Open Source Napster: Gnutella 187
Luminescent writes "Nullsoft, in their new company, "Gnullsoft", just released an open source Napster clone. It does mp3s, movies, and any other format you could want. " More details: Gnutella is currently at version .48. Presently, they are finishing the version on-hand and will be doing a release at 1, along with the source, which is *not* currently availible. In addition to releasing the source at version 1, they will be releasing the client for other OSes. Presently, it's a Windows-only thing. Despite all of these drawbacks, this is an interesting move from WinAmp->Netscape->AOL->Time-Warner. Or whatever they are today.
Just meter it (Score:1)
server? or just client? (Score:1)
If it's just a client, then ho-hum.
more choice in clients is great, but i hate it when people don't release the code "early and often"
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:1)
slashdotted (Score:1)
Ever hear of CuteMX? (Score:1)
AOL has other GPL-like software! (Score:1)
mirrors (Score:1)
http://homepages.skylink.net./~warlo rd//gnu.html [homepages.skylink.net]
the program looks pretty nice btw.... nice and simple UI, but I'm sure that gnullsoft will fix that pretty soon :)
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:1)
File Community Software (Score:1)
Conflict of interest (Napster Lawsuit)? (Score:1)
Gnullsoft->Nullsoft->AOL->Time-Warner->Music Co.
Aren't there some music companies owned by Time-Warner that are involved in the lawsuit against Napster? What does this mean? Doesn't that make it illegal (or whatever) to sue Napster?
You have to wonder..
Re:Ha! This is the new economy (Score:1)
*sigh* The nostalgic fallacy lies in forgetting the crap of the past, so that it looks like times were better.
In any era, it's possible to point to the good stuff of a previous one and say that things have gone to hell.
When I lived in Austin, it was a truism that the city's golden age had ended just moments before you got there.
In twenty years, people will complain that that era is crap, since it has produced no Becks, John Zorns, Quentin Tarantinos or Tim Robbins.
And look at it this way: the past fifteen have produced no Paper Lace, Bay City Rollers, Roger Cormans, or William Shatners, either.
Re:distributed file sharing (Score:1)
You can do that now: Pong for N64 [dextrose.com]
Wrong. (Score:1)
Somehow... (Score:1)
Re:Somehow... (Score:1)
MMMM, Nutella (Score:1)
Is it just me, or do most free software projects have much cooler names than commercial products?
cross-platform ability (Score:1)
(Yes, I know about SAMBA...but then you've still got the Mac users out in the cold, and anyone who doesn't have SAMBA on their Unix boxen)
And this way you have the flexibility to go off-campus for those times where the local network doesn't have what you're looking for (details of this I'm not sure on since the site was
Ditto here, Firewall maybe??? (Score:1)
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:1)
There you go. Block the primary host and you shut the whole thing out: It's what Northwestern University did: they blocked *.napster.com from resolving, meaning that you couldn't connect to get the 'optimal server'. The downloads would've gone through if they were to ever begin, because they're not blocking ports, just name resolution. The same thing, methinks, could be done with this program too.
So in other words, sign up now before they get blocked, eh?
Sounds quite similar to iMesh. I guess if enough of these things start up (Audiogalaxy Satellite, CuteMX, Abes, etc.) organizations will have too much trouble shutting them down and it will all be open again.
(Or, in Napster, IMHO, an easier solution would be to use IP addresses, or a list of different hosts that could issue optimal servers?)
coj
Gnutella differences (Score:1)
And who says gopher is vital anymore? Not to say I have anything against it, but I can't think of anybody on the campus who uses it, student-wise. I can't speak for the instructors.
Then again, what university is in business for the students?
Re:MMMM, Nutella (Score:1)
Mmmmm, chocalate hazelnut spread. Us coders need a steady stream of Mountain Dew and chocolate goodies.
Cheers
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!
Re:zoinks. (Score:1)
It's a shame that the typical denizen around here can't(or won't) read the slashboxes, they would have seen this. As a result, it gets posted to slashdot, and ruins it for the rest of us. I can only hope the same ignorance prevails when it is ready to rock.
Re:Conflict of interest (Napster Lawsuit)? (Score:1)
Time-Warner/AOL/Winamp/NullSoft/GNullSoft cannot sue Company X for doing Y, and do Y themselves at the same time. Nullsoft is owned indirectly by Time-Warner, and is, therefore, indirectly involved in the suit against Napster.
