And yet another P2P download stopper just patented...

[Roundabout]

Still another try at stopping you from getting those downloads you need so badly :P

Seems to me that the RIAA was already doing something similar to this, but these guys got a patent on it - maybe they automated the process? Of course this won't stop P2P programs with SHA (like eMule), but since KaZaA is not among those, it'll probably stop a lot of people on the FasT Track networks.

Patent Awarded to Invention to Prevent Illegal Music Downloads


Newswise — A University of Tulsa computer science professor and a graduate student have been awarded a patent for a software-based method to prevent illegal downloading of music over the Internet.

U.S. Patent 6,732,180 was awarded May 4, 2004, to computer science professor John Hale and to Gavin W. Manes, a doctoral student in computer science.

The invention combats copyright infringement on peer-to-peer networks, or P2P, such as Gnutella, BitTorrent and Kazaa, by systematically injecting decoys into file-sharing networks -- essentially flooding the networks with alternative content that appears authentic.

Currently, songs protected by copyright are copied and uploaded on peer-to-peer networks, allowing anyone with Internet access to download those songs -- without paying the artist or record company for the benefit. The new technology would frustrate illegal downloads by overwhelming pirated music files with hundreds of decoys containing white noise, low quality recordings or advertisements urging users to legally buy the song.

The technology developed by Hale and Manes exploits the very characteristics that make such peer-to-peer environments breeding grounds for copyright infringement. Because anyone can connect to such a network and can do so anonymously, decoys are just as easily placed on the network and are that much harder to detect.

A report last year estimated that $700 million was lost in CD sales due to P2P piracy. Lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America have failed to stop such piracy, and Hale says the problem may worsen because the next generation of peer-to-peer systems offers superior connectivity, enhanced search facilities and even greater anonymity.

"The beauty of this approach is that it does not impede legitimate uses of P2P networks. It can surgically target pirated media," Hale says.

"Our invention is extremely resilient in terms of its ability to adapt to different networks, clients and protocols," explained Manes. "As long as a user can sign on to a network and trade files -- even anonymously -- our solution is effective."

The inventors and the university are commercializing the technology and exploring new options for licensing the patent.

Hale, who leads a group of researchers at The University of Tulsa in pursuing practical technologies for digital rights management, testified twice before Congress last year on the hazards of file-sharing networks, and sees the situation only growing worse.

"It really is just a massive problem, and one that calls for a combination of legislation, technology and awareness. But as far as technology goes, we believe we may have the most viable countermeasure that will stand the test of time."

[dvdashot]

Gotta hand it to 'em. That's pretty good. Not as good as say : stop wasting money trying to stop illegal downloading and instead lowering CD prices. But hey, whatever works.

[guns1inger]

Why is it that no one can seem to agree on how much it actually costs. Every time some RIAA or MPAA git opens his mouth, the number gets larger. Now if they all told the same lie . . . . . . .

[flaninacupboard]

surelt their method won't work? wen you look for a download, you pick one with most users as it'll be fastest. with a popular file this can be 100's of users. unless they place the same spoofed file on hundreds of clients the real file will still be more appealing, so won't spread. even if it did, anyone D/Ling it will delete straight away, preventing it spreading further.

gonna cost them a lot to have that much hardware set up if they want to cover a lot of networks, plus all the bandwidth.

maybe if they signed some artists that appealed to adults with money rather than penniless teenagers...

[MeTaLgEaRsOoTy]

so i wonder if itll be able to target the smart move with people renaming files to keep shitheads like the RIAA off there back.
and i cant see it affecting downloads like "newalbum.rar."
not unless they infect 100s+ of trackers,etc for torrents.
the more they try this shit,the more sublime and tighter the downloading community will become.
but after all these years,cds,dvds,videos havent dropped in price.
surely someone somewhere has made there money back..

[gitreel]

downloading is not illegal. The dmca does not cover p2p

[dvdashot]

Well, illegal or not, they want to take a stab at stopping it.

[gitreel]

and they better be prepared for the backlash that is going to happen.

