Mercora - New Radio P2P Network
jtids writes "The maker of P2P Client, Shareaza, is working
on a new Radio P2P project called Mercora.
This network gives users the ability legally webcast
music to other users on the network. Users can also share images, send instant
messages, and join groups where they can participate in forums and chatrooms.
Although the program itself is still in beta, the project looks promising."
pist frost
1.) You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal
funding.
2.) You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach 4th-graders
how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.
3.) You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-bidding Americans
are more of a threat than U.S. nuclear weapons technology in the hands of
Chinese and North Korean communists.
4.) You have to believe that there was no art before Federal funding.
5.) You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by
cyclical documented changes in the earth's climate and more affected by
soccer moms driving SUV's.
6.) You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being
homosexual is natural.
7.) You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on
demand.
8.) You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments
create prosperity.
9.) You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but loony
activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.
10.) You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually
doing something to earn it.
11.) You have to believe that the military, not corrupt politicians, start
wars.
12.) You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts
of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain
parts of the Constitution.
13.) You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.
14.) You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more
important to American history than Mary Washington, Betsy Ross, the American
Pioneer Women, Eleanor Roosevelt, "Rosey the Riveter," and Rosa Parks.
15.) You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial
quotas and set-asides are not.
16.) You have to believe that Hillary Clinton is normal and is a very nice
person.
17.) You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked
anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.
18.) You have to believe conservatives telling the truth belong in jail,
but a liar and a sex offender belonged in the White House.
19.) You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag,
transvestites, and bestiality should be constitutionally protected, and
manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
20.) You have to believe that illegal Democratic Party funding by the
Chinese government is somehow in the best interest to the United States.
21.) You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right wing
conspiracy.
lk;djfvadc;asdkcadc dfdsf sadfef rg rfg aeg
dun da dunnn... the riaa comes in and starts subpoena-ing your isp again. those fuckers.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
Sort of like AlohaNet, with warez?
P.S: Taco WILL YOU HURRY THE HELL UP AND FIX SLASH? Half the damn pages won't display properly!
Mercora, a derivation of a Latin word meaning "to trade" and is run by Chief Executive Srivats Sampath, former CEO of McAfee.com
Wired ran an article on this last year here.
1st post
If you are running linux, bsd, mac or anything but windows you're out of luck there is only a windows client. I don't care enough to get this working under wine.
----
doesn't that depend on what you broadcast?
Altise - GNAA, Nigeria.
Arf Arf. International rap sensation Earl 'DMX' Simmons has announce that he swings his gat on the other side of the hood. Our journalists tried to contact the star, whose first four albums debuted at the top of the charts, to find out what his family thought.
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The GNAA welcomes the hip hop sensation and creator of hit tracks such as "X Gon Giv It 2 Ya" and "Where da hood at?" with open arms. A celebrity of this magnitude should provide some great publicity for the GNAA and get their name out even more.
Gay/Straight by DMX
I'm ready for lovin, cause I give head really well.
Ever since I was 7,
I've had a gay story to tell.
You see, anal is great,
and it's why I'm still givin,
head to you,
and I'm a keep on givin.
The bravery of a man's ass is slavery,
which defines the man I was made to be,
cause I'm a nigga who's goin down in history.
About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which
gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.
Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a GAY NIGGER ?
If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GAY NIGGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America. You, too, can be a part of GNAA if you join today!
Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!
First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it. (You can download the movie (~280mb) using BitTorrent, by clicking here.
Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website
Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on irc.gnaa.us, and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!
If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Niggernet, and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as our official server. If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the GNAA Java IRC client by clicking here.
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please
I thought it was ruled a year or so back that all webcasts have to pay royalties to the artists if they boradcast the music over the net. How can this be legal if that is still the case?
roche
Bah Humbug!
I thought free internet died with the proverbial dot com fallout.. it will be interesting to see the sustainability of this project. This might also hurt online radio like shoutcast.
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
Every single time a new p2p client comes out, it gets various posts on different tech sites saying how it's the wave of the future, and it seems only a fraction of the time is it even close to being true, and usually it only attains a fraction of the status that it tries to live up to. While I haven't used this one yet, I myself am very skeptical of the hype (yes, hype!) surrounding this new p2p network.