And just to dispel any retort about the separation of Nullsoft and GNullsoft -- read the bottom of the gnutella.org webpage: "This stuff ©2000 Nullsoft, Inc, a subsidiary of America Online, Inc.".
Chocolaty love (Score:1)
See, that's the kind of thing you don't see on most commercial product's pages.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Re:What a lot of you are failing to realize... (Score:1)
Re:distributed file sharing (Score:1)
as for useability... well, many people use Napster regardless of whether it has some quality control system. i agree that it would be cool, though, to have that functionality. by performing some simple crc, the Napster server could probe different user databases for identical files. This way they could implement some necessary load balancing.
as for poor quality data... well, that should be a parameter of the particular data file. mpg is encoded with its dimensions, frame rate, etc in its frame header which is easy to extract. they already have similar mechanisms in place for mp3's, the bitrate, frequency, etc. that's all straightforward stuff that i'm sure they know about.
And when someone buys... (Score:1)
What's in the "clientid" ? (Score:1)
Do you think AOL can be related to humanitarism?? (Score:1)
Is that an example of Open Source used as a commercial weapon??
slashdotted (Score:1)
tragedy of the commons (Score:1)
Admins have to do something because otherwise napster users will cripple their networks. Blocking napster seems like a good way to go to me.
Heavy network use for piracy has always been against acceptable use at universities and this is just a very consistent and logical continuation of that correct policy. University networks are a shared and scarce resource. I like pirated mp3s as much as the next person but a university network is the wrong place for it.
from the gnullsoft contact page (funny) (Score:1)
Gnullsoft is the open source, freeware extension of all the cool crap Justin and Tom want to do.
Justin and Tom work for Nullsoft, makers of Winamp and SHOUTcast. See? AOL *CAN* bring you good things!
If you like abuse, you can email tom: tom@winamp.com
--
We'll see how Gerald Levin likes this when he starts to see all his precious IP float free on the Net, using a program a couple of his employees built and GPLed!
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:1)
Yes, I too got a good chuckle over that. Then I started formulating ways in which college sysadmins would restrict access anyway. Granted, I'm not a sysadmin, I know nothing about sysadmining, but I got into college, right?
Okay, AFAICT with this you can escape the dangers of having specific IPs blocked, specific ports blocked, specific hosts blocked, etc. So much so that sysadmins would pretty much have to block access to the entire freakin' net to stop it all.
Why do people assume they won't do this? Bad publicity for the college? News flash: all publicity is good publicity in the long run. Even horrible, life-ending publicity will be good for the institution five, ten years down the line. People will forget the cause and nature of the bad publicity and only remember that there was publicity at all. It's hard for people to remain upset for long periods of time. Even if a college eliminated network access to the internet, within a few years everyone would forget about it. Especially if they were not the only college that did it. Trust me on this one.
Oh, boo hoo, they've taken my access to the internet away. Well, maybe, maybe not. Maybe they just double their modem pool and make everyone dial in. Maybe, like was the case not so long ago, you would have to specifically request network access, and then would be strictly monitored for so-called abuses.
Or maybe they don't take away network access at all. Maybe they just put insane restrictions on it. Here at USC [usc.edu], the solution was to place restrictions on bandwidth [usc.edu]. But those restrictions are still fairly liberal. Who is to say that a college couldn't place a restriciton of, say 10 MB total network traffic per ethernet port ber 24 hour period? Exceed it, and your ethernet port is automatically shut down for, say, 72 hours as punishment. Light web browsing, checking your email, etc., wouldn't be impeded, but it sure would make trading files (any type of file, be it mp3s, warez, whatever) extraordinarily difficult.
Just some thoughts. People who post challenges like gnullsoft has done should be prepared for people to take them up on it.
Re:Ha! This is the new economy (Score:1)
Sendy
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:1)
Instead they stop trying to quietly save their bandwidth and prevent people from breaking the law (which is the prototypical use of these types of services) and instead just send the police to their doors. Let's get real here, the universities and businesses aren't here to hide your actions or to cover your back or to support your decision to break the law. I guess some people really want to weed themselves out of the gene pool.
