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Loudeye Corp. dumps Overpeer

10 December 2005 9:51 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 20 comments

Loudeye Corp. has announced that it is closing its anti-piracy / content protection unit Overpeer Inc. Overpeer is responsible for poisoning some of the world's biggest P2P networks with useless digital audio files that often just play 5 second loops of songs over and over (or intentionally corrupted files). The company has issued a press release detailing why it has taken this step. Here is the important part of it...

Seattle, WA � December 9, 2005 � Loudeye Corp. (Nasdaq: LOUD), a worldwide leader in business-to-business digital media solutions, today announced an important step in its effort to focus its business and reduce its cost structure. Loudeye announced that Overpeer, Inc., Loudeye's wholly-owned content protection subsidiary, has ceased operations effective immediately and will continue to pursue options to maximize the value of its assets.

As a result, Loudeye has reduced its quarterly consolidated cost structure by approximately $1.6 million, or 10%, compared to third quarter 2005 levels. Overpeer expects to incur approximately $200,000 in severance and related payroll costs associated with the closing of its operations, which is expected to be paid during December 2005. In addition, Overpeer may incur additional wind-down costs to terminate property or equipment leases, and other contracts. The cessation of the Overpeer operations may also result in the acceleration of depreciation or amortization or the impairment of certain fixed and intangible assets. Loudeye anticipates that the net assets and results of operations for Overpeer will be presented as discontinued operations in its consolidated financial statements.

"We continue to focus our business on growth opportunities with digital distribution. Our actions to exit content protection services will substantially improve our go-forward cost structure," said Mike Brochu, Loudeye's president and chief executive officer.

The damage done to P2P networks because of Overpeer wont change however. The broken/corrupt/useless files will continue to be shared by users who either don't know they are still sharing them, or never even checked them after the downloaded them.

Source:
Loudeye

Permalink to this article

Nokia to acquire Loudeye for $60 million (8 August 2006)

Loudeye sold Mobile Digital Music operations to Muze (3 May 2006)

P2P spoofing patented (10 May 2004)

Overpeer spreads fake files through P2P networks (6 July 2002)

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Discuss this article!
dude845 (Senior Member) 10 December 2005 10:23
ha ha [ + quote]
Mik3h (AfterDawn Addict) 10 December 2005 11:27
Lol! Well Said :� Well, there's another battle won by us P2P users :P -Mike [ + quote]
evilh0ly (Senior Member) 10 December 2005 15:29
they are the one that screw up kazaa big time. [ + quote]
myndphuk (Junior Member) 10 December 2005 18:28
awww diddums... [ + quote]
yellowsub (Newbie) 11 December 2005 7:41
I Believe it is this company or some other company that is associated with the RIAA that is responsiple for all the freakin viruses on P2P. I just wish someone could prove it. [ + quote]
Dela (Staff Member) 11 December 2005 8:53
Someone needs to organise a big witchhunt for messed up files and viruses on P2P, when they are found, users sharing them get a message asking why the hell they would be wasting their disk space and bandwidth sharing a messed up file ;-) of course you'd never completely clean a P2P network, thats just impossible at this stage. And there's worse being shared on P2P then viruses and broken mp3 files...... [ + quote]
kschewe (Newbie) 11 December 2005 13:44
It prob doesn�t matter since there are billions of 5 sec garbage on there shared by all the noobs of the world [ + quote]
denzilla (Junior Member) 11 December 2005 13:57
Thats also alot of bandwidth being wasted just to get a junk file. [ + quote]
dude845 (Senior Member) 11 December 2005 17:02
Quote: Someone needs to organise a big witchhunt for messed up files and viruses on P2P, when they are found, users sharing them get a message asking why the hell they would be wasting their disk space and bandwidth sharing a messed up file ;-) of course you'd never completely clean a P2P network, thats just impossible at this stage. And there's worse being shared on P2P then viruses and broken mp3 files...... yes i agree there is much worse coughCHild Porn or even worser child Porn +virus attached to them Cough but the ppl who get virus from that diserve it so ha ha to them anyways couldn't the simplest thing the Fbi do is download these files and look at the ip of the host(s) and then just put them away like sheesh its not that hard and you can search that persons files that he/she is sharing and even have more proof against him (talking bout child porn, wtf out of topic lol) [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11 December 2005 17:04
Rikoshay (Member) 11 December 2005 20:23
Question: Who the hell downloads something and doesn't open it? It's like buying a cup of water and never drinking it. I can understand if someone did that on accident, but how retarded do you have to be to not notice something that you downloaded on purpose!? [ + quote]
myndphuk (Junior Member) 11 December 2005 23:06
well, flame me all you want, but if im looking for songs by a particular artist I would tag every file i see... knowing that eventually, i will end up with a good copy... in the mean time, my stuffed up mp3 will actually share to someone else... [ + quote]
donnysrx (Newbie) 12 December 2005 3:32
P2P clients allow you to add comments to files, its just a shame no one uses it. [ + quote]
mystic (Member) 12 December 2005 4:47
the only reason this company is anousing their closure of overpeer is because of all the hype and disgust over what sony has done and this company loudeye wants to say well we did stop but our product is still being downloaded and shared so we are closing that division and you cant sue us as the parent company ...... well it speaks volumes to what lenght the RIAA was going to to stop downloading and in some (some) instances they have a point but to infect homeusers machines with crippling software or milishes code is against the law here in the us and since sony is being halled to court so should thease guys....... [ + quote]
juaneryle (Member) 12 December 2005 6:09
I agree with your statement mystic. I think Loudeye is trying to avoid future lawsuits. [ + quote]
mxndemon (Newbie) 12 December 2005 10:28
i havent downloaded a bogus file in over 6 months they should have shut down ages ago [ + quote]
Mik3h (AfterDawn Addict) 13 December 2005 3:02
Maybe they had. Maybe they stopped doing it on P2P then decided to announce it recently. -Mike [ + quote]
j0j081 (Junior Member) 14 December 2005 16:29
verified files over bittorrent is the way to go. [ + quote]
Mik3h (AfterDawn Addict) 15 December 2005 12:42
Yeah most people actually USE the user comments! -Mike [ + quote]
necronite (Junior Member) 16 December 2005 11:38
Quote: Question: Who the hell downloads something and doesn't open it? It's like buying a cup of water and never drinking it. I can understand if someone did that on accident, but how retarded do you have to be to not notice something that you downloaded on purpose!? I've done it tons of times. I'm interesting in getting something so I queue up a song, then decide oh what the hell, let's download the whole album. And I do this about 10 times. who has that much time to list to 10 full length albums? Oh I tell everyone I'll get around to it, meanwhile I'm really just addicted to downloading and boasting about how much space I've used. ...well now I'm out of space, so that period of my life was short lived. [ + quote]
Mik3h (AfterDawn Addict) 16 December 2005 11:40
Haha, the last post describes me perfectly :� -Mike [ + quote]