Bill is a private investigator. He has been for many years. He has had little experience with computer systems or the operations of the Internet.

That is, until recently.

Now, while he still does not have a great understanding of the systems, he is working with computers almost exclusively. Ever since that first bust on the two kids with downloaded movies, the media industry has kept him busy. Lots of evidence to sift through. Lots of people to sue.

Copyright infringement and related acts the industry was interested in were not criminal. That meant the police would not, could not, be involved. The evidence was all here, all being collected, but someone had to find actionable content and report it to the lawyers. The lawyers could then sue.
Bill is thinking about his life. It isn’t as glamorous as finding lost loved ones or ending underground operations, but it pays. Every private investigation firm is involved at least in part with the industry. It pays.

He pages aimlessly through some data. Surely there had to be something better he could be doing than this!

Now he notices it. Right there in the data stream all this time! He is looking at what amounts to a log of all digital footprints left by a particular system. If he had been looking for infringement instead of just paging around he never would have noticed the part of the stream he is noticing now.

Bill flips quickly through the data streams looking for more evidence on another system. After quite some searching he finds it again.

Child porn.

jjdavis: Police and PIs are asking gov’t to let them use spyware to find kiddie porn.

Our protagonist is exhausted. The poor guy who reverse engineered the media industry’s spyware is free. Free after the community raised over one million dollars in fines. Somehow Nicnus got pretty directly involved in that effort. An effort that now stands in his mind as a testament to the power of mass organisation online.

Stopping kiddie porn, though, now *there* is a use for spyware tech he can be in favour of! He replies to jjdavis.

@jjdavis that sounds like a good thing.

An IM pops up:

<jjdavis> Maybe. Basing it on spoofable data, though?
<nicnus> Hmm. But all data is spoofable.
<jjdavis> Somewhat, but not like this.

A tweet comes in, a reply from Acklas:

acklas: @nicnus it’s a privacy violation. #kiddiespyware

Nicnus isn’t worried too much about that, he types out a reply:

@acklas But it’s data that’s being collected anyway. #kiddiespyware

jjdavis is clearly following the tweets:

<jjdavis> It’s being collected for a different purpose, though. Media guys don’t have time to go over all the data… this gives another group access to look for something different.
<nicnus> If you want your privacy protected, just encrypt everything.

Another message from Acklas, replying to someone else:

acklas: @lucy2 everyone who cares about privacy is not a perv. That’s the reasoning I fear #kiddiespyware

Nicnus creates a chatroom and invites both Acklas and jjdavis. He pastes in a link to a webpage containing the log of his conversation with jjdavis so that Acklas is up to speed.

<acklas> Sure, we can encrypt everything, but a lot of people won’t.
<nicnus> those sorts of people have their privacy violated all the time without knowing.
<acklas> Not this much.
<jjdavis> I keep thinking about the French Revolution guillotines. What if anyone could accuse anyone of a crime and easily fabricate the necessary evidence.
<acklas> To be fair, not just anyone could.
<jjdavis> For a fee…
<nicnus> Oh…
<acklas> Oh…

Dinner with his family: that’s what faces our protagonist this evening.

It’s not that he doesn’t like his family, or that he doesn’t like dinner. The problem is more one of timing than anything else. His brother is back with the girl. The not-too-bright girl. He himself has his head far more firmly fixed in geek land than usual. What are they possibly going to talk about when all he can think of is crypto and politics, and all his brother can think of is how to avoid another emotional meltdown with what’s-her-face.

It’s time to go. Phone in his pocket, laptop in his backpack, Nicnus catches the bus. He sits somewhere near the back and pulls out his phone. His feeds and messages from mailing lists he’s on have been piling up. His finger flicks across the screen, his eyes scanning the headlines and subjects.

Something jostles his leg and his head snaps up. The bus is crowded and someone has sat down next to him. He squishes over to make room, and his mind returns to his phone. Companies dying and raising money, features being requested and built, and everywhere a little more worry about privacy and copyright than in the past.

Nicnus gets off the bus in front of his parents’ house. It’s quite nice that they live right on a major bus route. From the sound inside he can tell his brother has already arrived, and that his brother brought the girl. He takes a deep breath before entering. He never knocks here: he grew up in this house.

The girl is telling some story about what happened to her walking home from the mall. From the apparent emotion in her voice you’d think that almost tripping over a dog because you pay no attention to the world around you is the most exciting thing that can happen.

