A university professor and his student have patented a way to confuse Peer to Peer (P2P) filesharing applications and therefore make it more difficult for end users to obtain potentially copyrighted material over these networks.
Professor John C Hale, from the University of Tulsa, and student Gavin Manes, filed the patent in August 2000, but it was only awarded to them at the beginning of May this year. The patent summary states that the patent (no 6732180) covers the following:
Method to inhibit the identification and retrieval of proprietary media via automated search engines utilized in association with computer compatible communications network
The idea behind the idea is fairly simple, and consists of flooding filesharing networks with thousands of copies of bogus files which share the same attributes as the real thing. The bogus files however contain either low quality versions of the song, advertisments for the song, or just white noise. Artists who wish to share their music over filesharing networks would not be affected as bogus versions of their music would not be created.