Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I still don't really get it. It's always been virtually impossible for copyright holders to be able to know if their copyright was being violated on a small scale. Even long before ebooks were ever conceived. I guess I just can't get my head around how this might be considered a "game-changer." "Easy" doesn't change anything if it's still "small."
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Exactly.
The only change cloud based/encryption may make, is that the scale of small may be able to grow a little larger.
For example, 5 people send their public keys to an uploader they trust. From then on any new addition to the group only occurs if one of the existing members wants to admit a friend. This could be done by anonymously posting a signed copy of their friends key encrypted using the uploaders private key. The uploader will never know who the new friend is and the new friend will never know who the uploader is (only the original trusted 5 know), however the uploader knows one of the existing core 5 (or several other existing members trust this new member) and starts including their public key in future releases.
It's a piracy spin on the web of trust.
At some point the group may grow too large and a member of a company enforcing copyright manages to be admitted. They can then decrypt all the latest posts and issue take down requests. However, if the group doesn't grow too big, that's less likely to happen and it will only impact that groups releases.
If any members in that group are taking the downloads and re-encrypting them to distribute to another group they're a member of, then a takedown might only impact a handful of people at a time.
However, for this to work on a large scale and replace torrents etc it will need software that makes the process trivial. That could be the weak point if the software is deemed to only be used for copyright infringement (e.g napster) it may be easier to restrict access to that, although that may be easier said than done.
Either way, I don't think it will be any better or worse than the current situation.