Re:That's Justin Frankel for you (Score:1)
Re:What a lot of you are failing to realize... (Score:1)
Re:thank you! (Score:1)
Re:zoinks. (Score:1)
I would think a better client for search smb shares would be better for our situation. Workgroups are broken down to residence halls and many people share their files that way, with and w/o passwords.
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:1)
Re:Chocolaty love? (Score:1)
Re:cross-platform ability (Score:1)
NT server has Services for Mac, Bridge SMB and Mac.
Re:distributed file sharing (Score:1)
Also, is there anything like ID3 tags for image files?
Re:What a lot of you are failing to realize... (Score:1)
A better reason for net admins to ban Napster is simply that they can't handle it all and need to cut something, anything, but at that point there should be enough tuition money to buy more gear.
Re:distributed file sharing (Score:1)
So maybe there's a group of people out there trading zips with an extra mp3 header, using strange filenames so people can't find them as easily. But I haven't run across them.
Re:distributed file sharing (Score:1)
Re:Gnutella (Score:1)
sound of the names Ferrero and Nutella, the name
and the product are German.
Re:Good Admin Defined (Score:1)
Any of you ever got creative enough to try filling a "0" in for the only allow X connections option? It turns off file serving completely.
It does bug you on startup, granted, but it's not hard to tell it to continue disabling the file server...
-Paul
Re:BBS deja vu? (Score:1)
Re:How the heck do you use it? (Score:1)
Well, looks like you actually have to build a database... have to have at least one person, then build off what they have, maybe?
The documentation is very poor... Says "Clicking ping will auto-list other members in the GnutellaNet network." Well, I don't see no Ping button... closest I see is Update, and it doesn't do what it should.
Dunno. Guess this is what I get for being an alpha tester.
Re:Status of "Gnullsoft"? (Score:1)
time warner is represented by the RIAA who is sueing napster.
it doesnt make any sense???
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear." [microsoft.com]
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:1)
Still, it will be interesting to see how this pans out. Part of the "problem" with the net is the depth of the information. How do you restrict and focus your search? One nice thing about napster being MP3 only is that it's more foolproof (You can make anything foolproof, just not damned fool proof). If I do a search and forget to type the extension I don't have to wait for it to finish the first search before starting a second. What happens if I do a search for "sex" in Gnutella and forget to type
AOL has killed it. Congrats. (Score:2)
AOL killed the project, in large part due to the slashdot effect. Great job. Assholes.
--
Gnapster (Score:2)
I only use it for music, myself. Have never tried the alternate media types nor an opennap server.
--
Re:Just meter it (Score:2)
Re:college sysadmins (Score:2)
QoS cant save the fact that the new traffic pattern would have cost this certain higher education instution lots and lots of money and affecting my tuition bills.
Re:college sysadmins (Score:2)
Just set up your router to give preference to DNS and mail, then outgoing web traffic, then telnet/ssh, then everything else. That way, you allow the people using the bandwidth for "serious academic pursuits" to do what they're supposed to, but then utilize the rest of the bandwidth for the things that make students into humans.
I'm sick of people complaining about Napster traffic slowing down their Internet traffic, when it doesn't need to be that way.
--
Shouldn't even apply to Napster. (Score:2)
I don't think that law should even be applied to Napster (and as far as I know, it never was).
The law only comes into affect, IIRC, when some sort of certain content is eliminated based on some criteria of content itself, not how it is encoded.
Example:
Phone system. They qualify as a common carrier because they don't take any say over what people send over the lines (for the most part, anyway). There are certain things it would be illegal to send over the phone lines: if you are a US citizen, voice data saying you are planning on killing the President, I think, would be illegal, or maybe using a modem to send a stolen data to someone. The legality is determined based on the content itself.
However, they do limit the *format* of what is transmitted. You can only send analog signal over the phone lines (to live in a simple world anyway, ignoring anything but simple analog phones for the sake of argument); you couldn't transmit raw ethernet frames over the phone. You can, however, modulate anything you wish to transmit over this line using a modem. So you could be sending voice data about killing the President, a song by your favorite artist in mp3, fax data containing top secret stolen documents, etc over this line, all eventualy encoded in some manner over the analog carrier.
