Strange Sound, Screeching Songs...et Cetera

[Kahu]

Didnt get the chance to read all 40 pages, but ill add this anywayz

As im sure most of you know about the corrupted mp3's that have spread around.
It seems that most of the new/popular songs have been corrupted and seeded. Youll notice that the first 20 seconds or so of a song will sound fine, and then get garbled into a screechy sound.

This is a powerful blow from the RIAA/Record company's or whomever these corrupted files originated from. you gotta give these guys props for their effort. heh.

"A cottage industry of companies has sprung up that saturates file-swapping networks with false or corrupted versions of songs and videos, hoping to frustrate would-be downloaders." -CNET News.com
“Update on the piracy wars
Snap, crackle, hiss. The ongoing battle over copyrighted works has taken yet another innovative turn. The Washington Post reports that, with growing frequency, "spoof" files are turning up on popular sites (such as Kazaa) where music fans illegally trade songs online. Spoofs are repetitive loops or snippets filled with crackle and hissing sounds. Thousands are now downloaded every day by unsuspecting music sharers.

Record labels have been hesitant to openly address spoofing, but the trade group that represents them, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has called it an acceptable manner with which to fight piracy. New file-sharing entities are proliferating, and two billion songs are traded monthly, according to the Association. The labels are also backing a bill that is now being considered by the U.S. Congress that would make it legal to "impair the operation of peer-to-peer" networks. Spoofing is but one tactic that would fall under the auspices of the bill. "We're looking for a way to stop gross infringers, and there are measures that we can take to prevent people from making 100 copies or uploading CDs for millions to take," said Hillary Rosen, chairwoman of the RIAA.” –RSA Rsasecurity.com

They have taken advantage of the multiple sources function of your p2p program.
They seed 1 corrupt file somewhere that is identical to a good file. The p2p program thinks its the same exact file. So you find a file/song that 10 people are sharing. 9 of the files/songs are good and that 1 file is corrupt. Well the p2p program downloads chunks from all 10 file's including the corrupted chunks. Thats why youll hear the screechy sounds in different parts of the song.

This is only a speed bump and there are Steps in which you can take to get around this until someone develops a plugin or something to filter these corrupted files out.

Listen completely to your mp3's and delete any garbage songs. This will minimize the spread of these corrupted files.
Also... limit the number of ‘Max Sources’ to 2 or so to minimize the chances of you getting part of these few corrupted files. If you dont limit the number of ‘Max Sources’, your more than likely to get a hefty chunk of garbage in your song. Good luck fellaz!

[Kahu]

heh. just finished reading all 40 pages of bewl sheot. man... I almost gave up around 10 times. It has been the most agitating experience.

Thank goodness for that screechmaster 3100 sheot. Funny stuff man!!

[Gutter]

Originally posted by Eulogy@17 November 2003 - 16:45
Well I think its bullshit because there ARE songs that I can NOT find in the store. Esepecially some live shit. So there are artists that are losing millions of dollars. They're still doing a dream job and getting paid for it, quite well too. And filesharing is good for little artists that dont have their name out yet.

I give the RIAA a big electronical middle finger for their efforts. I think the music industry will just totally die altogether. People wont be as obsessed with music because it wont be free. The only thing the RIAA might get out of this is a few more radio sales. (because the songs on the radio are free).

I cant find any old Alice in Chains cd's at my local music store. All this old stuff that is hard to get ahold of in the real world can be easily found in the electronic one, but not anymore. Well if you want bitching/screetching theres plenty in both worlds (both from the RIAA supposably).

Also if they actually try to sue everyone I'm sure there'd be a world wide depression lol.

you need to be introduced to soulseek my friend
rare, live, and older albums a plenty


Pinned: --&#62; Soulseek <-----&#62; Klf Music World <--
How2download full albums (No more Fakes)

[Skeptic-WM]

Prety Funny huh??? But any how some guide are good thanks a lot.

And yeaho those screechy schrachy irratated noise I have experienced those as well but not often.

BTW thanks those who introduced SOULSEEK quite useful but err... takes time... most of the people who own the song I want not online (LoL, in my case)




Quite entertaining and quite eyes opening...

[wolfdogg]

Since people don&#39;t bother to go back and read, I&#39;ll post my earlier post again...

Are you still trying to figure out what&#39;s going on? Still not convinced this is an all our assault by the RIAA and the record companies? Here&#39;s yer&#39; sign....