Sure, it includes some features I've never seen in a p2p client before, but so does the new version of Yahoo Messenger. I'd rather see improvements to the structure and robustness of an existing network/program myself (as Soulseek has done) than a bunch of features that I know I'll never use. Then again, I really don't even download anything anymore.
Just my thoughts on this matter.
legality is based on country of origin and content broadcasted, not the technology
Let your friends stream all their sound to you, rip it from the source, tear it apart and create a legal song archive. No, no profit here ;)
Would this basically suck up all of the upstream bandwidth, so that basically the quality would suck, or you have an audience of 4.
Hopefull now everyone will be able to listen to Howard Stern again,
It seems it's a legal loophole project which relies on the fact that you can broadcast (since they got the license) music that you legally own (so what happens when I transfer over my collection from Kazzaa? - who is liable?). There seems to be little useful technology as such. And it's not anonymous, so basically 1st (can't really do multiple sources for broadcasting of things you own and so ripped yourself, can you?) p2p with a an IM/etc. layer tagged on.
And if it catches on there will likely be a patch so save the streams... bringing on a lawsuit or continuos updates/kracks.
I remember that webcast sites (in essence indexes to internet radio stations) were attacked by the BIG R sometime back...anybody have an update on that?
It seems streaming MP3/RealAudio(lower quality ofcourse) would be the next way to share music, what with Kazaa etal becoming extinct. Ofcourse, Bittorrent, and these webcast stations have the same problem - they need to have an index page to publicize the tracker/links.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Sounds like Konspire2b, but not open source, and only for windows.
Besides, the guy who wrote konspire is also the guy who wrote MUTE, so I think he knows a thing or two about P2P.
From the Gentoo desktop of Luke Harman
All rights reserved of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unautorised Copying, Public performance, Broadcasting, Hiring or rental of this recording is prohibited
APublic. (noun)
1. The community or the people as a whole.
2. A group of people sharing a common interest: the reading public.
3. Admirers or followers, especially of a famous person. See Usage Note at collective noun.
now IANAL but it seems pretty clear to me its illegal
It seems like warez channels have been doing this forever. Once someone gets something, it spends a few days getting passed around all the high-bandwidth providers before it goes to the "public."
I'm glad to see more legal, but free (as in beer) music available. But how long before someone writes a "MyTunes" (or something similar) that allows you to download music (illegally, I'd imagine), off of this service?
It's run by some corporation, and all corporations are only in it for the money, so what's the catch here?
Most *nix users can't configure ALSA correctly
So transmitting an MP3 for this legal, but transmitting an MP3 for sharing purposes is not? Even thought the contents of the data stream are the same? I can't really see how this is going to work. BS
You share pictures on Mercora right from your local directory on your computer. You "tell" the Mercora client about which pictures you want to share and with whom (people on your friends list, etc.) and those pictures can then be viewed by those people when you are both online on the Internet. People who have the permission to view your pictures will also have the ability to download those pictures.
Hmmm...look--somene is sharing Harry_Potter_the_Everlasting_MoneyMill.jpg.
This should be interesting.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
The website gives you the impression that you can webcast the files you have to your friends. However, the restrictions on this (to be legal) make it basically useless to how the majority of people would use this anyway. Read below for the restrictions:
You are not allowed to do any of the following things:
* Publish advance program guides or use other means to pre-announce when particular sound recordings will be streamed or the order in which they will be streamed (this is because we are a non-interactive webcasting service)
* Webcast specific sound recordings within one hour of the request by a listener or at a time designated by the listener
* Webcast audio content for which you do not have the legitimate legal rights for use (music you have ripped from CDs that you own or music you have downloaded from a legitimate online music store like Apple iTunes is considered legitimate, music downloaded using file-sharing programs like KaZaA are not legitimate)
I've tried PeerCast before -- neat idea, but it simply isn't practical -- not many people have enough bandwidth to relay a 128kbps stream realiably, and every time I tried it I got nothing but stuttering and skipping.
How is this different from PeerCast? I glanced at the Web site, and didn't see anything that was revolutionary -- looks like PeerCast combined with IRC to me.
Though, perhaps they have fixed the problems PeerCast seems to have with bandwidth -- I've used it off and on, but it seems to always suffer from lag. Perhaps that would go away if there were more users, or perhaps it's just inherent in the design of the network -- I've never bothered to look at the technical details.
