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The Information Anarchy weblog is being enhanced with a wiki centered around peer to peer networks.

There is already a lot of good content and structure. Go, contribute!

silence

Lately I found a reference to Kademila on the Information Anarchy Wiki.

Haven't tried.
Maybe you can find more on IA.

silence

Lately I found a reference to Kademila on the Information Anarchy Wiki.

Haven't tried.
Maybe you can find more on IA.

silence

Well, as someone who tries to look beyond the obvious, I actually researched the reasons why these laws spread and, surprise, it's not because of the US government, it's because of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization of the United Nations. The 1996 WIPO World Copyright Treaty, among other things, requires signatory nations to enact legislation that prohibts the circumvention of copy prevention. See my article Understanding WIPO for details. Unfortunately, most people don't recognize the importance of WIPO, and EFF does little to bring it into the spotlight.

Wow, nice troll!

While there's no dedicated Ogg chip currently, there's proably very few, if any, dedicated WMA chips out there, so immediate availability of Ogg chips isn't a make-or-break for the format.

However, as for the parent post's link to that single, outdated study, I think I trust the huge, distributed test covered by c't over one guy, thanks.

Floating-point intesive? Try again. Take a careful look at the HUGE TEXT at the very top of the page.

And how about those format specifications, eh?

If anything's a joke here, it's your post. :P

I think the infoAnarchy Wiki covers it better than I could.

too bad there are no Linux clients for it.

The latest CVS version of Lopster does WPNP as well as OpenNap. Here are instructions on building it and getting connected to the WinMX network.

I tried to submit this a couple of times, but it was rejected. Google has in beta a service known as "google answers". Pay google 50c for a listing fee, then post a question you want answered by google users. Min price for a question is $4, and google gets 1$ of that. Max price for a question is $50 IIRC.

Lots of fun looking at all the questions, and answers. eg one of them was asking for pictures of duck bottoms, and another asked for the meaning of life valued at a pathetic $4.

This has already been posted to infoanarchy.org and kuro5hin.org. I thought slashdot would have picked it up, but haven't so far.

Coincidence du jour: InfoAnarchy has just posted a review of Siva's Copyrights and Copywrongs. Check it out!

Here's the public domain version of the story, for those of you who want true freedom. I still haven't figured out why freedom of speech doesn't apply in this case. Maybe because he wasn't "talking"?

See "An Analysis of Current File-Sharing Systems" for more information. IRC trading is the way to go. Branding is just as important in the piracy scene as in corporate America, and specific IRC channels are devoted entirely to single ripping groups.

Ever checked your MP3 comment fields? Most of mine, at least, are riddled with tags from ripping groups, claming credit for their hard work. EGO, CMS, or my personal favorite Team RNS, infiltrate recording studios and provide high-quality rips as zips. You can trust these groups to provide high-quality 192kbps rips, they must provide quality or face dimishining of their brand name. However, once the secondary crowd gets their hands on the perfect MP3s via IRC, they share on second-level trading networks such as FastTrack, OpenNap, Gnutella, Blubster, or WinMX. That's where the problem begins. By using a trusted source, one can easily get perfect copies of CDs online, several times easier than a retail store can provide.

Ummm... did you know that (in the US) blind people are allowed to recieve copyrighten books for free if they are certifiably blind. There is actually an undertaking to convert novels into a form usable by the blind. Ahh just found a link.

You don't know of enough tech sites to claim that "almost every tech site" banded together on something. No one does.

This report is false. Google is still censoring Operation Clambake, they have just relisted the root URL.

If this page is at all correct, MusicCity are lying through their teeth.

Apparently the FastTrack protocol was upgraded a little more than two weeks ago. A grace period of two weeks was given, to allow users to upgrade their clients. Remember what the Morpheus requester said? "Your program is to old to connect the network."

Grokster, the third (and smallest) FastTrack licensee upgraded their client, Morpheus for some unimaginable reason did not.

Apparently this is a question of politics... Kazaa/FastTrack and Morpheus have had some sort of falling out. Morpheus have long been working on their 2.0 version. Gnucleus say that they have felt for some time that Morpheus is moving toward gnutella.

