[IP] more on The Shadow Internet
------ Forwarded Message
From: Dennis Paull <dpaull@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 12:24:17 -0800
To: <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] The Shadow Internet
Hi Dave,
I am quite concerned about the possibility that the neocons will
try to control who gets to use the Internet. I'm sure that laws
will be written to allow that possibility.
It appears that the Darknet may become the model of secret groups
that will form to preserve our political freedoms. Orwell had the
right ideas. As repression increases, the need for underground
communication increases.
Is it really possible that the government is unable to identify
the topsites and find out which servers connect to them?
Dennis Paull
Half Moon Bay, CA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At 10:41 AM 12/30/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>
>------ Forwarded Message
>From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 02:50:03 -0800
>To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Shadow Internet
>
>[Note: The other part of the story that 'Wired Magazine' just did in
>their Jan. '05 issue on the Darknet. DLH]
>
>The Shadow Internet
>They start with a single stolen file and pump out bootleg games and
>movies by the millions. Inside the pirate networks that are terrorizing
>the entertainment business.
>By Jeff HowePage
><http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/topsite.html>
>
>Just over a year ago, a hacker penetrated the corporate servers at
>Valve, the game company behind the popular first-person shooter
>Half-Life. He came away with a beta version of Half-Life 2. "We heard
>about it," says 23-year-old Frank, a well-connected media pirate.
>"Everyone thought it would get bootlegged in Europe." Instead, the
>hacker gave the source code to Frank - it turned out that he was a
>friend of a friend - so that Frank could give Half-Life 2 to the world.
>"I was like, 'Let's do this thing, yo!'" he says. "I put it on
>Anathema. After that, it was all over."
>
>Anathema is a so-called topsite, one of 30 or so underground, highly
>secretive servers where nearly all of the unlicensed music, movies, and
>videogames available on the Internet originate. Outside of a pirate
>elite and the Feds who track them, few know that topsites exist. Even
>fewer can log in.
>
> Within minutes of appearing on Anathema, Half-Life 2 spread. One file
>became 30 files became 3,000 files became 300,000 files as Valve stood
>helplessly by watching its big Christmas blockbuster turn into a lump
>of coal. The damage was irreversible - the horse was out of the barn,
>the county, and the state. The original Half-Life has sold more than 10
>million games and expansion packs since its late 1998 release.
>Half-Life 2's official release finally happened in November, after
>almost a year of reprogramming.
>
> When Frank (who, like all the pirates interviewed for this article, is
>identified by a pseudonym) posted the Half-Life 2 code to Anathema, he
>tapped an international network of people dedicated to propagating
>stolen files as widely and quickly as possible.
>
> It's all a big game and, to hear Frank and others talk about "the
>scene," fantastic fun. Whoever transfers the most files to the most
>sites in the least amount of time wins. There are elaborate rules, with
>prizes in the offing and reputations at stake. Topsites like Anathema
>are at the apex. Once a file is posted to a topsite, it starts a rapid
>descent through wider and wider levels of an invisible network,
>multiplying exponentially along the way. At each step, more and more
>pirates pitch in to keep the avalanche tumbling downward. Finally,
>thousands, perhaps millions, of copies - all the progeny of that
>original file - spill into the public peer-to-peer networks: Kazaa,
>LimeWire, Morpheus. Without this duplication and distribution structure
>providing content, the P2P networks would run dry. (BitTorrent, a
>faster and more efficient type of P2P file-sharing, is an exception.
>But at present there are far fewer BitTorrent users.)
>
>It's a commonly held belief that P2P is about sharing files. It's an
>appealing, democratic notion: Consumers rip the movies and music they
>buy and post them online. But that's not quite how it works.
>
> In reality, the number of files on the Net ripped from store-bought
>CDs, DVDs, and videogames is statistically negligible. People don't
>share what they buy; they share what is already being shared - the
>countless descendants of a single "Adam and Eve" file. Even this is
>probably stolen; pirates have infiltrated the entertainment industry
>and usually obtain and rip content long before the public ever has a
>chance to buy it.
>
> The whole shebang - the topsites, the pyramid, and the P2P networks
>girding it all together - is not about trading or sharing at all. It's
>a broadcast system. It takes a signal, the new U2 single, say, and
>broadcasts it around the world. The pirate pyramid is a perfect
>amplifier. The signal becomes more robust at every descending level,
>until it gets down to the P2P networks, by which time it can be
>received by anyone capable of typing "U2" into a search engine.
