A Devious way to Stop File Sharing or just a Coincidence?

I have a conspiracy theory for all. Gather round.


The Music Companies, I believe, are placing worms in their music files to "decrease file sharing." Why do I blame this for such devious acts?

1. I heard a report on CNN last year about worms and viruses in music files that are created by the music company to kick file sharing in the crotch.
2. The Music companies (not the artists, who are also getting flipped off by these bastards) are black-hearted pigs who love money so much they would shoot their own mothers in the head just for a few measly dimes!

How do they think they will make more money? By taking money out of the pockets of music lovers and telling the artists bull # like "If this keeps going, you'll lose millions!" or "If we send all these theives to prison, you'll make millions." When the truth is, they're telling the artists to turn around so they can jam a knife into their backs (metaphorically speaking.) When the Music Companies (or as I like to call it, the Kleptocracy) threatened to sue, a lot of file sharers just abandoned file sharing out of fear of being sued. But file sharing was still a problem. So what do they resort to? Worms and Viruses! Yes, worms and viruses that sever your internet connection and give you no hope of getting it back save for bringing it into a professional to fix it. How do I figure? The two times it struck my computer, I used Imesh before I lost internet connection completley.

The nightmare is by no means over. When you want to share a file, you now have to put down all of your personal information! This is enforced by a California bill.

This is my opinion.

I hate the music companies now, but as I love music, I have no choice but to support them... its a sad world. And yes, putting worms on p2p probably wouldnt be beyond them...

the band PRIMUS suports "bootlegging and or file sharering see at www,primussucks.com/bootlegbarn

lol leave it to primus...as for worms in music...uhh i dont think so beacue that means u couldnt put it on ur computer which is legal for mp3 players use if u bought the album and i dont see how you can make a virus out of an audio file.

I too remember hearing on the news or something about them planting worms or trojans in music files........... that won't stop ppl tho.(not me anyway )

Worms and Trojans won't do anything. These P2P app. are getting a lot better, and more complicated. I'm running winxp pro so I couldn't care less... nothing a quick format wouldn't fix. Formatting is a lot easier to do with winxp that with an earlier version of windows. Getting a copy of ad-aware 6 and installing the latest service packs from microsoft.com helps a lot, even if you don't have a firewall.

Because of the way an mp3 file is treated by an MP3 player, an mp3 file can not contain a virus.
Some MP3's are scrambled though, meaning that files with exactly the same filesize and intern name, contain silence or noise.
This way, when you download from multiple sources, a part of your MP3 file becomes scrambled as well, and this way the scrambled MP3 file can spread quite fast.

[Edited on 29-6-2004 by Jakko]

Loclly, I have a small band. We play mostly at small clubs and parties. We support file shring and p2p applications, and we tell everyone at our shows. Sometimes the police get ticked, though.

Originally posted by DarkDragon
lol leave it to primus...as for worms in music...uhh i dont think so beacue that means u couldnt put it on ur computer which is legal for mp3 players use if u bought the album and i dont see how you can make a virus out of an audio file.

Usually its a virus file (exe,vbs etc) with a filename of say Five For Fighting-Superman.mp3 p2p programs like Kazaa and WinMX see it as an MP3...as does Windows...so you download it thinking its an MP3...then play it and it executes.

And no...it wouldnt be the RIAA spreading hte viruses...cuz purposely furthering the spread of viruses is a federal offense punishable by jailtime.

[Edited on 29-6-2004 by dreamlandmafia]

You'd have to be pretty stupid to not realise that a mp3 file was actually an exe, bat etc etc.......
Also a virus cannot have a bitrate so you should know by that......


Ash

The record companeis and the RIAA are definately going further with their underhanded methods, and it will only get worse as both sides entrench for what seems to be a life-long fight. As for the worms and crap, its possible, but there are more than enough workarounds to that. First off the top of my head is to switch operating systems to some Linux flavor or something like Mac OS X which dont have that open-arms attitutude toward viruses and executing every file handed to them. I've said it before, but it definately bears repeating here: No matter what the RIAA or record companies do, filesharing will never die!

Some cds I have will run on a computer (added junk that I don't think should be there), so if the record companies are putting viruses or worms in the music. This could be one way to do it with out actually affecting the music.

Originally posted by websurfer
Formatting is a lot easier to do with winxp that with an earlier version of windows.

Easier? What is hard about inserting a boot disc, and typing "format c:"???
You still need some sort of firewall or packet filter, to keep you protected against Internet worms, and as your on Windoze XP - to protect yourself against RPC exploits.

[Edited on 5-7-2004 by MetalHead]

Originally posted by A5H
You'd have to be pretty stupid to not realise that a mp3 file was actually an exe, bat etc etc.......
Also a virus cannot have a bitrate so you should know by that......


Ash

It can be easy not too see... If the setting "Hide known extensions" is enabled, you can call a file "audio.mp3.exe" and Windows 99% of the time will show it as a MP3.