By Thomas Mennecke
Just about everyone would love to see the first 8 digit population P2P network. Imagine 10 million plus users trading and sharing files. Every obscure piece of literature, software, music, movie, video, etc would be accessible. Of course this is just a fantasy, and so are eDonkey2000’s aspirations for reaching this goal - at least for now.

Yesterday, eDoneky2000 appeared close to achieving this. And it wasn’t just a few individuals noticing this. More and more people were reporting outrageous numbers on their eMule clients - 7.6 million, 8.5 million, 9.4 million. Even the venerable OCB Maurice statistics page was reporting insane numbers.

The explanation? A few people were confident it was just OverPeer bots flooding the network and artificially inflating eDonkey2000’s number. This is plausible, but let’s get that from the horses mouth.

So the first thing I did was ask Jed McCaleb, the head programmer at MetaMachine what the deal was. Unfortunately, he did not have an explanation and directed me to the “Lugdunum Master.” He did have an answer…

Apparently, a few server administrators wrote some code that gives an artificially high client number. He attributes this to “some stupid guys” (but perhaps clever), and specifically pointed out an ill-run donkey server.

By Thomas Mennecke
There’s BitTorrent, eMule, the Newsgroups, LimeWire, Morpheus and so on. While these big players in the file-sharing world manage to grab all the attention and headlines, many tend to forget about the small time favorite. Although the file-sharing world is filled with political wrangling and other related debates at the moment, the P2P community still lives – and lives well on a community named SoulSeek.

SoulSeek is the brainchild of Nir Arbel. Nir Arbel interestingly enough was on the development team of the original Napster client. Nir managed to take what he learned from that experience and reestablish it under SoulSeek. Considering SoulSeek is of the original Napster lineage, it contains what many P2P networks lack today – a strong community.
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By Thomas Mennecke
Everyone has his or her favorite P2P application, and God knows that BearShare has its loyal following. There’s nothing really wrong with the BearShare client - it does a good job of searching, sharing and enabling participation of the Gnutella network. In addition, the developers behind this application have also been instrumental in the resurrection of Gnutella. However, it just never quite reached the heights of its brethren, LimeWire.

In fact, it’s never come close.

Let’s start off with the obvious comparisons between BearShare and Limewire - third party software. Now, there is a raging debate as to the difference between “adware” and “spyware”, and we could waste paragraphs of content describing the two. However for the purposes of this article, we will refer to these entities as “third party software.”
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Via Zeropaid
eMule is a filesharing client which is based on the eDonkey2000 network but offers more features than the standard client

This version is mainly a security update for 2 severe issues: A security issue in zlib 1.2.2 was found, which is used by eMule and can at least be used to crash eMule. A second bug allows to crash eMule clients with a malformed Kad-Packet (only if Kad is enabled)
We recommend to upgrade to 0.46c as soon as possible.

Via Zeropaid

You can now download torrent files to your Pocket PC device with WinMobile Torrent, a BitTorrent client that runs on your Windows Mobile 2003/SE device and lets you leech or seed multiple torrents. You can even view the progress of each torrent and extract individual files before the torrent has finished downloading; sounds similar to BitComet and Azerus for the PC. T

here isn’t much that the software can’t do. You can log transfer activities, add/connect/disconnect/delete peers, pause and resume downloads, scape the tracker, and display graphs for leeching and seeding, and i’m sure the RIAA will be just as able to keep an eye on what you download as they would with desktop torrent applications.

WinMobile supports multiple simultaneous downloads with various functions to manage downloads and peers in a very user-friendly interface.

Via p2pnet.net
Millions of personal files on ordinary Australians are being shared between and among federal Australian government departments.

And it’s being made possible by under “dramatic extensions” of a little-known data matching scheme, says The Australian, quoting privacy advocates.

“Even before the possible introduction of a national identity card, federal agencies are increasingly cross-matching the personal data held in vast government databases to crack down on identity theft-related crimes ranging from terrorism to welfare fraud and tax evasion,” says the story.

The Attorney-General’s Department says identity theft costs the Australian economy more than $1.1 billion a year but, “privacy advocates, already concerned about the renewed Australia Card debate, believe the increased use of data matching could actually stymie the Government’s efforts to combat identity theft,” it says, adding:
“While the largest federal government data-matching program is covered by laws restricting the use of personal information, most activity is covered by less stringent voluntary guidelines administered by federal Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis.”

