I'm reluctant to "Block Host" on these things, as those bogus search results usually (always???) come back as groups of multiple hits. Am I correct in assuming that there are good people out there who have innocently dnl'd those spam files, and if I click on Block Host I run the risk of blocking somebody who has legit stuff I might want but who also happens to have some spam files residing on their HD?

couple of references:

Is the spamming deliberate? The gnutella development group has been discussing this, so it's more than just paranoia. Here's an abstract of the paper

Quote:

Copyright holders have been investigating technological solutions to prevent distribution of copyrighted materials in peer-to-peer file sharing networks. A particularly popular technique consists in “poisoning” a specific item (movie, song, or software title) by injecting a massive number of decoys into the peer-to-peer network, to reduce the availability of the targeted item. In addition to poisoning, pollution, that is, the accidental injection of unusable copies of files in the network, also decreases content availability. In this paper, we attempt to provide a first step toward understanding the differences between pollution and poisoning, and their respective impact on content availability in peer-to-peer file sharing networks. To that effect, we conduct a measurement study of content availability in the four most popular peer-to-peer file sharing networks, in the absence of poisoning, and then simulate different poisoning strategies on the measured data to evaluate their potential impact. We exhibit a strong correlation between content availability and topological properties of the underlying peer-to-peer network, and show that the injection of a small number of decoys can seriously impact the users’ perception of content availability.

See http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/pam-p2p/index.php?p=40 for the details.

Don't forget that all the new users migrating from other networks are probably bringing their corrupt files with them. IIRC, one study claimed 50% of FastTrack files were corrupt.

Is there hope for a technological solution? Perhaps. LW is encouraging developers with a "bounty" for a solution http://www.limewire.org/wishlist.shtml

Frankly, I've not had a problem with corrupt files and have learned to avoid much of the spam just by ignoring it in the search results. Like Longjump, blocking hosts just seems too unfair (and I can't be bothered keeping up with it )

so really no one can do anything, appart from limewire (etc)? surely in there next version they can have a short filename scan for one which verifies invalid characters in the she short filename and removes them from the search, and also a file size specifications list in an advanced tab somewhere so you can remove the 105-107kb files, also surely if people were more anal when it comes to deleting stuff straight away and not sharing it, I dunno somesort of user rating, so if your not deleting your files that are crap then you get a bad share rating and your booted or just dont get a good banwidth, there are ways around these things surely, UNINTED WE ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE FIAA, BILL GATES AND THE INCREDIBLE HULK. I dunno maybe the people can be the P.U.R.A.G.R.C.A.S
peoples uninted reform against gay record companies and suchlike

WHO WANTS TO JOIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s please can some poeple just randomly e-mail me I like to get messages and I usually get really bored.

p.p.s I did a test, I donwloaded 400 files from limewire into a folder overnight, all of the same or similar thing they were mp3s, I awoke in the morning to find that 347 of these files were of 0kb, not a problem? I think not

if your having the problem with 0kb files, you can get rid of them by downloading Delinvfile from purgeie.com just find the folder the files are in and hit delete via shortname and bosh gone and gone

I think it would be usefull to have a user rating.

I have dld no end of movies that were either mis-titled (I had to laugh when my girlfriend tried to dld a film and ended up with porno) or just won't play because they were encoded with some wierd unknown codec.

I have no idea how it could be implemented on a P2P system. but at least users would have a guide to whats hot & what rot.
+ the spammers would have to work a bit harder to screw up the ratings and not just leave it to an automated system.

Don't forget about Bitzi. Not enough people know about or contribute to the Bitzi database. Bitzi Web Lookup ...
Filters can filter out spam from search results but this may not suit many people blocking out wmv & jpg results. autogenerated spam results Which is one reason why I requested a working size filter for our searches. But I've been waiting some time for it. lol

yea loads of fakes around especaly with music atm, iv been testing nearly all the p2p software thats around and iv found that if its music u want i STRONGLY sugest trying the program cauled Blubster. it wont do any other type of file but if its music your after and your feed up with fakes just give it a try.

