Exeem "Successor" to Suprnova Announced

After the demise of Suprnova, hype has risen over Exeem, the supposed heir apparent to the popular BitTorrent index. Today on Novastream, Sloncek announced it officially, but to me his announcement raised more questions than it did answers. Since the official exeem.com website still isn't up, I've got a few notes below. Thanks to several users on irc.suprnova.org, and Sloncek himself for answering my questions.

First, Exeem really isn't an extension of Suprnova as the hype might have you believe: the connection between the two seems more marketing than anything else. Sloncek has been hired to promote their product as the heir apparent to his popular website, but his involvement really seems to be almost entirely PR. It'll work obviously: my headline on this story mentions Suprnova, and so will hundreds of websites around the world in the coming days. "Yet another p2p app" would not create anywhere near the waves that "Successor to Suprnova Announced" will. I hope that people judge exeem by its own merits and not by its (clever) marketing.

Second, Exeem is pretty much what was rumored earlier: a blending of the tracker, the BitTorrent client, and decentralized indexing. It's Windows only. It's in beta now, and will be out at some indeterminate date in the future. It also has a rating and commenting system which appears to be somewhat rudimentary. It's unclear to me if the rating system will be as useless as other attempts, and I think this is the critical thing: Suprnova succeeded because the content available on it was verified and trustworthy. Suprnova was as much the work of a few dozen editors as it was a list of torrent URLs. So far no other p2p system has achieved that level of accuracy. Exeem supports magnet sites which is a start, but not exactly p2p either. And did I mention that it's adware?

Third, there's a mystery company. Someone is paying Sloncek. He won't say who, but there's a history in the p2p world of secretive development. Since Exeem is to be adware, someday it will have a billing address, which means the legal issues faced by predecessors like Napster and Kazaa will be forthcoming, which is of course why we have a mystery company that Sloncek won't talk about in the first place. We definitely haven't heard the last of this.

Personally I was hoping for more: source code and cross platform compatibility never hurts. These are the things that made BitTorrent a huge success. I guess I was hoping for a new protocol instead of just another Kazaa. I guess I was hoping for a monumental leap, and instead Exeem to be a more incremental step. I'm sure we'll learn more in the coming weeks.

Torrent trackers on Freenet?

I can't help but wonder if BitTorrent is the application that finally pushes people towards Freenet [sourceforge.net]. That would appear to be the obvious way of decentralizing it, without requiring platform specific software, and providing anonymity for both producers and consumers in the process.

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

The suggestion is to use freenet to distribute torrents, not to actually serve as a tracker. It can do that, surely, since torrents are tiny and one-shot downloads. This makes the MPAA's whack-a-mole game more difficult, since they have to go after each individual tracker rather than any centralized site hosting torrents (pointers to trackers).

Usenet (was Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

Why not just use usenet to distribute the Torrent trackers? On usenet one can post anonymously, and they are automatically distributed to other usenet servers.

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

Unfortunately Freenet is an incredibly inefficient method of data transfer. Remember it was designed with security and anonymity as top priorities, performance comes as a distant third.

I was hoping for a more innovative p2p app, perhaps combining the advantages of VPN-type systems like WASTE or DirectConnect with the swarming efficiency of BitTorrent. Such a system would truly take the world by storm.

At the same time it seemed obvious that Exeem wouldn't be such a system. From rumors circulating after the start of the closed beta (not a good sign to begin with) it became apparent that Exeem was just another closed-source proprietary network. It's really unfortunate but not at all surprising.

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

I don't see why freenet is such a great way to serve up torrents. When you run the torrents they can still find you the only diffrence between this and how something like emule works is you have to use freenet. Might as well just have the clients also host the torrent and you just search the client.

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

their are several problems with freenet...#1 it's slow as hell (at least when I tried it) #2 it has become a haven for kiddie pr0n #3 you become a node holding said kiddie pr0n because you have no control over what you cache.... I think freenet is a good thing overall...but I cannot justify being a node on freenet because I do not feel right helping traffic kiddie pr0n... now if a mass exodus occured that marginalized these people I would feel better...but atm their is a helluva lot of kiddie pr0n on their...

