RIAA reveals how it tracks college file sharing

A painstaking examination of how the RIAA goes about its business hunting down file sharers on college campuses is available online.

The Chronicle of Higher Education visited the offices of the Recording Industry Association of America and got a demonstration.

The RIAA employee, who declined to give his or her name for fear of receiving hate mail, said the organization has hired online copyright enforcer MediaSentry to do most of the heavy lifting. MediaSentry writes scripts to automatically hunt for the names of copyright songs and locate the IP addresses of computers sharing files, and forwards the information to the RIAA.

If a university or college is involved, the RIAA sends a takedown notice to campus network administrators. The RIAA says it doesn't target specific schools. It's interesting to note that MediaSentry checks the hashes (identifying marks) on the song files to make sure they match the copyright song. If the marks don't match, the company uses software from Audible Magic to compare sound waves.

There aren't too many surprises about how the RIAA goes after serious offenders, but the story is worth reading.

[Pete Bardo]

Interesting that RIAA targets university and college students who mostly do not have the financial means to fight.

Here's an idea to thwart their efforts: Get a list of all the titles in the RIAA database, then create files with those titles, but with bogus mp3 content, maybe a baby crying. This will force RIAA investigators to spend too much time tracking down false positives so the economics of the program. That's the ticket--web spam RIAA and MediaSentry with so much crap their system becomes unusable.

[xhable]

They would get reported as spam, and wouldn't be distributed across the network.

[No Man]

Um... the RIAA has been known to do exactly that in order to make it impossible for P2P users to find the real song. Spamming in the way you've described would only make the RIAA's job easier, not harder.

[aka_tripleB]

You could put the actual music files in a shared folder then turn off "read" permissions. Then the files will be visable but no one shoud be able to copy them without violating the law themselves and exempting you from any liablity.

[paulej]

I have a simpler solution. Ban the RIAA from the network. Of course, you cannot ban the RIAA from using the Internet, but you can certainly create a file sharing network that has explicit provisions that ban the RIAA, its affiliates, employees, contractors, partners, etc. The legal language could be such that the RIAA and any employee, directly or indirectly, including, but not limited to, third party companies, are not (ahem) licensed to access the file sharing network. If the RIAA, directly or indirectly, violates the terms of the license agreement for the network, then the license agreement would say that they subject to fines and prosecution. After all, it is entirely illegal to access a computer one is not authorized to access.

Why not fight their legal crap with legal crap?

[protagonistic]

I have nothing but contempt for the RIAA and the MPAA, but how about this for a solution? Don't download music you haven't purchased. If the RIAA is involved I buy elsewhere. There is plenty of good music from the Indies. if you want to fight the RIAA you are going to have to hit them where the money is.

[aka_tripleB]

It sounds like MediaSentry is conducting illegal searches. Or they are entrapping people, it not both offenses. It's obvious that MediaSentry is snooping in people's computers. Whether it engages in entrapment depends on whether MediaSentry compares hashes or audio on its own system or the accused's system. If MediaSentry checks hashes or audio on its own system, then argues that it obtained the file from the accused, which would be entrapment. In order to argue that a file is shared, you need a warrant to monitor internet traffic, and then witness someone else copying the file. But it doesn't appear that MediaSentry does or even lawfully able to obtain a search warrant. If a search warrant was obtained, it would be mentioned in this type of article or at least be in public records. It would be in the best interest of the RIAA to note that legal search warrants are obtained before accusing people of crimes. However, in most cases, it's obvious RIAA or MediaSentry don't use search warrants; more lawsuits have been issued than warrants. That is probably due to the fact that neither the RIAA nor MediaSentry are not law enforcement agencies, so they cannot get a warrant themselves.

[bigaussie]

This article caught my attention because I am using PeerGuardian and lately it has been going off with MediaSentry being the main offender. The VERY interesting thing about the MediaSentry script is the way it "appears" to work.

The script hangs onto the IP Address (and port) of any connecting PC. It will do this until you block the port which was being used by the p2p program. What is even more interesting, it appears to be selective in what is being watched. TV shows seem to be flavor of the month.

It definitely isn't just universities being watched - - and I am based in the south pacific; not USA.

[gumpman155]

This sounds like some thing that gets done in communist china. Sence when did we become communist china? I have said it miny times its all about $$$$$$$$ thats all they care about. They don't care about us any more then the government dose. We better stand up and take America back or it will be gone for ever. We will not have freedom once it's gone and it will never come back.

[skekoa]

There is one ivy league university that RIAA steers clear of - Harvard. If you're not at Harvard but want to keep the RIAA henchmen at bay, consider using W.A.S.T.E - the secure P2P freeware program created by Justin Frankel.