Overpeer Spewing Bogus Files on P2P Networks 479
nimec writes "Zeropaid.com has posted news of a company called Overpeer which is the source of all the bogus mp3 files that are popping up on the various P2P networks. Zeropaid, in the news article, said: 'If you've encountered the "loop" files, in which a section of the chorus or hook is repeated over and over, you've been tricked by OVERPEER. OVERPEER are doing this with the full knowlege and consent of Interscope and Universal Music, in fact they are under contract to Universal and other major record labels, and will be doing a LOT MORE of this type of "interdiction" in the near future.' Right now this doesn't bother me because these bogus files are few, very spread out and it is easy spot them. I'm just afraid that over time people will keep downloading these bogus mp3s and become too lazy to delete them, like they are when it comes to incomplete songs."
So? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have any sympathy... (Score:4, Insightful)
People who download songs and movies continuously only make bandwidth more expensive and/or capped for the rest of us.
I think it's kind of funny - we waited overnight to download "TPM" only to discover it was "Pearl Harbor" with the title changed.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
And that might be an argument that could be used under the DMCA, anti-terrorist or whatever it is legislation.
Why complain? This is a sensibe solution. (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do so many people think that they have a right to infringe copyright? In most parts of the world, it is illegal, and you are causing the recording companies to loose money. The fact that I consider the recording companies to be charging far too much for mediocre products:
SUCH AS OVER-COMPRESSED AUDIO ON COMPACT DISKS - RECORDING COMPANIES - DO YOU HAVE ANY CONCEPT OF THE MEANING OF DYNAMIC RANGE THESE DAYS?
This does not mean in any way that people have the right to illegally copy their, products.
If you want to listen to music free of charge buy a radio, or, even better, buy a large satellite dish. Check your local laws - maybe you are permitted to record music from the, literally hundreds, of radio stations that you can receive. The quality of radio via digital satellite broadcasts is very good. If your local laws permit you to record the music, then you don't need to illegally download music from the internet.
This is not a difficult concept to grasp. Stop acting illegally, and purchase the music you like. Every time you purchase a CD that sounds too loud, BECAUSE IT IS OVERCOMPRESSED BY UNSKILLED RECORDING ENGINEERS, complain about it. Ask your local radio stations to complain too.
In summary:
People who illegally copy music, and other copyrighted works:
Please don't. You ARE hurting the recording industry, and other people by doing this.
Recording industry:
Please start offering higher quality products. I would willingly pay in the region of 25 pounds, (I am in the U.K.), for a CD which is MASTERED TO A HIGH QUALITY, NOT THE LOW QUALITY THEY ARE TODAY. Learn how to use your equipment.
If you have never heard a studio master tape, please try to get the opportunity to. Ask your local radio and television stations - tell them why you are interested. The quality of music we are all listening to today is FAR below what the technicians are listening to, before they RUIN it becuse of either:
* Marking pressures, ("make it sound LOUD!")
or
* A lack of knowledge, ("this button makes it sound different, so I'll press it." or "I don't know what this button does, so I'll leave it set at it's default setting).
YAWS (Score:5, Insightful)
Your p2p application (which supports metadata, hashes etc) will wait to add a downloaded file to the "shared" section until after you view it.
This would cut down on some short divx'd files (which won't play "out of the box") bogus mp3 files (overpeer) and whatever else.
A system which flags files as "ok" could come under attack because overpeer could just flag their files "ok" as well.
The system I suggested above would only of course work with files downloaded, not files you have existing on your computer. Of course through the hash system you could be verified against other people.
Overpeer... create mp3's backwards from one-way hashes! Good luck you bastards!
Considering we already have hash systems in Gnutella apps... they can suck me.
Re:Even though I'm not a big fan of copyright.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Essentually this is a software war. One side will do x the other side will counter x. Kind of how AOL occasionally treats the wonderful Trillan IM client.
You don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
And where did you get the idea that Overpeer is only going to make bogus MP3s of artists belonging to the labels that contracted with them?
It would make more logical sense to continue the RIAA tradition of attacks on P2P networks by making bogus tracks of everything they can find so as to make the networks as a whole unusuable.
I don't see this as a method of protecting label artists, I see this as a way for them to attempt to shut down networks on which non-label artists can be distributed and an extension of what they did to Internet and LPFM radio.
Re:Gnucleus needs to add a "self-similarity" check (Score:3, Insightful)
So, they are wasting my bandwith! (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't really think that this is going to work do you? People will simply be annoyed and have to share more. Someone is going to have to pay for the increased bandwith usage and it's not Universal Music. So, Universal is stealing from cable opperators. It's like spam, but they don't even hope to make money off it.
You have not even thought that people might be trying to share files that were intended to be shared and are NOT owned by Unviersal Music. But that's like the big 5 music publishers, "No one but us can record music, right? Drool, Drool."
twitter, who has never bothered to download silly mass produced comercial music, is annoyed that Universal Music is going to waste his time. Universal, you suck.