The same thing here applies to Napster. Napster only limits the format of what is transmitted (ie MP3), but doesn't care what you use mp3 to encode. It could be music--it might not be. You easily come up with a way to encode html content in an mp3, or image data in an mp3, much in the same way that you could encode arbitrary data in a gif file Granted, it isn't the best encoding format, but it would work.
Now if Napster started eliminating stolen music from the stream of transmitions, then I think they would not be a common carrier, because they would be eliminating content based on the content itself, not on the encoding.
I think the confusion here stems from the fact that almost everyone uses mp3 to encode audio, specifically because the scheme is optimized for lossy audio compression. But they are by no means limited to only audio data, it would just probably suck for anything but.
Another example would be an online discussion forum, like Slashdot (which as far as I know, would qualify as a common carrier since no posts are deleted, only ranked). Slashdot limits the form of what can be transmitted to simplistic html. I can't directly post, say, raw image data. But I could uuencode the data, and post it (granted it would be moderated down because it looks like line noise).
But then again, this is all ramblings about the spirit of the law, not the law itself. There could be loopholes. Don't bet money on any of this.
Re:server? or just client? (Score:2)
Status of "Gnullsoft"? (Score:2)
If there in a new company, does this mean that there no longer owned by AOL? like, that they sold there company, and then jumped ship or somthing? Or did AOL just rename them for some reason (And refocus them on Open source software, It would seem). Does anyone know what's actualy going on?
Hotline, even better than Gnutella! (Score:2)
Hotline not only supports filesharing (TIP: Search ALL online servers for files at http://www.hotlinehq.com/ [hotlinehq.com]), but also chat, messaging and news boards (like ICQ Active Lists in fact). If you are into warez, hotline also has it advantages which I won't talk about here ;). I get most of my stuff from Hotline servers nowadays.
The sad news is that Hotline is only for Mac OS and Win32. Haven't tried it with WINE though.
oy (Score:2)
What about iMesh (Score:2)
Doesn't iMesh already do this?
http://www.imesh.com
Re:Ha! This is the new economy (Score:2)
> Everything is free.
Nothing is ever free. Digital media reduce prices close to the marginal cost of delivery, never free. The only thing supporting napster is that the clients don't have to pay for their internet connection (or don't realize that they do).
Here in NZ, it costs me US$0.17 per megabyte of traffic internationally. Does that mean I don't download anything? Nope, because I have prepaid 512megs/month. Do I use napster? Nope, because I can't afford the traffic charges.
If universities started putting metered internet connections in the dorms, and made students pay for the traffic they are generating, then we might find out what the true values of the music/files/warez are. As it stands we have no idea because the distribution of the music is subsidized.
Jason PollockRe:Is this the end of Hotline? (Score:2)
Ah, but the MP3s I found were all things I already owned in another format. (This was 1997 when encoding an MP3 on the fastest machine available to me at the time, a PowerBook 3400, was painfully slow, but I did have lan-speed internet access.) That's still legal.
Yet you have do a doubletake when another criminal is chased down and made to face his actions.
In my mind, Adam and his family are right, and Hotline Communications is wrong. Yes, he was naive, but I still think it's wrong.
Got it! (Score:2)
You have to be linked to at least one other person in the Gnutella network. Then, you use their list of other people in the network, and so on. This thing expands exponentially. Thing is, you need to get on first.
How? IRC to Efnet (#gnutella), and do a
(Remember to share your directory(s) as well!)
SysAdmins and bandwidth (Score:2)
As long as you allow everyone unrestricted bandwidth, you'll run into QoS issues. Whining about Napster hogging bandwidth is like the Department of Transportation complaining about there being so much traffic. You either make more room, or limit the flow of data. The solution is not for sysadmins to become the secret police of the network, closing ports and banning software. For every countermeasure taken, someone will find a new way to circumvent it.
I personally use a cable modem at home, and have noticed that though each download gets limited to between 40 and 60k/sec throughput, I can have multiple downloads totalling at least 500k/sec. In the case of college dorm networks, a per-user connection cap should be implemented. I think the real issue is the same one many start-up ISPs run into: they just didn't plan enough bandwidth for everyone. You can't cut corners and expect to have a decent network. If QoS is really an issue to you, you should spend the money to get the bandwidth you need.
