FileSharing

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories

PeerToPeer filesharing started with Napster, which spawned several clones such as the GnutellaProject.

A Peer to Peer filesharing network works on trust. It may not be a network where people know each other or UseRealNames, but you trust others to share their files as you share yours, and you trust that files will be what their filenames say.

However, trust is breaking down -- CommunityMayNotScale, perhaps. Gnutella already has an option to "block freeloaders", ie, "do not connect with users who are not sharing". Is this a form of CommunityExpectation?

When Gnutella went online, it was touted by pundits as the network the lawyers couldn't touch; even as a network that could still run if a sizable portion of the internet were taken out.

The music industry is desperate to fight filesharing of MP3s, and maybe they've found a way: break trust.

A recent attempt to get a new song by a popular artist from Gnutella gave half a dozen 6MB files of "glitchy" noise (presumably this fools the MP3 compression into making a big file, rather than silence), and one file which faded after the first verse.

Lawyers are expensive. But it wouldn't cost the big music companies much to run servers that pump fake files onto Gnutella and other networks. When the majority of files listed in searches are duds, the whole thing rapidly loses its appeal. The question is: are Time Warner & friends clever enough to have thought of this, or was this incident just a case of RandomVandal?s?

is it the end of Gnutella?

This misinformation strategy has been discussed on PhonyFlood.

I take it all back. This strategy may destroy Gnutella.

To listen popular artists' songs all one needs to do is to turn the radio on. People will keep trading rare files on Gnutella, SoulSeek? and other PeerToPeer FileSharing systems. I don't think record industry cares much about faking those. Of course they could make faking automagic - use a fake client which responds to any search by sending noise files. But comunity may start sharing the ban lists with violators ip ranges as well. Which violators can fake again. Normal ArmsRace?, no reason to panic and talk defeatist. -- ArtmBaguinski?

FileSharing

Discussion