COMMENTARY--Following up on Brilliant Digital Entertainment, the company that secretly installed its own peer-to-peer network on perhaps millions of individual users' PCs, I'd like to pose a few questions.
For those who have been away from the melee, CNet reporter John Borland discovered earlier this week that Brilliant had been piggy-backing its software with downloads of the file-swapping software, Kazaa.
When the Brilliant network is activated, the software uses the Internet bandwidth, hard drive space, and processor cycles of individual users' computers to distribute content on behalf of Brilliant's commercial clients. The software might also use your spare processor cycles or idle CPU time to run computing tasks for those clients.
BRILLIANT DOES ALL this surreptitiously. Who'd guess that, buried in the Kazaa user agreement, is another one, for software you didn't know you were downloading? And who'd guess that, by clicking "I Agree," you'd be giving Brilliant permission to use your PC and Internet connection pretty much as it sees fit?
Those aren't my only questions--I've got plenty more below. I invite the Brilliant people to answer them; I'll be happy to publish their responses in a future column.
- How is Brilliant's use of Kazaa to propagate its software any different from the distribution methods used by computer viruses? How is Brilliant's software different from a Trojan horse that gives a third party access to a user's computer without his or her knowledge?
- You added your user agreement to Kazaa's--so thousands, if not millions, of users have already agreed (in many cases unwittingly) to let you use their computers. Why did you choose this clandestine method of licensing?
- You promise that in the future, you'll ask people for permission to use their machines and (somehow) to compensate them. Why are you doing this now? And why didn't you start this way?
- Many of the agreements between users and their ISPs prohibit servers, file-swapping services, and sharing Internet connections. Couldn't the Brilliant network cause people to violate these agreements?
- Those same ISPs could pay the real price for the Brilliant service, because they'll end up supplying the bandwidth required by your network. Do you have agreements in place with any ISPs to compensate them for use of their networks?
- Even if someone knowingly agrees to be part of your network, how can he or she be sure his or her machine will remain secure? For example, let's say someone hacks into the Brilliant network. What's to keep them from infecting every computer on that network with viruses or worse? Suppose they started storing illegal content--child pornography, say--on those machines. Who'd be responsible? Could the cops kick down my door because a hacker put illegal content on my machine using Brilliant's network?
MAYBE THE BRILLIANT FOLKS have excellent responses to these questions. Maybe they can convince me their system isn't such a bad thing. Neither is likely, given what they've already done, but I'll keep an open mind. I look forward to hearing what they have to say.
Speaking of which, in my earlier column, I did not mean to imply that either Kontiki or Red Swoosh are in any way misleading people, as I believe Brilliant has done. In my distaste for the whole notion of using other people's computers as distribution points (which is what all three companies do), I painted with too broad a brush.
The business models of Red Swoosh and Kontiki aren't like Brilliant's. I may not like what Kontiki or Red Swoosh do, but I don't have the same questions about their trustworthiness that I do about Brilliant's.