Nicnus can smell the dinner cooking. His mother makes amazing food, or at least he thinks she does. Certainly better than the toast, canned soup, and pizza he eats much of the rest of the time. His mother calls and soon they’re all seated in the kitchen saying grace, after which there is no need to converse for awhile, except to comment on how hungry one is and how good the food smells and tastes.

Nicnus is happy. Good food, good family, his worry was certainly unfounded. He’ll have to put up with some stupidity from the girl, no doubt, but that’s not so bad. He is munching along happily when his mother, of all people, asks him if he’s heard about the new measures being proposed to finally crack down on child pornography on the Internet.

He thinks for a moment, weighing out what he should say. He’s not sure what she wants to hear, nor is he completely sure of his own opinion. Finally he speaks. “I think it could be dangerous.”

The girl speaks up quickly. “How can stopping child abuse be dangerous?”

He glares at her, biting out his reply, “I said the measures in question could be dangerous.”

His mother can smell trouble while it is far off, and she steps in to attempt a course correction now. “I was just curious, no need to get upset.”

“But there is need,” the girl has no intention of being helpful, “the Internet has been a problem for years.”

“Hold on,” says the brother, “I don’t think you mean to say the Internet is a problem–”

Now she is quite visibly upset, “But I do! What good has technology brought? Wars, pollution, porn, abuse, theft, money laundering, no good at all!”

Nicnus’ brain is confused. She hates all technology? What does that even mean? She watches movies, and probably doesn’t mind handplows…

Some time later the discussion has fizzled out around him. The girl is signalling strongly to his brother that they should leave. He recalls his father speaking in favour of the Internet, getting the discussion back on track a little. Ultimately, however, the girl was very unreasonable. His brother finally picks up on his girlfriend’s hints and they take their leave.

Nicnus is left for awhile making small-talk with his parents until the next bus. Normally he would suck at this, but he’s had such conversations with his parents all his life. Finally, he is walking to the bus: head awhirl, and a little upset. How could anyone hate the Internet?

His phone is in his hand, earphones in his ears, his finger spinning through his music for something to restore order. He punches up some Technical Death Metal and Power Metal and hits random. The wall of powerful sound reaches deep into him, slowly restoring order as he rides home.

22:01 <acklas> http://openparliament.ca/bills/ << parliament has tabled a bill to deal with the volume of court cases.

Our protagonist is doodling on his arm with a pen. One of the few things meatspace (as opposed to cyperspace) has going for it: absent minded doodling. Not that the Internet hasn’t given him all kinds of things to occupy his mind. Sometimes he just needs to doodle and think about nothing.

22:05 <acklas> I guess if we’re going to have so many court cases being brought by one entity, we might as well reduce the cost to the taxpayers.

Bouncy jazz flows from the sound system in his room. The happiness in the music doesn’t match his emotions at all, but he isn’t really listening. He spins idly in his chair, mind occupied by the geometry appearing on his arm as the pen leaves its trail of blue.

fakepm: Why try court cases when obviously the pirates are guilty? #C63
acklas: @doctorow taxpayers’ $$ are going into the suits. Maybe limits are good.
m0rty: So cute. My daughter sleeping with puppy http://twitpic.com/12_g
jjdavis: Hitler upset about C63 youtu.be/a80c

His pen runs out of ink. Now he’s chewing on the cap. He hits a key combination so that he can post to his microblog:

Drawing on my arm. #bored

He ought to be doing work. He telecommutes, and as long as he delivers the boss will leave him alone. He just doesn’t feel motivated today.

22:15 <acklas> What do you think?
22:15 <nicnus> mi na se raktu
22:17 <acklas> lojban?
22:17 <nicnus> u’inai
22:19 <acklas> If you’re so bored, then do something.
22:19 <nicnus> darsygau mi ma
22:24 <acklas> What audaciousness do you bring about? ??
22:24 <nicnus> Dictionary says darsygau = encourages
22:24 <acklas> Oh.

Less bored. Mental exercise, however small, wakes him up a little bit.

The doorbell is ringing. Why is the doorbell ringing? He sets himself to away and reflexively locks his screen. The music is still playing. He’ll probably be coming back right away anyway.

His brother is at the door. Something irrational has happened in his relationship with his girlfriend. She is his girlfriend now, they finally decided to call it that a week or so ago. His brother comes in and sits down. Now there’s a torrent of emotion and confusion. It seems pretty trivial. The situation is a misunderstanding. Those usually clear themselves up, and when they don’t, making sure all sides know what really happened is often sufficient.