I also have not had the fortune of living in a dorm with built-in network access, but I'm familiar with networking. As long as your software can distinguish between a computer and a network, you can enforce bandwidth caps. Personally I am amazed that this seemingly obvious and less difficult solution has not been attempted (or at least publicized).
I am glad to see the proliferation of software like Napster, and the expansion from mp3 to any binary information. I hope development of such software continues despite the unnecessary adversity that is being encountered.
David Howell
Good Protocol Design uses Caching & Scaling ! (Score:2)
In the real world, most internet users are in one of two environments
- Fast LAN or medium-speed WAN behind a firewall with slower outside connection
- Slow dialup, concentrating large numbers of users to fast internal servers plus an Internet feed that's big but oversubscribed.
Businesses and universities are in the former model; most ISPs are the latter model, though the DSL and Cable Modem ISPs are somewhere in between. In both cases, http caching is available, and is a valuable tool for keeping most requests on the fast inner network instead of the slow connection to outside.Napster was designed so that Napster.com's servers only handle the databases, not the bulk file transfer, which lets them handle a large number of users with manageable load (and avoid copyright blame, shifting it to the users :-) But what it ignores is the transfer of large numbers of users - which is a serious thing to ignore if you want to have zillions of users using your stuff.
University users look like business users - typically fast LANs on campus, slower connection to outside, so Napster would be no problem if most students got their MP3s from other students or a caching server at the same school, and only downloaded from outside when nobody at the school has the song they want. How would you design something like this? Here are a few possible approaches:
- Give the Napster Database more information about where the client and file-sharers are, so it can show you the nearby sharers first, with something more relevant than just ping time. Even a crude measure like "same second-level domain name" helps a lot, because it keeps things in the same university or corporation.
- Design a Napster Proxy/Cache Server you can install locally, and a way to find nearby servers, so you ask the cache if it's got your song instead of getting it from Napster themselves. This was easier for Pointcast to do, because their sales hook is "we're helping your employees get interesting business news, plus the occasional headline and sports score", as opposed to "we're helping your students pirate MP3s and Warez", but it's a start
:-) But it can be minimal modification to the Napster protocols, with the complex work done by the proxy. - Design a "distributed proxy", which lets some random user's machine elect itself database cache in its domain or community; requires a mechanism to tell other users where to find it, but it may not be hard, and there could be interesting ways to generalize "community". It's a bti of work, and Napster needs to be sure their business model still works
:-) - Use HTTP for file transfers, basically making each Napster sharer speak http, maybe on port 80 or 8080 instead of Napster's own protocols as the default. This lets web caches work automagically, though it really benefits if there's a way to get most clients at one university usually use the same few servers for each specific song they download (e.g. sharer-1 shares songs 1,2,3, sharer-2 shares 4,5,6, etc.) to maximize caching.
- Other things the open source community will think up and code.
- More flexible choice of port numbers, so Napster can hog ever-increasing amounts of bandwidth, choosing to be Anonymous Cowards rather than good netizens. (Hiding anonymously is fine, but the system still needs to clean up its bandwidth act as much as possible.)
Remember, only YOU can prevent broadcast stormsthank you! (Score:2)
Its not sysadmins people.
I don't think you'd be terribly impressed if your trying to get some actual work done and you can't do anything because some loser two rooms over is busy draining all the network resources in the building to listen to Backstreet Boys.
The whole point of things like College Networks is that they're there for some kind of actual use, which trading music doesn't really qualify as.
When something frivolous like Napster is consuming 30% of a connection as big as an OC3, then you know there is a major problem. As an admin, what can you do? Let the network slow to a crawl, buy more bandwidth, or get rid of the single biggest waste of bandwidth on the network?
So, bearing in mind that you probably don't have a budget big enough to just add bigger lines whenever you want to, what would you do?
Hence, mass bans of Napster.
So, now we have people writing programs to try to get around those bans to continue to waste network resources. Don't these people learn, or are they just too selfish to care about anything but how much music they can collect?
What we'll probably see if this kind of abuse keeps up long enough is metered traffic. Just wait and see... if there is no way to block it, they'll just find a way to start charging you for extra bandwidth being used.
And then where are we? All because some people have to basically steal network bandwidth so they can have more music.
Yeah, thats just great.
