
sub-optimal, but I included this word to suggest the possibility that
this is not actually what you intend to do.  Nevertheless, what you
actually said was this:

> I also want to get a general purpose p2p tool similar to Napster,
> for sharing ogg, mp3 or other multimedia files.  The number one
> prerequisite here is which tool/protocol offers the best anonymity.

Whether or not you actually plan to violate the law, you clearly want
to share types of files which exist primarily, almost to the exclusion
of anything else, to represent music digitally.  The usual case is for
such files to be ripped from copyrighted CDs.  You mention Napster, a
tool notoriously associated with copyright infringement.  

To complicate your situation, you went on to say you wanted anonimity,
practically in the same breath.  You stated that anonimity was your #1
criteria for choosing a file sharing tool.  We all know that there are
many reasons to want anonimity.  But it doesn't help your case at all.
RIAA lawyers will (probably rather convincingly) argue to the judge
that the only reason you could want anonimity so badly is to avoid
prosecution.

It is not unreasonable for people to believe you mean to violate the
law, based on what you've said.  It is very likely that the paranoid
(i.e. the RIAA's watchdogs) will make such assumptions.  It won't
matter much if you did or didn't, should they decide to try to
convince some judge that it IS your intention, and if they convince
the judge...  Either way, your home will be raided, and your system
will be confiscated.  You may well not go to jail, but if it were me
at the very least it would wreck my day...

> My intention is explicitly stated and legal 

I beg to differ on that.

 explicit - adj.  Fully and clearly expressed; leaving nothing implied.

This is from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition.

Your intention was NOT explicit.  You left it up to the reader to
decide whether the OGG and MP3 files you intend to share are
encumbered by a non-owned copyright.

That I am splitting hairs, there is no doubt.  But these are the kinds
of hairs that lawyers (such as those in the employ of the RIAA) enjoy
splitting...

> (and this is a wholely public forum).  

I disagree there, also.  In order to post to the list, you must sign
up...  It is not possible to post unless you are a member.  In order
to sign up, you must provide some amount of personally identifying
information (an e-mail address).  That e-mail address can ALWAYS be
traced back to you, with varying degrees of difficulty, by those with
government-backed subpoena power...

A public resource, by contrast, is one which anyone can use.
Generally speaking, there's some amount of anonimity implied.  If I
use a public restroom, I do not need to sign up to use it, nor do I
need to identify myself when I do.  If I use a municipal swimming
pool, (usually) the same is true.  These are public.

You say that this list is a public forum; not so.  In order to be a
forum, people must participate.  In order to participate, you must
sign up and identify yourself (albeit minimally).  Hence, it's not
public.  Likewise, distribution of the original source messages is
limited to those who are signed up.  This list happens to also archive
the messages, but a) not in their original form, and b) this does not
need to be the case.

There is absolutely nothing inherently public about a mailing list.
They can, in fact, be extremely private.  Most are somewhere in
between...

> I think it's a good idea to discuss anything.  Who gets to discuss
> illegal things?  Only lawyers?

You can discuss illegal things all you like, so long as you don't
announce intention to commit a crime, which is generally illegal.  For
example, if you plot to commit a crime with your friends, you need not
even actually attempt the act to be guilty of a crime.  This is called
conspiracy.  If you are dumb enough to announce your intentions to
kill the president, the Secret Service will make your life unpleasant.
If you tell airport security that you intend to bomb a plane, you will
almost certainly be arrested immediately.  You probably won't go to
jail, but you probably will miss your flight.  Though, if you happen
to be carrying anything that might be used to make a bomb...  Well, I
wouldn't want to be you.  

>   It is
> >certainly possible to exchange materials which do not have copyrights
> >to which you are not the owner via these file sharing networks;
> >however I don't think anyone here is naive enough to believe that is
> >(exclusively) what you intend...
> You confused me a bit with this wording.  I think you meant to say that 
[SNIP]

I said precisely what I meant to say.  The sentences I wrote are
grammatically correct and grammatically convey exactly what I meant
them to convey.

> and only the naive here will forget all the fair-use rights bestowed
> upon us all.

Your fair-use rights end when you pass a copy of your media to someone
else.  You clearly intend to do this; this is exactly what file
sharing utilities do.  The only question is whether or not you have
right or license to share the files you intend to share.

> Or  else you were saying that I could share all the Grateful Dead
> songs, public speeches, and other forms of un-encumbered 

Public speeches have copyrights, regardless of the fact that they are
delivered publicly.  There may be some issue of how enforcable the
copyright is in that case; I'm not sure.  Are you?  

Grateful Dead songs may well not be encumbered by the owner's
copyright, though that can only happen if the actual copyright holder
released them into the public domain, or if the original copyright has
expired and was not extended.  I don't know that this has happened, or
that it hasn't...  I'd be a little surprised if it was true though.

> media that I want.

And again, even if you actually don't intend to share files illegally,
few would believe you...

> >What you have said is almost certainly not enough to charge you, but
> >if interested parties were/are paying attention, it's probably enough
> >for them to get a subpoena...
> 
> IANAL, so I can't say with any degree of certainty what requirements 
> must be met to subpoena a person.  But expressing "I would like a gun to 
> hunt food" does not equal "Subpoena: Show me your murder weapons".

But what you said is definitely not the equivalent.

-- 
Derek D. Martin
http://www.pizzashack.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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