Via www.infoanarchy.org
Unlike standard television broadcasting, there are a limited number of viewers that an Internet television station can accommodate. These limitations are determined by the amount of bandwidth the network media server has available. A popular Internet television station would require large amounts of bandwidth to provide the broadcast to a large viewing audience.

There are readily available software-based broadcasting alternatives that do not require large amounts of bandwidth for Internet television distribution.

Peer to Peer (commonly referred to as P2P) broadcasting allows viewers using specialized software to re-distribute the media broadcasts. This eliminates the need to utilize costly centralized media servers to distribute the broadcast. Any size business or group can establish an effective media broadcast presence without the huge costs normally associated with Internet broadcasting. Only a small amount of bandwidth is required for a global Internet broadcast distribution using this method.
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By Bary Alyssa Johnson
The Motion Picture Association of America this week announced the availability of its Parent File Scan software. The Windows-based application helps users identify illegal files stored on their computers.

In light of the MGM v. Grokster Supreme Court case and recently launched PauseParentPlay coalition campaign, the MPAA said it is working to provide parents with the tools and technology needed to detect and delete illegal multimedia files and P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing applications that have been downloaded to the family computer.

The MPAA contracted DtecNet Software ApS to create the Parent File Scan software. DtecNet is a business-to-business software company based in Denmark that specializes in technical and legal protection of copyrighted content distributed via the Internet, according to the company’s Web site.
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By Yiming Gong
Former senior China Telecom system administrator Yiming Gong has just published a paper proposing a new method to help identify p2p users, and the type of p2p applications being used.
His paper, which appeared first in Security Focus, is published below with his permission.

Identifying P2P users using traffic analysis

With the emergence of Napster in the fall of 1999, peer to peer (P2P) applications and their user base have grown rapidly in the Internet community. With the popularity of P2P and the bandwidth it consume, there is a growing need to identify P2P users within the network traffic.

In this paper the author will propose a new method based on traffic behavior that helps identify P2P users, and even helps to distinguish what type of P2P applications are being used.

Current Technology
When it comes to identifying P2P users, currently there are only two choices: port based analysis and protocol analysis. Here is a brief review of both.
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Via p2pnet.net
In South Korea, 60 domestic music labels are preparing a collective lawsuit against 4,000 people: not for file-sharing through p2p networks, but for offering music files for download on Naver, a popular blog service:
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The Electric New Paper By Eugene Wee
Peer-to-peer (P2P) network companies Grokster and StreamCast Networks may be liable for copyright infringement as they actively encouraged their users to share copyrighted material.

But does this mean that movie studios and record companies can stop worrying about the Internet piracy perpetuated by P2P software?

Experts say this is unlikely.

Industry insiders say the Supreme Court decision will do little to stop illegal file-swapping from continuing.

That’s because in the majority of cases, P2P networks don’t require the support or aid of any commercial venture to flourish.

Miss Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer with US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has represented StreamCast Networks, told CNet News that if both Grokster and StreamCast were to be shut down, their P2P networks will still continue to be operational.

”It operates in a decentralised way,” she said. ”It doesn’t need to call into a home base; it doesn’t need product updates from any place. What’s out there continues to be out there.”

And recent history seems to support Miss Seltzer’s view.
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By Alex Malik
In Australia, the Federal Court recently brought down its judgment in the ComCen case (Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd v Cooper [2005] FAC 972).

As we know, following an investigation by Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) into the website www.mp3s4free.net, Universal Music Australia and 30 other companies, including seven international companies, commenced proceedings against the alleged registrant of the mp3s4free.net domain name, Stephen Cooper, and ISP E-Talk Communications (trading as ComCen Internet Services). Proceedings were also commenced against an employee of ComCen, Chris Takoushis, and the principal of ComCen, Liam Bal.

The record companies were successful against all of the respondents primarily on the basis of authorisation and the existence of misleading and deceptive conduct.

Interesting? Yes. Revolutionary? Probably not.

If anything, our interest in the case says more about the nature of the internet rather than the case itself. Despite that, ISPs and p2p companies will be studying the transcript very carefully.

