creative deconstruction

BitBlinder Baits RIAA With Free Anonymous Filesharing

Posted on 12. Jun, 2009 by refe in INNOVATION

The RIAA is not going to be happy about the newest evolution of file-sharing technology.

BitBlinder is a free new service that claims to hide users’ IP addresses, allowing them to
use BitTorrent anonymously. There is only one reason for this, of course, and that is to
hide illegal activity from the authorities. In the words of one of its creators, “We want to
make online anonymity fast, usable and ubiquitous to the point that organisations give up
on spying and filtering us.”

In my mind, anonymous file-sharing has been an inevitability since the RIAA began demanding large sums of money from thousands of individuals under the threat of legal action. It’s a simple escalation principle – if the cops have handguns, the crooks get machine guns and around and around we go.

Many rights-holders and lobbyist groups want to fight file-sharing for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are legitimate and others are based on false assumptions. I don’t want to get too deep into that discussion right now, in part because it may be irrelevant anyway. Does the RIAA honestly think it can out-gun the filesharing community? Even more to the point – should it want to?

In a recent article I talked about the different factors that have driven the value of recorded music down to just about zero. File-sharing – although it is widely heralded by groups like the RIAA as the destroyer of music – was not on the list. Why? Because I don’t believe that file-sharing is a cause of the devaluation of recorded music so much as a byproduct of that devaluation. Digital technology has made it possible to generate nearly infinite copies of the files that now contain most of the worlds recorded music. If you can look at it objectively, that sounds a whole lot like progress.

In many ways, Filesharing simply utilizes the infinite copy-ability of digital technology to its full potential. Does that make it right? Well, under our current copyright system no, it doesn’t. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean it’s legal. Yet it does bring up some interesting questions about progress vs. established systems.

At what point do we let go of the old and make room for new systems which are better equipped to handle today’s market realities?

Tags: bittorrent, copyright, file sharing, intellectual property, RIAA