Professor and Student Thwart P2P File Sharing

Digitus1337 writes "Wired has the story. 'A computer science professor and graduate student have been awarded a patent for a method of thwarting illegal file sharing on peer-to-peer networks by flooding the network with bogus files that look like pirated music.' This raises the question of whether or not companies that are already using such techniques are in violation of the new patent. Good news for subscription services?"

Comments

This can only be good news for fileswappers. Maybe

[Raindance]

First off, many P2P networks are smart enough to easily defeat this attack. Reputation tracking alone, out of several technologies already implimented to prevent this attack, is almost enough. The news here is not about the technology used, it's the patent itself.

With that said, this is then a barrier to entry for Overpeer, MediaDefender, and like companies- either they convince these folks to license this technology or they'll probably face a lawsuit (depending on whether they're infringing currently, which is probable).

So yeah, this is good news for P2P filesharing specifically, and P2P networks in general, as being a network disrupter is probably more costly because of this patent.

The courts, however, might rule that one cannot patent things such as this-- there's little-to-no qualitative difference between folks patenting this and me patenting a method for a DDOS or patenting a method used in a computer virus. Depending on the judge, they may be in for a surprise if their patent goes to court.

RD

False patent

[Orion Blastar]

This is called a Cuckoo's Egg and many people have done it already.

The Definition says:

A cuckoo egg is an MP3 file that typically contains 30 seconds of the original song with the remainder of the song overwritten with cuckoo clock noises, white noise, and/or voice messages such as, "Congratulations, you must've goofed up somewhere." Ideally, a cuckoo egg should have the same playing length as the music it pretends to be. The purpose of cuckoo eggs is to deter the downloading and sharing of MP3 files using Napster and similar approaches.

Typically, a Napster user downloads an MP3 file and sometimes share it with others before listening to it. Recognizing this, a cuckoo egg creator creates the cuckoo egg to look exactly like a real MP3 file. The user then unknowingly shares the cuckoo egg with other unsuspecting users spreading the cuckoo egg like a virus. Unlike a virus, cuckoo eggs do not damage computers, but simply annoy and waste the time of those who download the files.

The Cuckoo Egg Project began with Michael and Stephanie Fix. Stephanie Fix is a musician who is concerned about the illegal availability of copyrighted music through Napster. The concept centers on the idea of how a real cuckoo bird lays its eggs in another bird's nest. To the Fixes, the Napster system is like a huge nest of MP3 files, a perfect environment in which to lay cuckoo eggs

The first cuckoo egg was laid on June 10, 2000. Since then, Napster users have posted hundreds of angry messages at the Cuckoo Egg Project's Web site. Whether it's deterring them from downloading other songs has not been determined.

First spotted in June 10, 2000, so the patent is a false or fradulant one.

So basically they patented spam?

[cowscows]

This is basically a patent on the reality of spam. A bunch of noise that makes email/IM/p2p such a mess that it's hard to find anything that you want.

If only someone held a patent on spam, maybe that'd lower the volume of it somewhat.

Re:but...

[ticktockticktock]

You are forgetting that peers are generating the results and relaying results from other peers. Nothing stops a rogue person from modifying a gnutella client to look for certain searches and then prevent them from going beyond their peer and simply send back garbage results with hundreds/thousands of fake sources for the fake file.

Re:Uh, prior-art?

[rfmobile]

You need a central certificate authority to validate the autheticity of users. And, that is a big no-no in P2P systems.

Actually, you don't need a central CA - a distributed one will do. In other words, every peer implements their own "buddy list". The buddy list includes positives (confirmed trustworthy) and negatives (confirmed un-trustworthy). Instead of distrusting every peer, you can choose a list of peers from one peer you already trust, and build from there.

When performing a search, your P2P software might color code the results based on this list. Green for known good peers, red for bad peers/spammers/etc., and yellow for unlisted, unknown peers.

-rick