New File Sharing Networks

An anonymous reader sends in: "Most readers of slashdot have been following the exploits of the RIAA and their attempts to shut down Napster, KaZaA, Morpheus, etc. In response, it appears some live music fans have taken things into their own hands and started new file sharing networks made exclusively for trading live recordings of bands that allow that sort of thing. The main player, RNL has reached version 1.0, features a distributed architecture, supports linux, and is even GPLed. Another peice of interesting software is Furthur. Though still only in beta, Furthur has cool features like allowing a user to piggy-back another user's download to reduce the load of the uploader."

Comments

Re:If you're looking for anonymity,

[evilviper]

FreeNet is crap. It's not as useable as Gnutella (no search, no easy way to ad hosts, no real search feature, etc), and it's copying the files you want through host after host after host before it even gets to you.

If you people thought Gnutella had growing pains (which have now been resolved) then FreeNet will be having constant growing-hemorages. Even an incredibly fast connection can only handle so many broadband connections downloading at full speed of of it... And chances are, your data won't be routed through the fastest of the fastest. Rather, a dozen people's MP3s will be getting routed through Fred's 14.4 Modem connetion.

Text files may work okay, but downloading an entire ISO over FreeNet would probably cause more traffic than the entire internet could take.

And by the time everyone's connections are 10Mbps, Those ISO will be several DVDs in size, and the problems for FreeNet will just be getting worse.

FreeNet? Not if your trading anything bigger than a text file.

Gnutella may not be as anonymous, but you can still simply get your story together ahead of time and say it was just something you accidentally downloaded and didn't even know you had.

And if RIAA or the MPAA starts watching Gnutella traffic, just zip all those files with a 1 digit password, making it illegial for anyone to decrypt unless you've explicitly given them the password. May not stop opressive governments, but if they're opressive in the first place, why would they allow you to run FreeNet/Gnutella?