MLdonkey 2.6.5
About:
MLdonkey is a multi-platform, multi-network peer-to-peer client. It supports several large networks such as eDonkey, Overnet, Bittorrent, Gnutella (Bearshare, Limewire, etc.), Gnutella2 (Shareaza), Fasttrack (Kazaa, Imesh, Grobster), Soulseek, Direct-Connect, and Opennap. Networks can be enabled or disabled. Searches are performed in parallel on all enabled networks. For some networks, each file can be downloaded from multiple clients concurrently.

Release focus: Major feature enhancements

Changes:
MinGW support was improved with respect to threading, graphical stats support, support for files larger than 2GB, and sparse files. server.met files are now compressed. log_file is enabled by default. The first steps have been taken for Emule secure ident support. The server extended getsources2 opcode is supported. Using BitTorrent for multi-file download with zero-byte files was fixed. Some RAM saving patches were applied, and lots of small fixes and improvements were made.

Music is neck-deep into a new era in which convenience is paramount. Artists are creating music at increasingly lower costs in their own homes and distributing it over the Internet, while consumers are listening to that music anywhere, anytime on wireless portable devices.

Cell phones are no longer just cell phones, they are becoming all-everything portable entertainment and communication portals that will eventually not only allow consumers to listen to hundreds of music files but to share them with friends.

These aren’t just passive consumers looking for a thrill. A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 57 percent of teens who use the Internet — about 12 million users between the ages of 12 and 17 — are also content creators. They’ve created a blog or Web page, posted original artwork or photographs, written stories or produced videos, or remixed online content, including music.

Via ZeroPaid

It happened to Napster, Grokster, eDonkey (eMule is next) and finally BitTorrent.

Now the Dutch Supreme Court hammered down another nail. Peer 2 Peer has not died but most of its vital functions have seized under relentless attacks and is now on life-support.

What the hell happen in 2005?

You can read more on this here.

In a decision praised by the entertainment industry’s BREIN Dutch enforcement unit as an opening for it to go after p2p file sharers, Holland’s highest court has ruled Lycos, “wrongly protected the identity of a user who anonymously posted slanderous allegations against an Internet postage stamp dealer on a member site,” says the Associated Press.
“It is the first ruling of its kind in the Netherlands on Internet privacy and could have far reaching consequences for other Internet providers,” it says.

“A. Pessers” sued Lycos in 2003 demanding information about a client so he could seek financial damages allegedly resulting from the allegations, says AP, going on:

“Supreme Court spokesman Steven Bakker said the court found Pessers’ claim of having suffered damages sufficient to order Lycos to release its client’s name and address, even though no criminal offense had been committed. It issued a sweeping rejection of Lycos’s argument that personal client details should only be released if they are suspected of a crime and the information is wanted by the police.”
Via p2pnet.net

PCLinuxOS, a start-up KDE engineered distribution, has recently released their v0.92 Test 3 build that contains an updated Unionfs stable version as well as fixes largely when it comes to the livecd-installer. Bundled with PCLinuxOS v0.92 is everything from the LimeWire P2P application to a scientific calculator. Even though PCLinuxOS hasn’t yet gained much momentum from the desktop Linux community, its intentions are definitely in the right direction and we look forward to seeing how this distribution “shapes up” after passing its development stages.
Via www.dvhardware.net

Drew Wilson
A show some may have never heard of. It was a show others have grown to love or simply fell in love with it at first sight. The large fan base of the hit comedy show ‘Whose Line is it Anyway’ have refused to let their favorite show die. It still lives on in the P2P world.

Many may recall about a year ago about a TV show called ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ It originally started on radio for about six episodes in the UK. After the short series as hosted by Clive Anderson, it ceased to air on the radio. A while later, it made a new appearance on Channel4, a British TV station as an all out improvisation show. It was then cancelled after 10 seasons to the dismay of a number of fans. It was then picked up by an American TV station called ABC and Drew Carey hosted this version for six seasons. It was cancelled again, but fans refused to let it die. The re-runs of the show had received very good ratings for a couple of months - not bad for a cancelled comedy show. The network then decided to air previously un-aired pieces of the show in a large seventh season before it was cancelled a final time to the dismay of a rather largely expanded audience. Even then, the show refused to die.

