p2pnet.net News:- Fakes, or spoofs, as the major studios and record labels like to call phony files posted on p2p networks to overpower them, have been around for a while but recently, they’ve started to appear in increasing numbers.

That’s because one of the entertainment industry’s current pet theories is: flood p2p networks with fake files and users won’t be able to tell the difference. So they’ll give up trying to download and/or share.

We knew there were plenty of Shrek 2 flood-files out there so we thought we’d see what was happening on WinMX and K-Lite (yep - it’s still around) with the latest DreamWorks production - Shark Tale.

It was interesting. There were tons of supposed downloads for both so we grabbed six Whois results randomly from the awesome list of WinMX results. See below for the list.

Although there are various ways to sort the wheat from the chaff, obvious User Name patterns being but one, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of spurious Shark Tales out there - certainly more than for The Forgotten or Ladder 49, two other new releases which are on the p2p nets.

Is Loudeye’s Overpeer responsible for the Shark fakes, as it is for the Shrek 2 phonies?

Could be.

One of the Hot Topics at the Digital Hollywood conference at the end of September was flooding

Questioned by people such as StreamCast Networks ceo Mike Weiss, Marc Morgenstern, vp and general manager of Overpeer, “whose technology helps protect record labels’ copyrights,” danced around the issue of whether or not Overper is flooding p2p networks, although, as we said earlier, there’s no doubt that it is.

Ratiatum.com has a list of 2,989 files distributed by the company, including 789 spoofs of Shrek 2.

But, “This is a discreet activity authorized by the content owners,” Morgenstern said. “We’re engaged in legal activity.”

There is, however, nothing disceet about it.

At this point, fake music and movie files exist in their thousands - perhaps hundreds of thousands.

But the entertainment industry deals in extremes, Big Music’s sue ‘em all campaign against people who share music and the Motion Picture Association’s raids on the homes of 12 people in Iceland, being cases in point

The movie studios are reporting record profits and the members of Big Four record cartel are raking it in as well - Warner Music says it has “significant” cash in hand and plans to “provide for a return of capital” of up to $350 million to shareholders.

So leaving aside whether or not file sharers are indeed guilty of bringing rack-and-ruin to the multi-billion-dollar movie and music industries, what will happen if all of the many and various entities that fall under the Hollywood umbrella decide to follow suit, paying file-share scalp-hunters such as Overpeer and temporary hires to load the networks with millions upon millions of fake files, many of which will in turn be downloaded?

More to come.

• User Name: Harm0nicsDept904_21493
• Connection Type: 56K
• Files shared: 200
• Elapsed time online: 3:08:16
• Transfer Status: 101 of 196 available
• User Name: MarinnaNeely_87835_26532
• Connection Type: T3+
• Files shared: 200
• Elapsed time online: 7:16:55
• Transfer Status: 20 of 77 available
• Time/date of report: Wed Oct 06 08:25:36 2004
• User Name: Letitia_76160_59289
• Connection Type: 28.8K
• Files shared: 200
• Elapsed time online: 1:45:07
• Transfer Status: 45 of 105 available
• Time/date of report: Wed Oct 06 08:26:01 2004
• User Name: GrayceMawji36789_14642
• Connection Type: 33.6K
• Files shared: 200
• Elapsed time online: 6:15:28
• Transfer Status: 28 of 197 available
• Time/date of report: Wed Oct 06 08:26:22 2004
• User Name: AlexinePisani_123_17727
• Connection Type: T3+
• Files shared: 200
• Elapsed time online: 7:14:13
• Transfer Status: 125 of 175 available
• Time/date of report: Wed Oct 06 11:43:07 2004
• User Name: NurettinRebate222_37792
• Connection Type: 128K ISDN
• Files shared: 200
• Elapsed time online: 9:45:10
• Transfer Status: 5 of 93 available
• What do all of these have in common?

==================

See:-

Digital Hollywood - File-sharing debaters swap harsh words, CNET News, Septemer 29, 2004

Ratiatum.com - Loudeye’s ’secret’ spoofs, p2pnet, October 1, 2004

sue ‘em all - RIAA sues another 762, October 1, 2004

raids - MPAA raids Iceland, p2pnet, October 1, 2004

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 6th, 2004 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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