These spammers are really annoying and ruin the network. I don't know how hard it would be to incorporate, but there are two features that woulf fix all this:

1) There should be a "<, <=, >, >= File Size Filter". This way if you are looking for a 1GB file, you don't get 300 search results for a 36.4Kb FREE IPOD file, because you would have the option to search for a file that is >= 800MB. Conversely, you could download that 5MB song and NOT download that 20MB.mp3 of Silence.

2) Secondly, we shouldn't have to block by host IP's. That can block GOOD users who have been victim of bad files. It also doesn't work, because for every one bad IP blocked there's 100 in line to pick up the slack. So the solution is that when search results come back and we KNOW it's a bogus file already (like those lame S_P_A_M files) we should just be able to block results for those exact files altogether. Right click on the result, and say BLOCK THIS FILE FOR THIS SEARCH. Limewire should just ignore any future results and move on to the real file that is out there.

I am going to try and post these Feature Requests in the New Features section.

Folks.. it is the RIAA. I just want to enlighten you all to this. The great folks with know how that are using WinMX are working on workarounds. They've created add-on programs for MX that automatically take out the bogus files... LineWire users seem to be a little behind the times. Now don't go getting all mad and start flamming; the latest news for MX aint roses either. The RIAA is getting to the source of P2P creators and cutting deals to allow them to take money from users instead of taking the creators into courts. Pleaz, don't start with the p2p isn't just for illegal use crap; you are old enough to be using p2p then you are old enough to know MONEY TALKS [bottom line]. The RIAA can get more money busting billions of users [a term also used when talking about drugs] than hitting the limited numer of p2p head corps with one time fines.
I said the news for MX aint all roses either... and here's why. Users have developed ways to remove the bogus files from the library index in MX so they won't return the bogus files in the search results automatically, but now their users are finding themselves unable to connect at all. This, like the 'war on drugs' will be a never ending thing. "You do this ..." as a workaround "and they do that..." to try and stop it. You'd think it would end and one side or the other would win, but that's not going to happen. Again, just take a look about 20 years back and you'll see the people on the wrong side of the laws thought the same thing about the 'war on drugs'. It goes on. One side thinks 'they'll run out of money to fight all of us' and the other side thinks 'the cost will evenutally run so high that fewer people will be able to afford creating p2p programs'. All the RIAA has to do to really push this stalemate is get the fines raised in the courts for "users" and they have the 'war on durgs' as a model of just how to do it too with the heads of states/nations backing up the idea and showing them how to do it, after all they're gaining money for themselves out of it too.
I've limited this to just the IRAA but let's be honest, it's not just them. Many industries are comming together and doing the same thing or at least contributing money to the efforts from the film/movie industry to book publishing companies. So, the best anyone is going to find is to just sit back and wait this out. All p2p apps are going through this. Get fed up with this one and go to another one and in 6 months go to another one and just keep repeating the whole thing and then get mad at the framents on your hard drive and post your anger in different fourms for a wide range of all different sorts of programs, etc. until you finally have a heartattack from rage and die. Just sit back and relax a little while. One p2p creator will find a temp patch to the problem and things will flow smooth again until the next monkey wrench gets thrown into the works by those making money to stop it.
By the way... "let's just eliminate the fastest connections" idea for Limeware is NOT the answer to this latest problem. Be glad you now that most of your problems are comming from those connections so you "the user" can work around it to a very SMALL degree. You limit LimeWire to not get the fast connections what do you think the FIRST thing the RIAA and the others will do? That's right; they'll ruin all the other connection speeds as well. Again, "you do this... they do that...". Fourms like this, while they help the user with info, they also load those trying to stop it all with what workarounds they might have to contend with next.

Ok, I don't doubt your RIAA conspiracy theory. And it's evident that the RIAA would benefit from B.S. file spammers. But what is certain is that both the Kazaa and Gnutella networks both had File Size filters in the past and Limewire REFUSES to re-implement this extremely necessary feature despite NUMEROUS posts and subject chains requesting what I have asked for.

The only conclusion is that Limewire really doesn't give a rat's *** about us users. Secondly, I agree with the more evident conclusion from other posts and that is that Limewire is responsible for the spam files and refuses us the option to weed them out for their own interest. It is most likely that they profit from these spamming jerks.

So I'm through with Limewire. It's already uninstalled and I'm spreading the word about it's garbage until someone sees the light and implements the changes. People will buy Limewire in droves if they just took the high road.