... The interesting questions are ... how much better collaborative filters will become in locating freely offered material.

Shirky: Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content

We investigate the darknet – a collection of networks and technologies used to share digital content. The darknet is not a separate physical network but an application and protocol layer riding on existing networks. Examples of darknets are peer-to-peer file sharing, CD and DVD copying, and key or password sharing on email and newsgroups. The last few years have seen vast increases in the darknet’s aggregate bandwidth, reliability, usability, size of shared library, and availability of search engines. In this paper we categorize and analyze existing and future darknets, from both the technical and legal perspectives. We speculate that there will be short-term impediments to the effectiveness of the darknet as a distribution mechanism, but ultimately the darknet-genie will not be put back into the bottle. In view of this hypothesis, we examine the relevance of content protection and content distribution architectures.

This paper, co-authored by Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman (all Microsoft employees), was presented at the DRM 2002 conference hosted by Stanford.

The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution [DOC]

You can read the book online now for free, or you can wait and buy a copy when it's published.

Patents in the Knowledge-Based Economy

Abstract: Peer-to-peer file-sharing networks are currently receiving much attention as a means of sharing and distributing information. However, as recent experience shows, the anonymous, open nature of these networks offers an almost ideal environment for the spread of self-replicating inauthentic files.

We describe an algorithm to decrease the number of downloads of inauthentic files in a peer-to-peer file-sharing network that assigns each peer a unique global trust value, based on the peer’s history of uploads. We present a distributed and secure method to compute global trust values, based on Power iteration. By having peers use these global trust values to choose the peers from whom they download, the network effectively identifies malicious peers and isolates them from the network.

In simulations, this reputation system, called EigenTrust, has been shown to significantly decrease the number of inauthentic files on the network, even under a variety of conditions where malicious peers cooperate in an attempt to deliberately subvert the system.

The EigenTrust Algorithm for Reputation Management in P2P Networks [PDF]

Abstract: The entertainment industry, facing a formidable threat from peer-to-peer piracy networks, is exploring every possible means to attack these networks.

The industry is also employing defensive strategies to protect media and media players from those who would extract and copy their content. These content protection systems depend on the computer industry’s newly announced ‘trusted computing’ technologies.

While "trusted computing" technologies may better protect media and media players from content extraction by pirates, we assert that the very same technologies can be employed to better protect pirates and their peer-to-peer distribution networks from the entertainment industry.

Trusted Computing, Peer-To-Peer Distribution, and the Economics of Pirated Entertainment [PDF]

The DMCA impedes the progress of science, is economically unjustifiable, and lacks the balance the Constitution requires of intellectual property legislation.

Pamela Samuelson of UC Berkeley writes about DRM in the April 2003 issue of Communications of the ACM. She has made the article freely available from her web site; no subscription is required. Note: the linked document has no DRM :)

DRM {and, or, vs.} the Law

Try to visit this URL for an NYT article by Amy Harmon entitled, "More Than Just a Game, But How Close to Reality?" It's from April 3, 2003 -- only nine days ago, and yet NYT has already moved the article into its pay-per-view archive. Lame.

Even articles from April 4 have already been moved to the archive.

NYT Archive Policy Gets More Aggressive

The New York Times has changed its policy for online access to news articles older than thirty days. These articles are no longer available via the free registration process.

Do a Memestreams search for "nytimes" and browse down a few pages into the results for an NYT article from 2002. Try to follow the link. No dice.

What do they hope to gain by this? It seems likely to encourage private full-text archival of NYT articles, rather than on-demand online retrieval. Some may be dissuaded from linking to NYT at all, given the short fuse, and migrate to other publications that don't have a similar policy.

NYT Archive Disappears from the Net

... kids aren't interested in music anymore; "it's about gaming and PlayStation."

Twilight of the CD? Not if It Can Be Reinvented

The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT), Berkeley Technology Law Journal (BTLJ), the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic and the School of Information Management & Systems (SIMS) are proud to announce this year's ground-breaking conference confronting the controversies surrounding digital rights management.

This conference will be held at Berkeley from Feb 27 through March 1. Speakers include: Brian LaMacchia, Pamela Samuelson, Carl Shapiro, Hal Varian, David Farber, Lucky Green, Hal Abelson, Edward Felten, Larry Lessig, Jerry Berman, Mark Lemley, and many others.

The Law & Technology of DRM