P2P Polluter Shuts Down

Dotnaught writes "Loudeye Corp. said today it is closing its anti-piracy unit, Overpeer, Inc., in an effort to cut costs. Overpeer is best known for polluting P2P networks with garbled digital files. For what it's worth, the Internet filter at CMP Media, where I work, blocks Overpeer's site as 'spyware.'"

Comments

And?

[garcia]

For what it's worth, the Internet filter at CMP Media, where I work, blocks Overpeer's site as 'spyware.'"

For what it's worth, a friend that works at Honeywell says that Bug Me Not's site is blocked as "hacking and subversion tools".

Yeah, exactly, so what?

Morphing and going into hiding, more likely.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

The IP blocks they use are widely known and have become ineffective against savvy filesharers. More likely, they're going to go under deeper cover, sourcing bandwidth from consumer sources like cable modem and DSL providers to spy on file sharers and pollute the networks. I'm surprised it's taken this long.

Where do these numbers come from?

[ScrewMaster]

To make a spoofed file "persistent," that is, omnipresent on a P2P network, requires 10,000 copies of the file, Goodman said. Additionally, since P2P networks are set up in clusters of 100,000 machines, a professional spoofer needs enough always-on servers to connect with each of a P2P network's clusters.

What the hell does that mean? I agree with the man that spoofing won't stop file sharing (it hasn't yet, anyway) but from what part of his anatomy did he pull those numbers?

They are only improving P2P

[4Dmonkey]

Polluting is a short term solution, on the lines of - if you can't stop them, annoy them.

It will only result in more sophisticated clients. Some features which may circumvent this method are -
-Rating : polluters can also artificially rate their files high, but assuming that pirates outnumber them by thousands, its highly useful.

-Hashing : polluters can easily create and hash their files, but this will stop them from polluting existing stuff.

-Preview : preview-before-download is most effective way of checking if a file is valid .Polluters can keep the starting part of a file good while messing the rest of it, so preview statring from any random place in the file can be implemented.

-Blocking : autoblocking a user if he has a lot of wrong files.

-Chat : asking the user about the file's quality. You cant expect a polluter to sit 24x7 in front of his servers chatting with millions.

-Voice and music recognition : the s/w may evolve so much that it will recognize any speech and music information present in the file and will warn if not found. Same can be done with images.

-Encryption : a trusted network can start encrypting the files, if client provides such a feature.

-Redundancy : a p2p network can have dedicated servers to copy bits of files and place them on client machines. A million copies can beat a few polluted ones.