<speculation>
For some reason, Morpheus became pissed of with Kazaa, and to decided to devote a few man-years to constructing a new client + protocol upgrades which would let them move to the gnutella network without the users even noticing. Kazaa pulled a fast one and changed the protocol, without notifying (perhaps even keeping the docs from) Morpheus, and here we are...
</speculation>

For those of you who are interested in where those juicy 3.500.000 users are going, I have followed the IRC at MusicCity. At first, everyone was in a state of complete panic. Seriously, some of the reactions were quite unbelievable... My life is over! My life is over!!! or how about this one The FBI are at my door!!! Delete your files!!! Delete you files ***NOW***!!!!! :-) Then, about half defected to Kazaa/Grokster, while the other half waited for the new version.

The new version arived, 1.500.000 persons installed it. Unfortunately, 95%+ thinked it utterly sucked and most of them are currently seeking desperately for a new system.

Note: numbers are based on dl stats at download.com. Currently 1,998,910 downloads of Kazaa this week, and 1,394,331 for the new Morpheus.

JohnBE writes "'This article

as a whole.'

Its just so wrong for that scgmille to copy so blatently from that poorscgmile guy. er. wait...

This is off-topic, but it is a reply to a genuine question. The answer BTW is to post a submision to infoanarchy.org.

Some background on WIPO can be found here.

I know it is off-topic, but don't forget the other war that will significantly effect the future of the net. The p2p vs *AA war. So far the *AA has won several battles already. I wonder if they can win them all, or will the infoanachists eventually triumph. Being an infoanarchist I hope we win, but I fear we, and the internet, will lose.

Keep coding infoanarchists, you are our only hope.

However, for the average Linux user, WINE shouldn't matter much. After all, what's the reason he uses Linux? Certainly not running Win32 apps, but trying to find free, open alternatives. We should not try to run MS Office but rather improve Open Office & Co. (and agree on a common document standard, damnit). Instead of investing time and money in getting PhotoShop to run on Linux, how about investing time or money in GIMP instead? Etc. etc.

Add to this the fact that WINE has taken on a pretty large challenge. Given the speed with which Microsoft can (and possibly will) change their APIs in the future (and possibly make their own apps incompatible with WINE if it becomes a threat), I don't know if running common applications is really feasible. Again, hardware emulation looks like the more viable approach to me.

Let's also not forget that, were it not for Microsoft's OEM contracts, most PCs would probably come with a running, easy-to-use, well-configured Linux configuration by now, so new users could try both systems separately without ever having to touch Win32.

The emerging P2P scene is still pretty interesting. For the curious there are a few good resources out there for the latest info on peer networks in general:

www.infoanarchy.org

www.peertal.com

Decentralization mailing list

P2P-hackers mailing list

It's worth pointing out that most of the dialogue is only "fascinating" if you accept the clumsy application of copyright to electronic works. Surely it isn't necessary here to reiterate why copyright is so grossly inapplicable to electronic works.

Or is it still necessary? While people have been offering well-constructed arguments against copyright for years, "progress" marches on, in the shape of lawyers and their loopy discussions about the "unexplored terrain" of "encrypted token servers". Look, if copyright law makes it illegal to copy work X, then everybody who participates, even unknowingly, is liable -- somehow or another. There is no question of finagling some workaround through encryption or any other scheme...sooner or later the copyright owner is going to come knocking. The real, unresolved questions, are still about whether copyright can be reformed or replaced with something that fits the technology space we live in.

Fail to support UN effort to prevent Biological weapons via independent inspection (yet America sees fit to solely enforce the idea in the middle east) - rest of planet supports this effort.

Fail to support UN effort to limit and monitor the trade of Handheld weapons - rest of planet supports this effort.

Fail to support Kyoto protocol *EVEN AFTER* it had been reduced to half effectiveness - rest of planet supports this effort

Extends corporate control of Speech/Thought/Action into the monster known as DMCA. Leads fight via WIPO to have rest of world implement their own version of a law that would have them comply with the WIPO 1996 Copyright Treaty. (See : Understanding WIPO (down the page a bit)).

Has ridiculously looong copyrights. (see Disney-Bono Term Extensions)

Plan Columbia - a reaction to the mindless war on (some) drugs.

America's Solution to health care is to pass a 'patients bill of rights' which amounts to methods for people to sue one another - never mind universal health care (like Britons and Canucks (and some others) enjoy. Canadians/Britons: Is the present 'health care crisis' a pre-cursor to 'harmonizing' with Americans with regards to health care?? think about it...

Not to mention the archaic first-past-the post political system, Republicrat domination of all politics.

