Jari Ketola
30 Aug 2003 12:02
The recording industry lawyers have discovered that they can prove whether or not an MP3 file was selfmade or downloaded from the Internet. The claims were made in a case against a New York woman, who has been accused of sharing 1000 files through a peer-to-peer network.
The woman claims to have made the MP3 files herself, but RIAA lawyers beg to differ. They have discovered that the headers (or more likely ID3 tags, which are actually located at the end of the file) on the MP3 files on her computer included "the username of another computer user". Also the hashes of some of the files matched songs found on p2p networks earlier.
It's the latter that has even some significance. A hash is a "digital fingerprint" of a file created using a pre-defined algorithm (eg. MD5 or SHA1). The hash uniquely identifies a single file, ie. it's extremely unlikely that any two files would result in the same hash.
MP3 files of the same song, even when created from the same source, differ from each other somewhat, due to differences in encoder routines. Then again just editing the ID3 tags on the MP3 files changes the hash as well.
RIAA has been granted more than 1300 subpoenas already. Those found guilty might face fines between $750 and $150,000 per song.
Source:
NewScientist