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:2)
There's nothing that the students can really do about that except pay more for more bandwidth.
So, in the end, each student will probably be back to a 9.6kb line
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:2)
Maybe combine it with that "Freenet" idea that was being posted on Freshmeat.net.
Re:fair enough. (Score:2)
Quite wrong... if you're paying for the access, you agreed to pay for the access with restrictions on how you would use it according to the Acceptable Use Policies. If you enter into this agreement with the intent of violating the Acceptable Use Policies, they can cut your connection off. If you try to take them to court (why not? School rules are not laws, LAWS are laws. If a teacher takes your hat, nail them for petty theft. If a student tells you they're going to kick your ass, press assault charges.) they can very easily argue that you made the agreement in bad faith and you'll be left high and dry.
When you buy something, ANYTHING, you do it as an agreement with the seller. The seller sets conditions. If you don't like those conditions, you don't buy it, its as simple as that. I'd LOVE it if AT&T weren't complete moron jerkoff assholes and would unlimit the upstream of cable modems, but I want that bandwidth even with the restriction so I will buy them if they ever come ot this area (I don't know why I believe them every time they tell me it'll be a month or 2, they've been lying about it for over 3 years). I will not attempt to override this limit, I will not bitch about this limit, I will not claim I was FORCED to accept the limit, because I wasn't. I was presented with a choice and I took it. End of story.
Esperandi
Personally I'd like it if our school networks were run into the ground with Napster, you have no idea how absolutely putrid out network is. NOTHING works on it. No reverse DNS so you can't access about half of the FTP sites out there including huge ones like export.andrew.cmu.edu. Through ICQ you can't send messages longer than 450 chars, you can't transfer files, hell until a couple months ago they blocked ICQ completely. Students have done significant research to determine why inTRAnet page grabs of the schools own site from within their network are slower than shit (about 50x slower than going outside to the net), determined the problems, went to the administrators and then were told if they didn't stop looking into how the network worked they would be fired from their campus jobs and all net access would be revoked. Thank gawd I don't live on campus.
/. is a menace! Film at eleven.. (Score:2)
(from the "download" page on gnullsoft..)
DOWNLOAD GNUTELLA --
DUE TO A COMPLETE ONSLAUGHT OF USAGE FROM GETTING SLASHDOTTED, THE BETA GROUP IS NOW CLOSED. I will be creating a mailing list where we will take 1,000 members for a closed beta group to test the network stability of gnutella before the 1.0 release. Details are forthcoming. The kids are usually hanging out in #gnutella on EfNet IRC if you want to come visit.
We're a doggamn menace!
.------------ - - -
| big bad mr. frosty
`------------ - - -
BBS deja vu? (Score:2)
What shall we call these new client/server combinations? For now, I'll simply call them DFSs: distributed file sharers. What benefits to DFSs have over the web from the user's perspective? A few for your consideration:
- Single user interface to multiple sites
- Ability to interact with users on all sites, not just the currently viewed one
Benefits from the administrator's perspective?What else?
I recall an incredible sense of community on the old BBSs. Though Slashdot can boast a strong community, I don't think most web sites can. Will DFSs change this? Do you foresee DFSs adding BBS-like features like discussion groups and online games? Are they filling a niche that the web doesn't?
What I dont Understand (Score:2)
The thing is, you release an open-source project, that allows transfer of Mp3s, that comes from a huge congomerate, and is part of Nullsoft...
How can it NOT get slashdotted?
What a lot of you are failing to realize... (Score:2)
bandwidth shaping? (Score:2)
So I guess my question is, is this bandwidth shaping for real? If so, how is that possible?
-Colbey
Ha! This is the new economy (Score:2)
I wonder if the copyright crimes napster and it's clones are encouraging is going to have any negative effects on the release of media content.
My guess is it's not. Making movies and music has never been cheaper than it is today. That coupled with the fact that that you don't have to work is the sweat of your face anymore to survive gives people with real creativity the ability to produce god material.
The big media companies have worked against quality content and instead focused on suplying crap for the masses. The last fifteen years have produced no Brian Wilsons, John Lennons, Luc Bressons or Orson Welles.