Unbelievable Media Concentration which self-censors in order to support present power-structure/re-enforces mindless consumption/limits public discourse/leads to the present soul-less pandering to the lowest common denominator (Brittany spears, daniel steele, sitcoms-of-all-types, clearchannel, AOL-TimeWarner, RIAA, MPAA)

Tolerance of Anti-Competitive Monopolies (M$)

Threatens world peace with idiotic chest-thumping missile - *miltiary-industrial-complex-political-kickbacks-p orkbarrel-terrorisim-propaganda* *bullshit* defence *bullshit* program.

Unbelievable 'energy policies' that would pump oil in nature reserves all in an effort to avoid a buying petroleum products in the same market as everyone else (read: maintain the public subsidy which enables unbelievable levels of mindless-consumption)

Before the rest of the world decides to model American-policy, they need to determine some priorities and try and evaluate which things are cause-and-effect. Basically, America seems happy to live in a Plutocracy - would you?

Where is the international effort, with this kind of *power* to harmonize Labour Law? Environmental Law? WorkPlace Safety Law? Public Safety Law? Health Care? Education? Why is it that seemingly more and *MORE* ridiculous efforts are being mounted and pushed on an staggering international basis that have no relationship to improving the lives of the Citizens of the Planet? On whose behalf are our politicians acting?

Here is an article on infoanarchy.org, that includes a pre-emptive letter from Fox to get ISP's to do its dirty work in halting trafficing of "Planet of The Apes".

A crisis such as this one is an important test case for Slashdot as an organizing medium for the tech community. In this instance, Slashdot has completely failed. Even just reporting about the protests would not have been enough, you need to motivate people to take part in such a protest shortly before it. Show images, link to videos, post a permanent story on the front page -- that singals importance. You have to reach people's emotions to get them off their asses (and for that, you have to get off your own ass, Hemos). Do you think CmdrTaco and Hemos will understand that? Or will anyone who points out their failure simply be moderated down? Slashdot is a site with great political potential -- but in spite of years in the making, it has failed to realize its potential so far.

Visitors only have a limited viewtime per day. Do you really want to give that all to Slashdot, if it degenerates into a fake community site primarily giving you a highly filtered digest of CNN, ZDNet, Wired News and press releases? If this is not a test case -- an unjust arrest, an unconstitutional law, rallies all over the nation --, then what is?

You may want to check out some alternatives:

• Kuro5hin is a user-moderated community with a wide scope of topics (specific issue-related stories are usually voted up by the users if well-presented, stories are not typically one-liners like on Slashdot. I've never seen a really good story voted down on K5)
• Advogato is a very open community with trust-based moderation that has often discussed issues related to information freedom
• Indymedia is a leftist general community news outlet that sometimes has tech stories as well
• infoAnarchy is a Scoop-based weblog discussing issues of copyright and information freedom which I edit (here's my summary of Dmitry's case)
• Wes Felter's weblog is a pretty good digest of current tech-related events
• Radio Userland allows you to automatically compile a personal digest from many web news-sources using RSS (Windows and MacOS) -- if Slashdot is only mainstream news, you might as well use a tool like this one

Others?

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A crisis such as this one is an important test case for Slashdot as an organizing medium for the tech community. In this instance, Slashdot has completely failed. Even just reporting about the protests would not have been enough, you need to motivate people to take part in such a protest shortly before it. Show images, link to videos, post a permanent story on the front page -- that singals importance. You have to reach people's emotions to get them off their asses (and for that, you have to get off your own ass, Hemos). Do you think CmdrTaco and Hemos will understand that? Or will anyone who points out their failure simply be moderated down? Slashdot is a site with great political potential -- but in spite of years in the making, it has failed to realize its potential so far.

Visitors only have a limited viewtime per day. Do you really want to give that all to Slashdot, if it degenerates into a fake community site primarily giving you a highly filtered digest of CNN, ZDNet, Wired News and press releases? If this is not a test case -- an unjust arrest, an unconstitutional law, rallies all over the nation --, then what is?

You may want to check out some alternatives:

• Kuro5hin is a user-moderated community with a wide scope of topics (specific issue-related stories are usually voted up by the users if well-presented, stories are not typically one-liners like on Slashdot. I've never seen a really good story voted down on K5)
• Advogato is a very open community with trust-based moderation that has often discussed issues related to information freedom
• Indymedia is a leftist general community news outlet that sometimes has tech stories as well
• infoAnarchy is a Scoop-based weblog discussing issues of copyright and information freedom which I edit (here's my summary of Dmitry's case)
• Wes Felter's weblog is a pretty good digest of current tech-related events
• Radio Userland allows you to automatically compile a personal digest from many web news-sources using RSS (Windows and MacOS) -- if Slashdot is only mainstream news, you might as well use a tool like this one

Others?