The novel concept of a totally improvised comedy show was just too appealing to fans. When it was cancelled a third time, Drew Carey then started to host a show called “Drew Carey’s Green Screen” on the WB. The new twist was that they utilized the Green Screen technology where animators take the show and draw over the action to give it a more artistic slant to the improv genre. Many fans thought that this would be a savior to the old improv show, but after 5 short episodes, it shared the fate of the other hit comedy show and was cancelled.
(more…)

Teenagers five years ago had a sense of entitlement to illegally download music and now, “We’re having to go back and retrofit those values.”
That’s Organized Music spokesman Mitch ‘The Don’ Bainwol (right) on p2p file sharing.

By ‘retrofit’ Bainwol means ’scam’. Because the OM family, fronted by Bainwol, says it’s successfully suing not only teenagers but also mums and dads and grandparents and schoolgirls into buying its music ‘product’.

These OM assertions are, however, more than mere PR / propaganda BS. They’re outright lies.

It’s been estimated that more than 61 million Americans regularly share music with each other online. Against that, OM members Warner Music (US) Vivendi Universal (France), the infamous Sony BMG (Japan, Germany) and EMI (UK) list some 16,000 US citizens who’ve received RIAA subpoenas.

Sixteen thousand against 61 million? And not one of these OM victims has ever been found to have broken any laws, civil or criminal. In fact, not one of them has even appeared before a judge.

Put into perspective, this means individuals stand less chance of being singled out by the RIAA as they do of being struck by lightning or winning the sweepstakes. And as more and more people open Net accounts, the chances become smaller and smaller. It’d be interesting to see this rated as ‘odds’ for and against.

And yet the mainstream media report, ad nauseum, repeated RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) claims that it’s successfully ‘prosecuted’ thousands of people as though they’re accurate statistics from a reputable source.

“Now, by comparison, teenagers are paying for legitimate music downloading services, such as iTunes,” Bainwol is quoted as saying in Axcess News. “They don’t have the sense of entitlement that we have had to go back to transform.”
You can read more on this here.

“In May 22, 2003, I wrote, “What drew me to the Net years ago was online music - and MIDI was about all there was, back then. But still very, very cool, even on some of the wierd software that was around. And now what I’d like to do is host a limited number of readers’ mp3’s here on p2pnet.net.”

I posted some of my own (now ancient) stuff a long time later, but I didn’t have the time to follow through, although I plan to in the forthcoming p2pnet upgrade.

Anyhow, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) has been online forever and these days, “virtually anyone can take a midi file and using a program such as Garage Band or Reason create a near studio quality rendition of their favorite song,” says -1-Lone_Eagle on slashdot.

“This opens up an interesting discussion, is a remixed midi file an original creation? Or is it simply a copied work with the rights belonging to the original author? Is it Piracy? What do the you think?”

So what do you think?”
Via p2pnet.net

Sony BMG and its anti-p2p rep First 4 Internet have the same mentality as the entertainment and software cartels. They don’t just believe we’re dumb. They think we’re really dumb.

A member of the Big Four record label and Big Seven movie studio cartels, Sony BMG thought it had you when it loaded a secret DRM spyware application on some of its music CDs. And it would have done the same for all of its ‘product;’ if it had gotten away with it.
But it didn’t.

Within days of each other, a company, F-Secure, and an individual, Mark Russinovich at Sysinternals, independently uncovered the Sony BMG DRM stashed on the CDs.

They were the first, but they wouldn’t have been the last.

Two class actions, the discovery that there was also a version for Apple Macs and news of the first e-bug centering on Sony BMG DRMS (Digital Restriction Management Spyware) code quickly followed, and now Sony has withdrawn its polluted CDs.

(more…)

The Organized Music family forced Soribada, Korea’s largest p2p file sharing company, to close its Soribada 3 site.
But the company is unrepentant and plans to launch new p2p software soon, says the Chosun Ilbo.

In the US, when OM members EMI Group, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and Sony BMG say ‘jump’ the response is always, ‘How high?’ and, “The move is expected to inflame the powerful music industry, which says file-swapping sites violate its copyright,” says the story

“The Open Soribada software simply supports file-sharing between Internet users, but additional services on the website including registration and reward points will be scrapped,” says the Chosun Ilbo.

Now, “The Soribada webmaster will no longer ask members for personal information or charge them for providing the service in an apparent bid by the firm to place itself beyond the reach of the law.”
“I’m wracking my brain to develop various models that don’t infringe on rights of Internet users and allow us to allocate revenues to copyright holders,” the story has Soribada’s Yang Jung-hwan saying.
Via p2pnet.net