I have voted "almost never" in this poll, however, I do get repeated "corrupted file" signs, usually by song.

Particular songs by ****** seem undownloadable.

Does anyone know a way around this? Have these corrupted files been placed in the system on purpose?

Just curious.

****, that's what got me here.

I'm sure it is probably an industry inspired corruption of files. Either by the legitimate download sites, to prevent further distribution, or dare I suggest the creator of our trusty machines (macusers).

We could do with an experiment, somebody with a genuine ripped from CD version offering it to share, preferably by modem or similar old style connection (in case there is a particular broadband speed quirk twix server and recipient)

If this is Industry inspired then we all will have to become a little more savvy in the files we offer to share, and perhaps the naming of.

We also should concentrate all of our intelligence into a single thread maybe.

Sailsurfer,

I'm a PC user so I can't say whether or not this is Mac-inspired.

It does seem odd that you can get 600 hits and none of them aren't corrupt.

I also worry about "dupes" getting into the system with corrupt files and somehow tracking our IP addresses.

Am I being paranoid?

I experienced the same thing with songs available in large (popular) quantities, contiually coming in corrupt. I don't really download songs much, and not for a few months, but when I did, I tested theories out and came to one possible key to avoid the problem.

It appeared that 99% of the BAD music files tended to have non-standard bitrates values. I'm talking about bitrates that are NOT 128 160 192 256 etc. If they were something like 185 or 197, 201, even when there were over 100 copies of it available, it seemed that it showed up marked corrupt and none of my players would play it, including ALL of the most popular audio players (for PC).

I found that by finding a standardized bitrate-marked file, most usually spelled differently in filename than the norm that was failing (thanks to smart sharers who probably realized the problem), then I had no problem, and after realizing that, and changing the download strategy, ultimately nothing was permanently a loss to try for.

Other than this bitrate issue, most of my corruption failures, were simply due to my own computer having crashed during download. (not Limewire's or Gnutella's problem at all.)

Hope that helps someone, assuming the problem still exists (for whatever reason has been causing it).

Limewire seems to have improved greatly in error checking (verifying) files upon recieve. I don't think enough good can be said about the latest Limewire verisions.

Everything i downloaded today failed when "verifying". It would say either the file was corrupt or it would start the download again from o%.

I've NEVER had this happen before. Then i dumped a bunch of stuff into my "shared" folder and boom...no prob's.

Over time, I've thought that corruptions were much fewer over time. But I recently logged in to see if that remains true.

It appears that there are huge amounts of popular songs that are coming in to verify as corrupted. It seems quite deliberate.

Perhaps the technology could do something to stop the abuse.

I just tried to download against forum rules and it was corrupt... three times!

And I just tried against forum rules and it was also corrupt, 6 or 7 times!

What the hell!

i have a problem with downloading 24 it never works cause the files are corrupted whats with that

Just wanted to say that I too have experienced this corrupt file scenario. Once before with every ****, and now with every ****l file. EVERY ONE. All 179 returns. What the heezey????

I'm going to take a "wild guess" and say that it's most likely 100% the works behind the RIAA or the labels.....

hustlesimmons see & make note of T3 Spammers; mp3 Bit-Rates Versus File Sizes (click on link) ie: be wary of T3 sources for recently released music. Check the file size & bit rate shown in search results & compare it to others on the list. Those that are modem sources (or non T3) are most likely going to be the accurate ones for comparing against.