Music Industry Swamping File Trading System With Spoofs

from the fun-for-the-whole-industry dept

There has apparently been a noticeable increase in "fake" or "spoofed" files showing up on various file trading systems lately. They're generally blank sound files (the same length as the related song) or just a small part of that song repeated over and over again. Everyone seems to agree that these spoof files are coming from the music industry themselves. While no one will officially admit it, they certainly aren't denying it - and they seem to indicate that it's exactly what they need to do. All this is really going to do is make the various file trading systems one step better by forcing them to (finally) add some element of "trusted" users, trusted nodes, and trusted files. That'll make life better for everyone (except some grumpy music execs who still insist that they really really can hold back the tide this time).
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2002 @ 12:55am

    No Subject Given

    B i t z i
    Bitzi

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 28 Jun 2002 @ 1:18am

      Re: No Subject Given

      Heh. I'll go you one better and actually link to Bitzi. For those of you unaware of Bitzi, go check it out (and I'm not just saying that 'cause Bitzi's founder is a "friend of Techdirt").

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    acb, 28 Jun 2002 @ 2:43am

    Trust metrics and file sharing

    Urk. Let's try that again...

    The solution may involve trust metrics and a PGP-like "web of trust". One experimental file-sharing/communications system which uses them is
    The Circle. At the moment, they're only used for news/gossip, but they could be extended fairly easily to find the most "trusted" user hosting a specific file, or to sort found files in order of trust.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    2Lazy2Register, 28 Jun 2002 @ 12:05pm

    So what?

    Using Kazaa-lite, I routinely start multiple downloads of the same item. That way, if one server craps out or I get a bogus file, I have umpteen others downloaded as well. They'll have to do better than this...

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.