[LDinOR]

P2P is like hacking, there will always be a way. The means to curb illegal downloading may be to be friendlier to your market, not make yourself an enemy. Lower the prices and put out a larger variety of more talented artists.
Oh and word to flaninacupboard, as the father of teenagers I have to tell you, they aren't penniless as long as we parents have green in our pockets.

[smearbrick1]

Isn't denial of service type attacks illegal? Isn't what this sort of amounts to? They want to clog up the network and frustrate the users to stop them from downloading. This sort of sounds like a little bit of hacking trick... (not necessarily hacking, but attacking) How come for every other network, this would be considered illegal? Why can law enforcement come after a programmer that writes a program that bombards, oh let's say, the RIAA's site with thousands of requests that utimately brings the network down?

...not the same thing?

[hhhhbk]

im sure they tried this before
my friend* has downloaded a couple of albums where each track is about a 50 second clip looped to fill the time
would be slightly frustrating but i doubt it will infiltrate bit torrent or irc as with forums etc the ip of the faulty uploader would be known and blocked

this is probably their best chance of combating piracy as the lawsuits are having minimal effect

they woulld have to literally flood the networks with these files im talking of 100's of computers with different ip addresses having lots of different falsely named files ie 10 different false versions of each song

it would be pretty expensive for them to run enough machines to make it more than an annoyance

i cant see this stopping the downloaders from getting what they want even if flooding networks proves somewhat successful new file sharing methods will show up

their best method would be to get isps to put in low transfer caps
cant see that ever coming around as the internet service providers know that the majority of its customers only have the fast lines for filesharing

c'mon who needs a 2mbit line for surfing the web
you may say someone running their own website but even that is doubtful
you may say downloading new versions of linux or other free software

but for legitimate usage i cant see how the majority of people who average over say 500mb per day in transfer are not using the line for filesharing

[Roundabout]

im sure they tried this before
my friend* has downloaded a couple of albums where each track is about a 50 second clip looped to fill the time
would be slightly frustrating but i doubt it will infiltrate bit torrent or irc as with forums etc the ip of the faulty uploader would be known and blocked

hhhhbk,

Exactly right, and that's why the Secure Hash Algorithm is useful, they can't fake it - the fake file will have a different "fingerprint" and not be downloaded. eMule/Donkey even has a "fakes" file that is updated when you start the client to help kill this kind of tampering. Filedonkey has a way to report fakes also, and any known website such as Shareprovider won't post the SHA of fake files, so you can use them for links and not be concerned about it.

KaZaA is a different story. Their hash isn't secure and I think such companies have had a modicum of success in using such methods as mentioned above. That's mainly what they are targeting at the moment, but later they will no doubt be looking for some way to infiltrate the eMule/Donkey and BT networks if they can.

[montburnsy]

Roundabout quoted: "A report last year estimated that $700 million was lost in CD sales due to P2P piracy. Lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America have failed to stop such piracy, and Hale says the problem may worsen because the next generation of peer-to-peer systems offers superior connectivity, enhanced search facilities and even greater anonymity." (end Q.)

Now, is this $700million worth of songs d/l'ed, or that if there were no P2P's, they would've made this much more in sales?
I d/l songs, if I like 'em, i'd go and buy the album. If not, then I haven't wasted my money or had to fight with somebody just to get my money back.
I'm guessing they think that they (or someone) would have made a neat little profit without P2P d/l'ing (piracy), HA! wotaload'a'crap.
And I've even bought cd's I never wouldv'e in my life, thanx to P2P.
I also played in a band for 7-8 years, and would be proud to know if someone was d/l'ing my music, 'cos that's who I intended it for. (especially those who don't have the talent to make their own, but love it)

Maybe Metalica should read this post??? (greedy b^%$#'s)
In the 60's, was free love,
Now it's free music!!
Rock on guys'n'gals.
I wonder if Marshall can sue me for all the times i've written their logo on my school books???

[indolikaa]

This is a DoS in my book. It would make for a very interesting lawsuit...

