Title:	CONTENT SPREADING IN PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS
Author(s):	Dinesh Dhanekula , Gregory L. Heileman , Bill Horne
ISBN:	972-8924-06-2
Editors:	Nitya Karmakar and Pedro Isaías
Year:	2005
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	File sharing, P2P networks.
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	85
Last Page:	92
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have facilitated the distribution of content, legal or otherwise, with little accountability across a wide variety of jurisdictions. Music, movies and software are all readily distributed through anonymous P2P networks, and much of this distribution is in violation of the copyrights associated with the content. The financial loss world-wide due to the piracy of content via P2P networks is believed by some to be in the range of billions of dollars (Blackburn 2004). In this paper, we investigate the topology of P2P networks and the factors that influence how content spreads from one user to another in such networks. We start by assuming that the nodes in large P2P network infrastructures, such as the follow a power-law distribution. Next we consider some of the factors that affect both the content acquisition and distribution preferences of users of these types of networks. By quantifying the mean acquisition and distribution preferences of the users, we are able to study how various factors, such as legal attacks against specific types of users or technological attacks aimed at the content itself, affect the spread of content in these networks. We show that legal attacks aimed at large distributors (i.e., hubs) have little chance of significantly changing the rate at which content spreads in these networks, but that other forms of technological attack such as flooding the network with degraded content can be very effective in significantly reducing the rate at which content spreads.
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