Anyway, I think the more exposure Webcasting has, the better. More variety, smaller players that can appeal to niche audiences, and lack of corporate interests playing to the lowest common denominator for the highest advertising profits are all advantages Webcasting has over traditional, ClearChannel-dominated radio. At the moment, at least. :-)
The network is nice, I admit I use it myself but its not new technology. This also is not a new network because I've been using it for a while. I don't know why this site decides to post this to the top of the page when other P2P news far more important is not posted.
Did you know MUTE developer Jason Rohrer will be speaking at the 5th International Free Software Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil?
View some slides Slide1
and notes Slide2
Lets also not forget that Shareaza is open source now.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Can you get pr0n off it?
At this point there is giant void between 'hobby' P2P webcasting solutions like this and PeerCast and P2P-Radio (http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/) and the professional applications like Abacast, ChainCast and the others. The hobbyist applications fail to deliver the counting tools needed for us to report our listenership numbers appropriately to ASCAP, BMI and the others and still have some flaws in terms of functionality. The proprietary options have these tools available but they are currently not much of a savings compared to the traditional bandwidth options.
What's needed is something like Shoutcast which provides a professional means of distribution, but built on a P2P architecture. To my knowledge that simply doesn't exist, but I have my fingers crossed. As a new webcaster who sees his listenership growing week after week, there may come a time when I can no longer afford to be popular without a REAL P2P webcast solution.
-pjc
Broadcasting LIVE from a Bonus Room Over the Gara
This is definitely a promising idea, but it would get really complicated, I for one at home only have about 30kilobytes a second upload, which is barely enough to radio one song to one person, and would also severely lag me. This kind of thing would probably end up having the people with larger connections all serving the people with smaller pipes, and the people with smaller pipes not giving back (mostly because it is hard). And also, the media industries will probably jump on the legality of this because they don't like these kind of things... because noone will actually serve only music that they legally own, they will also serve music that they downloaded from kazaa and other variations, because not that many people use itunes compared to the people who get songs illegally.
How these people get money?
Are they using spyware or adware, or what?
Here are some Projects that may be of interest to readers.
Streamer P2P Radio
AudioScrobbler
Last FM
Software Freedom Day!.
Presumably, Mercora will pay some sort of royalties on the Webcasts. Even if they get a free ride somehow, they will still have to administer the network (there *does* seem to be some form of central admin for the system) and pay for bandwidth and hosting. What's their business model for supporting the project? I see no visible source of revenue there. If there is no business model, will it all be run from a residential DSL account somewhere, with attendant performance and scaling problems?
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
personal rivalries later seen in 7ery own shitter, it. Its mission is Marketing surveys survival prospects she had no fear
1.) You have to believe that the AIDS virus was created by a magical deity to punish mankind.
2.) You have to believe that the topic of sex is more dangerous to children than exposure to violence and murder via media.
3.) You have to believe democratic nuclear weapons are less of a threat the world than communist nuclear weapons.
4.) You have to believe that the best art comes from corporate associations.
5.) You have to every American has the right to drive a 6 person 10 mpg Sport Van to work and back and that we need to widen all the roads, create more parking lots, and drill for more oil wherever possible, or invade other countries if needed.
6.) You have to believe that homosexuality is new to our society, and the the ideal TV 50's was the perfect era.
7.) You have to pretend to believe that preventing abortion of an inseminated egg is more important than poverty, war, peace, lost of innocent lives or hunger.
8.) You have to believe that dominating businesses like mcdonalds, coca cola, starbucks, walmart and microsoft showcase what quality businesses are all about, and that a government that promotes paranoia, war and censorship will create prosperity.
9.) You have to believe that hunters are just nature lovers with guns and chewing tobacco.
10.) You have to believe that money is more important than actually doing something good to earn it.
11.) You have to believe in the corrupt politicians that start wars as long as they are conservative.
12.) You have to believe that owning a gun for sport, accidental deaths and sometimes self protection is more important than all other freedoms and rights.
13.) You have to believe that taxes and gas prices are too high, and that we should increase military spending as an investment in oil.
14.) You have to believe that women have no place in history or politics except perhaps as first lady to a great man.
15.) You have to believe that standardized tests can help an outdated education system that teaches no modern skills.
16.) You have to believe that Nancy Reagan is normal and is a very nice person.
