File-sharing users are more vulnerable than one may think, L.A. Times says

John Healey of the L.A. Times writes:

“As it turns out, so-called peer-to-peer networks are very good at distributing digital material, but very bad at hiding the sender or the receiver.

Taking advantage of this transparency, record companies, Hollywood studios and other copyright holders are tracing users of peer-to-peer networks back to their Internet addresses and cataloging not only the items they’ve downloaded, but also the goods they’re storing for others to duplicate.”

Story: Easy to find computer pirates

Of course we know where they go from there. The simple way to solve this is to only share music the RIAA / MPAA wouldn’t go after you for. Share all of your files only with those that you trust; use a private ftp or DC++ for transferring files with the above mentioned. Soulseek has the option to share files only with users added to one’s userlist. If you are this carefull, you virtually can’t get caught. Even though your IP address might be made known, the RIAA won’t know what you’ve got.

Is this leeching? No, as long as you’re sharing something that someone might want to download. It might hurt the availability of data on the network that you’re sharing on, but is that detrimental to the network? Maybe when the network is at a loss of files, the developers will work to find solutions that are more secure.

The other option is to not worry about security at all. The millions of file-sharers could not possibly persecuted one by one; if they were, it is likely that more voices would be speaking out in protest. In addition, the case against Verizon might only be a scare tactic employed by you-know-whom to get users to stop sharing.

If you know more ways to protect anonymity, please discuss.

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