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Poisoned Torrents Plague Mybittorrent
jambarama writes "One of the biggest problems with the Fasttrack network has been poisoning. This is the practice of sharing a file on a P2P network that looks like the real thing, but isn't. Bittorrent until recently has been largely immune to this. Now a new type of torrent is tricking bittorrent sites to rising to the top of the download lists." From the article: "According to Rex, about 50 new torrents have been released from what he calls "fake" trackers (~31 in total.) These trackers are seemingly part of an elaborate plot to infiltrate the BitTorrent community with intentionally corrupt files. These movie and film titles are specifically designed to report false information to trackers, thereby gaining artificially inflated popularity."
In addition to fooling unsuspecting users into downloading these broken torrents, it is likely that IP addresses were also harvested - potentially for future lawsuits. So BitTorrent clients will have to add/invent a trust systems for trackers now - not just for files.
--- Eat my sig.
Files that impersonate other files (e.g. get the latest britney spears song when it's really just static) tend to only impersonate files that people don't have permission to distribute (and are therefore breaking the law). Most files that are legally distributable tend to not suffer from having poisonous files out there, so therefore people that follow the law don't actually have a problem with them.
If the past is any indicator (and it normally is), the bittorrent poisonous files will mostly (if not only) be impersonating files that people aren't allowed to distribute. Your garage bands or Linux distributors that use bit-torrent, are most likely not going to have people impersonating their files out there (there may be a little bit of it, but chances are it'll be a very small amount).
So really, for people that follow the law, this isn't going to be a problem. For people breaking the law, you really have no reason to complain. However what can be a problem is when legit files falsely report information to increase their perceived popularity.
First of all, I cannot read the article because of the corporate proxy filter, so I'm talking "blind" here.
Ok, so what is the real problem with this???
If this is being done to prevent "ilicit" files from being spread, then I do not see what could be wrong with it. Some people are getting free stuff and then complaining the file is corrupted or it isn't what they expected to download???
Another matter would be for example contaminating "licit" files, but I'm sure that this is not the case (again, I couldn't read the article), which could be used from preventing downloading of some linux distros for example. That'd be something to worry about though.
The solution to this is simple: Moderation on the tracker sites. Let users report what torrents succed and what not. And release lists of poisoned torrents to be used on all sites.
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
It seems kind of stupid to try to get Them(tm) to break the law while trying to catch you (in general, not timmarhy personally) break the law, doesn't it? If you have a problem with the business and legal practices of the **AAs (or similar associations depending on your country) then the easiest way to deal with them is to not deal with them at all and not use their products.
Rather than turning their weapons against them, don't give them a reason to use their weapons. Go for the legal stuff. IMHO it tends to be very good anyway. Here is a good place to start:
LegalTorrents.com
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Actually, yes, you are uploading it too. That's the way BitTorrent works - only one person needs to seed the original copy, but while people are downloading from the seed, they upload the chunks they have to other downloaders as well, so the original seeder doesn't get hammered.
Downloading via BitTorrent is equivalent to downloading with Kazaa and then placing the downloaded item in your shared folder. So, as far as the law stands, it's copyright infringement.
Giving away free copies once does not automatically put something into the public domain. The copyright holders still retain copyright.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The odd thing is that you're not the customer of the Simpsons, you're the product. You're sold to advertisers with the promise that some of you might just possibly not skip their commercials or walk out of the room while their messages are broadcast.
By downloading the episode, you've broken that relationship. The media empires may just need to find a new business model. I do hope that whatever it is, it moves us back to a relationship where the content is the product and the viewer is the customer.
I think it's a great act of civil dissobedience. The public airwaves are overrun by television which I think is crap soley because of this messed up viewer-product relationship. :-)
IANAL, but I think you can be sued in a civil court for downloading your episodes. If a do-not-record flag is set, you can be hauled off to prison by the federal police for violating the DMCA.
you may have received 98% of actually copyrighted data. So it's copyright infringement nonetheless even if the product turns out to be useless.
No, it's not actually copyright infringement.
When you download something from itunes, is it copyright infringement?
Why not? because it's not copyright infringement if you have permission from the copyright holder, right?
Now, here's where this example ties into this discussion:
If the copyright holder puts their work up on a P2P service, with full knowledge that the file will be downloaded and uploaded, how can they claim infringement? They know how the protocol works, they know that copying will occur. By putting the file up, with knowledge of how the protocol works, they are implicitly giving permission for the copying to take place.
It's not copyright infringement if you have permission.
Actually, most of the time there was neither. eg. Armour that was not invincible, and a weapon that was not unstoppable. The solution was, and still is to use combinations.
:) .
Example: My firewall will not stop viruses, but will stop most other intrusion attempts. Similarly, my antivirus program does not stop people portscanning my box, but can stop viruses reliably. A computer with one but not the other is vulnerable, a computer using both working together is far more secure. Similarly, most nations send in the troops with an assortment of weapons and tools, because they are more effective across a variety of situations than one weapon ever will be.
There will not be a protection mechanism for Bittorrent that cannot be broken, forged or otherwise avoided. Likewise, nothing the RIAA can throw at Bittorrent cannot be countered in some fashion. By using combinations of protection mechanisms, Bittorrent can be protected to a degree that attacks can be tolerated. The RIAA gets this, that's why they try many tactics, such as torrent poisoning, DRM, the DMCA, sending goons to street vendors, etc.
I'm not disagreeing with you, just tweaking your points a bit
The odd thing is that you're not the customer of the Simpsons, you're the product. You're sold to advertisers with the promise that some of you might just possibly not skip their commercials or walk out of the room while their messages are broadcast.
By downloading the episode, you've broken that relationship.
An important point to remember here is that you haven't broken any relationship. You never signed up to any of this. No one who watches TV signs an agreement guaranteeing that they will watch ads. No one.
If people stop watching ads, for whatever reason, they are certainly NOT "stealing" TV (a ridiculous concept). They may not be obeying time honored consumer models, but that is not, yet, a crime, or even morally ambiguous. It just is.
May the Maths Be with you!