His brother is really upset. He has grown very attached to the girl. He’s afraid something bad will happen to their relationship because of the situation. Of course, he doesn’t say all of this. He has come to his older brother to vent, and perhaps for advice, but the depth of his emotion is not communicated.

Our protagonist listens, and then reaches around in his mind for the culturally acceptable response to this. What would he want said to him? Whatever that would be, it’s not what he should say. His brother does not want to hear that the problem is of his own making and will probably go away in time.

“That sucks. She’s being so unreasonable.” That’s the statement he finally lands.

“I know, right?” His brother seems to have accepted this direction for the conversation.

Our protagonist is lost deep in a chunk of code. This bug has taken precedence over everything else today. IMs and other incoming communications are queued up in some window that he is not looking at. He hasn’t eaten all day. Not that he notices any of this, his mind is bent on the problem.

Someone nearby starts a lawnmower, temporarily breaking his concentration. The sound is mostly white noise, however, and he quickly filters it out. There’s a developers’ meetup tonight, and he wants to have this code done by then.

This is as good a time as any to describe his living situation. As you may have gathered, he lives alone and telecommutes to work. His home is a small house near downtown with easy access to public transit. Most of his time is spent in his office, which is more like a den. When he does go out, it is usually to attend some event where a large number of attendees will be geeks.

While it may seem strange that he spends much of his day conversing with geeks on the Internet, only to go out once or twice a week to converse with many of the same geeks in meatspace, this is similar to the pattern lived out by many such people. Periodic meatspace meetups provide a very high-bandwidth platform to communicate to many at once, and also give some semblance of a traditional social life.

This particular event is made up primarily of presentations by attendees. One guy presents about designing a new metalanguage that could be translated so that programming could be done without knowing any English. Another presentation is about something to do with a Microsoft product. Still another is about an application whose primary selling point seems to be that it has a pretty interface. Probably a Mac application.

One presentation in particular, however, interests our protagonist and his friends. This developer has all kinds of data about the spyware that the media industry has installed on computers belonging to the majority of consumers. The spyware that is fuelling the lawsuits.

He first demonstrates that the spyware is sending back way more data than just filesharing usage and what songs are on the hard drive. It is monitoring emails and IMs for certain keywords, logging passwords and private keys, and all of it tagged with as much personally identifying information about the user as possible: name, email address, even telephone number if it is to be found on the system.

This sort of behaviour does not surprise anyone, but has the potential to be pretty scary.

Next, however, is the really interesting part. The data being sent back to the media industry is all digitally signed so that it cannot be spoofed. That makes sense, since if someone could just send in any data the entire system could be compromised.

The key used to do the signing, however, was not being rotated. In fact, even if it were being rotated, anyone could monitor the spyware getting the new key. This means that, in practise, anyone who has the spyware has the key. This is fundamentally the same problem that plagues all DRM systems, and in effect renders the entire system vulnerable.

Anyone could submit any data to the media industry, and sign it with their own key! Nicnus pulls down the source code to the utility that the presenter has written as an example of how one might do just that, and begins to peruse.

He waves his hand up in the air and the presenter stops to take his question. “Doesn’t this mean that any of the so-called pirates being railroaded through the courts could be completely innocent?”

The gathering snickers as one, and the presenter responds, “Yes, but we already knew that.”

“No, I know,” Nicnus hops up, “but doesn’t this mean that there’s a potential legal defence here? Reasonable doubt can exist that any given data from the software actually came from the software.”

“Since no one is exploiting it right now, I doubt any judge would consider it reasonable to doubt the validity of the evidence.”

Another hand goes up, “Just pointing out, that using this software is probably not legal.”

“Oh, yes,” the presenter apologizes, “I thought that was obvious. I’ve proved this *can* be done, but I’m certain that actually doing it would be in violation of the IP treaty.”

Our protagonist awoke the next morning to find a number of microblog messages waiting for him:

jjdavis: Spoof tool casts doubt on accuracy of media industry spyware: http://is.gd/c9a5j
acklas: RT @eff github.com taken down for hosting illegal software. http://j.mp/ol5z
jjdavis: Woah! The code is gone already! #mediacrack
acklas: Github back up. They took down the exploit example code. #mediacrack
m0rty: I hate Thursdays. Neeeed cofffeeeee.
piratepartyca: RT @doctorow #mediacrack author taken in by police for questioning http://tinyurl.com/xsb6
acklas: @lucy2 It’s important because he’s been arrested for *writing code*.
acklas: Is anyone raising money for legal defence? #mediacrack

Today will probably not be boring.