I found a blurb in a USA today article that states:

"Meanwhile, as a pre-emptive strike, the record industry hired specialized software companies to flood the Internet with glitch-filled versions of songs as a way to frustrate would-be KaZaA file sharers. In reaction, the KaZaA service this week introduced updated software that rates files so users can avoid corrupted versions"

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columni...9-25-maney.htm

...and then there&#39;s this blurb from an article in The Weekly Standard:

"This bill would allow record companies to foil attempts to share illegal copies of copyrighted files by flooding systems with corrupted or false copies of popular music, using practices known as interdiction, redirection, and spoofing. Some bands, most notably the Canadian group Barenaked Ladies, have already put trick files on the Internet that look like a copy of one of their songs, but instead play a message from the band saying, "Although you thought you were downloading our new single, what you actually were downloading is an advertisement for our new album." These files, like the ones permitted under the Berman bill, didn&#39;t do any permanent damage to users&#39; computers; they simply made free MP3 sites more frustrating to use and reliable pay sites (backed by RIAA) more attractive. "

http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Con...1/579azbul.asp

And finally.. would you like to know who is responsible? Here ya&#39; go.... Overpeer Inc.
--------------------Cheers&#33;

SPOOFS

Digital Decoys

In an attempt to foil those seeking free music, the recording industry is flooding the Internet with fake song files

By David Kushner

It plays like something out of the "Twilight Zone": consider the story of Joe Music Fan. He logs on to his favorite peer-to-peer network to download the new Eminem song. But when he boots up the track, something spooky occurs. Eminem is repeating the same four words over and over. "Holy Encryption&#33;" Joe Music Fan exclaims, "Spoofed again."

Scenes like this occur a million times a day among the clients of the burgeoning peer-to-peer (P2P) services that have taken over music file sharing from Napster. Recording companies are now taking the offensive against music piracy, and Napster successors such as Morpheus and LimeWire are facing their onslaught—the flooding of their P2P services with so-called spoofs, that is, falsified MP3 files that appear under a song&#39;s usual track name but, when played, offer only a frustrating mix of looped choruses or noise.

The idea is to hit pirates where it hurts —boxing their ears with spoiled music to encourage them to buy CDs or obtain music on the Web through legitimate methods rather than download songs illegally for free. "Copyright owners would like to use technology to protect their interests so long as they&#39;re not causing damage," says Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA, Washington, D.C.), the recording industry&#39;s trade group. The question is: what, if any, damage is being done?

The company behind the spoofs is Overpeer Inc. (New York City). Overpeer is run by Marc Morgenstern, former senior vice president for new media for the music publishing company, American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (New York City). Overpeer employs dozens of engineers who create altered MP3 files. According to Morgenstern, they protect more than 30 000 titles—including songs, videos, and games—by producing spoofs of them and putting them on the Internet. He calculates that his group blocks more than 200 million acts of piracy every month when its spoofs are downloaded instead of the real things.

"It&#39;s a real cat-and-mouse game," Morgenstern says. "We continually upgrade and adapt our solution to keep up with the changes of the peer-to-peer clients."

P2P company Morpheus says that it will have anti-spoof wares in its next upgrade. And BearShare, used by Gnutella surfers, and KaZaA software already employ forms of user ratings that can blow a spoof&#39;s cover.

Mark Gorton, CEO of LimeWire LLC (New York City) just doesn&#39;t see any long-term impact. "I don&#39;t think spoofs have potential to hurt the peer-to-peer network," he says. "People who download something other than what they&#39;re looking for just delete it and try something else."

Surveys tell a different story. Lee Black, a senior analyst for Jupiter Research (New York City), a technology research firm, has found that spoofs do frustrate many users. This could help the music industry get its wish: drive consumers to join its online music subscription clubs, MusicNet Inc. or Pressplay (both in New York City).

Meanwhile, content owners want ever stronger weapons. The Peer-to-Peer Piracy Prevention Act, introduced in Congress by Representative Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), would grant content owners the right to unleash a barrage of hack attacks against online pirates. An example might be denial of service, an online attack that swamps a server with so many requests for a single file that the computer crashes, or at least cannot fulfill legitimate requests.

But the act&#39;s draconian aspects—such as relieving government hackers of liability for any damage done during the pursuit of pirates—have created opposition. Berman no sooner introduced the bill than the Computer & Communications Industry Association (Washington, D.C.), a trade group whose member companies include Yahoo&#33; and AOL Time Warner, issued a press release, declaring that "the last thing we need is to create a protected group of hackers."

