A recently released software program purports to let peer-to-peer file swappers exchange files through encrypted transmissions on the open-swap P2P networks like KaZaA and Morpheus – without masking the Internet protocol addresses of the swappers, its creators claim.
The product, called MyGudio, was created by Syncodea. "This will end any technology that tries to monitor or duplicate files flowing in the P2P networks," Syncodea chief executive Leo Lee told TechNewsWorld this week.
And this, says P2P United executive director Adam Eisgrau, is exactly the kind of outgrowth feared by those who have tried to prod policymakers, copyright holders, and P2P networks, and supporters to get together rather than fight wars with each other.
"P2P United has consistently encouraged policymakers to help bring all the stakeholders to a negotiating table," Eisgrau told AVNOnline.com, when asked about the Syncodea program, "in order to craft a marketplace in which consumers can easily make use of peer-to-peer technology to obtain what they'd like. The danger, as we've always seen it, is perhaps now beginning to manifest itself. Without such a marketplace and with continued draconian enforcement actions, technology will offer consumers a darker solution that will not benefit artists or facilitate evolution of the marketplace in a way that allows individuals to be called consumers instead of criminals."
Mark Ishikawa, chief executive of online security and intellectual property protection company BayTSP, said they see developers always trying to create new tools for anonymity. "But it doesn't work," he told TechNewsWorld. "You can't make IP addresses completely disappear. There are always tracks of activity on the Internet left behind."
Eisgrau said encryption by itself is not inherently criminal and has numerous benign and beneficial uses, but he said many "more knowledgeable than I" have feared draconian prosecution – such as the almost year-long Recording Industry Association of America subpoena-and-sue campaign to stop P2P music file swapping – will continue driving "irrepressible conduct" to the underground and broadening, not shrinking, the market for such options.
"We won't wind up with less of it, we'll wind up with less of it visible and with people winding up with less compensation for copyright [materials] under the law" if the draconian prosecutions, rather than negotiation and accommodation, continue, Eisgrau said. "We call on the industries to call a truce and embrace the powers of peer-to-peer technology and established P2P networks, in order to meet undeniable and undoubtedly permanent consumer demand."
