Internet Piracy on Documents

[xechnao]

Could this be a problem for a rpg maker?
If so I wanted to present here an idea that stroke my head about the matter and ask about it.
I admit I am a bit ignorant about internet and this means most propably this idea will be something silly so forgive me if so.

We pay bandwith providers as internet users for the bandwith we consume. This means that bandwith is translated to money, for both the user and the provider.
Could files be created with some kind of a bandwith signature? This means a special signature that can be recognized if ran in the "bandwith" and cover it.
If this is possible then the provider could have an alert system making known every time this file covers bandwith. The provider gets paid for this bandwith from the user, so the file owner could get paid by the provider (something like interests).
So what do you think about it?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

The Forge's search engine isn't Google, but it's not bad. A search on "piracy" specified to the Publishing forum yielded these threads:
PDF publishing
Distribution: email vs. private webpage
A .PDF query
PDF idea
Question of how to present information: one book or many?
Kazaa, piracy, and your PDF game
Split from Kazaa thread
How to deal with a PDF pirate
Ethics of indie proselytizing and the PDF

I hope people review these past discussions before everyone jumps in with free-associated "well I think" posts.

Best,
Ron

[xechnao]

Or I said something silly big time or Ron scared people a bit :)
I believe it's kind of both.
Nevertheless I searched these very productive discussions on piracy over here but this matter hasn't been ever mentioned.
Maybe it's something extremelly silly but I wouldn't have known.

[ejh]

xechnao -- for a more direct answer, let me give it a try --

If something like what you're talking about is ever going to happen, it will first happen for the extremely well-heeled RIAA.  They are more interested in preventing filesharing than any RPG publisher is, and they have more money to make it happen.  So the fact that the RIAA isn't doing this, and is instead resorting to suing twelve-year-olds and similar gangster tactics, indicates that it is not feasible.

(I could go on at length about the technical reasons it's not feasible or desirable, but I figured the RIAA thing kinda sums it up.)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ed,

I know you're busy this weekend, but afterwards, it would be great to learn more about those technical reasons.

Xechnao, you didn't say anything silly at all; you've provided a good inquiry that I hope people will help answer. My concern was that piracy-issues tend to spark lots of well-meaning but essentially empty or repetitive posts, and I provided the links so people would kind of bleed off that energy elsewhere (and maybe you'd find the links helpful too).

Best,
Ron

[ejh]

I'm sure someone could answer this better than me, but it'd go something like this...

What passes over your connection to the internet is information.  It's packaged up inside protocols, called TCP and IP.  It will also be packaged up inside another protocol: FTP or HTTP or HTTPS, or perhaps even other protocols like SSH.  A PDF sent over any of these channels might also be wrapped up inside a ZIP file, or a SIT file or HQX file if you're on a Mac.  It might also be UUENCODED or MIME-base64-encoded if you're sending it through email.  It might also be 'tar/gzipped' or any of a dozen other things.

The point is that each of these layers of encoding is going to change the format of the data as it moves from point to point.  There is no 'signature' which would be constant over all or even a large number of those protocols and formats.  Some of those protocols and/or formats, like SSH or HTTPS are designed to be secure, so that it would be practically impossible even in principle to scan for the files over such connections.

And these are all completely normal, everyday protocols and formats, not used for deliberate obfuscation or piracy.  Deliberately hiding your data would add a whole new layer of impossibleness.

These are all the things that would make it unfeasible *even if* an ISP was willing to do that.  It is not likely they would be willing to do so, since it would require an immense amount of computing power on their part and therefore slow down their connections and make them less competitive.  And finally, the privacy implications are significant: this would be "wiretapping," which even in the post-USA PATRIOT ACT age is a nontrivial measure, and requires some kind of authorization, even for criminal investigations -- and copyright violation is not exactly terrorism on the scale of seriousness of crimes.

So there ya go.  It's not particularly possible, and even if it were possible it would probably not be particularly legal or particularly good businesswise for ISPs.

That said, certain organizations (like the RIAA) have been attempting to roll back the ethical and legal barriers to invading people's privacy in order to punish copyright violation, and for that reason, I have a feeling that if I were wrong about the technical matters above, and therefore it was possible, they would have found a way to make it legal, and to do it whether or not it was ethical -- hence my first message.

[DP]

Thanks, Ed.

What that all boils down to, for me, is "Stop wastin' your time trying to figure out a way around all this crap, and spend it making more products, which will likely make a profit despite the unavoidable (and pretty much numerically constant and stable) pirates--as long as one takes reasonable measures."

This makes me think, given that this is an issue hashed out relatively completely before, that it's time to create some "Wisdom of the Forge" threads/stickies/articles/sutras, that encapsulate the "best practices" (in corporate parlance) of experienced Forge publishers and the big huge brains that love them.

And no, don't look at me to do any of them, unless by way of trade someone offers to sit me down and explain GNS in terms a Canadian can understand.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Dave,

Please see Thank you for volunteering.

Best,
Ron

[DP]

Dang.

[xechnao]

I've seen somewhere on the internet that a Bill Gates' company(most propably Microsoft but ain't sure) project is to make a unique, common internet language and source-that will unify all codification-  for all means of internet involvement. I think the timetable has it to be ready in the next 10 years.
Then I don't understand the privacy worry mentioned. When you enter in a store and buy some purchasable goods the cashier gets to see what you are buying or not?
Maybe the RIAA could push to vote for a law to make it work like something I said before: and I think this could be just for every developer of digital products that wants to be paid back.