Kazaa code rises from ashes to help ISPs block pirated material for profit

The people behind a company once accused of being complicit in copyright infringement through peer-to-peer filesharing are now selling software that blocks pirated content—and gives Internet service providers a way to make cash in the process. And soon, a version of the same technology could be used by ISPs to inject their own advertisements into search results—a capability that is sure to raise the ire of proponents of network neutrality.

Global File Systems LLC, a subsidiary of Kazaa owners Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. (BDE), have developed software that combines a database of “known bad files” with Web filtering technology at the ISP’s firewall, allowing ISPs to intercept and change links in search results being passed back to a user’s PC—and sending searchers to sites where the user can pay for legitimate copies of the content.

“A number of trials have shown that, properly priced, it’s possible for the content owners and the ISP partners to take back customers from the pirate operation,” BDE’s Michael Speck, who manages the content management business, told Ars in an interview. He said that the software, called Global File Registry—advertised with the tag line, “What goes up can come down”—offers an opportunity to end “the friction between content owners and ISPs,” and to make content blocking a no-cost or profit-making capability for the ISPs themselves.

Speck said that the other solutions proposed by content owners and some ISPs to stop piracy (such as those that were part of drafts of the failed SOPA and PIPA legislation) require fundamental changes to the way the Internet works. BDE’s approach, he said, “is a software platform integrated into the existing machinery of the Internet,” and doesn’t require changes to the Domain Name Service.

Ironically, Global File Registry is based on Truenames, a file identification technology that was originally part of the Kazaa filesharing service. “It’s the Truenames patents that allow individual items of content to be located within a peer-to-peer or cloud environment,” Speck said. BDE has pursued a number of cloud companies to get them to license the technology, and Speck says that many have bought in, including Skype, Level 3 Communications, and Google (which Speck called “one of our most enthusiastic users of the patent”).

In the case of Global File Registry, which BDE has worked with Cisco to develop over the past few years, a database of Truenames identifying information is combined with the existing content-filtering capability of firewalls to intercept links to infringing content being returned in search results. The software, which is embedded in the ISP’s firewall, then modifies the data to remove and replace the link. “ISPs already have equipment that can identify ‘bad data’,” Speck said. “We’re only asking the machinery that operates the Internet to do one more thing after it identifies bad data—and that is to convert it to a positive response.”

Speck added that the software doesn’t look at the source of the infringing content or the destination of the search results, so it doesn’t identify users trying to access the content. “It’s only a refinement of the data being delivered,” he said.

Global File Registry is already being deployed, and BDE is initially marketing the software to ISPs in Australia, New Zealand, and France. In addition to the anti-piracy version of the software, Global File Registry is also being packaged for law enforcement customers in a version the company plans to give away as a way to block access to child pornography sites, drawing from data collected by child protection organizations.