If only you fags would read the looking glass patent, it would clear up much confusion.
Based on the fact that someone was claiming to comb through the "source code", I would guess that it wasn't going very well. Because, you know, a disassembly is not source code.
CM has been notified of an algorithmic solution. It is up to them to implement it or not.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8660828B2/en
CP was mostly shared through USENET binary groups back in these early days. I think that sting op you referenced was a USENET bust. Videos were very short clips at low (PAL/NTSC) resolution.
In the US, local calls were free and ISPs offered local dial-up numbers for end user access. It was slow but didn't incur the high costs of dialing up non-local BBS.