Our protagonist is one who may be unfamiliar to you. That’s because he is a geek. Those of you who join him in this culture know what I mean. Most of the world, however, does not. While many of you who are interested enough to read this bit of fiction will be geeks, statistically speaking many of you will not be.

A geek, in case you are unaware, is anyone who has chosen to pursue skill and imagination over conformity. This is often technical skill, but may be any skill. Geeks are usually of above-average intelligence, and are prone to neophilia.

Those of you who do not share these qualities may have a harder time relating to our protagonist. It is perhaps for this very reason that he finds himself in the situations that he does. Hopefully as the story unfolds you will allow yourself a glimpse into his world.

Our story begins, not with the protagonist, but with his brother. His brother is not a geek, and while his is not a moron, his is of fairly average intelligence. We find him in the home of his friend. I say “friend” only because their relationship could not be fairly classified as anything else. Before too long, they will likely be more. Being as they are both in their late teens, this will probably get messy. Luckily, they are not the focus of our plot.

They are, at this point, watching a movie. What movie doesn’t really matter, since they about to be interrupted by a team of private investigators bursting in their front door.

The lead investigator takes stock of the situation before speaking. Two young people, watching a movie. Hardly the stuff he’s used to crashing in on. He puts on a confident face, but before he can address them, the girl speaks up.

“What are you doing in my living room?” She shoots a nervous look over at her not-quite-boyfriend, hoping he hasn’t done anything wrong.

“We are here to issue you a summons to the courthouse for tomorrow morning.” The investigator is calm now. This is not the way a summons should be delivered. He shouldn’t just bust in someone’s door for this. He’s worked for some scum before, but this…

The girl looks helplessly confused. She keeps glancing at her not-quite-boyfriend, as if he’ll know what’s going on.

The investigator figures she hasn’t quite understood, so he gestures at the still-playing movie. “We detected a case of copyright infringement.”

“Wait, that’s what this is about?”

“Yes, miss.”

“You broke into my house over a downloaded movie?” Now she’s confused. How did they know? Why did they care? Is this the way most lawsuits start? She’s also mad. She has rights, or at least thinks she does. This seems like a violation of something.

“I don’t make the rules, miss, I just enforce them.” The investigator almost sounds apologetic.

Her words drip with sarcasm. “And dramatically, apparently.”

Her not-quite-boyfriend has been silent this whole time. He’s smart enough to realise that they are in over their heads. “Alright, well, you’ve issued your summons. We’ll be there.” He thinks for a moment, then addresses the girl, “I’ll call my brother.”

The call is reaching our protagonist. Would be, anyway, if he were awake. For him it is the middle of the night. He’s recently decided to live on UTC time, so his body clock is more than a little off from those around him.

He does not wake up to answer the call. This is not because he is a heavy sleeper, but because his phone does not make any noise. It stays on vibrate at all times, and right now it’s lying inside its holster on his dresser.

He does eventually wake up, however, and when he does his first reaction is to reach for his phone. He uses it to catch up with what those he follows on the Internet have been discovering over his night. He then glances at his blog subscriptions and his email, before finally noticing that he has a voicemail message.

Checking his voicemail is not something he does often, and he has quite forgotten how. He figures that any communication coming to him in a form that he has forgotten how to retrieve must not be urgent, and makes a mental note to figure it out later.

After putting on some clothes and pushing some waffles in the toaster, he sits down at his desk and types his password in to his computer. The screen wakes up, and he spends some time scanning over mailing list emails and unread IRC activity. Nothing too important has happened in the world since he last sat at this desk.

He remembers that he has a voicemail message. It’s probably from one of his family members. Who else would try to contact him by telephone? A short time on the Internet later he has discovered that he must dial a number and enter an access code to retrieve the message. After a brief hunt around the interface on his phone he has found the dialpad. Just as he suspected, the message is from his brother. Blabbering on about court and a movie and his not-yet-girlfriend.

One of his terminal windows is flashing. He hits a simple key combination and finds that one of his geeky friends, whose handle is “acklas”, has sent him a link over IM. For clarity, I should let you know that our protagonist’s handle is “nicnus”.

14:46 <acklas> It seems Old Media isn’t taking any time to take full advantage of the new treaty.

14:46 <nicnus> /me reads

14:50 <nicnus> Did we really expect anything different? They’ve had spyware on user’s computers since the day it was ratified.

14:51 <acklas> I guess I hoped people would resist, or take it off, or *something*.