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even though I'm not a big fan of copyright.... (Score:1, Insightful)
So what, if they wanted a list of the biggest pirates, they just ask for the highest moderated users.
Re:Even though I'm not a big fan of copyright.... (Score:3, Insightful)
So only files, that somebody wants are counted... i could share 20gb of shit, so i know, nobody will download them.
But if you count the traffic you get the more important data."
Then the RIAA stooges download shitty MP3s from each other and have mod points to use against targeted songs.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
couldn't these DoS attacks be considered illegal
I think the problem with that argument is that this really isn't a DoS attack. They are using a P2P file sharing network to share files. That's the purpose of the network. Just because it is a file that you don't want doesn't mean that it is a DoS attack.
Re:So? This is easy to get rid of (Score:1, Insightful)
Second anyone who has half a brain will check the file halfway through (on 1Mb/s DSL that's about 90 seconds into the download) and if it's not good they'll blackball the file (files are grouped by name/size.)
Third, and maybe even better, they download the whole thing and stick BS on it. Actually I'm thinking of just labeling them Overpeer. Wait, won't effect me anyway, I just download mixes you can't buy on CD anyway, and stuff the record companies don't sell in the US, and bands that they don't think worthy of signing.
Fourth, and final, is that the RIAA, Overpeer (basically the whole bunch), can burn. Record sales are down to cookie cutter groups (N'Sync, 98 Degrees, who can really tell the difference) and they'll lead themselves into their own destruction at this rate. Going after used sales? When I was a poor brat that's how I bought 500 of my now 2260+ CD's. I couldn't afford anything but used discs.
laters.
web of trust (Score:4, Insightful)
Eventually this evolves such that sites which post bogus music, low-quality rips and the like will not get used, because no one will trust them. And a good web of trust allows you to see the trust path that led you to a server, so that if you get something bad you explicitly can mark as untrusted the nearest site to that (since they didn't do a good screening job) even though they would otherwise implicitly be trusted.
Game Over (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem has two aspects:
1) If the systems has strong identities, then you have a confession from every uploader - as long as you can find them.
2) If you don't have strong identities, then those who would interfere with your system can hijack the identity system.
In the strong identity case, those few people who have uploaded most of the songs that are floating around suddenly find themselves targets. A well-funded attacker, especially one with the Law on their side, could use traffic analysis to track down the high-use users. Recall, they don't need enough info from the traffic analysis to get a conviction, just enough to get a warrant. Frankly, I don't believe claims that "my system is immune to traffic analysis." If the Law can tap into UUNet's big NOCs, they can watch the majority of US internet traffic. MP3's are pretty big, and a small population of users uploads most of the songs. It doesn't matter if your data is encrypted/chunked/whatever, the Law just looks for lots of traffic and tracks the big dataflows to their source. Once they find you, they find your secret key, and you're in jail. Secondly, a digital signature is forever. If you share a bunch of files in college, but then clean up your act and lead a respectable life (in the eyes of the RIAA), your digital signature stays behind. A gun that smokes until the statute of limitations runs out is a little scary.
In the weak identity case, you're no better off than in the no-identity case. The people who want to stomp on your little piracy garden are better funded and less constrained in their action than you. Everyone has infinite moderation points? What's to stop the bad guys (good guys?) from modding everything totally randomly?Much faster than carefully listening to each song and clicking a button. Legitimate rankings get lost in the noise. Use hashes or song fingerprints? What's to stop someone from transmitting the hashes/fingerprints from non-bogus media?
No, I'm afraid that the solution is the same as the solution to the wAr3z distribution problem. Small groups can share with full impunity (this is actually legal [hrrc.org] to do with music). But sharing music with perfect strangers is not just illegal, it means that the Man can play, too -- and do everything in his power to stop you.
Re:You don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the artists and labels could sue them for doing so.
Simple solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, quite simply because they were trying to use content they legally owned. The whole thing with P2P is that it started with people posting MP3s on websites, then they made search engines for them, then along comes Napster. It all started with people sharing illegal content. Don't be fooled by the guise that these sharing networks were set up for legal content that the music labels just didn't think was good enough. That came a long a bit later.
DeCSS on the other hand came about because there was no way to play legally owned content on Linux. I'm not blind to the fact that people are using to rip DVD's, but that wasn't it's original intent. As for Napster, and the rest of these file swappers, it was their intent.
Somewhere you have to strike a balance between restricting content that people own and do not want distributed, or choose to distribute other ways and allowing free flow of content that people wish to release to anyone who wants it. Unfortunately, P2P networks don't restrtict the flow of non-free copyrighted works, and are used mostly for their distribution.
Boycott the recording industry (Score:3, Insightful)