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Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems: Caught Between EMI and Echelon

http://www.webreview.com/pi/2001/04_27_01.shtml

April 27, 2001 > Platform Independent

By Andy Oram

We'd all like more accountability on the Internet: less unsolicited bulk email, fewer denial-of-service attacks, and even some relief from stupid newsgroup postings. But most of us accept that these drawbacks are an acceptable trade-off for a degree of anonymity and privacy.

Still, some problems seem to cry out for accountability. For many people, they justify abrogating the time-honored right to anonymity.

EMI and other members of the Recording Industry Association of America (the organization leading the lawsuits against Napster) would probably place the unauthorized exchange of copyrighted files at the top of their list of problems. The designers of Echelon (a top-top- secret international program to track all traffic on the world telecommunications network) would cite use of the Internet to plan criminal activities.

Peer-to-peer forces us to rethink the nature of these problems and the proposed remedies. Furthermore, peer-to-peer systems reveal weaknesses in current legal approaches to Internet accountability. In this article, I'll focus on the legal status of the best-known peer- to-peer application: file sharing.

[...]

Government attempts to hold on to their surveillance capabilities are also profoundly antiquated and more than a bit pathetic, because they assume a clear cleavage in the world between the good guys and the bad guys. Governments always think they can hold on to their advanced technologies and keep them out of their adversaries' hands. They've tried to do that when developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and they're trying again with electronic snooping. But any technology they develop will eventually be used against them. In fact, digital technologies can be stolen relatively easily—the government possessing the technology doesn't even have to err by sending busybody airplanes too close to the adversary's territory. Thus, while there are temporary winners in the infowar race, everybody comes out a loser at the end.

[...]

Andy andyo@oreilly.com, is an editor at O'Reilly & Associates and moderator of the Cyber Rights mailing list for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. This article represents his views only.

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