Free Software Targets Piracy
Add comment October 24th, 2006
Parents who want to wipe pirated music from their children’s PCs and companies that want to see if their employees are using file-sharing software at the office can use a free program developed by the global music and movie trade groups as part of their ongoing campaign to stop piracy.
Digital File Check, the software developed by the Danish arm of the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry and made available on the Internet on Thursday, is designed to “help people clean up their computers,” the London-based federation said.DFC searches a personal computer for any of 198 versions of Internet file-sharing software such as Kazaa, eDonkey and WinMX and allows the user to either restrict their use by a password or delete them.A separate function looks first in special “sharing” folders and then through the whole PC for film and music files that “are likely to be” pirated, the group said, but could also very well be legitimate music or files that have no explicit copyright.
“I think this is something that people will welcome who are not computer-literate,” said John Kennedy, federation chairman. “We hope this helps them move checking out their computer further up on the to-do list.”
The free download is available on the industry groups’ international sites, but the effort may also be rolled out separately later in the United States, the group said.
Technically, the software only searches a PC for certain file names and extensions that identify whether it is likely to be a media file and does not examine the contents of the files. But the simple design of Digital File Check makes it more likely to be used than a manual search, which requires knowledge of those various file types, Kennedy said.
A notice in DFC acknowledges to the user that file-sharing software is not illegal. But it notes that “mostly all file-sharing activity is illegal because it involves copying and distributing copyrighted material online without permission from the copyright holders.”
Tobias Andersson, a spokesman for Piratbyran, a grass roots, anti-copyright organization in Sweden, dismissed the effort as “naive.”
“There may be one or two parents who will mess things up for their kids,” Andersson said. “But I don’t see that too many people will use it.”
Noting that “parents download from file-sharing sites too,” Andersson said that he doubted the move would “do harm to the pirate community.”
Pirated files, generally shared by so-called peer-to-peer networks, are largely blamed for a steady decline in music sales over the past four years.
Adrian Strain, spokesman for the IFPI, said Digital File Check is a passive tool - educational and informational - and does not require the user to actually delete anything on the PC.
The software also does not look for commercial applications that may be counterfeited or pirated, though Kennedy said that function could be added later.
Digital File Check also does not communicate its findings with the IFPI or any other party, Strain said. Its Internet connection is only for updating the versions of file-sharing software.
The release of the software on Thursday was the first against piracy that joined both the music lobbyists and their movie counterparts, the Motion Picture Association.
Kennedy, whose oldest child is 15 years old, said he used Digital File Check on his own computer. “It came out clean, I’m glad to say,” he added.