It might cause them a little heartburn initially, but when they trudge through the minutia of the judgement, I think they will recover.
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Via p2pnet.net
The free p2p BitLord 1.1 client is now out.
Download it here
Built for high-speed distribution of 100MB or GB sized files, it doesn’t have spyware or adware, but it is a promo for a ‘pro’ version.
(more…)

Via p2pnet.net
Mp3 is 10 years old today.
“On this day back in 1995, the researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS decided to use ‘.mp3’ as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology,” says ecoustics.com.
And, “Soon MP3 became the generally accepted acronym for the ISO standard IS 11172-3 “MPEG Audio Layer 3″.
The tag which has given the entertainment cartels so much happiness, “emerged as the unanimous winner of an internal poll at Fraunhofer IIS,” adds the story.

Via p2pnet.net
Organized counterfeiters are becoming increasingly sophisticated, says the Big Four record labels’ RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in another ‘study’.
Possibly for the first time, it doesn’t try to link file sharing with the activities of criminal duplicators who copy readily available physical product for sale on blackmarkets and undergrounds.
However, the RIAA continues to misuse ‘piracy’ and ‘pirates’ when it describes illegal copying activities.
(more…)

Via p2pnet.net
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is creating a legal wave from the AllofMP3.com decision and riding it all the way to iRights.info [German]. A wave, since it’s sending out warning notices to sites for linking to AllofMP3; all the way, because iRights is an informative website providing critical, but independent, background on digital copyright issues.

The German IFPI had already sent a notice to online magazine Heise demanding a link to AllofMP3 to be removed from one of its articles.

The IFPI bases its demands on the court decision that prohibited the making available of unlicensed music files within Germany by the Russian AllofMP3. In the notice to Heise, similar to that sent to iRights, the IFPI claims:
“By establishing a hyperlink to the Internet page in question you are enabling the acquisition of copyright protected sound recordings of our clients via the illegal download offer. By illegally providing public access you are thereby objectively supporting the illegal dissemination of copyright protected sound recordings […] or even aiding and abetting such activity.”
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Via p2pnet.net
AEG, America Online and XM Satellite Radio say they’ve hooked up to create Network Live, which they’re billing as “the first multi-platform digital entertainment company committed to delivering live entertainment programming through the Internet, satellite and other third party global media platforms such as VOD, wireless and HDTV”.
Programming will be promoted through AOL and to XM Satellite Radio subscribers.
Kevin Wall, who ran the Live 8 video broadcasts, is Network Live’s ceo.

Via news.com
Video game players will now be able to legally download PC games and earn cash back for sharing them through a closed peer-to-peer network, thanks to a new deal between Wurld Media and Trymedia.

The owner of the P2P site Peer Impact said it has opened its doors to the PC gaming provider in a contract that makes more than 1,000 titles available to Wurld Media subscribers. The two companies are currently in beta testing. Officials said Peer Impact is expected to have games available for download in the coming weeks.

Members earn cash back if they help redistribute games purchased through the network, representatives with Wurld Media said. Members simply leave their computers on, and if another Peer Impact member buys a game from that computer, the P2P said it will reimburse that member with credit towards future purchases.
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Via eweek.com
Microsoft has broken its silence over the decision to downgrade the default recommendations in its Windows AntiSpyware product, insisting that “absolutely no exceptions” were made for Claria Corp.

Facing heavy criticisms for recommending that users “ignore” the existence of Claria’s adware products, Microsoft Corp. issued a public statement to explain that the change stemmed from a review that was based on a single set of objective criteria.

“[We] decided that adjustments should be made to the classification of Claria software in order to be fair and consistent with how Windows AntiSpyware handles similar software from other vendors,” Microsoft said.

Anti-spyware advocates first discovered the Claria default changes immediately after rumors swirled that Microsoft was in acquisition talks with the Redwood City, Calif.-based distributor of the controversial Gator ad-serving software, but although Redmond won’t confirm or deny the rumors, the statement made it clear the Claria downgrade occurred more than three months ago.

“All software is reviewed under the same objective criteria, detection policies and analysis process. Absolutely no exceptions were made for Claria. Windows AntiSpyware continues to notify our users when Claria software is found on a computer, and it offers our users the option to remove the software if they desire,” the company added.

In an interview, corporate vice president at Microsoft’s Security Business and Technology Unit Mike Nash said the downgrading of the Claria rating had nothing to do with any kind of rumored acquisition.

While he said he could not comment on acquisition rumors in any way, Nash said his team is “hard-core religious about the definitions [of spyware], independent of anything else going on.”