[Nilfennasion]

I have very few MP3s that are of songs or artists that I don't own recordings of on CD. One record store owner told me that while MP3 downloading hurts the sales they get from people who buy an album or a single because they want the one song, the opposite side of that coin is how those people feel when they buy an album and discover that aside from that one song, the contents are crap (typical of RIAA-approved material).

Now, when you look at my collection of MP3s and CDs, you'll notice something very funny about it. Namely, there are very few RIAA-approved "artists" amongst it. This situation was best summarised on one online magazine thusly: It's one thing when you don't think a recording artist is worth the money to buy their material on CD, but it's another thing entirely when you don't think their music is worth the bandwidth to download. Maybe the RIAA should be asking themselves why members of their main target audience (male between 21 and 50, no children, no spouse etc) don't even consider their product worth stealing.

[BobK]

> but after all these years,cds,dvds,videos havent dropped in price.
surely someone somewhere has made there money back..

Yeah- all the people who keep coming up with this kind of stuff (to stop P2P) are probably making a fortune.

> Now, is this $700million worth of songs d/l'ed, or that if there were no P2P's, they would've made this much more in sales?

I think they try to estimate how many people have downloaded songs, figure that all of them would have bought the CD if they couldn't download, then triple that number and claim that's how much they lost in sales.

[Nilfennasion]

I think they try to estimate how many people have downloaded songs, figure that all of them would have bought the CD if they couldn't download, then triple that number and claim that's how much they lost in sales.

Here is to hoping that the courts see this for the fallacy that it is. If I couldn't download Kylie Minogue's greatest hits, I still would never buy them. I think the RIAA should be looking more at who doesn't get downloaded before asking themselves why.

[Faustus]

The invention combats copyright infringement on peer-to-peer networks, or P2P, such as Gnutella, BitTorrent and Kazaa, by systematically injecting decoys into file-sharing networks -- essentially flooding the networks with alternative content that appears authentic.

Wow, someone has no idea how BT works, that must be some Amazing software to flood the BT "NETWORK".

[andkiich]

Another note: I don't think that people just download files for the sake of downloading. The only way that something like this would work, especially on a bit torrent would be if the downloaders didn't check the content of their files.

If I downloaded a file and it's content was not what I wanted, then I'm deleting it, hence, no one else will get a faulty download from me.

Not to mention, hackers are always looking for soemthing to attack. All it will take is for some malicious hacker to get frustrated with this and they will go out, find the machine that is tanking up the works and blast it.

All this kind of stuff does, at least my perception of it, is escalate a cyber war. One group gets slapped, the other slaps back. All they are going to do is slap each other harder and harder until the kid gloves come off.

The only way for things to get better:

1) Record companies need to stop signing as many one hit wonder bands. I agree with a previous post. I download whole albums of groups to see if the album is worth buying. I get extremely frustrated with spending $15 - $20 on a CD and find out that I only like one song. Hence I have adopted a 3 song minimum on CD buying rule. If the album is worth buying, I plunk my money down. Regardless, the downloaded music is deleted one way or the other.

2) Record companies need to lower the price on CDs.

3) I don't know about the rest of you, but through the middle to later part of the '90's it just seemed that there was not a lot of really good music being released. That trend seems to be going out in the last couple of years(I've bought more CDs the last 2 years than I have through the whole of the ned of the 90s). Might it be that the record sales are low because the music just wasn't worth buying? Not according to the record companies. Because they couldn't find talent to sell, they blame the end user for "downloading". Does this attitude really surprise anyone? The standard American mindset in teh last few years is that it's everyone elses fault. The person with the problem has no blame or cause to the issue. Disturbing trend, I know and one that will need to reverse itself or things will keep getting worse and worse.

[Nilfennasion]

Because they couldn't find talent to sell, they blame the end user for "downloading".

www.mydyingbride.orgwww.moonfog.com
The talent is more than out there. The RIAA is just too busy (or has too much of an agenda) to bother looking.