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Wrapster Allows Napster To Distribute Any File
An anonymous reader sent us a bit that's running over at CNet and talking about a wrapper for napster called Wrapster that allows
distribution of files besides just the MP3s for which the software is known. Now suddenly it's a distributable filesystem... Wild.
There's also the issue of viruses and trojans. How long before somebody has an army of Netbus'ed machines because the owners wanted Quake 3 for free?
I can think of two ways of handling this. A trusted site could list md5 checksums of the various warez, and i don't think that would be illegal. The software could be configured to automatically check the site whenever it got a file.
Alternatively, warez groups could pgp-sign all their releases, and again, the application could have a list of which warez groups were to be trusted. A lot of them really care about reputation, and so would keep their stuff virus- and trojan-free.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I wonder how long do we have to wait for the first Napster-enabled trojans/viruses: on execution copy oneself to a napsterized directory, rename to something like new_pamela_anderson_mpg.exe and wait for others to pull it in...
:-) masses to realize that before something reformats their hard drive for the n-th time, where n is inversely correlated with IQ.
This is only one reason why getting executables from unknown sources is a bad idea. More have been pointed out in other posts around here.
However, I don't expect the (unwashed
On the other hand, sharing data files over WrapGnapNapster is very interesting idea. I see some parallels to Usenet and to things like Eternity service (which aims to make it impossible to unpublish stuff).
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Dialup users totally violoating the acceptible use policy by running server systems on dialup accounts keeping their connection live while they are on vaction in the netherlands. So people who don't violate the policy can't get online.
Not to mention the amount of bandwidth consumption put on an ISP by this activity.
I am all for the use of distributed filesystems like this, but until someone comes out with a way for me to firewall my users ability to be a server for this stuff , I am afraid I have to firewall them all out from napster all together. I would love to allow them download ability on personal connections, and not server, but there's no way to do that.
So until that happens only my business accounts have full Inet access.
I know you all are hardcore geeks and all, but I don't think the majority of people are going to use this to download Windows 2000. I think there will be 2 main uses for this: Music and Porno, neither of which needs to be an executable file. That porno option was sorely lacking from the original napster.
Hey, maybe this tool could even be used for things other than w4r3z. How about .. oh, I don't know ... um, how about hypertext documents? You could use this to share hypertext documents. Even modify the software to automatically display the hypertext documents instead of just downloading and storing. Then, when someone clicks on a link to another document, it would automatically retrieve it.
That would be revolutionary!
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
One thing my page has which is cool is a web interface to Gnutella! You can download files from the Gnutella network right over the web...hopefully I will hack up some better stuff as time allows
We live in amusing times. :)
James
Imagine, for example, a browser that, while a given page is loading, goes out and pings the pages that are linked to, checks their existence and the time it takes to get to them, and displays this information when you roll over the link. Suddenly, a user's experience of the "web" becomes much more reliable: they follow the links that they know to exist and be available at that moment, instead of floundering around hitting pages that went away a long time ago.
Napster's success has been largely because of the reliability (and therefore time-saving) that it promises someone looking for a given resource. That's also why it's being extended to include additional media times. It would be great if we could build this reliability into existing technology.
insmod napsterfs.o /dev/napsterfs /nap
/nap/MP3/By_Group/Korn/*.mp3 ~/mp3s /nap/hollywood/1999/The_Matrix.mpg.gz ~/vids /nap/SURPRESSED/DeCSS.tar.gz...
mount
cp
cp
tar zxvf
OK who's gonna write napsterfs.o?
http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10080-100-158 1508.html?tag=st.dl.10001_103_1.lst.td
Cheers,
-j.
Click here for the website for wrapster.
http://pevets.virtualave.net
Now I can start distributing a postscript version of my manifesto, not just the 20Mb mp3 of me reading it.
I woke up this morning, I was feeling kind of high, it was me, Jesus Christ and Haile Salassie I.
We obviously need to put a stop to this before we have another Oklahoma City on our hands!
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dinner: it's what's for beer
Wrapster simply wraps valid MP3 header information around the binary file you're Wrapping, and saves it with a .mp3 extension.
It gives it values of 32KB/s bit rate, and 32K Frequency. So, in Napster, you simply set your Advanced Search fields to look for only files equal to those values, and do a search on whatever term you're looking for. I have yet to actually find any Wrapster files on Napster.
What would be really cool is if you could define ID3 tag information to be saved as part of the archive, because Napster would be able to search through that information, and it would make things a ton easier. Does Napster support ID3v2? This would allow complete descriptions of the archive to be searched through.
Very creative hack, though.
I have not been following Napster and it's clones in the past, but this seems different. How does it recognise a file? Does it just use the filename?
So I take linux-2.0.10.tar.gz, rename it linux-2.2.14.tar.gz somewhere and watch people fall into very large holes? Rebranding Win 3.11 as Win98TE would be even more fun, and no-one would even be able to sue without admitting that they were pirating software.
I like to have control over where my downloads come from and this program looks like a license to self-destruct for it's users.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
I really thought Gnutella was going to be cool. I know the guys at Nullsoft can kick out some really tight code. They know what they're doing. It doesn't take long to realize that Napster is just a special case of a much more general case of distributed file sharing.
/control/ of information. The internet is completely contrary to their whole foundation. And they will /have/ to adapt. Period. Once the dam of information control bursts you can't put the put the water back in...
I have no sympathy for the media syndicates. There is simply NO way that they could NOT have realized that the internet would introduce an entirely new paradigm. If they didn't realize it, well they deserve what they're getting for being so stupid and unadaptable. I'm sure the original creators of the internet, of TCP/IP, the guy who started the Gutenburg project, were aware of the enormous potential and paradigm shift the internet would introduce. It introduces cheap and ubiquitous exchange of information. Media fat cats have long lived on
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Anyone notice how the examples for what kind of software can be traded with Wrapster are sure to make it seem controversial?
The article actually states "Hey now we can go out and download Hollywood movies and Windows 2000". This seems to be an indirect attempt to get the software as much flack as possible so just in case the RIAA doesn't bite the MPAA and BSA should. I wonder what C|Net's ulterior motive is?
I thought this would be a cool thing to do, too. Sure makes it a whole lot easier than Hotline, but I wonder about security...especially in light of the way Napster gives drive paths to the files it transfers. How many Windows registries could I download?
I know you can configure Napster to only share specific directories, but there are plenty of people who don't bother with those things.
There's also the issue of viruses and trojans. How long before somebody has an army of Netbus'ed machines because the owners wanted Quake 3 for free?
I'm not sure, but this could be a bad thing in the end. If sysadmins need a reason to block Napster, the "Evil Hacker" threat is always good for instant credibility.
I think I'll wait for a little more security before going this route. On the other hand, maybe I should download Back Orifice....