“They are pure. They will not be messed with,” Nash said. “We’ve had some interesting learning on the anti-spyware product front. We took our time to define our parameters on what is spyware vs. software. We published a white paper on this a couple months ago.”

He also noted that Microsoft doesn’t always downgrade ratings. “Sometimes we bump up from moderate to high.”

Via Slyck News
Thomas Mennecke

The summer months usually means less time indoors and more time out doors. Typically, we see fewer people populating file-sharing networks as BBQs, vacations, the beach and laziness take priority. Although June 2004 also saw an increase in the P2P population, it appears this summer is also showing a modest increase. According to BigChampagne, the total population of all users on any given P2P network was 8,888,436 in June 2005, up from 8,665,319 in May 2005.

While we usually see things cool off on P2P networks during the summer, the amount of media attention diverted to file-sharing in the months of May and June most likely helped boost P2P’s popularity.

The media’s attention had been acutely focused on the MGM vs. Grokster Supreme Court battle, especially during the beginning of June. At issue was whether P2P developers Grokster and StreamCast are liable for the copyright infringement that exists on their networks. Since the media had an entire month to fester in Supreme Court decision limbo, the situation gained widespread attention.
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Via p2pnet.net
The former indie, but these days corporate, Israeli p2p firm iMesh has confirmed that it and Sony BMG have signed a deal.
With ex-Sony Music boss Robert Summer now running things at iMesh, the news doesn’t come as a big surprise.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) sued iMesh, which eventually settled for $4.1 million.
Now, “iMesh was also close to signing a deal with Universal Music Group in the next week to 10 days,” says CNET News, quoting Billboard.

Michael GeistThe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California-based non-profit corporation charged with administering the Internet’s domain name system, meets this week in Luxembourg. As usual, only a relatively small group of government officials and people connected to domain name businesses will pay close attention to what transpires.

That is a mistake. Countries around the world have become engaged in an increasingly tense battle over “Internet governance” (a reference to ICANN-related issues). The battle has quietly simmered for a couple of years, but appears headed for a showdown over the next six months, with Canada home to its culmination at the last ICANN meeting of 2005 in Vancouver.

The general lack of attention accorded to ICANN and Internet governance is due in part to general misconceptions about the issue. For some, the term Internet governance conjures up images of new Internet laws and regulations, yet ICANN is not a law-making entity.
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Via p2pnet.net
p2pnet regularly runs statistics from BigChampagne which prove indisputably that, contrary to claims from the Big Four record labels, file sharing is on the rise, and has been for some considerable time.

As we recently emphasised, the average number of users simultaneously connected to p2p networks each month around the world has rocketed from 3,847,565 in August, 2003, to 8,722,793 up to June 17, 2005, as per BigChampagne research results.

digital music news now reports the average number of simultaneous users on p2p networks, “inched up again in June, reaching 8.9 million”.

The numbers come from BigChampagne and the post goes on, “That is a modest 2.6 percent increase over May, and a substantial 20.1 percent jump over the same period last year. US users accounted for about 75 percent of the global total, with both figures closely aligned.

“The increase is notable heading into the summer months, which normally produce a drop in P2P traffic. That seasonal effect could confuse any effect that the recent MGM v. Grokster decision has on overall volume, though so far there has not been a notable dip. Overall, P2P traffic levels have been steadily increasing over the past few years. Current levels are now double what they were in September, 2003, when the RIAA first initiated lawsuits against individual file-sharers.”

That Grokster may have affected file sharing is about as realistic as the idea that Big Music’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) sue ‘em all marketing campaign is encouraging people to buy ‘product’.

By Libe Goad
The fallout of the recent Grokster v. MGM Supreme Court decision hasn’t meant much to the wellspring of new legally minded peer-to-peer companies who are looking to turn a pirate’s territory into a legitimate delivery system for music, movies and video games.

While Grokster and StreamCast face more time in court, legal P2P software companies like Peer Impact, Weed and Mercora make strides into turning their file-sharing services into a legitimate industry with the potential for plenty of profit to spread to music labels, musicians and in some cases, to the users.
ADVERTISEMENT[AD]

Peer Impact has been working to create a legal peer-to-peer download platform that allows music lovers to search for music, pay for it and then download it from other Peer Impact users.
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Via news.yahoo.com

A Napster pre-paid card which allows music fans to download Napster’s digital music. The number of song downloads at authorized websites tripled among US Internet users in the first six months of 2005, compared with the same period a year ago.(AFP/HO/File/Jeff Christensen)

By Victoria Shannon International Herald Tribune

PARIS When Microsoft jumps into a new technology, when Web browsers start adding it as a feature of their software, when the U.S. Supreme Court case confers it legitimacy, that’s when you know the technology is going mainstream.

