Mission: Infiltrate the P2P Network

prostoalex writes "Wired News unveils the secrecy behind Overpeer, the company whose mission is to infiltrate peer-to-peer networks with low-quality audio and video files, or corrupted chunks of data which carry the same name and have the same size as originals. Apparently OverPeer even managed to procure a USPTO patent on (a) producing an advertising digital music file by deteriorating or damaging a sound quality of an original music file of a record of a cooperating record corporation; and (b) distributing the advertising digital music file through the communication network."

Comments

What About Checksums?

[nuintari]

Couldn't something be added to file sharing programs to check against user run databases of checksums, such a song, at such a bitrate should sha1 or md5 to this, and red flag files that don't fit the bill, yellow flag files that are unknown to the database. It would up to users to make sure new stuff got added, and admins ot watch out for bad checksums. Users in the gnutella software, or whatever, could define which checksum servers they trust, and which they don't.

If your not careful, it would just add another level they would have to "infiltrate." But I think a little thought could make something along these lines work.

Anyone got anything to add to this? Its not perfect by any means, but checksumming files is one way to spot even minor changes.