Topic: Could Bitcoin (protocol) kill file sharing? (Read 1765 times)

its def a good option instead of file-share, in certain situations IMHO

You could certainly implement a PoS system in regards to file sharing, you would need to explicitly state that you want to run an app if it has been signed by someone with a low balance in his Bitcoin address.

Yeah that makes sense.

Go figure, if content providers get with the times and new technologies and use it to improve services instead of trying to fight technology, people don't actually mind paying for things they like

That's basically what I said.
I never said that netflix is killing piracy right now , nor that will kill it unless it improves both the time the shows are delayed and worldwide availability.

But , time will tell.
My opinion , as a retired trusted uploaded / helper on tpb (green/then blue skull) , for the first time in the last decade , legal services are improving at a faster rate than piracy websites.

While I agree netflix is pretty awesome and it's true that a lot more people use it nowadays when in the past they would have downloded stuff for free..... Services like netflix still have a LOOOOONG way to go to compete with piracy to the point where only a small % of people download stuff for free. And there are no signs of content creators backing down and allowing services like netflix to get movies any quicker, there really is no time table on when or even if that will ever happen.

I'll give you one quick example. I want to watch both hobbit movies tonight. The first one has been out on dvd for almost a year now, yet it's STILL not on netflix streaming , this is all too common with big name movies. It takes literally years if ever to show up on netflix. So if I want to watch both tonight I have to drive to the store and buy the dvd, and then im still left with the fact that the dvd of the 2nd one still isnt out..... however , both can be downloaded in about 10-15minutes total for FREE in HD with a few clicks of a button on my computer.  You tell me what most people will and what most people DO choose to do.

It may be true that someday in the future online streaming services are so quick and efficient that few people ever want to download anything for free, but I don't see that day coming for at least a few more decades.

In regards to people running piracy sites to make money....there are also no signs of that going away. Piracy sites are making more money than ever before actually even after a decade or two of trying to stamp them out and or offer other services to get people not to use them.

Even tv series that are aired on a tv stations website within 12-24 hours have a hard time competing with something like torrent sites since shows typically appear on there within 30mins of being aired and without commercials.

This doesn't even take into consideration the issue of streaming services being blocked in a large % of the world. Netflix is blocked where I'm at right now, so are the streaming services American TV companies offer for their shows.  In these situations my only options are  1) pay for a vpn  2) download for free


Overall though I agree with you that the best way to stamp out piracy is to simply offer better services so people no longer have much of a need/desire to download stuff illegally. We are still pretty far away from that day though imo.

The private key required to use the software could be shared in the same way as cracks are shared in order use some software.

Also, how would this payment be checked? People could run small servers with an alternative blockchain. Lets call it the crackchain. You then point to this crackchain instead of the bitcoin blockchain and there you can have all you want. Being a hard fork you can use all your bitcoins on crackchain without actually spending them on the bitcoin blockchain. Crackchain coins could be so cheap a software would cost a few cents at most.

Exactly. And the fact that an authorized user can very simply create an unprotected copy of the digital media he is consuming.

For some software, however,piracy may become less of an issue as more and more of the services we depend on are actually running on the software/cloud provider's hardware. i.e. the user runs a lightweight client that interrogates an API running on some remote server.

For consumables - music - videos etc, it really is a lost cause and there is seriously nothing that can be possibly done apart from providing alternatives like deezer/netflix etc.

Till now , I've seen only one thing that can really hurt piracy , and it's not DRM or other encryption /security  , it's called Netflix.

Also , most of the file sharing is done for money , people posting for the 30/45 % in sales from filesharing websites.
In torrents is for the adds on their own imageservers where they upload the so called screens or previews/ Check tpb pronsection.

90% of the pirate websites will die if they can't get money out of it.
out of the remaining 90% will get killed once services like netflix will improve their delay and world coverage.

The rest , ... who cares about 1%?

DRM is a lost cause.

The protection in Bitcoin is in that spending money requires others to accept your money. And spending bitcoins = by defintion the transaction appearing in the public ledger. And once you spent it, people simply won't accept transactions in which you spend that money again.

With DRM however, this dependency on others does simply not exist. We can't have a construction where you have to publicly declare that you watch a certain movie, and then the world denies any further claims to watch it again. You're not dependent on them.

Even if you try to enforce something like this, it's an artificial dependency that can (and will) be worked around. For typical passive single-person-usage content like movies or music or ebooks, if you can play it once (no matter the technical requirements) you can always re-store it in any DRM-free format you prefer, and share that.

This is the fundamental problem with DRM: there is no intrinsic dependency on any external factors about music or movies or ebooks, that it can't do without. Unlike financial transactions which by definition require an accepting counterparty or payee.

Very interesting topic/question!!  I don't know enough about it to really say much,  but in theory it sounds like something that could be implemented to reduce online piracy , at least in products that are digital online (ebooks etc etc).

