Big Music May Be Watching You

[dArKeR]

The recording industry is providing its most detailed glimpse into some of the detective-style techniques it has employed as part of its secretive campaign against online music swappers.

The disclosures were included in court papers filed against a Brooklyn woman fighting efforts to identify her for allegedly sharing nearly 1,000 songs over the Internet. The recording industry disputed her defense that songs on her family's computer were from compact discs she had legally purchased.

According to the documents, the Recording Industry Association of America examined song files on the woman's computer and traced their digital fingerprints back to the former Napster file-sharing service, which shut down in 2001 after a court ruled it violated copyright laws.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/28/tech/main570507.shtml

http://darkerxdarker.tripod.com/

[Impolitico]

1. How...

So I get that an RIAA subpeona can produce information from an ISP about what information may have been transmitted through their service (although I find it bizarre that an ISP would register detailed data about every info transaction every user completes- wouldnt' that be prohibitively difficult in terms of database size and expense in maintaining such a database?), but how the hell did the RIAA *examine files on the defendant's computer* in order to compare hashes to those in their own documentation?

Did they hack her to compare hashes, THEN file a lawsuit?

I don't get it. Somebody explain it to me like I'm five?

[kutastha]

2. My guess

Is that it's scare tactics. Hence, the title of the article isn't too far off. Digital fingerprinting for files acquired by Napster? How are those going to be differentiated from something I extracted from my own CD to my computer? In 2000-01 did computers tag on something to the file once it was transferred over Napster? Are they going to do this for every single file on every person's computer?