The article says that now every legit download of music will be encoded with "the GRid" a uniquely identifiable serial number that will be able to be traced back to the purchaser should copies of said track appear on music swap networks.

This is, for lack of a more eloquent word, stupid. It is stupid for many reasons, but let us review the important ones:

1. This only covers electronic sales, doesn't do a thing to stop someone from buying a CD ripping to MP3 (something even my Mom knows how to do) and posting those tracks.

2. But let's say they were really smart/ambitious and encoded serial numbers on every CD track as well, and were smart enough to do it such a way that the number wouldn't be lost in the conversion from .aiff to .mp3, so now for every new song recorded after x date every single version of it will be tied to a specific purchaser in the RIAA database. Still a waste of their time. Will used CD stores become illegal? What about borrowing or trading CDs, a practice which, if I am not mistaken, is still protected by the first sale doctrine? (FSD says that once you buy something, its your copy, you can sell it, lend it give it away burn it, use it to prop your table and basically whatever else you want to do with it, doesn't extend to mp3s because each transfer is an additional copy)

3. Most importantly, this annoys me because it shows that the content prodcution powers that be have learned nothing from the past three years. What on earth makes them think that this new magic number is going to be any harder to find/remove/alter than all the other boneheaded watermarking/encryption based solutions they have tried to implement?

Quick story: Once upon a time, in Norway, there was a 15 year old named Jon Johansen. Jon had a dream. He wanted to watch DVD's on his computer, which happened to use Linux. This seems reasonable, but there was no software DVD player for Linux. The movie industry probably saw no profit in making such a program (rather dumb in hindsight) and thought, "Well, all those Linux people should just get Windows, everyone uses Windows." Jon saw it differently. Having the knowledge of how computers work shared by more or less all Linux users, he realized that he would probably be able to make a Linux player by looking at a Windows player and making some alterations. DVD's featured something called "CSS" )(Content Scrambling System) which encrypted the data on a DVD and prevented consumers from being able to make additional copies or alter the data in any way. CSS was the prinicpal obstacle for Jon. Being a clever sort, Jon realized that in order for any DVD player to work, it would have to contain the decryption key for CSS, and since there are software based DVD players for Windows (such as Windows Media Player) that decryption key must be expressable as computer source code. All Jon had to do then was examine the source of sucha Windows DVD player, isolate the decryption key, and incorporate it into his own player. (That is not in fact all he did, he also made a computer program called "DeCSS" which took all of his long hours of work and reduced it to a one click and you're done form that, again, my Mom could use. This is what got him arrested, and while whether or not the creation and distribution of DeCSS was in fact criminal is a worthy topic of discourse, it does not serve my rant so we'll leave it for another time)

The Moral, digital content, be it a song, picture, movie, Windows XP or this email, is all reducible to a very long string of ones and zeros. Any copy protection or rights management scheme is going to manifest itself as a manipulation of those ones and zeroes, and as long as people have free access to the source code of their software, any change put in place by the RIAA/MPAA et al can be changed back, or changed further by...anyone with the requisite knowledge of computers. In other words, anything they do can be undone or rendered useless, by anyone with the wherewithal to learn how.

Bruce Schneier wrote that trying to embed copy protection onto a digital file is like "trying to make water not wet." I'll extend on that and say the GRid, along with and any other scheme like them are sort of like trying to use water to plug a leak.

There is one way, and ONLY one way that the RIAA/MPAAy would be able to exert the kind of control over online file trading and sharing that they so desperately desire, and even that would be fallible, unless other changes are made.

What they would have to do, is bring all of their encryption and watermarking and what have you to everyone's HARDWARE, rather than their software. They would have to use (industry buzzword coming) a "Trusted Computer Architecture."

This would involve everyone buying a new computer, with a new operating system, new speakers new monitor and etc. These new pieces of equipment would be coded in their very firmware (the code blown into the machines when they are built to make them function, much more difficult to alter than software code) to only display content that has been certified by the powers that be. You would not be able to play your friend's CD, download a program without paying for it or watch a movie you didn't own, even if your friend brought it over and wants to watch it with you.

Its far worse than that, once they lock your computer down they can make everyone accountable. (This will be done in the name of national security and has other significant upsides as well, Spam would be reduced, initially (see below), viruses as well) but the tradeoffs would be huge, you would not be able to do anything with your computer that was not expressly sanctioned by MSFT and other large corporations. Try putting up a culture jam site, they could probably shut it down. No more Free Republic or Slashdot, or any discussion forum where anonymity is treasured. Once everyone is accountable online the government can start taxing you for your activities, charging per download or even per web page visited, think they wont? Also, the trusted architecture would allow MSFT and its partners to built a 100% accurate profile of the sites you visit and the things you buy, you wont get less spam you'll get more, it will be for stuff you want (or that they think you do) and it wont be block-able.

The answer to this, of course, is Linux. You can run Linux on old hardware (the truly hardcore Linux hackers will also take it on themselves to hack the firmware of trusted hardware making it free for use with Linux, but that’s neither here nor there) and any Windows based scheme is not going to work against Linux users. Once MSFT/RIAA et al establish the trusted architecture, they will probably be happy with the 95% or so of the population they will have total dominion over, and allow the Linux crowd to exist above the law, as they always have. You see the problem right? Our children will be confronted with two choices.

1. Use Windows!!! You get to have your parents know every website you look at, every thing you buy and when you bought it, and you have to pay taxes.

or

2. Use Linux, no taxes, no accountibility, plus a vibe of outlaw cool that teenagers love so much.

Rough choice, and when Windows starts to lose serious market share, they'll do the same thing the RIAA did in the face of Napster, turn to Congress, they will try to make Linux illegal, to make understanding how your computer works illegal, akin to knowing how to build a bomb, Failing that they will allow you to know how to do it, but make the use of linux illegal. Its the only way for them to keep control.

Personally, I don’t want them to have that level of control, the beauty of the internet is that its not television, its interactive, its user controlled. MSFT/RIAA/MPAA want nothing more than to turn the Internet into TV 2.0, a passive content delivery system that turns an actively involved user into a consumer and your monitor into a hose sucking the money out of your wallet and a giant unblinking eye taking your privacy away. Don't let them. Learn how your computer works, learn what the Free Software Foundation is. download Linux (it's free) see how you like it. Voting with your wallet wont work while MSFT has a 95% share, but if anyone who reads this leaves the Windows environment, that might be more kids who can tell their friends that there's a better way...