How's THIS for a way to prevent file-sharing?

DISCLAIMER: I do not endorse or support the trading of illegal musical software. I do, however, endorse and support Yello.

I checked out K[censored] for music by the band Yello. The vast majority of the songs were from the CD The Eye (which I now own). The only reason I mention this - I know the administrators hate file-sharing - is because I noticed that the vast plethora of files that were listed all had the same names of the songs from the CD’s, but they all had different file sizes and track lengths. After some investigation, I noticed that… well… all the files were corrupted and cut out around 1/3-2/3’s of the way through.

So, is this a Clever Dan method of preventing file-sharing… dumping a glurge of tracks that have the correct song name, but are incomplete, into sharing networks? Seems like it would be pretty damned ingenius to me… not only would they be using the piraters’ weapon against them, they’d also be putting out plenty of “teasers” for music, maybe enough to prompt people to actually go buy the CD a bit more.

What says y’alls?

I think this is one tactic that is used by the record companies to discourage file sharing. I think its pretty clever, as you say - give them a taster and hope they’ll then buy the album.

I think games companies are starting to use copy protection which will let people copy games, but the copy will only play for a couple of missions or so and then start to play up - you won’t be able to aim properly, control the character etc. Essentially it becomes unplayable.

I think these approaches are a perfectly acceptable way to combat file sharing. Unlike issuing lots of lawsuits to sue their own customers…

Hear, hear.

I despise methods of copy protection that interfere with my legitimate, lawful use of a product I purchased exactly as its manufacturer attended. For a while, I wouldn’t buy VCR tapes that had certain copy protection methods used, because it screwed up the color, and I’ve had problems with getting my computer to run certain CD-ROMs because their own copy protection interfered with my computer’s attempt to run the damn things!

…but a method of copy protection that does NOT interfere with legitimate use of a purchased product… well… that’s between the owners and the pirates, and no business of mine.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too. It’s a pretty good idea–using the file sharing network itself to discourage file sharing. As far the “teasers”* part goes, I dunno. I think most people would just be annoyed when they find that the song they thought they got isn’t really there.
*It seems like they’re not so much incomplete, as only playable for a certain period of time (like 15 seconds), so a user could potentially listen to the whole song by constantly moving the player timer. Of course, no one would actually do this because people listen to music to relax and this would only piss them off. Sometimes they might buy the actual CD, but I doubt this is an effective strategy for that.

Actually, there is something like this in effect. There are music files that. maybe 20 to 30 seconds into it, become nothing but random noises and gibberish that is almost to the point of painful to listen to. But they have that noise for the rest of the song length, so the MP3 info and file size make the user think it is the right one, he doesn’t know it’s bad until he downloads it and tried to listen to it.

I ran into this problem when I was trying to check out the new Marilyn Manson album. There were tons of MP3s all correctly labeled but each one only contained about 30 seconds of music then it skipped or had static. Either it was intentional or there are a ton of people out there who have software which can’t rip more than 30 seconds.

I take it you missed Madonna’s attempt to sabotage file sharing of her new album? She flooded the file sharing networks with bogus tracks which simply contained her voice saying “what the fck do you think you’re doing?" which looped over and over again. Well, on the day her album was released someone hacked her site, posted the entire album in MP3 format and titled it "This is what the fck I think I’m doing”. site

Gave me a chuckle anyway. I own over 500 cd’s so I’m not worried about an artist losing any money off me. If anything a few of them owe me refunds for the days when I bought crappy albums before having the chance to hear them…

It might have the opposite of desired effect. I downloaded a couple radiohead tunes. HttT, before the album came out I believe. The files were song-length, but only had the intro over and over. The song would start, and I’d think “hmm, sounds nice.” It’d cut out, and I’d wonder what happened. But I kept doing whatever I was. But here comes the intro again! Repeat this a few times. (“Hey, radiohead song in this folder. …Oh, yeah.” “Hey, radiohead song!..”) I ended up HATING those two songs, and had to get over it when I got the album. I enjoy them now, but those crappy teaser songs can do harm.

I says I first encountered this back in, oh, 1998 or so, so I’m thinking it might not work so well ;).

Hey whoa wow, not liking the sig on by default feature…