Exeem "Successor" to Suprnova Announced 608
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
adware? (Score:1, Interesting)
So basicly it's Kazaa without the quality of programming.
Goodie.
I dont understand (Score:3, Interesting)
eXeem beta. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Tangler [nyu.edu], FreeHaven [freehaven.net], and Publius [nyu.edu] come to mind.
Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:4, Interesting)
Adware enclosed, windows binaries only? (Score:4, Interesting)
But at least they are upfront about it.
Re:adware? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there any good FAQ on the algorithm used? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Torrent trackers on Freenet? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want it to have respectable content, use it to browse respectable content. (and inject respectable content if you can)
Re:"Nothing for you to see here, please move along (Score:3, Interesting)
Luckily, you didn't have mod points and those that do get the joke.
*sigh*
Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Obvious Question (Score:3, Interesting)
TV shows are my BitTorrent mainstay though; getting US shows outside the US is a nightmare; I thought the UK was bad, but while doing a little globe trotting at the moment I've found out I actually had it pretty good at home. By "pretty good" I mean that usually you can buy the DVDs of a show *before* the damn thing airs on terrestrial television which is, quite frankly, a ridiculous situation. I mean, who is going to watch a TV show, probably with adverts, if they already have an ad-free version of DVD? Plus, try as you might, if you like to watch shows without seeing any spoilers then grabbing the thing off BitTorrent is the only way to be sure.
Personally, I think a TV show/movie based version of something like iTunes would work; monthly subscription, per file billing or both doesn't matter. P2P has proven itself a viable distribution method for the media files, there's clearly an audience for data and it gives the MPAA the same "legal alternative" argument the RIAA likes to spout. It's not like they stand to lose much, unless they are worried that the DMCA won't stop a DRM removal tool from being released shortly after the launch...
Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is obviously why they suggested using freenet only to replace the function of supernova: distributing tiny *.torrent files, rather than the huge files being traded.
Under that plan, it is still possible for a detective to connect to a bittorrent tracker and log IP addresses, so it doesn't create the same protection from lawsuits as a full-freenet system would. But, there is no longer a single webmaster as a point-of-failure ("point of lawsuit"?), as there was when supernova.org was shuttered.
What someone needs to do... (Score:3, Interesting)
sold out ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Ethics (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel guilty that i download things. And, in general, i only use it as a stopgap while i earn more money, and as a trial to see if it is worth spending my hard-earned cash on the dvd or cd or whatever. I do not think that i should be deemed a bad person because i do this, and i most certainly should not be deemed lazy.
You may think what you like about me, but i know that my downloading of things is only because i can't afford the legal alternative. and yes, you may say to me that i should go without, but have you tried living for 6 months without seeing a new movie?
so the guy above may not care about paying money to see a movie, but i do. there just isn't much i can do about it, until i fall upon happier times.
Re:Why would I care? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the only folks they can sue are the individual infringing users, their ability to shut down the rampant misuse of BitTorrent for massive copyright violation is dramatically decreased.
P2P is dead (Score:2, Interesting)
Any protocol that allows "show me what you're sharing" type command or maps content to IP addresses is inherently vulnerable to these 3rd party organizations that are being hired by the MPAA. It's a trival matter for them to fire off violation notices to ISPs at high volumes.
Thus, I would suggest:
An offshore site that allows users to remotely (over SSL or MSTSC) use P2P apps to download to local disks, and then permits transfer via SSL to their local machines.
A virus/worm that pretends to be popular P2P apps and appears to be sharing copyrighted material. Result: almost everyone in the US appears to be sharing, overloading the people monitoring such things.
People familiar with the law need to see what the loopholes are (e.g. IANAL, but I have heard that sharing less than an entire "piece" is legally different than sharing the whole thing...don't know if this is true, just an example). Result: we use the law against the same people who are using it against us.
I don't want to come off as an evil pirate here. I simply feel that:
Intellectual property needs a serious reworking.
When you don't offer your customers what they want (e.g. on-demand without-commercials video), and what they want is technologically achievable, the customers will use the technology, even if it happens to be illegal.
I pay $150 for cable + internet + HDTV channels. I would gladly pay the same for a single channel of on-demand video, and more for the same without any commercials.
Re:Torrent trackers on Freenet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bittorrent will beat Bittorrent (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed! What about MUTE? (Score:3, Interesting)
While it may not be as secure as Freenet, it does take advantage of IP obfustication and is a fair bit faster. No one user knows what machine is connected to what data. With enough users, it would virtually be impossible to determine data origin.
The author of the program continues to make progress as the funds continue to roll in - fair enough.
Give it a try at: mute-net.sf.net and think about supporting the ongoing project. It certainly seems to have more plusses than Exeem!
Re:EXEEM SUCKS (READ) (Score:2, Interesting)
A few of the modifications sound like BT2. First about the subdirectories. BT2 (Bittorrent2) also has this modification; this is just so that the torrent name (which also surve as root dir) is not part of the torrent hash. People have been having trouble changing the torrent name without changing the torrent hash with BT1. This is important in BT1 because many torrent sites only look at the torrent name within the file, and list that name. If that name happens to be inaccurately named there is no way but to create a whole new torrent, since changing the torrent name means changing the torrent hash. Now this seems like a minor/useless modification in a network in which listing on a torrent site doesn't really matter (actually you can't), but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is a bad modificiaton.
Also, it is a given that "announce" and "announce-list" are missing... after all there is no fixed tracker.
Also, are you sure the central "tracker" is needed for the users to stay online the eXeem network? I was under the impression that the "tracker" (or "server") exists just to bootstrap new people onto eXeem. If the central "tracker"/"server" is indeed like you say, it seems even more like BT2... (the "tracker"/"server" being the "hub" that redirects peers to the real "trackers")
Don't get me wrong... I never really had high expectations for eXeem... especially now since it is closed-source and ad supported. But I was just unclear on a few things that you were talking about...
Re:Corporatization (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anonymous bittorrent already exists (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably because they explicitly asked *NOT* to put it on slashdot, which you probably knew, my dear anonymous coward!
Also anarchy online (Score:3, Interesting)
the flaw of the 'encouraging/promoting' reasoning (Score:3, Interesting)
So, because they feel safer, the prog itself is 'encouraging' it, and can't be used? Proxies may feel more safe for them, encryption may make them feel more safe, heck, maybe the internet istelf! Should we not use any of those tools, then?
Come to think of it, digital camera's may make them feel more safe: no need to go to a photo-developer anymore! So the same argumentation is possible to say digital cameras and the like is 'encouraging' CP; yet, I think most would see the absurdity of it. It's as absurd to say Freenet 'encourages' it, however - unless you interpret 'encourage' in the broadest way, in which case you can forbid all tools, basically. I'm sure the RIAA will like a broad interpretation of 'encouraging', however, especially when INDUCE gets passed. Then they can sue every P2P application (and many others) in existence.