Macrovision floods P2P networks with bogus files to battle piracy

Macrovision floods P2P networks with bogus files to battle piracy
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050901_111755.htmlIsn't this just a DenialOfService (DOS) attack - I thought that was prohibited by the FCC

No, a denial of service attack is totally different. What they are doing is putting empty files out there the look like the real thing and letting you DL them. They could probably sue, they can show you intended to pirate, wether you were sucessful or not is a different story. In the earlier days people woudl post in the porn newsgroups and put up a description like "neighbor_topless.jpg", when you dled it, it was a jpeg that said "Jesus hates perverts", and such nonsense. That's almost the same thing. :D

i doubt that it would be an empty file. I think it would make more sense to put in a real file, but put in a background tracker as the video/music/software/other is being used. Thus, as a person uses it, their systems would be tracked via internet or it doesnt have to track them but instead send their ip address to a government database and from there they can send it in. Or i think what would make more sense, especially in a battle against bittorrent (where it is harder for fake files to be uploaded and live long) is for the government to open a "private tracker." from there, the government (or whoever will trace a person down) can collect all the ip addresses. Find out their address/location. From there, the bittorrent network will stop or piracy will slow down. Of course, to make this possible, the antipiracy organization would have to upload pirated files (probably lots of music since that is what lots of people are after for) and track people down in that manner.

No, a denial of service attack is totally different. I was thinking that putting out a lot of bogus files on a p2p is about the same as overloading a server's bandwidth with bogus hits, or sending out malicious spam from a site - both of which I thought were criminal. Seems like if you represent celebrities it's ok to do effectively the same thing.
From the article - the intended result is to have about 100 bogus files in the p2p network for every usable one. I'm no lawyer - but If I were defending spammers or hackers this seems like a pretty good precedent.

Ya, it boils down to how good the lawyer is. This could be interpreted many different ways from a legal standpoint.

Tactics like this wont live too long. Many P2P networks hash out the binary content of files to determine their validity. Any new files added to the network are first hashed by a server, if the file matches other known files it is added to the pool of available sources for that particular file, regardless of actual file name. This allows more sources even when folks name their content differently.

If the hash does not match any others, it is put on the network with its original file name. It gets downloaded a couple times and folks realize that its no good so they delete it. Since noone ever keeps it, it will continue to come up very low in the rankings during searches. Eventually it will be near the bottom of the search list with maybe 5-10 available sources, meanwhile, the good files are at the top of the search window with upwards of 300-500 known sources.

Try it, go on limewire and download any of the newer songs in MP3 format, they are blank (empty) 23 minute or so MP3s. :hithere:

i doubt that it would be an empty file.

by blank, i thought they meant no data...as in like a notepad document...stuff like that...

Mpaa, Smd

Mpaa, Smdout of the 40 or so smd acronyms here :http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=smd&Find=Find - I'd guess it's Severely Mentally Disabled and not Systems Managment Director :D