File-swap 'killer' grabs attention

By John Borland

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5168505.html

Story last modified March 3, 2004, 4:00 AM PST

A new political battle is brewing over Net music swapping, focusing on a

company that claims to be able to automatically identify copyrighted songs

on networks like Kazaa and to block illegal downloads.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Audible Magic has been making the rounds of

Washington, D.C., legislative and regulatory offices for the last month,

showing off technology it says can sit inside peer-to-peer software and

automatically stop swaps of copyrighted music from artists such as Britney

Spears or Outkast.

The company's technology is still being tested and could yet prove

unworkable. But limited demonstrations have already turned some heads in

legislative offices.

"It is definitely something that is interesting to people on (Capitol)

Hill," said one senior congressional staffer who had seen the demonstration

and requested anonymity. "We are open to all kinds of different solutions at

this point. Having the technological ability to do this certainly opens up

some opportunities."

Audible Magic has predictably become a protégé of the Recording Industry

Association of America (RIAA), which has helped the company gain entree to

official Washington circles. The group says Audible Magic's technology, or

something like it, should be adopted by file-swapping companies if they are

serious about not supporting widespread copyright infringement.

The RIAA's backing, and the month-long press tour, has given the technology

new credibility in legislative, regulatory and university circles. After

watching a demonstration at RIAA headquarters in late January, University of

Rochester Provost Chuck Phelps said he instructed his technology staff to

evaluate the technology for use on his campus.

The RIAA isn't pressing for legislation or enforced usage of Audible Magic's

software, at least not yet. Indeed, in an election year, any serious

congressional attention to the issue is unlikely. But peer-to-peer companies

are keenly aware of the potential for political strong arming--and of the

threat it poses to the world of file swapping.

Privacy advocates and file-swapping backers have been deeply critical of any

technology that would enforce monitoring or blocking of file swapping or any

other Internet service. They argue that filters could infringe on free

speech and block technological innovation, all to serve the entertainment

industry's relatively narrow interests.

Nevertheless, the vast popularity of file-swapping networks like Kazaa

remains largely based on trades of copyrighted songs, videos and software,

according to many Net analysts. Being forced to install song-stopping

filters inside software such as Kazaa--much as a court required of Napster

in its heyday--could severely disrupt the ability of file swappers to freely

trade songs.

In past months, peer-to-peer executives including Sharman Networks' Nikki

Hemming have repeatedly told legislators that it was technically impossible

or infeasible to install adequate filtering systems on their networks. Now

some are switching focus, saying that even if filtering is technically

possible, mandating it would be a disastrous mistake.

Requiring filters "would amount to the anointment of a specific technology

as the winner in what the (recording) industry has made a file-sharing war,"

said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a file-swapping company

trade association. "It is time that (the entertainment industry) be politely

told that theirs is not the only social and economic interest at stake."

P2P United members have not seen Audible Magic's technology, Eisgrau noted.

His group sent letters to RIAA Chief Executive Officer Mitch Bainwol and

Audible Magic earlier in the week asking for a demonstration.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Bainwol said he would be delighted to do

so: "The peer-to-peer community has said they are serious about filtering.

But they've said they can't filter. We're saying, well, the good news is

that you can."

From Napster's death to Audible Magic

The idea of filtering file-swapping networks got its first test run in

Napster's last days, when courts mandated that the company block trades of

copyrighted songs with near-perfect accuracy. The company first tried to

block key works, but that failed when users simply renamed their songs.

Later, it began blocking using audio "fingerprinting" technology supplied by

partner Relatable, and the amount of material available through the service

dropped from tens of millions of files to just a handful almost overnight.

Napster closed its doors to the public not long afterwards.

Audible Magic's song-identifying technology is the product of a group of

former Yamaha sound engineers, who originally created the software to help

movie post-production studios search massive databases of sound effects such

as footsteps or door slams. In the late 1990s, they joined forces with

former Hewlett-Packard marketer Vance Ikezoye and his newly formed Audible

Magic startup, and turned their attention to identifying digital media files

such as songs.

The company's technology works by identifying "psycho-acoustical"

properties--essentially the computer equivalent of listening to the song

itself. That means that the identification procedure is flexible. A song

might be compressed into a lower quality recording, or have a few seconds of

silence taken out at the beginning or end, or be otherwise transformed, and

the technology will still recognize it as the same song, the company says.

The identification technology has already won credibility, used by

songwriters' and publishers' trade association SESAC to identify when songs

are played on broadcast radio in order to collect royalties. Several CD

pressing plants also use the technology to track what they're manufacturing

and ensure that their customers aren't trying to create counterfeit discs.

But it has been the company's peer-to-peer-focused efforts that have now

brought it squarely to the forefront of the copyright debates.

Audible Magic is offering two different versions of its technology, one

focused on networks and one on file-swapping software itself.

For several years it has tested a network-based "appliance," which would sit

inside an Internet service provider (ISP) or business network and monitor

data traffic as it goes by. If it identifies a copyrighted song, the

technology would stop the transfer in progress.

A test of that technology was held at the University of Wyoming last year,

but was ended after students complained about privacy invasions. In

response, Ikezoye offered a university-focused version that simply blocks

the copyrighted songs, and does not link specific trades to specific

computer users.

That's helped spur new interest in the technology, such as from the

University of Rochester's Phelps, although announced customers are still few

and far between.

Inside your software?

The company's main demonstration for the last several weeks has been a

version built into a piece of open-source Gnutella software. Similarly, it

could be built into any other popular file-swapping package, company CEO

Ikezoye said.

In that software-based version, the technology watches what songs are being

downloaded, and when it has enough data to make a match--usually about a

third to half of the file--it uses the Net connection to call Audible

Magic's database. If it finds a match with a copyrighted song, it stops the

download midstream.

Similarly, when files are put into a shared folder, the demonstration

software calls up the Audible Magic database. If it finds a match, it

prevents the song from being shared with other people on the network.

That second version of the software has not been tested on a large scale.

While it appeared to function well in a single-user demonstration,

implementing it on a widespread basis, particularly in software such as

Kazaa or Morpheus where tens of millions of search requests a day are made,

could have unforeseen consequences.

Moreover, for the filtering to work on a large scale, Ikezoye said that

pressure--probably through legislation--would have to be put on

file-swapping companies, which would be unlikely to voluntarily adopt his

technology universally.

"This implementation clearly requires the cooperation one way or another of

the peer-to-peer vendors," Ikezoye said.

Audible Magic's technology is far from perfect, even if it works as

demonstrated. It's most critical weakness is likely to be encrypted files

and encrypted networks, which its audio recognition software can't break

through. Nor is it difficult to imagine hackers creating "cracked" versions

of file-swapping software that have the song-recognition technology broken

or stripped out, if legislators were to mandate its use.

Audible Magic is not the only company seeking to build filters for file

swapping. Napster creator Shawn Fanning's new company Snocap is working on

similar technology, with an aim toward giving record companies and music

studios a way to make money from peer-to-peer networks.

But the file-swapping controversies are today as much rhetoric and politics

as they are technology, and the last few weeks may have quietly seen a

change in the file-swapping debates.

"I've achieved my objective, which is to say our technology works," Ikezoye

said. "It is interesting that the question has shifted from 'Is this

possible?' to 'How should this be deployed?'"