Hi Snark!
(<---- this just to delight you!)
Quote:
Originally posted by Snarkridden
Strangely just recently a new CD appeared in the set, never found it before, then there it is complete all tracks at 320k, none at lower rates as you would expect from normal multi-sourcing, so looks like you could be right.
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A recent case I know for a fact: a long-time collector/trader suddenly offered
all his material (tens of gigabytes collected over long periods of time in mixed bitrates from various sources) to a new trading partner in 256 kbs. Suspicious eh? Talk about wholesale quality!
Then there are also similarly sad cases of lost quality libraries - also brough about these handy bitrate conversion utilities. People have been happily reporting how they managed to make more room to their full HD by converting all their 'stuff' to 128 kbs... and afterwards they wonder why their old trading partners suddenly lose all interest in their library....
Quote:
Originally posted by Snarkridden
On the other hand, what better way to discredit a source of good quality material, in the battle against sharing, could this be another example of the weapons of war?
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Polluting the mp3 pool with faked quality files would indeed be a potential weapon in the hands of the RIAA against p2p sharing. If bitrates become an unreliable measure for quality at least some people might be motivated to buy the CD instead of grabbing it from p2p. The greedy traders are already doing a good job for the RIAA by pushing their forged merchandise into circulation.
The good news is that certain technical countermeasures can go a long way in ensuring the quality of p2p-distributed material. The basic idea (as I mentioned in
this thread on P2P) is to have trusted sources publish unique signatures for their quality rips and to have p2p software to support the verification of these signatures. Similar measures would help to keep p2p-distributed software free from virii and other unpleasant additions.
- tg