14:55 <nicnus> I’m actually quite surprised that it took them this long to start hauling people in.

14:56 <acklas> Well, that article is an industry press release. First news I’ve heard.

14:56 <nicnus> That’s true. This is the first I’ve heard of it. Actually… my brother left me a voicemail this morning.

14:56 <nicnus> He said something about copyright or something.

14:56 <acklas> Hate that.

14:56 <acklas> What’s that got to do with this?

14:56 <acklas> Oh. You think they got him?

14:57 <acklas> If they did, does he even know any lawyers?

14:58 <nicnus> I’m not sure, I’ll listen to it again.

14:58 <nicnus> I don’t think so.

15:00 <acklas> They’re pushing for maximum statutory damages, the article says.

15:01 <nicnus> No way he can afford that. Yeah, he’s saying they’ve been asked to come to the courthouse. 10:00 their time. What is that?

15:01 <acklas> .625Z, that’s like now

15:02 <nicnus> crap

** You have been set to away

He’s about to step out the door when he realises that his waffle is still in the toaster. He runs back to grab it, shoves it in his mouth, and then goes to wait for the bus.

As our protagonist enters the courthouse, his phone buzzes. He pulls it from the holster as he walks. One new message:

acklas: Crazy! RT @doctorow media industry dramatically sues fanbase http://is.gd/bEeiV #spywaresuits

He quickly tapped out a message for his own microblog:

Heading in to help defend/inform my brother #spywaresuits

He has to ask around the courthouse a bit to find the room where his brother is about to go up in front of the judge. Quickly verifying that he does have the right room, and that his brother is indeed already standing before the judge, he summons his confidence and pushes through the door as quickly as he can.

“Nicholas Henry Brannigan for the defence.”

The judge stops mid-sentence to look up at this new intruder. “… you are?”

“Brother to the boyfriend.”

The judge shakes her head and waves her hand, “You’re not even a lawyer, are you?”

“I’m an interested party with more knowledge of the laws in question than either of the accused.” Nicnus stifles a smirk. The formal language sounds forced when verbalized.

The judge addresses the accusing lawyers, “Do you have a problem with this?”

“Not at all, your honour. If he wants to make a fool of him self, by all means.”

The judge waves her hand again. “Fine. There’s nothing much to try here, though. I already have the evidence from the inspector showing that the accused did indeed violate copyright laws.” She sees that our protagonist is about to protest and cuts him off, “The evidence is legal. The defendant agreed to the terms on the MusicBox software, which allow for this sort of data to be collected for just this purpose. The terms themselves are legal under the recent intellectual property treaty.”

Nicnus nods, “I am aware of that.” He glances over at the empty jury seats. It sounds like the judge expects to conclude this right away. “I take it that my brother and his friend are not to be judged by a jury of their peers?”

“They are not. There are too many of these going on today. I’d really rather make this quick, and I have the right to do so in this case.”

Nicnus is unsure if that’s true, but he sees no point in arguing with the judge. He has no doubt that the infringement was real, or that the evidence is. “Well then, we stipulate to the infringement, and ask for leniency.”

“On what grounds?”

On the grounds of it being a dumb treaty, he wants to say. That’s not much of a defence. Why shouldn’t they be assessed the maximum damages? They did violate the law, and that can be easily proved. The media industry now has the legal right to install spyware along with other products, such as music stores, so long as the user is notified. The law says nothing about how fine the print can be on this notification. That may be a good reason for leniency, though…

“On the grounds of ignorance, ma’am. The laws are new, and neither of the accused were aware of their full implications.”

“Ignorance is not a defence.”

“No, it is not. I hope, however, it may be grounds for leniency.” Nicnus shifts his weight a little nervously.

One of the lawyers on the other side stands quickly, “If it please the court, we are concerned that leniency on this matter would set a bad precedent.”

“Well,” Nicnus says quickly, re-asserting his confidence, “The accused also have no means of paying the maximum damages.”

“We are willing to structure the payments over time, your honour.”

“Fine,” the judge clearly does not want to bother listening to this. She knows there will be a number more of these cases today. “Maximum damages of $100 000 per file assessed. The evidence shows 12 files were uploaded, at least in part. $1 200 000 to be paid to the plaintiff on a structured basis to be negotiated by you.” She banged her gavel down, “Next!”

Nicnus, his brother, and his brother’s not-quite-girlfriend quickly file out of the courtroom. Nicnus takes out his phone again and posts:

Brother raped by media industry. They’re just railroading the cases! #spywaresuits