Last week Aimster went to court to sue the RIAA before the RIAA sued them (reported here). Aimster was not like all other file sharing progs. In the beginning only your AIM contacts could be used for file sharing, but now they have opened their network for everyone.
They say they have secured their file sharing process in such a way that traffic using Aimster can't be viewed because all data is encrypted.
Well they say users can't be traced but what happens next:
MediaForce--one of several companies that tracks people trading files through Napster, Gnutella and similar services--announced Thursday that it had found a way to find copyrighted works by evading the encrypted network, exposing a serious hole in Aimster's claims to privacy. |
The New York-based company's terms of service bar anyone using the network from spying on its members. It also argues that attempts to track use of its service violate digital copyright law's ban on subverting cryptography schemes.
MediaForce's approach isn't particularly complicated--it's simply running searches on Aimster's network using the company's own software and taking down the results.
Lame way of course but it works No encryption is broken. However you can hide:
Aimster's original buddy system is still secure. But as soon as Aimster users reach into the wider network in search of a larger number of files, they open themselves to monitoring by MediaForce or anyone else who chooses to look. |
Well Aimster has gone to court saying that breaking the encryption on its network to spy on its users would violate this copyright law. But now MediaForce is taking down information that is freely available to anyone that turns on the Aimster software, is this illegal too? Well let's see what happens...
Source: ZdNet
