Are you paranoid? The internet is a breeding ground for conspiracies, and the fear of corporate surveillance is one topic that has rattled around for years. This week however, rumours became reality as it emerged that spy software is the latest weapon in the entertainment industry's war against copyright pirates. But as file trading peer to peer networks like Napster and its successors become increasingly popular, can corporations force millions of people to obey laws they don't believe in?
News site 7amnews.com has exposed a piece of software called Media Tracker, which it alleges the entertainment industry is using to spy on individuals using P2P networks. Media Tracker can tell exactly what pirated music, video or software files you are trading. It can trace your identity back through the network of servers and internet service providers (ISPs) you use when you access the web, and it can root out your computer's unique IP number. Lawyers can then use this to trace your identity, and send out a cautionary letter to your ISP insisting that you stop sharing copyrighted material, or potentially face prosecution.
Industry lawyers have contacted ISPs over a hundred times in the past few weeks asking them to exclude individuals involved in file trading. By tracking over one million Roy Orbison songs being traded on Napster, lawyers were able to deduce the offenders' ISPs, demand from them names of the 60,000 individuals involved, and then force Napster to block their access. Similar legal action by the thrash metal band Metallica also led to users being barred from Napster.
But these are small victo ries given the many millions of users in dozens of countries all disobeying copyright through P2P networks every day. Effectively engaged in a mass act of uncoordinated civil disobedience, people power looks set to overwhelm legal muscle and technical espionage.
Unable to prosecute every user, the entertainment industry's options are already looking limited. Perhaps by making examples of a few high profile users they might intimidate others into stopping, but attacking your own customers is hardly good business. When Metallica took legal action against Napster - and effectively its own fans - they turned themselves into a joke, destroyed their rebellious image overnight and alienated the very people buying their albums. "It was a disaster," said an EMI new media spokesman. "The same teenagers who had Metallica posters on their walls were parodying the band on websites all over the internet, and re-doubling their efforts to copy and circulate the group's music".
In addition, the long-term success of any surveillance campaign would depend on the co-operation of ISPs, which are unlikely to want take on the time-consuming, and incredibly unpopular burden of becoming a global internet police force.
If ISPs start accepting responsibility for what is held on subscribers' hard drives, it will not only dramatically increase their responsibilities, but also severely compromise the privacy of their customers, who will simply leave and join another less discriminating ISP. Any attempt to force ISPs to comply would pit the entertainment industry in a legal battle against very wealthy and powerful companies.
Even if the entertainment industry lawyers overcome these obstacles, and manage to find a practical way of using the technology, it may already be out of date and unable to cope with the most recent P2P innovations. New file trading networks such as Freenet http://freenet.sourceforge.net are totally decentralised and spread files across all the computers involved. There is no central hub or index, and no way for individual users to tell what is being stored on their computers. No one keeps track of users, and this makes it nearly impossible for even sophisticated programs to track who is sharing what with whom. Even if other networks become unsafe, pirates could escape the prying eyes of entertainment industry lawyers by moving on to Freenet.
Unless internet users decide to stop voluntarily, there seems very little the entertainment industry can do to force them. In a bizarre millennial twist on people power, popular greed has succeeded where socialism failed and capitalism is about to take a knock from the largest display of selfish solidarity the world has ever seen.