Unprotected hackers expressed their displeasure by swamping the RIAA&#39;s Web site with their own denial-of-service attack. With spoofing on the rise, the salvos have likely just begun.

http://audioworld.com/cgi-bin/FrameI...le=FrameIt.cfg


-- In my opinion, you guys are just making this way too hard. And those of you suggesting to just keep downloading until you find a good version are making this way too hard. Nobody wants to spend 2 hours or longer downloading 1 song. That&#39;s exactly what the RIAA wants you to do. I just downloaded Soulseek and WinMX and I use them both. Soulseek is my new favorite. I actually like it much better than Kazaa because you just click on album folders and it brings the whole album down (Sorry RIAA.. that&#39;s got to suck to read). If you don&#39;t find what you&#39;re looking for.. you just enter one of the many rooms listed at the bottom right of the screen and ask for it, by leaving a message. You can come back later in the day and someone will almost always have replied that they&#39;ve added you to their list and to go download off of them. It&#39;s great software.
It&#39;s a shame this post doesn&#39;t have all of the irrelevant crap weeded out of it. It&#39;s no wonder people post the same questions again and again. Unfortunately, I&#39;ve noticed the worst people to do it are the older members of the forum... celery and those guys. You guys like to leave a post about how funny noob reading is every page or 2. Does this give you a sense of claiming ownership or something?... because my dog does that to fire hydrants, but with such ignorance, I can&#39;t explain to him that the hydrant is no more his than mine. Still, he&#39;ll piss on it every day. Do you think we give a flying fuck-a-diddle that you have thousands of posts? If you don&#39;t have anything relevant to say, you should shut the hell up and quit ruining the posts for everyone. You would think that with so many posts, you might be able to actually offer help to people, but I see that it&#39;s the noobs that are actually providing all the answers. This is contrary to most forums, where the long time members will usually provide you with the answers.

Good luck to all and long live P2P&#33;

[Kahu]

First off, Wolfdogg, I agree with you. That is what was so agitating to read. All of the bewlsheot chatter and useless info. I swear there&#39;s like 100 links that start you off at the beginning of this forum. Your previous post with the article&#39;s were very useful. It seems the more experienced user&#39;s of this forum must be around 15 years old. too cocky to help someone. All that n00b sheot comes from kid&#39;s mouth&#39;s. They are dumb enough actually think its offensive.

I had already read your original post.
as for my post... it was already pre-written. I left out more articles I found. I guess i should edit it for future use. I&#39;ve just been trying to spread the word to the folks who are still clueless and actually help someone. spread the word.

[wolfdogg]

Kahu,
I fully agree with you on the age thing. That&#39;s what I suspect, as well.
And don&#39;t think I was cracking on anything you wrote.. You&#39;re one of the few actually offering sound advice...and thinking things through and researching before you post. And I also agree with you.. You&#39;ve got to give them (the RIAA or whoever) their due for what they&#39;ve done. I&#39;m sure on the large scale, it&#39;s quite effective. Your average teenage girl is just going to give up after downloading about 4 or 5 bad songs. And let&#39;s face it.. that&#39;s really their target audience.. not the advanced users. They&#39;ll always get theirs and I&#39;m sure they know that...
Cheers&#33;

[andi0kam]

yeh, same problem here very strange isnt it. Although I doubt it could be virus or hack because I use various antivirus software and im sure one of them would have picked it up.

It must be just RIAA planting false files.. any tips on how to find which one is safe and which one isnt?

[halfbakedskillet]

Ok...I have information to add to this. It seems that the screechy noises arent acually totally screwed files. When I play them in Winamp, they still make the noise, but it starts playing normally when I click on the bar that changes track position (even though I don&#39;t change the track position...just click on the selector). You can also just scroll to the "screechy" part and it will play fine in Winamp. I think that this might mean that the tracks don&#39;t have new parts inserted in them, but instead have the codec or encryprion changed in the middle of the song (without telling the player), and when you tell Winamp to restart playing that part, it re-reads that part of the file and selects the right codec or encryption. This would mean that it would be possible to write a program to fix these proplems, wouldn&#39;t it?


...just my 2 cents

**NOTE** As far as I know, this only works in Winamp. I have winamp version 3.0 build #488 (x86) - Feb 25 2003. I run windows xp pro. If anyone else has noticed this, post what happened, what version of Windows you run, and wat OS you have. I haven&#39;t seen any of the track position jump around or anything. I don&#39;t have any patches or addons installed to Winamp, except some skins. I&#39;ve tried this with mutiple files, and it works the vast majority of the time, occasionally it just changes from one screechy noise to another one, but thats only happened once to me.

[Afronaut]

This is a rather funny thread.
They ask the same questions but no one actually wants to read the answer.

Why?

Ignorance?

One could do some basic searching about donloading music in musicworld,
check the pinned topics etc.
There is other (one would say even better) ways to download music than Kazaa too.

Cheers:
-GS-