17.) You don't really know the distinction between socialism and communism, and fail to realize that much of Europe, Canada and some of US policies are socialist.
18.) You have to believe conservatives exaggerating the truth to go to war belong in the White House.
19.) You have to believe the separation of church and state should be ignored by Christians when appropriate.
20.) You have to believe that illegal corporate Republican funding is somehow in the best interest to the United States.
21.) You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, left wing conspiracy.
According to the Wired News article linked to above, they're going to sell DRM-encoded songs but ship them from end-users' hard drives rather than from a central server.
Looking at the Mercora web site, they seem far more p2p-oriented. I'm guessing that, like Kazaa, they plan on making extra money by installing a metric ton of spyware on your PC.
--
Usenet is roughly aal along. *BSD some of you have
Broadcast rights have been reserved by the record companies since when they well, just made records (of the round black variety).
That said, historically the record companies have as often been complicit in illicit broadcasting as they have been desparate to shut it down; in the UK for instance to get around the quota system for live vs. recorded music, pop records were beamed over from Luxembourg and even 'pirate ships' in the North Sea . More recently, much "urban" music owes its intital sucess to underground radio stations like the now-legal Kiss 100.
Was after a long over the same the channel to sign time i'm done here, The project is in
What a lame stupid fucking program... "they can broadcast music, chat and use forums"... You guys are so dumb and the ones making the app are even more stupid !!!
JUST USE THE GOD DAMN FUCKING INTERNET !!! I can broadcast Radio, Chat and use forums on the fucking Internet !!!
Stupid stupid stupid... !"#@$@
...seeing as this is from the same guys who made Shareaza, which is the very likely the best P2P app out there right now. It's the first one where I didn't have to fight the program to get it to do what I wanted, it's rather user friendly, has undetectable amounts of bloat (by me, anyways), and installs a total of 0 third party programs (= spyware). And now version 2.0 is open source. :).
So I'd be inclined to expect good things from them
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/edna/
... you have to know where it is.
Edna is a py script that will stream MP3 files over a network or the internet. It has a nice web front end and if you scan the cover art and drop it into the directory it will display in the web page. The main difference though is that there is no easy way to find your edna server on the internet
At home I have ripped almost all of my and my kids CD's and can listen to them on any PC in the house. Streaming 2 or 3 songs at once doesn't seem to tax the network.
One of my future projects is to put together a (silent) media room PC so that I will be able to pipe MP3's through my main stereo and play them on the speakers in the back yard. (Pool Party!) Right now I have to go inside every once in a while and feed new cd's into the changer.
I can also listen to my entire collection at work, ether by opening up a port to my home network DMZ or by tunneling via SSH or VPN.
It works pretty well. My DSL connection can stream a 128mb MP3 file ok. If I try to stream 2 files however at the same time my DSL line can not handle the upload without pauses. Downloading 2 streams at once though the DSL
One of my co-workers set up an Edna server at home. Listening to 2 streams at once over his cable modem connection works just fine, no pausing.
I also know someone who is putting together a wi-fi enabled system to go in his car. When that is done he will be able to park in his driveway and sync his MP3 collections between his car Edna server and his home Edna server. (hopefully he is reading up on iptables)
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
Are there provisions to prevent "microstations" from springing up? If I don't take requests, but people know they can listen to "Hey Ya" or some other dreck all the time, it's essentially peer-to-peer file sharing, right?
For example, if the client is small enough, I may be able to run five instantiations of the server through different ports, playing five different songs over and over. Then, if someone could come up with an intermediary service to check what songs people are advertising that they have available, users could be "assigned" to broadcast songs, theoretically providing one or several songs to each person to continuously broadcast all the time.
Which might be kind of cool.
"Hey, who are you on Mercora"?
"Dude, I'm "Smells Like Teen Spirit"!
"Sweet! I landed "Tangled Up in Blue."
"Steve, who are you?"
"Batdance."
"..."
to download the may also want which don'7 use tUhe
It runs every time Winblows starts, and there's no turning it off short of uninstalling. That's a deal breaker for me. Now I need a reformat. *sigh*
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Sounds like BitTorrent
John Susek
Bittorrent seems to pick random pieces, which is impossible to use in a live streaming environment. You have to get the bits in the order like it was written in the original file.
Source: bittorrent's economic paper
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
http://www.mercora.com/legal/eula.asp
http://www.peercast.org/ is