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Sorry, I should have put more info in my previous post. Here's a link to a story I got off of Google, as well as the article, itself:

BEGIN QUOTE

"The latest version of AudioGalaxy contains webHancer, which is one of the most malicious spyware packages I have ever seen. webHancer is marketed as a "performance analysis" tool. But they are not just analyzing the performance of AG's web server -- webHancer sends information about your browsing habits to webHancer's central server, without your knowledge, in the background. This information, according to their privacy policy, includes: "Dns Lookup Time, Response Time, Network Round Trip Time, Load Time, Connection Delay and Access Speed." But obviously, this does not make any sense without logging the sites you are connected to, especially since the program is bundled with software that is unrelated to the sites it analyzes. Indeed, a short usenet search turns up a post by a webhancer employee, where he writes:

webhancer collects real end user data (35 million samples a day). From the end user PC and aggregates them accross the Internet as well as by industry vertical. We also have a subscription service that can show performance by site, domain, directory, and url.

In another posting (he has spammed a lot of groups), he writes:

We have a small peice [sic] of software that sits on end-users computers (voluntarily) and relays performance information as they surf the web like page load times, throughputs, TCP connects, DNS lookups, stopped page load times, etc.

The program plugs into your TCP/IP socket and is not removed automatically when you uninstall AG. In fact, if you use Windows' Add/Remove, you may no longer be able to use your Internet connection, as several users of webHancer-infected software have reported (example). webHancer is confirmed spyware by Spychecker. If you have recently installed AudioGalaxy, download and run Ad-Aware to remove webHancer. Do NOT attempt to uninstall webHancer yourself, or you may lose your Internet connection.

If you have been a long-time AudioGalaxy user, webHancer may not be installed on your system. AudioGalaxy has silently sneaked in webHancer without changing the version number.

At this point, I must recommend NOT TO USE AUDIOGALAXY, both because of system security and privacy concerns. Please see my rundown on file sharing software for alternatives. And if you find out that any software recommended here contains spyware, and I haven't denoted this here, please alert me immediately. Spyware is becomming a bigger problem than regular Trojan horses and virii. "

END QUOTE

Lots of people are trying to cash in on the mad rush of people trying to get more mp3s. Whether it be Spyware, advertising, whatever. So you have to be careful what you are using.

he best place I have discovered so far, to download MP3; is audiogalaxy.com.

Audio galaxy is spyware!!!

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Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.

For more in-depth discussion of these issues, check out InfoAnarchy. Slyway is a good guide to what's currently the best way to obtain music, movies, and software.

See InfoAnarchy.org for a discussion of CryptoBox. It isn't clear what exactly it is trying to accomplish and the cryptography doesn't seem very thoroughly worked out.

Zero Knowledge has failed on engineering grounds (efficiency, compatibility, etc. etc.) and on grounds of marketing, business, user interface, etc., but their cryptography was always real strong cryptography from the beginning. They employed many of the best cryptographers and crypto hackers of the world (including Ian Goldberg, Stefan Brands, Adam Back, Adam Shostack...), and they tried to design a system that would strongly protect users even in the face of a very sophisticated, expensive attack such as could be launched by a government or by organized crime.

CryptoBox does not have the same cryptographic pedigree. On the other hand, there is a project still in the design stages called "Free Haven" that is staffed by experienced crypto hackers. (No, I'm not a part of that project, although I would consider joining it in the future...).

Regards,

Zooko

cheers.

I checked Infoanarchy.org's queue this morning and this news story is extremely interesting. Check the sourceforge page here.

After reading the overview of that project, it looks much safer and more anonymous than Freenet (it probably even scales better too).

I checked Infoanarchy.org's queue this morning and this news story is extremely interesting. Check the sourceforge page here.

After reading the overview of that project, it looks much safer and more anonymous than Freenet (it probably even scales better too).

