Will the RIAA's legal push against music file sharing result in greater security for terrorists and organized crime, by promoting the spread of decentralized networks exchanging encrypted data, sometimes called "DarkNets"? For years, the government has worried about strong public key encryption in the hands of spies and criminals. The Clipper Chip was supposed to make the Internet safe for democracy, but it was quickly cracked and neutralized.
Consumers didn't bother to use strong encryption, because ... hey, its more work, and few folks have much worth the trouble of hiding. The RIAA's new moves, to obtain identities behind "peer-to-peer" file swappers by service of DMCA-empowered subpoenas, then sue those individuals, has dramatically changed the battlefield. As any student of military history and technology knows, the deployment of any new weapon is soon followed by the deployment of a new defense or countermeasure. Sometimes the countermeasure proves more powerful than the weapon: that's how we got the tank, as a countermeasure to the machine gun.
In today's e-letter, Clay Shirky suggests that in this case, the response to RIAA's offensive will be more widespread use of encrypted decentralized "dark nets" like WINW and BadBlue. He compares the situation to that during Prohibition, in which efforts to prevent alcohol consumption failed in their primary purpose, but did succeed in hatching organized crime: a countermeasure that survived the repeal of Prohibition and is a thorn in society's side today. He sees the result as a profound change that goes beyond the realm of music sharing.
"People will differ on the value of this change, depending on their feelings about privacy and their trust of the Government," Shirky concludes, "but the effects of the increased use of encryption, and the subsequent difficulties for law enforcement in decrypting messages and files, will last far longer than the current transition to digital music delivery, and may in fact be the most important legacy of the current legal crackdown." The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks Failed, Clay Shirky (December 17, 2003).
See also:
Unintended Consequences: "Darknets" Offer Privacy to P2P Net
Unintended Consequences: EFF Links to 9th Cir Docs re RIAA Suit MGM v. Grokster, et al