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

If theres that much of that there, and you've been looking at it, you've been extending it's cache time.

If you want it to have respectable content, use it to browse respectable content. (and inject respectable content if you can)

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

Perhaps you would use freenet to acquire just the .torrent files themselves. Isn't that what suprnova.org was - just a centralized directory to lots of torrent "tracker" servers?

Anonymous bittorrent already exists

With all due respect to the Freenet team, they have done a lot of good work, but the network isn't designed for things like bittorrent. What you need is a low-latency network like TOR or i2p. With that said, anonymous Bittorrent already exists, its available to work on the i2p anonymous network. Just go to the i2p website, , install the software and then click on this: There are already bittorrent trackers on the i2p network. Why this hasn't been on slashdot is beyond me.

Re:Anonymous bittorrent already exists

Damn does the markup suck on slashdot. Anyway, here are the URLS:

http://www.i2p.net [i2p.net]

And once you have i2p running, then you want to go to this i2p site:

http://duck.i2p/i2p-bt/ [duck.i2p]

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

IF, you could create a freenet that only hosts torrents, and not the files themselves, had searching for torrents (which they don't have), and then somehow tracks the downloads totally anonymously, then yeah sure why not.
Somehow I don't think it will happen, currently freenet doesn't have indexing / searching of contents, you need to find a link to the content through other means. Isn't that all that a torrent actually is? a link and identifier to the content and the tracker?
I don't want to host contents of unknown origin, I shouldn't need to keep a node running 24/7 in order to find and download the occasional file, and I don't want to wait in a queue of 1000 leachers to get what I want.

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

Do you surf the web? Do you use IRC or any chat service? What exactly does bittorrent, a web or IRC server or client do to make sure that no one is using it to distribute child porn? What does any technology actively do to make sure it isn't being used to distribute child porn? *crickets* That's what I thought.

You are free to have your beliefs, but that does't mean that they aren't absurd.

You are right about the speed issues with Freenet though; I'll give you that.

Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet?

Sure, I bet you could find child porn on any major P2P service; the difference is that Freenet almost *encourages* it because of their philosophy. With any other P2P service, you can choose to avoid it, you don't have to download OR upload it. With Freenet, apparently you don't have that choice. I think we can agree that all Slashdotters here would not want to aid unwillingly in the distribution of child pornography, which is why Freenet has been received with cold reviews in the past here.

Re:adware?

I for one have no intention if even trying this piece of rubbish, but I welcome it simply for the fact that it will attract attention away from the more traditional torrent sites that seem to be getting so much unwanted legal attention at present.

"Nothing for you to see here, please move along."

I really need to be able to mod slashdot errors...

-1 Annoying!
-1 Obvious! *sigh*

Why would I care?

So it's Windows only and adware. This is nothing like Suprnova.

The parent article is a Troll.

I care

I cared before, and now I know I don't need to care any more. So to me, this news story was useful, even though like you I no longer care.

Re:Why would I care?

So it's Windows only and adware. This is nothing like Suprnova.

But it's amazingly like the suprnova.COM and .NET scammers

Re:Why would I care?

And what was so great about suprnova? They are just an empty brand. Hell, they weren't even a tracker. What a scam they were running. People would find or start their own trackers, seed, and then give the suprnova people a link to the torrent while the suprnova people shoved 10 ads in your face.

I expect more people to be using eMule and bitorrent index sites to be hosted overseas while this exeed app dies the death of the empty branded hype with no substance that it is. Its just some company that saw the writing on the wall and paid off the suprnova kiddies to promote it. Big deal. Bittorrent if far from dead. The "russian" suprnova is up and works fine and at least the loki people are putting up some kind of fight so the technology isnt just considered illegal outright.

ironic

you can already find cracked copies of the latest version on *gasp* bittorrent sites :)

Re:ironic

I didnt get a serial, so i could only play with the app, and its HORRIBLE.
Like kazaa meets winamp3... Horrible gui with little pauses and laggy feeling when navigating, ugly blue-blob buttons, a new .torrent/exeem:// duality (why not only use one if its completely propritary instead of faking being a bittorrent client?)

