The End of p2p Nigh?

A Finnish based company called Viralg is predicting the end of unauthorised file sharing. The company claims their patented “overwrite” technology can mix files on a P2P network, corrupting downloads and rendering them worthless to play.

“On the market where our competitors can only offer a mediocre service for blocking illegal file swapping our solution means totally new level of revenue protection. By utilizing Viralg´s technology we can guarantee 99% protection for intellectual property like music, movie and game content in all the main peer to peer networks,” the company brag in their press release.

Unlike current fake file spamming techniques used, Viralg claim their system is effective against those experienced at spotting fake files and even verified file sites.

“Spoofing companies are only spamming the networks with corrupted files that can be easily identified and avoided with verification sites, latest incoming P2P clients or by experienced users with the right knowledge,” the press release states.

Slyck spoke to Viralg to discover how this can be possible.

“We make viable non-working file with a working file hash, so when someone tries to download a working file he/she will receive a random mix of working and non-working file. The final content depends on many things (bandwidth, sources etc.)

"Simply, we can deliver corrupted content with the same hashcode,” the press office informed Slyck.

The weak file hashing employed by Kazaa has always made a similar exploit possible on FastTrack, and is one of the reasons for the widespread fake file pollution found on the network.

By tricking file sharing clients into downloading corrupt file segments, the whole file becomes worthless when played.

Viralg claim their technology has extended the ability to corrupt downloads to the other file sharing networks, which have stronger hashing, such as Ares Galaxy.

It is unclear how Viralg can block out all unauthorized trading using corrupt segments, given that no modern hashing algorithm has shown a weakness in ability to guarantee the integrity of a completed file.

The technique has not been tested with BitTorrent.

To the critics, Viralg assert that the technology has been used successfully to protect BMG Finland’s copyrights.

BMG Finland is praising the technology for increasing their market share from 15% to 25%. Furthermore music protected by the service has stayed in the Finnish Top40 charts for an average of 14.5 weeks, where the average is just 8.7 weeks.

“Viralg´s DRP service has already been tested successfully by several parties including global game console manufacturer and movie retailer. Our DRP service can be applied in any of the existing P2P networks. DRP does not interfere or cause any side effect to P2P networks, ISP companies or downloader PC. The only ”harm” will be done to the illegal downloader who will not get the desired functional file,” the press release reads.

Viralg has been operational with “real customers” since 2004 and are now looking to expand with strategic partnerships in financing, technology licensing, and distribution.

Viralg website: viralg.com.

Story source: slyck.com.