Copyright is not a bad thing per se, but mainly just to ascertain who the original creator is. Bitcoin could probably provide that capability. It could also be used to prove the authenticity of a particular work, especially paintings. It would be funny if the real satoshi came out and no one believed him/her. But that person could reasonably prove it by their knowledge of the original private keys. Is the original white paper signed?

The real issue is that it is time for studios to step up to the digital age and stopped hiding behind 100 Year old copyright licenses.
Mickey Mouse Legislation is just delaying it.
One could argue though that a whole new form of content creation is being created already that is usurping the old role the big studios and bitccoins could have a role in that but that's another story.

The solution currently promoted by the industry especially for video called HDCP (High Definition Content Protection) is to first ensure that Bob does not have root or administrative access on the computer, device playing the source (Windows Vista or later, Blu-ray player, etc.) and the source checks for a trusted display (existing untrusted displays end up as ewaste creating a massive environmental problem). This is the reason why newer Blu-ray players do not support component outputs for example. Nevertheless this DRM scheme can simply be defeated by cam-cording from a TV, as proposed by the MPAA. http://boingboing.net/2009/05/07/mpaa-to-teachers-don.html

The real solution to the DRM issue is for the major studios, record companies and propriety software vendors to change their business models from those suitable to the 19th century to those suitable to the 21st century. If they cannot or will not change then they belong in bankruptcy court.

You are an audio producer, you have just got a brand new album and you want Bob to check it out. You don't want him filesharing it so you use your magic bitcoin protection system.

You give your copy protected MP3 file to Bob.

Bob runs your software which checks that he has the rights to play the audio. He does.

He records the audio and uploads the unprotected version to the internets. The next day 50 million people have it.

There is zero solution to get round this.

I don't think it's a lack of common sense and I don't think it's impossible. I'm a Libertarian... I agree with you but I know that means very little to large labels and it's a legal minefield.

Sure you can copy a sequence of bytes or remove it but in this theory that series of bytes would be linked by a recorded transaction to another specific series of bytes on the operating system that the software was first installed on... This would be a record on the blockchain and unless the rights were transferred from that OS to another OS it wouldn't be verifiable.

If I'm mistaken please explain the error in my thoughts so I can learn something new.

This is not correct. Most propriety software developed in the last 15 years has DRM. Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) such as GNU/Linux does not and in fact then GPL v3 is by design highly toxic to DRM making it an excellent FLOSS license for this reason. Also Microsoft software between the mid 1980's and roughly 2000 was free of DRM. This is the period when Microsoft provided the best returns to its shareholders debunking the common myth that DRM is necessary for propriety software and content.

DRM is typically implemented in one of two ways. Hide the key somewhere on the end user's property and hope the end user will not find it. In the early days this consisted of deliberatively creating bad sectors on 5.25in floppy disks. The location of the bad sectors on the floppy "locked" the software to the floppy. Then came dongles, and the more modern method of locking the software to the hardware characteristics of the computer effectively turning the whole computer into the dongles. All of these DRM methods could be defeated with the adversary (the owner of the computer or device) finding the decryption key that had at some point in time to be on her hardware.

The above problem was solved in a much more insidious way. Take root or administrative and thereby control away from the adversary (the owner of the computer for device). This is the model used by IOS, unrooted Android, and Windows 8 RT / Windows phone. Windows Vista, 7 and 8 also use this method since the "Administrator" is not a true administrator as she is locked out from certain "protected" parts of the OS. The consequences of this are very insidious since the "protected" parts of the OS can be used to for example to spy on the user, force the user to only obtain content and software from an approved and censored source and yes also to launch a 51% attack on a distributed cryptocurrency network such as Bitcoin.

The GPL v3 is a very effective tool against the locked device device situation above if it is present in components the OS which require root access to modify, since it requires the ability of the owner of the device to be able to modify the software as a condition of distribution. This is why modern GNU/Linux distributions provide the only assurance that an end user has complete control over their computing devices.


 

There is a frightening lack of common sense on display in this thread.

As soon as you give Bob your precious sequence of bytes, he can do whatever the hell he wants with it, including spending 5 minutes to remove whatever protection you put in place and putting the rest on the internets for everyone else to enjoy.

The thing you 'it can be done' guys are missing, is the fact that there is nothing about the bitcoin protocol that prevents applications from being patched and having its DRM removed. It doesn't matter how clever your DRM is if it can just be removed.

I don't know if it's impossible. I know it's a constant struggle...

If you could assign a value to a software key and then distribute it with a blockchain upon installation you could isolate keys which have been used in too many instances by looking at the balance on the blockchain.

It obviously wouldn't be perfect but it seems to me like a more advantageous way to keep track of things. It also legitimizes Bitcoin as another use of the technology.

Come on guys, it really is not hard. DRM does not and can never work.

At some point the user will need to have the (music/video/software) in non-encrypted form so that his (ears/eyes/cpu) can consume it.

So please tell me how your magic will prevent someone copying an unprotected version of this and sharing it with 50 million other people?

It is quite frankly impossible.