I dont understand

what makes this better than other peer2peer programs like limewire or bearshare or mldonkey. If you remove the tracker/website approach then all the stuff out there becomes unverified and you lose the appeal of using BitTorrent.

eXeem beta.

If you know where to look, there's a closed beta of eXeem avaliable - however, it needs a beta key in order to join the network - and it can't be a random key, i.e. it's assigned by the Suprnova team. At the time of writing, the version I have is 0.16, and does NOT include any adverts of some sort, although yes Sloncek did confirm this earlier this evening.

The basic user interface is friendly, and it's basically a "compact" version of Kazaa (you have to use it to really understand).

As for the release date, it "won't be this week, or next week, but very very soon". It'll be an open beta, to chink out all the bugs.

Censorship resistant networks

Shouldn't these developers take a look at some of the research in this area?

Tangler [nyu.edu], FreeHaven [freehaven.net], and Publius [nyu.edu] come to mind.

Re:Censorship resistant networks

What the RIAA/MPAA don't realize is that they are trying to close the barnyard doors after the animals have already left.

Information and content is a lot cheaper and more easily accessible than it was a few years ago. The RIAA still sells CDs for $10-$20, when a CD holds 700MB of music/data, tops. Meanwhile, a DVD, with 8GB of Video/Music/Data, is usually in the $20 range. Already, CDs seem overpriced.

But now take the cost of a high speed internet connection ($30/mo. for cable modems around here), and how much data you have access to in how much time, and you realize that the world has definitely changed. These aren't the days of the local library and record store, but of Google and Kazaa.

The RIAA/MPAA are dinosaur organizations who don't realize the meteor has already struck and they are soon to die. So they go around frantically foraging all the food they can while the doomsday clouds loom above. Information and content is cheap. Dirt cheap. Users want fast access to it. Message to the RIAA: adapt!

People have the connections, they have the big powerful computers, all they don't have is the service. If the RIAA had the foresight to realize that a) CDs are overpriced, b) too much of CD profit goes to marketing/advertising firms and the cushy CEOs of record labels and c) they can readjust the price of music, offer it online, and dominate the market, then today we would probably have an immensely popular online music service that offers songs for $0.25, compensates artists adequately, and keeps the RIAA in business.

You have to keep up with the technological innovations if you want to survive. People pirate movies, but not nearly as many people as those who pirate music. Why? Pirating a movie is a pain in the ass right now. You get a low-quality DVD rip that doesn't easily play on your TV. Music, on the other hand, you get at near-CD quality (or CD quality), and you can easily burn a CD or put it on your MP3 player. The day that one can download 8GB of DVD video in a few minutes is the day DVD videos in stores will be severely overpriced at $20/pop.

As to your other point, the reason this research focuses on censorship-resistant systems, and uses the word censorship, is because as it stands today using no fancy techniques, one cannot be assured that the publication of any document will not be censored by those who can control access to your particular server. And if the government or any other agency wants to censor the publication of a document on the Internet, currently it can (maybe not 'legally', but technically). So this research does have a place, and is well-named.

Re:Censorship resistant networks

The RIAA/MPAA are dinosaur organizations who don't realize the meteor has already struck and they are soon to die. So they go around frantically foraging all the food they can while the doomsday clouds loom above. Information and content is cheap. Dirt cheap.

