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Originally Posted by RDixon
I wonder what percentage of average p2p users are aware of this?
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my guess? most of the p2p habitués are well aware of it, i mean to say the sharers who've been around for 5 years or more, the ones most likely to use private networks, irc, dc hubs and (to a lesser extent) bittorrent sites. the amount of fakes on open nets is well known to them, as are the stories about companies that do the faking. the great shift away from kazaa and gnutella is explained only partly by legal worries, which are still mostly distant and theoretical. if you're happy with the results at a particular network you'll probably keep using it. i know i do, but what gets me out fast is an experience like yours: the stuff i get doesn't work or it's dangerous. that motivates like nothing else. so real people leave, leaving the fakers behind in increasing proportions.
naturally the community responds like the living organism it is and routes around spoofs fairly efficiently. and it learns. it's gotten so good at it the fakers are finding rough sledding. overpeer - the most notorious of a very ugly bunch went bust, closing it's doors and putting it's hardware up for sale. this won't end the problem anytime soon but it does illustrate the strength of the file sharing community, it's flexibility in dealing with such centralized onslaughts and it’s determination to persevere in spite of the obstacles.
there are millions of "us's" and only a handful of thems after all and today the us's have it, even if in the process we had to pass on a network or two for now.
- js.