>
>This should be good news for law enforcement. Lop off the head (the
>topsites), and the body (the worldwide trade in unlicensed media) falls
>lifeless to the ground. Sounds easy, but what if you can't find the
>head? As in any criminal conspiracy, it takes years of undercover work
>to get inside. An interview subject warned me against even mentioning
>Anathema in this article: "You do not need some 350-pound hit man with
>a Glock at your front door."
>
> The upper reaches of the network are a "darknet," hidden behind layers
>of security. The sites use a "bounce" to hide their IP address, and
>members can log in only from trusted IP addresses already on file. Most
>transmissions between sites use heavy-duty encryption. Finally, they
>continually change the usernames and passwords required to log in.
>Estimates say this media darknet distributes more than half a million
>movies every day. It's also, by any reading of the law, a vast criminal
>enterprise engaged in wholesale copyright infringement.
>
> But the Feds are getting smarter. Last spring, the FBI and US
>Department of Justice launched a series of raids codenamed Fastlink.
>Working with cops in Sweden, the Netherlands, and eight other
>countries, the operation seized more than 200 computers. One
>confiscated server alone contained 65,000 pirated titles. Fastlink
>rubbed out a few topsites, but new ones filled the void. The flow of
>illicit games and movies slowed briefly, then resumed. In April,
>federal agents interrogated Frank and impounded all his computer
>equipment. So far, no charges have been filed. "But the Feds had no
>idea about Half-Life," he boasts. "I was never connected to that shit.
>If they found out, I'd be in jail."
>
>Bruce Forest, a self-described "elder statesman" in the piracy scene,
>started ripping and trading in the ancient days of the late '80s. While
>he no longer actively traffics in bootlegged media, he maintains
>contacts that give him access to the most exclusive topsites. What the
>topsites don't know is that three years ago, Forest came in from the
>cold. "Basically, I'm a double agent," he concedes. "Though I don't
>fink anyone out. I'm not a cop."
>
>As a consultant for one of the world's largest entertainment companies,
>Forest notifies his bosses whenever one of their movies appears on a
>topsite. Thanks to his unparalleled access, he enjoys a bird's-eye view
>of the scene. And because he's ostensibly on the right side of the law,
>he's uncommonly open with information. This makes him an anomaly within
>the paranoid byways of the media darknet.
>
> Forest runs his business from the first floor of his rural Connecticut
>home. He's in his mid-40s but moves with jerky, adolescent energy. His
>brown hair is in perpetual disarray, and he pads around his office with
>bare feet, dressed in cargo shorts and a faded polo. Gold and platinum
>albums from his days as a producer at Island Records, MCA, and Arista
>line one wall. A baroque array of computer equipment fills the next,
>including 13 CPUs and 16 external hard drives (for a total of 3
>terabytes of storage). His desk runs the length of the room and
>supports five full-size LCD displays. I hear a soft ping. "That tells
>me a movie just made its first appearance on a topsite." He points to a
>window on the monitor. It shows an innocent-looking list of files from
>an FTP site. The uppermost file says, "Hellboy.SCREENER.Proper.READ NFO
>PRE VCD." Translation: The DVD of one of the year's biggest box office
>hits has been pirated two months before its intended release date. "The
>FBI would kill to be sitting here looking at this," he says.
>
>Even first-run movies get ripped. "Remember what happened to The Hulk?"
>he asks. On June 6, two weeks before its official release, a near-final
>version of The Hulk showed up online. To hear studio executives tell
>it, the bootleg went straight to the P2P networks and spread like a
>contagion.
>
>"Bullshit," says Forest. "Trying to distribute The Hulk through the
>P2Ps would take months, not hours." That's because files on the public
>file-sharing networks, where no single node is much more powerful than
>the next, spread at a glacial pace. Furthermore, when users connect to
>a P2P network - FastTrack, for example - they connect only to a small
>proportion of the number of other users connected at the same time. So
>unless a topsite seeds a file across the P2P network, the odds are slim
>that someone searching for a copy will actually find it.
>
> Forest pushes a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on end, and
>rotates in his Aeron to look me in the eye. "Here's what actually
>happened: Universal gave the workprint to its Manhattan ad agency. Then
>the print got to SMF. And bam!" SMF, Forest explains, is a piracy group
>that specializes in acquiring movies in theatrical release.
>
>Before the folks at SMF could release the movie to a topsite, they had
>to compress it - from roughly 9 Gbytes to 700 Mbytes, small enough to
>fit on a single CD. Now the film drops. Forest won't say to which
>topsite SMF first posted The Hulk, only that "SMF had affiliations with
>certain sites, so it must have been one of those."
>
>[snip]
>
>Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
>Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
>
>
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