Adding Trust to P2P Distribution of Paid Content

While peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing is a powerful and cost-effective content distribution model, most paid-for digital-content providers (CPs) use direct download to deliver their content. CPs are hesitant to rely on a P2P distribution model because it introduces a number of security concerns including content pollution by malicious peers, and lack of enforcement of authorized downloads. Furthermore, because users communicate directly with one another, the users can easily form illegal file-sharing clusters to exchange copyrighted content. Such exchange could hurt the content providers’ profits. We present a P2P system TP2P, where we introduce a notion of trusted auditors (TAs). TAs are P2P peers that police the system by covertly monitoring and taking measures against misbehaving peers. This policing allows TP2P to enable a stronger security model making P2P a viable alternative for the distribution of paid digital content. Through analysis and simulation, we show the effecti...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ISW
• Authors: Alex Sherman, Angelos Stavrou, Jason Nieh, Angelos D. Keromytis, Clifford Stein
• Keywords: Content Distribution Model, Information Management, ISW 2009, Model Making P2p, P2P Distribution Model