News Hidden trails to 'pirates' revealed

From the Beeb:;

The music industry's methods of tracking down suspected music pirates have been revealed for the first time.
Using digital fingerprints, or "hashes", investigators say they can tell if an MP3 file was downloaded from an unauthorised service.

The industry also tracks "metadata" tags, which provide hidden clues about how files were created.

The details were given by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in a legal case against a suspected pirate.

The association is trying to force a woman from Brooklyn, New York, who is accused of distributing almost 1,000 songs over the internet, to reveal her real identity.

She is currently only known by her screen name, "Nycfashiongirl", and wants to remain anonymous.

Full story here

 

So if I own the CD, but can't figure out how to rip it, and download a copy off the internet, I'm a criminal?

/me contemplates how the hell they think they can get $150,000 PER SONG.
Does no one else notice that it would be cheaper to kill everyone involved with the RIAA...

 

Apparently MD5 hashes don't stand up as evidence in court as (rarely) two different files can have the same hash.