• Once communities scale beyond a certain size, bandwidth becomes too expensive. This problem isn't likely to go away anytime soon because collaborative media will have to use videos and images (maybe even 3D data) in the future to emotionally compete with corporate media. In other words, while bandwidth will become cheaper, more of it will be necessary. The cost problem can be at least partially solved through voluntary payments, subscription etc., but the more obvious solution is to directly spread distribution costs over the users by using decentralized networks.
• Centralized discussion forums are very vulnerable to censorship and other forms of corporate control. The Scientology incident is only one example of this. K5 has not yet experirenced it, and it makes sense for Rusty to ignore this problem (or even to justify the censorship, as he has done, like many others, in the Scientology case), but that won't make it go away.
• Let me point out that I am not just anticopyright because I want "free stuff". Copyright is an effective instrument of censorship, especially if it can be transferred from the original creators. But even they may desire the removal of their works from the public when pressured many years later (I could give you examples of this). One of the key problems of free, collaborative media will also be the creation of visual content. In doing this, it is often inevitable to violate someone's copyright. The erosion of fair use and strict persecution of copyright violators will have the same effects on collaborative writing that software patents have on open source software development. A decentralized network can give better protection to its users and avoid the forced removal of content with the help of copyright, either for economic or ideological reasons.

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The facts are that corporations can manipulate the perception of reality of many people, and thereby, eventually, in some ways, reality itself. Those who don't believe this should read Toxic Sludge is Good For You and, as an intro into what you may expect, The PR Plot to Overheat the Earth. Toxic Sludge should be required reading in high school. It points out the many ways in which corporations are actively spreading disinformation and distorting our perception of reality, to maximize their profits -- often with deadly results. It easily refutes the most basic flaw in libertarian ideology, that free and informed decisions are possible in a centralized, corporate media world.

Rusty makes a valid point; namely, that the only way to fix this problem is by allowing people, instead of corporations interested only in maximizing profit (and speaking through corporate media), to inform other people -- building "communities" (a word which I merely put in quotes because of its [ab]use by others).

What is less interesting (but probably important to Rusty himself, who seems to only recently have discovered these facts) is the discussion of reality and what makes it. Unfortunately, this is the intro to the article, so many may stop reading there. Also unfortunately, the meatier parts are not backed up with sources. The truth about reality vs. perception is pretty easy to sum up:

• There is an objective reality.
• Our perception of reality tends to be an approximation, since reality is not a closed system, yet our information about it is limited. (The only method by which this approximation can be perfected is the scientific one, as compared to religious belief, which is basically guessing.)

Things get really messy once you start questioning the idea that there is actually an objective reality to begin with. Don't do that. If you assume that there is no objective reality, the first assumption you make is subject to this theory. That means it's both wrong and right at the same time. That means it's worthless. Constructivism and postmodernism are, therefore, bullshit. Rusty's arguments go a bit in the postmodern direction (or at least sound like it), but not too much.

All in all, I would have preferred more interesting real-life examples of mass manipulation and a neurophysiological explanation of the mechanisms of manipulation, but if I want to read that, I probably have to write it myself. Those of you who want to talk about the actual solutions to the discussed problems should subscribe to p2pj, a mailing list about peer-to-peer journalism (or "collaborative media", if you prefer that) which I have created.

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Go download your favorite Gnutella-based client program, connect, and do a search for the porn of your choice. It's so easy to amass gigabytes of mpegs that it's a wonder people will actually pay to visit x-rated websites. There are also centralized filesharing programs (FileNavigator) which will allow you to trade video with others who are also connecting to various OpenNap servers.

Very informative peer-to-peer links:

www.clip2.com
www.infoanarchy.org

From these places you can audit various downloadables as well as read the latest p2p news.

It is here, if you are interested. And yes, Jon is wrong, again :-)

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I've been hearing the argument of "intellectual inbreeding" a lot. It seems like a strawman argument to me. You should watch some political discussion forums. In the liberal discussion forums, the conservatives are ignored -- in the conservative discussion forums, the liberals are ignored. People with so different views don't really talk to each other, even if they DO talk to each other. Even the mistakes that are undisputable are disputed. You can rationalize about everything, and people do it all the time.

That's how the human brain works. It's our limbic system, our emotion center, that causes certain feelings when we think about certain subjects. When the smoker reads about the 238348th study that shows that smoking causes cancer, he knows: "If this is true, I'd have to stop smoking." Then his limbic system gets into the game: "But I don't WANT to stop smoking. Hey, cortex, think of a reason that I shouldn't stop doing it." Result: "Oh you know, George, for every study there's one that shows exactly the opposite. And by the way, my father was a regular smoker and lived until age 75 without problems. Why should I care?" Limbic system: "Great job, now I feel better. Give me another of those Marlboros .." ;-)

The effect is called selective perception. People ignore the information that contradicts their emotionally cemented worldviews. Most people aren't even able -- you might say they're physically, anatomically unable -- to change their views on fundamental subjects. Selective perception is a really, really powerful mechanism.

