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ZipTorrent Pollutes and Slows Down Popular Torrents

torrentfreak.com — BitTorrent users are facing a new enemy. A BitTorrent client named ZipTorrent, allegedly created by our friends from the anti-piracy organization Media Defender, leeches bandwith and spreads useless data chunks.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 17, 2007

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  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -9/+222uTorrent will protect us. uTorrent will keep us safe.
  • tymbow, on 10/11/2007, -1/+130Someone explain to me how this is not deliberately interfering with the operation of a computer network and is thus illegal?
  • DasteeZ, on 10/11/2007, -0/+87Media Defender is such a waste of time. They think by using low tactics to try and trick people that P2P will be stopped. Bittorrent isn't the only form of P2P, and spoofing a couple torrents here and there will stop nothing.
  • xXShadowstormXx, on 10/11/2007, -2/+82I hate MediaDefender.
  • Nadare, on 10/11/2007, -1/+74Don't most of the popular bittorrent clients just block peers that consistently send out bad data to begin with ?
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -8/+71(but not from double posts, apparently) :(
  • Anrkist, on 10/11/2007, -3/+62Or a Tracker Admin with half a brain who just blocks the client. Although client spoof may somehow bypass that.
  • rohanch, on 10/18/2007, -9/+58In the famous words of Admiral Akbar:

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  • winry, on 10/11/2007, -5/+49private trackers'll kill em all!
  • Voodooengine, on 10/11/2007, -1/+43***** are clogging up the tubes.
  • maninblac1, on 10/18/2007, -0/+30While literally this is the case. Those who wrote the law would probably agrue it isn't the spirit of the law. Meaning that clause was only intended for government and commercial interpretation. Of course leaving the rights of the people to blow in the wind.
  • ers35, on 10/11/2007, -6/+29I hadn't, considering Ludvig never did that.
  • Conquerist, on 10/11/2007, -10/+33As a matter of fact there have been some reports of uTorrent 1.7 uploading your private data to some other place than the tracker and is therefore banned on some private trackers. I'm sticking to uTorrent 1.6.1. See http://google.com/search?q=utorrent+1.7+banned or more specifically http://google.com/search?q=+site:forum.utorrent.com+utorrent+1.7+banned.
  • jleems86, on 10/11/2007, -1/+23Because its a corporation that is doing it. Jjust remember kids: corporations are considered "individuals" under U.S. law, but are only given a slap on the wrist for doing things that would send you or I away for life.
  • cien750hp, on 10/11/2007, -2/+23does media defender succeed in preventing anything? im going to go download even more stuff right now that i dont even want as my form of protest.
  • maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -2/+21You knwo what would be hilarious, is if media defender was behind an ISP that throttled BT traffic. I can see it now.

    "We're trying to work here do you mind!"
  • yingjai, on 10/11/2007, -1/+20Shouldn't there be laws against spoofing and spamming? It's just creating unecessary internet traffic.
  • ers35, on 10/11/2007, -2/+20That would be pointless considering Ziptorrent does not download anything.
  • Roger, on 10/11/2007, -1/+19Shut up fools.
  • h8one, on 10/11/2007, -5/+22HES FROM MEDIADEFENDER GET HIM!
  • maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+16AZ does, i don't know about uTorrent, BitComet, BitTornado, or Mainline. Since uTorrent and AZ have esentially identical feature sets, i'd guess uT does.
  • pivovy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+16It's not a big deal to block a particular client on the tracker level
  • refujee, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17Doesn't BT have some mechanism to prevent having a corrupt download anyway? Like a CRC check at the end?
  • jasperwillem, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14Some people respond on TF with 2 to 10 blocks each minute, so its good this is in the open.
  • DarkDragon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14this is a DoS, DoSing services are illegal and people have been sued and thrown i jail for DoSing people, corperations are legal entities just like people.
  • maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14Internetmaster has a point.

    When we live in a world where entertainment is leading purveyour of wealth. When an actor can get 30 million dollars to show up and "act", to produce a 2 hour movie, or a baseball star can ask for 30 million dollars to play for 1 season, or a basketball star who asks for 15 million. We live in a world where we give those who deserve money the least, the most of it. A high demand doctor may make a million dollars at most in a year, yet he alone saves lives. So when you think about entertainment and how important it is to you. Imagine if all those millions of dollars were actually put to a good use.

