A University of Tulsa (UT) research team has patented software designed to prevent illegal downloading of music over the Internet. The new software sends illegal downloaders on a wild goose chase in a P2P pond full of cyber-quacking decoys.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Patent Office awarded patent number 6,732,180 to UT computer science professor John Hale and doctoral student Gavin Manes for software that systematically injects decoys into P2P file-sharing networks, such as Gnutella, BitTorrent and Kazaa.
The software combats such copyright infringement by "essentially flooding the networks with alternative content that appears authentic," said UT spokesperson Rolf Olsen.