It's worse than you say. The RIAA and MPAA are cartels of content distributors. Sure, they may finance the production of some content and play favorites with the content they've got their fingers in, but they were built to distruibute content because in the past that was hard part for the people who made music and movies. Now, you don't need trucks, newspaper ads and shelfspace to distribute anymore. Distrubution is cheap and easy. There is no reason to pay them for it anymore. The message shouldn't be "adapt" it should be "go away". It's worse for the RIAA than the MPAA because arguably you still need the MPAA around to deliver huge spools of film to theaters, but that will change soon, and when it does you'll start to see movies get funded by people outside the film distribution industry just like you're currently seeing a new explosion of independant music with financially successful musicians. As the creators of the content (think directors, producers, actors, writers) see that they aren't dependant on the cartel anymore they'll realize they can make more money and gain greater artistic independance if they cut them out of the loop. The noose will close from both ends. The only way the traditional distribution cartels will continue to exist is if our governments grant them guaranteed profits through legislation, and even that can't last forever. This is the end game.

Adware enclosed, windows binaries only?

No thanks ..

But at least they are upfront about it.

Old Russian Lit Saying...

"In Europe, he would have been a just lawyer, an original philosopher, a bold psychologist, an influential teacher. In Russia today, he could only be a novelist."

In some alternate universe, suprnova would have been the next indispensable web site, the next Google, the next platform for innovation, the next great leap forward for human knowledge. But in today's world, it's nothing more than hype for some new bullshit adware.

It'll work

"It'll work obviously: my headline on this story mentions Suprnova, and so will hundreds of websites around the world in the coming days."

Yep. You couldn't have chosen another title for the article that wouldn't have worked for them. Nope. Had to go with that one. And then complain that it's just a marketing scheme. Yep. I'm feeling really sorry for you for being duped here!

Is there any good FAQ on the algorithm used?

Bittorrent has some interesting methods of making sure all parts of a file are available (sharing rarest parts first, for example), but I've been unable to find a complete list of how a file is shared.

There are some things I think would be interesting additions, such as sharing a the rarest part to users with the quickest turnaround time (determine how long it takes to download the file and then immediately upload it, and choose the person with the shortest time). Of course, that might already be the case, but I haven't been able to find out.

Ethics

This is probably really offtopic, but that's OK because I have bad karma anyways, and no one is going to see this.

I am a student in university, and I don't have much money to my name, so I don't buy DVDs, music CDs, and so on. What do I do instead? Simple: I download them for free off of the internet. Now I get to watch movies and listen to music without spending money. I relate it to taking donuts out of a dumpster being Tim Hortons after hours.

I don't even consider things like "freedom" or "ethics," or anything for that matter. I enjoy getting something for nothing. I like it when things are one click away.

I know that it makes some people very sad to hear this, but that's Ok with me. I am a good friend and human being, and I feel really bad about the disaster in Asia. I just don't care to pay fucking money for a movie.

Thanks for listening.

Re:Ethics

I support change. Drastic change. Like, revolutionary change. But the fact remains that while I choose to be a member of this society, and while I choose to partake in its distractions and pleasures, I respect its rules and laws. This is the pretense of a society. Take it or leave it.

The Boston Tea Party was pretty illegal, I'm sure.

Re:Ethics

I agree with the idea that if there were no theft there would be no DRM. I also agree that you can not legally justify downloading a movie/game without reimbursing anyone for it (or getting permission from the creators to have it for free).

One of the carrots that's dangled every so often, though, is the idea that if piracy of a product were 0, the price of the item would be drastically reduced. This is a lie.

Souring the game industry:

Case in point, the Nintendo Gamecube. It was thought of as "unhackable" by the PR folk at Nintendo and yet the cost of their games was just as much as any other console. Do actions like this not foster cynicism among both paying and non-paying gamers? People were already expecting a price drop as the alleged source of high prices with Nintendo before was the fact that they used cartridges instead of CD-like media.

Souring the film industry:

Putting red dots on the screen to psychologically interrupt a movie experience is ridiculous. This form of copy protection should be the bane of any film director who respects his or her works as art. Can you imagine the Mona Lisa having these dots over top its portrait? Does interpolating the frames before and after the dots as a way of removing them make this form of protection all that effective when you consider how the work is marred in contrast?

Souring the TV industry:

The industry itself is inherently sour. The medium of network and cable television is not a delivery vehicle for content, it's a delivery vehicle of advertisements to viewers (who are the end product). If any form of entertainment needs to go pay-per-view on a per-episode or per-season basis, it's television.