The free software movement has proven these points for software. The big media companies has a much bigger effect on our lives than companies like microsoft has ever had. For some reason pirating music and movies never felt as bad as pirating software. I'm getting incoherent now, best quit
Re:distributed file sharing (Score:2)
Content Discrimination (Score:3)
Re:distributed file sharing (Score:3)
Bad Mojo
Re:I'm not overly impressed... (Score:3)
I'm not saying that things like Napster should be illegal. I am saying that clogging up a network with Napster when people are trying to do real work is antisocial behavior and should be considered on-par with playing a boom-box at volume ten on the bus, talking loudly on a cell-phone in a supermarket, and otherwise acting like an obnoxious ass.
Re:thank you! (Score:3)
Now, I'm paying a pretty fair sum every semester to Housing and Food Services, and part of that is for my network connection. If you have to limit it in some respect, fine, I believe solutions exist. But it's not fair to block access completely when a more equitable solution would be to block each student to, say, 5 k/s of bandwidth during Napster transfers during peak hours, or whatever.
Napster and its ilk have legitimate uses. No, really, they do. If your solution to their overutilization of bandwidth is shutting them down completely, I can't blame anyone who tries to get around it. Hell, I've tried to get around it. A middle ground exists here, and I'm waiting for someone to stumble onto it.
-jay
No more downloads due to slashdotting! (Score:3)
DOWNLOAD GNUTELLA --
DUE TO A COMPLETE ONSLAUGHT OF USAGE FROM GETTING SLASHDOTTED, THE BETA GROUP IS NOW CLOSED. I will be creating a mailing list where we will take 1,000 members for a closed beta group to test the network stability of gnutella before the 1.0 release.
Details are forthcoming. The kids are usually hanging out in #gnutella on EfNet IRC if you want to come visit.
Wow.
Plankeye
Re:Napster.com days numbered? (Score:3)
piracy and bandwidth (Score:3)
You contradict yourself. If free music becomes as popular as pirated music is now, then you will experience the same bandwidth problems, except this time it will all be legal.
I remember when I did not autoload images because of bandwidth problems on the internet. Well now the internet has grown up a little and graphics are a small load on the network.
Sooner or later, music will be chump change compared to movie streaming or whatever comes next. We should hope that the consequence of the extreme bandwidth usage is more bandwidth, rather than the despise of new technology.
Napster Redux (Score:3)
Regardless of the outcome of the RIAA lawsuit against Napster, developments such as Gnullsoft's illustrate the "Whack-a-Mole" problem the government and industry face.
Call it gestalt critical mass. Viral software memes. Slashdot backlash. Whatever.
Simply stated, you can't keep a good idea down.
distributed file sharing (Score:3)
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:3)
Actually good sir, I believe you're mistaken. Gnutella appears to use a peer-to-peer-to-peer network to form its lists. That means all you have to do is link to a friend outside of the university firewall on whatever port you would decide, and all of a sudden you have access to all the hosts that he has, and all the hosts that the people he is linked to has, etc. This expands exponetially, and the only thing colleges could do is block EVERY port except vital ones. (HTTP, FTP, GOPHER, etc.) Heh, I'd like to see them try to pull that off.. They'd have a geek riot on their hands. ;-)
Chocolaty love? (Score:4)
This is great! (but) (Score:4)
It's great to see a big, AOL subsidiary, that as far as I know has never shown a big interest in producing GPLed software now jumping in and producing something like this.
But! The concern I have is that the analysis I've seen of the Napster protocol shows that it's a very poorly designed protocol. I wonder if there's any chance gnutella will be able to either support different protocols -- the old Napster protocol and a new better designed one, or help redesign the current protocol.
Anybody know a good alternative protocol that could be used instead? Anybody care to design one? Does someone want to let these guys know this is a priority?
Is this the end of Hotline? (Score:4)
Background info is available from this Salon article [salon.com] (the second of two parts; the first part gives an overview of Hotline). For the latest news in the case, try here [fairfax.com.au] or here [fairfax.com.au].
Hotline is what got me much of my MP3 collection, but the company's actions caused me to think twice. Napster doesn't present such a moral quandry.
Re:from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:4)
Oh, that's just f***ing wonderful. I can't wait to have 58% of my university's bandwidth used up by piracy, AGAIN. I just can't wait to be sitting here, wishing I had a modem connection to AOL rather than having the dedicated ethernet connection I have now.
