Cleaning spam from swapping networks

What if every other time you brought a book home from the library, you opened it up and it turned out to be a pop-up advertisement for a local dry cleaner?

Cornell University researchers are trying to clear file-swapping networks of this kind of disappointment, with a new program aimed at filtering spam out of the peer-to-peer pool. But the tool could also ratchet up the antipiracy arms race, by filtering out the numerous "decoy" files used by Hollywood and record label allies to discourage illegal downloaders.

Released Monday, the researchers' "Credence" software lets different computers "gossip" with each other in the background to figure out which peer-to-peer files can be trusted, and which should be ignored. The researchers say they're trying to take a page from Google's book, boosting the accuracy of search results by relying on the recommendations of other trusted users.

News.context

What's new:
Cornell researchers think computers that "gossip" with each other are the key to filtering out ads on P2P networks.

Bottom line:
The new program could also ratchet up the antipiracy arms race by filtering out the numerous "decoy" files used by Hollywood and record label allies to discourage illegal downloaders.

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"I believe in people; I think most people are honest," said Emin Gun Sirer, the assistant professor of computer science at Cornell who is leading the project. "I think it will be people on the periphery who will be kept out."

The project aims at the heart of peer-to-peer networks' biggest weakness today. Allowing people to search each other's hard drives has made hundreds of millions of files potentially available at a mouse-click, but search results remain spotty and badly organized, much like the early days of Web search.

What would ordinarily be a straightforward computer science question has been complicated by the fact that so many of the files on peer-to-peer networks are songs or videos under copyright. In this case, improving search results could also contribute to making copyright infringement more efficient.

Peer-to-peer networks have been polluted with junk files and spam almost since their inception. It took spammers only a few months to realize that the popular networks presented a new opportunity for unsolicited advertising, and to adapt their technologies accordingly.

Advertisements on peer-to-peer networks are typically sent by creating servers that automatically respond to any search request with an affirmative. Thus, if someone is searching for "Bush speech," a spammer might respond with a file that is dynamically named "Bush_speech," which instead turns out to be an ad.

Companies in the file-swapping software business say they've talked to ISPs about unplugging these spammers, but that it has largely remained up to consumers to adapt.

"Users tend to learn to detect and ignore it," said LimeWire Chief Technology Officer Greg Bildson. "It does hamper the user experience a bit, but isn't as bad as endless volumes of e-mail spam, for example."

However, the issue has been complicated by the rise of antipiracy companies, such as Overpeer, that seed file-swapping networks with false versions of popular songs and movies in attempts to prevent

[bobby_brady]

This sounds like a good program

eom

Pretty Soon, they will get sued

If the program works as well as they claim it does, they will undoubtably be sued by the RIAA and MPAA. Just another victim of corporate America waiting to be silenced. This sadly will become just another example of intellectual property rights trumping and stifling inovation.

Stop Overpeer

Protowall and Blocklist Manager are pretty effective at stopping Overpeer and similiar idiots. Edonkey also can detect most fakes by comparing the users filename to the file hash. If there is a different filename on the same hash, the file is possibly fake. Fakes on edonkey are usually porn and all you have to do is open the sources to see the different filenames. It's pretty easy.

We should get our ISP's to block Overpeers IP addresses, now THAT would solve a lot of problems.