Again, I'm not saying any of this justifies theft of artists' works, but I do think there are serious problems on BOTH sides of the fence. Simple finger-pointing by industry lobbyers / sycophants at pirates in order to justify artificially inflated prices and obscene forms of copy protection is morally -- and should be legally -- wrong.

Interview MP3

Link to a torrent [torrentspy.com] of interview as an MP3.

beta screen shots

eXeem 0.16 beta screen shots [nikush.com].

Anonymous BitTorrent is already available.

I've seen /.'ers suggesting freenet as possible {il,}legal content distribution method. I'd like to disagree with this methodology.

There is already a working way to have anonymous BitTorrent - using Onion Routing [eff.org] protocol. It's great for privacy concerned netizens and if more people set up Tor Servers, Tor would gain critical mass needed to support both tracker AND data connections for BT.

Most of torrent clients supports Tor out-of-the-box, as tor is nothing but socks proxy for your programs. Torifying [noreply.org] various applications is really a snap and there is a detailed guide [sourceforge.net] on how to make Azureus BT client [sourceforge.net] work flawlessly with Tor (see section 2.2 Totally Anonymous BitTorrent).

Currently, the only concern for the Tor authors is the fact, that the Tor network may not be able to handle the amounts of traffic, bittorent is able to generate.
However, if each one of you would set up a server with couple of kbps spare bandwidth, the tor network would immediately start scaling up.

Since BT relies on multiple (slow) transmissions occuring at the same time to create the "torrent effect", even if all the transmissions pick different routes trough tor network (taking slight performance hit), the overall performance of BT would remain unchanged.

There is also a very important aspect of tor. It allows you to create hidden services. Basically they are accesible via bogus URLs (like LKbalkbsflKflasbd.onion). The anonymity of the server is assured. More about hidden services at this address [eff.org].

So, before you let the *oids start reinventing the wheel (and charge an arm and a leg for it), do your bloody homework and use what's already there :)

PS. tor is free software.

Here's a link to the beta....

But it won't work without a key. It can't join the network. Gives you a chance to check it out the interface spyware/adware free I guess. I don't think I'll be using it. I too was looking for a larger leap...not so much of a baby step.

http://82.149.22.18/eXeem%20BETA%200.16.zip

/-McK

Lokitorrent and Anonymity

I honestly don't think this [the exeem client] is totally necessary, depending on the outcome of the Lokitorrent legal case. Exeem seems as if it will make .torrent files much harder to find, which in turn creates problems. The http section of the web is a lot easier to navigate than an adware-filled, bulky client.

Of course, even if it is legal for sites on the web to host the .torrent files, they are so easily tracked by anyone who cares! If Exeem could possibly get a better degree of anonymity, then it could perhaps boost p2p to an unbeatable level- forcing the MPAA and RIAA to actually work with the file sharers, rather than attack them.

Lastly, and on a bit of an off-topic note, if one is sharing only one part of a file, but not the full thing (or if the file being shares is obfuscated, but easily returnable), can they be prosecuted of illegal copyright violations? Is every single part of a film copyrighted individually? I've always wondered, so pegging it to the end of this post seemed as good a time as any to ask.

- dshaw

Corporatization

So the suprnova's of the world are being corporatized by "secret companies." The question comes down to, will it work? Does anybody care about napster.com since it was corporatized?

EXEEM SUCKS (READ)

eXeem is a piece of shit. Not only that it will have adaware and spyware, it is also a "lock-in". You will only be able to use it on SuprNova. They have modified the torrent file. It is missing a lot of dictionaries ("key -> value"), and dictionaries that should have been subdictionaries start directly in the file. For example "files" is not in "info" it starts with it directly. This torrent changes were unnecessary. Also, the "announce" and "announce-list" are missing. eXeem has a hardcoded url of a tracker of all the peers on eXeem. The original seeder of a torrent acts as a tracker (so SuprNova won't have to host torrents), but eXeem is in no way decentralized because of the tracker that keeps in contact all the eXeem users (it does not care about torrents, just eXeem users). So, all you have to do is to kill the main server, and all the users of exeem will be disconnected (this happened when suprnova died). THIS IS WORSE THAN THE WAY TORRENTS ACT NOW. EXEEM IS HYPE AND A WAY TO MAKE MONEY. IT SUCKS! I think the best way to decentralized BitTorrent, is to have trackers that are decentralized IRC server style. If you people want something decentralized and a little bit of BitTorrent, get G2 (Gnutella2) and add BitTorrent's tit-for-tat to it.