Is all hope lost for reason, then? I don't think so, but it has nothing to do with collaborative filtering. It's the ability to derive pleasure not from learning something that confirms what you know, but learning something that sounds like the truth. It's the "gut feeling" that truth is more important than "gut feelings". With an open mind, you will constantly seek new information to build a logically consistent worldview - from all reasonable sources.

Unfortunately, only few people have this ability. Not because that's some kind of elitist natural law, but because our education system doesn't teach the scientific reasoning that's necessary to discern science from pseudoscience and truth from falsehood. The intellectuals are preaching postmodernism while the rest of the world goes to hell.

Carl Sagan has written that while his parents were extremely important for his scientific career, his school did nearly entirely discourage him from ever going into the field of science. Only later at university he met the interesting guys. It's quite obvious that the education system will hardly get better, only worse. Need I say Columbine? The American education system is a hellhole for kids that are different, and the European one is often not really much better.

The new media, however, give kids many new opportunities. Right now, it's still extremely difficult for a youngster to see the difference between what some nazi is saying on a propaganda website, or a scientific analysis of World War II. Because the kid probably doesn't have the value system to discern science from pseudoscience, he's virtually lost in the information jungle.

The only solution, then, are the reputation and rating systems we already talked about. But here, the problem hinges a lot on how the reputations are implemented. It is absolutely essential that you have sophisticated trust metrics. I.e. an information can be recommended to me because a "friend of a friend of a friend" has recommended it.

How popular one identity is within the network depends on their past history. People who are extremely suspectible to selective perception will be only trusted by people who share their particular fetishes. People who have an open mind, however, will be trusted by all users -- not on all subjects, but on some by each. Because they are the more reliable source of information.

That way, people who are very good at fact-checking will inevitably rise to the top. Kids will be able to find mentors easily, and will learn to use the methods employed by them. These kids will grow up to be even better information managers -- the most important ability of the next century.

In other words, collaborative filtering is not the problem, it is the solution. The situation we have right now is the problem, because dangerous memes can spread in isolated parts of the network, whereas a working trust metric combined with recommendation systems permeates the entire network and brings the best thinkers to the top.

Sure, you can killfile them -- but the only effect will be that you yourself are isolated. The most dogmatic groups will also use whatever network becomes popular in the future, and they will try to shield themselves against any and all ideas that they find dangerous. But they will not be able to gain new members this way. They will die. The open minded ones will prevail.

The idea of forcing people to include links they don't like is about as appealing to me as forcing schools to teach creationism.

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Infoanarchy.org is a weblog for the discussion of information freedom and p2p apps that help create that freedom. If that interests you, then don't forget to visit.

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And if you are looking for a good p2p don't forget to check the resources page. Thankyou.

Crowds: http://www.research.att.com/projects/crowds/

Page linking to it, with various other things (anonymizing, peer-to-peer etc.): http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=special&page=resour ces

Napster can be used like a streaming audio directory if you have enough bandwidth and find users with the right speed. I have played a lot of songs while d/ling them. Pretty cool: 1) Search any song you like, 2) find fastest location, 3) play live. For maximum speed, Kazaa is quite cool, it bundles downloads from several locations to achieve higher speeds.

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infoAnarchy reports on the many, many alternatives to Scour & Napster, be it distributed or centralized. It uses the K5 site engine, meaning anyone can submit stories and moderate submissions.

In our Resources section, you can get an overview of the many available file sharing tools. Here's the ones I would recommend:

• One of the best alternative feature-wise is Filetopia (its userbase is relatively small).
• And for MP3s, Songspy is quite powerful.
• If you like Napster, get Napigator. It allows you to connect to OpenNap servers where any file type can be shared (and which are not concerned by any changes in Napster's business model).
• A good alternative to the Windows Napster client is FileNavigator.
• Recently reborn: CuteMX, has a lot of features but requires IE.
• Somewhat closer to Gnutella, with distributed servers: DirectConnect
• Distributed, anonymous, encrypted: Blocks

But again, please come visit us at iA to find out about the best new tools. We know our stuff.

File sharing will never die.

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