i dont think this is a good idea it would take me YEARS to do all that in the past 10 mins i have marked over 200 files as junk i am getting sick of it and i am takeing action since it we need a virus scan BEFORE upload this would solve the problem.

Make it MANDATORY. Dont let files be uploaded with out virus scan first this would solve our problem. I dont just mean with one program. I mean with Nortan, Bull Dog, AVG, Spybot search and destroy, etc . . .

Sure this would probally lag the uploads to the server but still at least it wouldnt be so junky

and where precisely would this virus scanner be put?
the upload is from the (alleged) spammer's computer. from there it goes thru the "series of tubes" to the downloaders computer.

there is no 'central location' where all the files could be scanned before being made available to downloaders.

the point of this idea is that instead of marking hundreds of identical files as junk just because they have a different name.... and then new ones continue to show up and still need to be marked as junk.... you simply point out to the system -why- said file is junk. then the system can scan any results you get back and automatically junk anything that turns up.

a virus-scanner solution will not fix this. the problem originates at the source, and the source has no interest in fixing it -- the source doesn't even consider it broken. if you put a forced virus-scan limitation into it, then you're going to get someone who writes a hack for it because they don't want to use anti-virus... or wore because they are one of the ones deliberately distributing them.


me personally, i don't consider 99% of the junk results i get to even be potential viruses, simply because most of them are not executable files.
go ahead and paste a virus into an mp3 file; you'll get a bit of static, or a corrupted file, or the player will just ignore it. the players don't execute the code, they just read it.

to make an exxagerated comparison.. it would be like taking a sheet of player-piano music, and drawing the plans for a bomb on them. the player piano will just read the sheet and play the piano music automatically. and when it gets to the bomb, it just keeps on playing and can't recognize it. maybe you've damaged some of the holes the piano is reading so it screws a few notes up.

if you took the sheet out of the piano and processed it differently, sure, you could make a dangerous bomb off it. but the automated piano isn't capable of doing it, and neither are most modern media players*

*to note; make sure you turn off "automatically open links in media" wherever possible.. once the player open some random website, all guarantees are off. but to-date, i've only ever noticed this in .wmv files, and i learend a long time ago to filter out *.wmv with the existing junk filters.

the only way i could see something like this happening is if you use a checksum on programs that contain the viruses and block the ones with that checksum. But then still you can download a RAR file that is a working game and it could still contain a virus. So the only way to really do this would be through checksums.

but again, what compares the checksums?

if it's on the sender's computer, they'll just write a hack to get around it, and then people will be less careful because they assume 'the network is protecting us'.

if it's on the receivers' computer, we need to store a checksum for.. well.. every file limewire/gnutella has ever seen. will limewire be shipping with a new HDD to store that on now? "new limewire, better compression, only a 5gig dowload". and thats still the same as it being on the senders' computer anyways. plus what keep the list itself safe from hacking thru a virus obtained elsewhere?

and if we put it on the limewire central server -- oh wait, there still isn't one.

i hope i'm not coming off condescending here, i'm certainly not trying to. it would be a perfectly acceptable method of protection in a more limited, client/server type setup. like an MMO style game sending patches to the clients. in a peer-to-peer system, where thousands of new files a day might be seen, theres just no way to keep up.

every time limewiere started up it would have to scan & compare every file against its database, to make sure it hasn't changed. that might take hours if you're sharing say 1000 files, and need to scan, hash, then compare against the 100,000,000 files in the database.

if you edit an mp3 to clip 2-3 seconds of silence off at the end, guess what, it's a "new file".

and then if it finds say 1 or 2 files you added that aren't catalogued what does it do? send a report and ban you till they get processed?
or risk lettng you onto the network to share these potentially dangerous viruses? (even tho it's just your shopping list in a txt file, that you saved in the wrong directory).

and then on top of that.. who catalogues all these tens of hundreds of thousands of files? by my guessing, you'd need a handful of people working full time jobs, just to keep the database up to date.


and then from there, you still need to get that database out to the users. every limewire user downloading an update every time they start limewire that might potentially be larger than the installer itself.

coz sooner or later someone's going to accidentally shar their c:\windows\ folder, and 50- to 100,000 files go on the pile in one dump.