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IS COMPANY STEALING YOUR COMPUTER?

Imagine discovering that your car was being driven by a complete stranger when you weren't using it. Upon arriving at work and leaving it in the parking lot for example, someone took your car and used it to run a few errands. Or after pulling into your garage for the night, someone took it to go to the movies and a hit a few nightclubs. But because the person was clever and returned your car before you came back to the parking lot to go home or put it back in the garage before daybreak, you didn't realize your car was being used. Would you consider yourself to be a victim of theft even though you never knew it was being used and you always got your car back before you realized anything was amiss? I bet you didn't have to ponder that question too long to come up with a big "Yes." Aside from the gas burned, added mileage and the wear and tear realized by the additional use, your property was used without your permission. You were the victim of a crime. Now let's apply the same scenario to your computer and see if we get the same answer.

Imagine a complete stranger taking control of your computer while you weren't using it and taking it's processing power to perform work and communicate with other computers, all without your knowledge. So would you consider yourself to be a victim of a crime? Do I hear another big "Yes?" My automobile analogy breaks down a bit because there's really no consumables being taken. Your computer is already on so there's no more electricity being used and stolen bandwidth in the form of processing power and connectivity would be a bit hard to measure. But nonetheless, someone else using your computer without your permission is a violation of your property. You can be sure that if someone wants to use my computer, I want to know about it and maybe even compensated.

Well, that's exactly what's been happening to potentially millions of computers. Fortunately, the company didn't get away with it but as is usually the case with new ideas, things may not be so black and white when it comes to the legal process. Brilliant Digital Entertainment has been quietly distributing its 3D ad technology attached to the popular free file trading Kazaa program since last fall. By using Kazaa, your computer becomes part of a yet to be activated peer-to-peer network that would allow Brilliant to control a potentially vast network of personal computers. That power could be used by Brilliant's clients to perform all types of work including ad distribution and complex computing tasks. An example of peer-to-peer distributed computing was made famous with the free Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) screen saver. SETI was looking for an inexpensive way to crunch the vast amount of data being collected by space telescopes across the globe. The ambitious project endeavored to use the computational power of millions of personal computers hooked to the Internet. By its very nature, a screen saver becomes active when a computer is idle. SETI programmers conceived the idea to use that idle time to process small segments of the raw space data by a participating personal computer. The computer would look for signs of intelligent transmissions within its share of data and then upload its findings back to the SETI computers. With millions of computers doing the work, a lot of data was processed. And although ET has yet to be discovered, it was enthusiastically embraced by many computer owners. The SETI screen saver looked really cool running on your computer and it made you feel like a part of the noble quest to find signs of life elsewhere in the universe. Most importantly, it was all voluntary and you knew your computer was being used by SETI.

Brilliant's quest is not as noble a one as SETI's but it's that same kind of distributed processing upon which they are trying to capitalize. What makes it all smell bad is that it was being done in a somewhat surreptitious manner. As part of Brilliant's tap dancing efforts, they are quick to point out that a small paragraph buried in the Kazaa's user's agreement clearly says:

"You hereby grant (Brilliant) the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or Internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation."

Now come on. How many of you actually read those pages and pages of end-user agreement documents. We all know for sure is that if you don't click on the "I agree" button, you don't get to use the software. But this still smells bad. Plus Brilliant is now saying that they intend to compensate users with something called "Brilliant Dollars" that can be used to buy merchandise. Remember Green Stamps? At least with those I could see what was taking a licking. Hey Brilliant, if you want to use my computer I say "Show me the money."

Bottom line is that anyone hijacking my computer or my car had best be looking over their shoulders. Don't let them get away with it because if you do, I wonder what else they'll be borrowing next when you're not looking?