Culture: Website: Exchange
Collectible "Dupes"   (-2)  [vote for, against]
Seeding P2P networks with interesting false files

"Dupes" are my word for those files seeded onto a P2P network that are other than described. There are multiple companies whose business is to prevent the successful sharing of specific properties by seeding networks with useless and discouraging crap.

Recently, I attempted to get a peek at an unreleased new album. Finding it online was pretty easy, so I downloaded several tracks. To noone's suprise, they were all dupes. In this case, the tracks were actually a short section of an interview looped for approximately the correct amount of time. A friendly little message from the band telling users about what they hope to do on their next album. I was irked at grabbing multiple megs of junk, but not as pissed as I would have been if I had downloaded Madonna's dupe (with her asking me "what the fuck do I think I'm doing?").

This caused a half-idea to form: How much easier would it be to subvert the P2P infrastructure if users PURPOSEFULLY kept and shared the files?

1. Interview your employer-band or purchase redistribution rights to a good interview. Release it under an open license that requires it to be distributed under it's original filename.

2. Break the interview into smaller chunks and loop them the appropriate number of times to make the right file size.

3. Release the interview on your favorite P2P network and publicize it to diehard fan sites. Voila! Fan-supported subversion of the network.

It's evil, but it's smart enough to garner my personal respect if I see it in the wild. patent pending (smirk)
-- bear, Apr 22 2003

Love it.(bear) Would you mind emailing me.
sufc@37.com.
Thanks.
-- sufc, Apr 22 2003


Please, for the totally P2P ignorant, how does this subvert the P2P network? How is it evil? What is the point? As best I can read this, it sounds like you're proposing to do exactly what has been done only it's better somehow because somebody else is doing it and doing more of it. Sorry, I'm not getting your idea.

Meh, maybe this is one for the younger crowd?
-- half, Apr 23 2003


Gawd. I hope it's not just my advanced age that's preventing me from understanding what the goal is to this plan.
-- bristolz, Apr 23 2003


I'm with [bristolz], I don't see the point of guerilla interview materials. Of course, I may be of a similarly disadvantaged vintage.
-- Don Quixote, Apr 23 2003


//my advanced age// Oh, yeah. Sorry. If 3156 days younger than me qualifies as the "younger crowd" then that shoots my theory. Now I'm back to the whole thing just not making any sense.
-- half, Apr 23 2003


This is already done. By me, anyway. Put a unique keyword in a file for your own knowledge, like 'xxyd', then add in some heavily downloaded keywords, like the names of popular bands or songs. If you want to be more subversive, make it look like a popular song. Give it some time and search for it. Works like a charm on seedier P2Ps like KaZaA.
-- motive power, Apr 23 2003


am I understanding this correctly? you think you are getting something for nothing and you are disappointed?

tough!
-- po, Apr 23 2003


Someday, when I become famous, I'm going to make a song called "What the Fuck Do You Think You're Doing?" where the only words are "What the Fuck Do You Think You're Doing?" Then, if Madonna pulls that shit again, I'll sue her for copyright infringement.
-- AfroAssault, Apr 23 2003


You too. The author wants everybody to do this certain thing for some reason. It doesn't make sense, though, because he wants p2p users to subvert the very infrastructure they use. What's their incentive here?

Wipe that smirk off your face, bear. This isn't patentable.
-- snarfyguy, Apr 23 2003


ick, not everybody - there are companies whose job it is to make it irritable/difficult to use p2p netowrks. They host lots of fake files for whatever record company employs them. I should have explained that bit.

This isn't _for_ users of the p2p network, per se. It's a method for "infecting" users computers with the useless files that they want to keep. It's not meant for nice users of the networks, it's more aimed at the laze ones. It's not a nice idea, but it is almost workable and definitely strange, hence posting at halfbakery.

[snarfyguy], if Jeff Bezos can make enough money to fund a private space company bond-villan-style from a patent on "online shoping with by a single-click", I think some enterprising bottom-feeder could patent this. It just won't be me, I don't care enough.
-- bear, Apr 29 2003


m-f-d removed, but now it seems like you're proposing the implementation of the thing you've described as baked.
-- snarfyguy, Apr 29 2003


It's not-quite-baked. The dupes that are out there now are either: a. insulting (see madonna); b. utterly useless (looped samples of one section of a song); or c. close to my idea without quite hitting it (Linkin Park's Meteora dupes have one non-anagonistic statement from the band in ALL tracks, as opposed to varying statements in each track of the (at the time) non-released album).
-- bear, May 06 2003


You could improve this -- or make it even worse, depending on your point of view -- by embedding each short piece of the interview at various points of old public domain speeches & tunes. Then duplicate and rename them to hundreds or thousands of different audio files. So everyone needs to download, and listen to, everyone else's files to be sure they get them all.
-- Amos Kito, May 06 2003


Hey, I posted two links to companies doing stuff similar to what was proposed here. What happened to them?

<Chuckles at the assertion that Bezos' wealth and ability to create Blue Origin has come only from the one-click patent>
-- bristolz, May 06 2003


I will crois this for the reference to Bond-villain style space companies, since I still don't understand the idea. The crois will go bone if I hear that bear deleted bristolz' links.
-- bungston, May 06 2003



random, halfbakery