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Reputation System Fights P2P Junk
yeejiun writes "Many of the files that are shared on p2p networks tend to be junk. Organizations such as the RIAA and music labels regularly pollute these networks with nonsense files masquerading as real music/video files. These junk files make it difficult for users to find what they want on such p2p networks. Some researchers at Cornell University have developed a reputation system called Credence, that works on the Gnutella network, allowing users to tell the good files from the bad ones."
quit downloading crap off of kazaa/grokster/morpheous/etc. dont trust brittneyspearsporno.avi.mpeg.exe
lameness filter thwarted.
I thought the primary purpose of P2P filesharing was to share legally swappable media files as well as other files like documents and useful freeware applications. Is there some nefarious entity flooding the P2P networks with garbage disguised as those files above? Why would you need to know the quality of the file's reputation?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Doesn't the eDonkey2000 network already have a system like this? Users identify fakes and report them, then the phony file information propagates throughout the network and the fake file dies.
If a file appears to by RIAA-affiliated music, treat it as a junk file.
Why bother with music the artist doesn't want you to have? Just forget about it altogether and discover new music, even new types of music that you'd never realize existed, much less that you could enjoy.
The fact that I didnt get to play HL2 was compensated by the 2 hours of dwarf porn.
-knowles
I think the main insight and contribution of the system is that the reputation of a peer according to you is determined by whether he/she votes in a similar manner as you.
So if the RIAA starts spamming Gnutella with lots of junk stuff, you will never vote in the same way as the RIAA dummy accounts, and you don't take their votes into account.
In fact, it seems the system is even smarter than that - it can take votes from people that are strongly uncorrelated with you and use that as negative information. So anything these people vote as valid files, you can treat as garbage as their definition of good/bad files is completely opposite to yours. And assuming you trust your own judgement, that means those files must be bogus.
Reminds me a lot of the google pagerank system, but with explicit learning/training instead of using back-links for determining correlation.
Many hardcore file shares and hosters, dare I say most that would call themselves hardcore, are not in it for getting free content on demand when they want it. They are into collecting absolutely anything and everything they can get their hands on. In some collections, people wouldn't possibly, in their lifetimes,be able to listen to all the music or watch all those movies. But just the thought of having it makes many hoarders happy. And it's not even necessarily reputation amongst others. It could be in many cases, but not always. They just have to have it.
What's my point? Well, this is the greatest strength and weakness of peer to peer. Hoarders ensure a healthy flow of files, but they rarely actually check what they have. They don't check to see the software works, or if the music is a complete copy, or that the movie was cut down to a quarter of the original screen size.
This is what companies take advantage of, both those who want to hurt swapping, and those who just want to seed files for the purpose of installing some evil spyware. It's nice to have a bunch of people trying to seed the masses but cmon the point of file sharing is to pool our independent resources. For someone who doesn't have all day to search for files and test quality and whatnot, it is sometimes less painful to just go buy the CD than it is to actually try to download it amongst the mess of files that are out there.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Who actually searches for files in the P2P client? Normally you visit some site where the releaser himself posted a torrent or an ed2k link and you download that.
I can't remember the last time I actually searched in eMule.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Can this also be used as a metric for the RIAA and MPAA to decide which people to take legal action against? Go for the most trusted, most highly rated individuals and take out the most influential (central? critical?) nodes. In the same way that cliques of poisoners would stand out.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I disagree that these scientists are breaking any *legitimate* law, but if you accept as a premise that they are, then they are in fact breaking the law using taxpayer dollars.
Instead of modding that down it should be modded up so more people can discuss the ramifications.
Do we allow taxpayer dollars to be spent on civil disobedience? On that issue, I am very unsure.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
But what the parent is saying (and which is a very legit argument if you ask me) is that if you're looking for a Debian repository, you're almost certainly not going to find a fake file!
If you want to be sure, you can compare the file size to the official one. If it matches, you can be all but completely confidant that it's real.
After all, there are probably far fewer people trying to flood P2P with bogus files just for the hell of it then there are trying to flood P2P with bogus files in an attempt to protect copyright.
And I don't see why they'd bother, when a threatening letter is all it usually takes to take a torrent site down
That's not really true. Depending on where the site is hosted, legal threats could be more humerous than scarry.
Case in point.
Btw, if you've got a few minutes to kill, you should really check out some of the emails to and responses from thepiratebay.com. They are hilarious!