What someone needs to do...

... is create a SuprNova styled website filled with completely legal torrents. For example, drivers, game demos and updates, Linux and other open source distributions, public domain stuff, share/freeware, etc. We have to let politicians know that p2p has practical legal uses.

sold out ?

So, the "mighty" owner of suprnova closed his website.
Very nice.

He advocates this new technology.

Who said the MPAA/RIAA did not stuff him some "funds" to provide the people some nice software
(ie: adware) that cleanly informs those nice
associations with the ip address of every peer/seeder. Think about it.

who did say the new software does not harvest ip
addresses and nicely hands em over to some place
accessible to the MPAA/RIAA ?

I do not know about you, but I am convinced some
donated funds from MPAA/RIAA could change the mind
of any site owner to join the " side"

just 0.02 euro

Re:The Obvious Question

Some of us DID use 'nova for legal stuff...

Me personally, for both 'freely distributable' software, and 'timeshifting' of broadcast TV programs that are available in my market..

Re:Thank you, CmdrTaco

Thank you for generalizing that everyone with an opposing viewpoint from you is some type of spoiled rich kid. Actually, I have met quite a few people who are in favor of changes to "intellectual property", from liberals who have spent years helping with poverty-stricken families in third-world countries and have little sympathy for CEO's who don't make another million, to archconservatives including my father.

Which one I am, if either, is not really relevant to our discussion here. I do not understand the concept of "intellectual property". Want to "own" an idea? Keep it in your head with your mouth shut, and if you write it down or otherwise record it anywhere, make sure that it's somewhere no one will ever find it.

An idea, spoken in public, is public property. Period. Doesn't matter if the "idea" is a song, a computer program, a movie, or anything else.

Awwwwww, big corporation can't make money? Too bad. No one has a "right" to the continued success of their business model. They have the right to adapt and find a way to provide what the consumer wants, the way they want it, and make money, or die. Copyrights and patents create artificial scarcity and give "ownership" and exclusive rights to the first person to come up with something which cannot be owned-an idea.

But it'll stifle innovation? Biggest load I've heard. Those who have great ideas and are passionate about them need no reward. Socrates was KILLED for putting forth his thoughts, but even facing that he would not back down. And we suggest massive amounts of money are necessary to encourage this? It never was before.

Of course, there are those who can consistently do a great job at coming up with and putting into practice great ideas. They'll make a living. (No, I didn't say "killing").

All "copyright" creates is a massive media monopoly capable of controlling the distribution of 98% or so of creative work. The "little guy" doesn't even get heard amidst their marketing noise.

No one has a right to make massive amounts of money for the REST OF THEIR LIFE plus 75 years because they do a good job one time, or even several times. Most of us must go to work, every day, and do our job well each and every time. I don't get to say "Well you know what, boss? I've done a damn good job, and this company will benefit from that work for quite a while, so you owe me royalties for the rest of my life while I do no more work." If an artist/programmer/filmmaker/whatever is out of ideas and can't do his job anymore, it's not time for him to retire and profit at 31, it's time for him to find another job.

As for the **AA's, they are as animals whose ecosystem has been radically changed. They can either a. Act like nothing has changed, and face extinction, or b. Adapt. Right now, they're thinking they'll roll back the clock, and that does not constitute option c. or any other.

Collective license would solve this whole problem. If the "IP Industries" are unwilling to embrace this model, they have chosen option a., and I won't mourn their passing.