    And instead of going to the movies, you went outside and enjoyed life with your family, instead of sitting in front of entertainment tonight to listen to cojo talk about queen latifa's dress she should not have been wearing. Or how paris hilton has a bad hairday in jail today. There are lots of more important things in life than saving the entertainment industry.
  • Qeveren, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14All the rights, and none of the responsibilities, of a person. Grand, ain't it? :)
  • visability, on 10/11/2007, -0/+13Any good tracker will ban this client
  • BlackVegetable, on 10/11/2007, -0/+13Or maybe they think that they can make money out of people who think by using low tactics, P2P will be stopped.
  • NikoKun, on 10/18/2007, -6/+18Time for a new form of file sharing... we need a totally new protocol, new design... have to keep them on their toes...
  • zabouth, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12RTFA
    Yes the hash check will fail but you will of download say 1mb of crap data. That's the point if you get a torrent with 100 of these thing and 25 of your 50 seeds are running ziptorrent you will be getting 50% crap data slowing the torrent down to half the speed so if you get enough it will kill a torrent
  • INTERNETMASTER, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11exactly. no more trash rap artists and crappy dumb movies. the crap they put out is complete garbage. mankind would be better off without these cretins. I would like nothing better than to see them all put out of jobs. they can work in soup kitchens.
  • Onibus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Peer Guardian will save the day!
  • jleems86, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10the trouble is is that the integrity check is AT the end (after the file or block is downloaded). sucking up bandwidth to download junk data is still sucking up bandwidth even if it doesn't impact the final downloaded file
  • ptFoe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10Don't most BT clients block peers that keep sending you corrupted data?
  • OGTL, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11I think there may be some copyright rule there. How ironic.
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11LONG LIVE PIRACY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • rageguy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9Bittorrent is not an illegal network, there many legitimate uses for it. Its how I get Diggnation every week. Yet the creators of these programs would rather assume I'm guilty of theft simply by the fact I am using a peer to peer network.

    You might as well run denial of service attacks on the internet, the internet has many illicit uses, its obviously its only purpose. You might as well create blank CD's and DVD's that destroy your drive, we all know that DVD burners are primarily used for pirating DVD's and music.

    Automatic assumption of guilt by association is perhaps the most archaic moral standard of justice, it is one of the main reasons people hate the RIAA and MPAA.
  • iRoy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9Think of it as another reason to keep on seeding.
  • Sabretou, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9Save us, Pirate Bay. You are our only hope.
  • keepinithamsta, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9Sad, considering there are actually a lot of torrent files that are legal.
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9Let's put this out in the open like people did with their ***** entrapment site Mivii.com and watch it blow in their face and come out of their ass.
    Also, ***** MediaDefender.
  • Bamborzled, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7This is not actually ZipTorrent (a torrent client discontinued in 2005), but a modified version of Azureus that can spoof BitTorrent client names and pollute the network with fake data.
  • masamunecyrus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Wouldn't it be more effective for Media Defender, instead of making a torrent client that nobody wants to use, to make a torrent client that doesn't upload anything and disguises itself as other torrent clients? A lot of people would (unfortunately) use something like that, and it would accomplish their goal, at the same time.
  • Shando, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Correction: uTorrent 1.6.1 will keep us safe.
  • INTERNETMASTER, on 10/11/2007, -9/+16hauhahuahahauhahah they think this will work? they are just mobilizing more consumers against them. for every action the MPAA and RIAA the takes like this I will download and distribute 10 movies and albums. I've taken to printing CDRs of torrent downloads and freely distributing them on my campus I hate these monsters so much. they cannot possibly win. they are doomed to failure and bankruptcy. good riddance!
  • nogami, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Well, the amusing thing as that the more stuff like this they do, the better that the protocols and P2P systems will become to overcome the noise and fake data they're injecting.

    They might slow things down in the short term, but all they're really doing is promoting development of a better P2P system that can't be fooled as easily.
  • courtarro, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Actually, BT is quite capable of handling problems like this. Most clients only have to download a few bad blocks from a remote client before they ban it for a while.
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.
  • maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Yes, but i don't think they are using this to prevent linux iso downloads, (meaning legit torrents). It's the same principle as going to the cops because your roommate stole your pot plant. You can do it, and he can go to jail for theft and possession, but you will too.

    And yes people are that dumb, see...america's dumbest criminals.
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