Look, I listen to mp3's, I own a Rio, I think the RIAA is evil, etc. etc., but I want Napster and everything like it gone!
Don't tell me about the legal uses for napster. That's BS. If you own a CD, you can make your own mp3's from it, and if you want legally free music, you can go to the band's web site and download the music from them. Or, go to mp3.com, or traxinspace.com, or one of the many other free music sites. That's what I do, and all the music I listen to is legally free. And it is damn good, too.
Furthermore, I really think we should be encouraging the artists who have been so generous as to give us free music. The should be compared to the coders that have givin us free (open source) software. If people realize that there is a lot of really good music on mp3.com, and start downloading it, then there will only be more in the future. As it is, the incredible amount of pirating going on right now only encourages the RIAA and the government to make more laws to prevent it--laws which we hate. The DMCA, for example. If there wasn't so much damn pirating going on, mabey we would not have it.
If everyone starts downloading legally free music, the RIAA won't be able to anything about it but say "oh shit", and fade away. The artists will all head towards giving away their music for free. (they can make money in so many other ways--endorsements, concerts, etc.) So, then all our music will be free, just the way we like it. There is no need for Napster clones.
------
-Everything has a cause
-Nothing can cause itself
-You cannot have an infinite string of causes
I'm not overly impressed... (Score:5)
... with the author's desire to completely circumvent the administrator's control over their own network. There are technolgies in this software to specifically prevent it from being throttled.
Yes I'm all for free speech and the freedom of information but at what cost? I can see the entire QoS of dorms and "open" labs to be turned way way way down over this. It would have been much better to have some kind of control app which the network admins could say "300kbps tops during peak times" or something to that effect.
Mind you I can now also see work being put into firewall software which monitors for large bandwidth useage on an connection basis and, if it exceeds xkbps for y seconds, throttle that IP down or turn them off completely.
Maybe this isn't such a bad thing after all.
from the gnutella features list (funny) (Score:5)
college sysadmins (Score:5)
The issue is economies of limited data transfer bandwidth in a shared network environment.
Where I go to school, we have full ATM switched core (or at least thats my understanding). Theres an OC3c to the net, along with a vbns connect (with another oc-12 to vbns coming soon).
Thing was... napster traffic was using 30% of the bandwidth available. To support this new traffic would have cost millions more on the OC3c connect to the internet. Probally eating out of state and federal funds, alongside higher tuition costs. Just so some bastard can get his/her britney spears music and porn.
Why should I fund their abusive network saturating connectivity? Why do you turn sysadmins into the enemy when the real enemy is the economics of scarce bandwidth?
In any case. There will allways be a method to block these products from saturating internet and vbns lines. Why tell people otherwise? If anything, you make it even more of a priority to start blocking SYN traffic unless someone has specifically asked to run services on their machines.
"Am I making myself painfully clear? I thought so."
ADOM.... (Score:5)
Needless to say, the author of that software package felt that he had written himself a loophole, and could take advantage of the good will of the open source community. I don't know about these people, but if the mindset isn't release early, release often, then they don't get it to begin with.
Re:Napster.com days numbered? (Score:5)
OpenNap already does this (Score:5)
gnap [sourceforge.net] -- gnome napster client
gnome-napster [sourceforge.net] -- gnome napster client
jnap [perham.net] -- java napster client
jnapster [sourceforge.net] -- java napster client
java napster [tux.org] -- java napster client
crapster [sourceforge.net] -- BeOS napster client
gnapster [gotlinux.org] -- gnome napster client
BitchX [bitchx.com] -- IRC chat client with napster plugin
Knapster [netpedia.net] -- KDE napster client
BeNapster [sourceforge.net] -- BeOS napster client
Napster for BeOS [sourceforge.net]
Napster for MacOSX [sourceforge.net]
gtk napster [geocities.com] -- gtk napster client
amster [amigart.com] -- amiga napster client
iNapster [optusnet.com.au] -- WWW interface to napster
BWap [bitchx.com] -- standalone console unix client based on bx-nap plugin for BitchX
These are all open source and free, and will work with Opennap servers (although most right now probably aren't coded to take advantage of the Pr0n search extensions, yet. Give it some time though.
zoinks. (Score:5)