And that’s where we are today with file-sharing.

The common notion of peer-to-peer networks is those weird-sounding names associated with teenagers, like Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus. But software that makes files on your personal computer accessible to others on the Internet is taking on increasingly conventional uses in the form of communications and business tools.

The concept of P2P dates back to the 1980s and uses the jargon that describes computers by their functions, like “host,” “server,” “master,” “slave” and “peer.”
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Via p2pnet.net
eXeem version 0.25 beta is out and it’s “completly ADWARE free, meaning you will not get any additional 3rd party software installed on your computer,” is the promise.

For ‘3rd party software’ read Cydoor which says, “We provide strategic direct response advertising for our customers that achieve outstanding results and a unique network of properties with general and contextually targeted advertising opportunities.”

Behind eXeem are the people who once ruled SuprNova which reigned supreme as the largest BitTorrent hub. The movie industry cartel shut it down and not long after, eXeem appeared, firing up a Netwide storm because it was loaded with Cydoor.

A while back Cydoor wanted to advertise in p2pnet, asking about, “purchasing your available advertising inventory” both “domestic and international”. By “adding your site to our buying properties you will join washingtontimes.com, mamma.com, Pal talk, SearchForit.com, and dozens of other respected Internet destinations,” it said.

We pointed out that p2pnet had been “highly critical of Cydoor, with special reference to the fairly recent eXeem debacle”. No problem. But when we said we wanted to see a specific example of what the company had in mind, that was all she wrote.

Anyway, the reaction to the news that eXeem came with Cydoor was enough to eventually force it to back away from the connection and now, “The only ads in the program are html based ads, the kind you see on websites,” says eXeem, adding that its app, “eliminates the need for trackers as nodes in the program will be taking their role”. It also, “features easy publication of files to the network as well as a rating and comments system”.

Via p2pnet.net
“You know you’re in trouble when your adware fires you,” writes John Borland on the CNET Music blog.

He’s talking about the fact that Claria (Gator that was) has dropped Sharman Networks p2p application Kazaa, which is highly ironic given that Gator has been described as one of the two worst spyware applications going and that Altnet, one of Sharman’s favourite associates, could almost be called the Father of Spyware.

Adding to the piquancy of the situation is the fact Gator (oops, Claria) is still listed as a member of Sharman’s DCIA (Distributed Computing Industry Association).

“Kazaa parent Sharman Networks issued a grumpy press release today noting that reports of its dissociation from adware maker Claria (formerly Gator) have been misunderstood,” says Borland, going on:
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Via p2pnet.net
A single Europe-wide copyright and licensing system for online music has been proposed by the European Commission.

“We have to improve the licensing of music copyright on the Internet,” says internal market and services commissioner Charlie McCreevy. “The absence of pan-European copyright licenses makes it difficult for new European-based online services to take off. This is why we are proposing the creation of Europe-wide copyrights clearance.

“Central clearance is not about making content available on the cheap. It offers a model whereby Europe’s creative community will get the lion’s share in revenues achieved online.”

The present structures for cross-border collective management of music copyright, developed for the analogue environment, “prevent music from fulfilling its unique potential as a driver for online content services,” says the EC in a study, going on:

“The Commission proposes options to remedy this situation as only music has the real potential to kick-start online content services in Europe in line with the Lisbon agenda.”

Via p2pnet.net
Google is one of three companies said to be investing about roughly $100 million in Current Communications Group, a power-line broadband start-up.
The other two are Hearst and Goldman Sachs.

The company plans to use the money to expand its broadband-over-power-line deployments in the USa nd overseas, says ZDNet, quoting the Wall Street Journal

EnerTech Capital and Liberty Associated, a partnership between Liberty Media and the Berkman family, also contributed, says the report, going on:

“Under its relationship with most power companies, Current runs the service, bills the customers and collects 100 percent of the revenue. Power companies, in return for use of their grid, receive payments from Current.

The company piggybacks units on power grid transformers to send signals through residential lines..