Music Industry Developing Sabotage Software

It appears the music industry is becoming more aggressive in their drive to stop internet p2p file sharing:

Some of the world's biggest record companies, facing rampant online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according to industry executives.

The record companies are exploring options on new countermeasures, which some experts say have varying degrees of legality, to deter online theft: from attacking personal Internet connections so as to slow or halt downloads of pirated music to overwhelming the distribution networks with potentially malicious programs that masquerade as music files.

Among the more benign approaches being developed is one program, considered a Trojan horse rather than a virus, that simply redirects users to Web sites where they can legitimately buy the song they tried to download.

A more malicious program, dubbed "freeze," locks up a computer system for a certain duration � minutes or possibly even hours � risking the loss of data that was unsaved if the computer is restarted. It also displays a warning about downloading pirated music. Another program under development, called "silence," scans a computer's hard drive for pirated music files and attempts to delete them. One of the executives briefed on the silence program said that it did not work properly and was being reworked because it was deleting legitimate music files, too.

Other approaches that are being tested include launching an attack on personal Internet connections, often called "interdiction," to prevent a person from using a network while attempting to download pirated music or offer it to others.

"There are a lot of things you can do � some quite nasty," said Marc Morgenstern, the chief executive of Overpeer, a technology business that receives support from several large media companies.

The covert campaign, parts of which may never be carried out because they could be illegal under state and federal wiretap laws, is being developed and tested by a cadre of small technology companies, the executives said.

NY Times Link

I see that the labels like to scream about illegal activity on the web, although they are not above similar illegal activity themselves.

A clear case of "do as I say not as I do".

I would suggest this would be a very good reason for boycott of all big label music and material. The best way to vote is with your entertainment dollar... dont spend it with the labels!

The best way to vote is with your entertainment dollar... dont spend it with the labels!

I agree.