Petteri Pyyny
6 Jul 2002 14:34
Company called Overpeer is "poisoning" various P2P networks with fake files. Company shares tons of files with attractive filenames, but files -- currently only MP3 files -- contain just garbage or 5sec loops of the track mentioned in the filename.
Overpeer does this on behalf of various content owners, most notably with world's largest record label, French Vivendi Universal. Problem isn't that big yet, but as many, many P2P users tend to download tracks and share them immediately without checking their accuracy, the problem can easily escalate.
Most likely this will lead P2P developers to figure out ways to "moderate" files, invent hashing systems to their software, etc. But obviously it will annoy users who have spent 20mins with their 56k to download a track and find out that the track they wanted to download is actually 100% useless.
Source: Zeropaid.com