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Exeem "Successor" to Suprnova Announced
First, Exeem really isn't an extension of Suprnova as the hype might have you believe: the connection between the two seems more marketing than anything else. Sloncek has been hired to promote their product as the heir apparent to his popular website, but his involvement really seems to be almost entirely PR. It'll work obviously: my headline on this story mentions Suprnova, and so will hundreds of websites around the world in the coming days. "Yet another p2p app" would not create anywhere near the waves that "Successor to Suprnova Announced" will. I hope that people judge exeem by its own merits and not by its (clever) marketing.
Second, Exeem is pretty much what was rumored earlier: a blending of the tracker, the BitTorrent client, and decentralized indexing. It's Windows only. It's in beta now, and will be out at some indeterminate date in the future. It also has a rating and commenting system which appears to be somewhat rudimentary. It's unclear to me if the rating system will be as useless as other attempts, and I think this is the critical thing: Suprnova succeeded because the content available on it was verified and trustworthy. Suprnova was as much the work of a few dozen editors as it was a list of torrent URLs. So far no other p2p system has achieved that level of accuracy. Exeem supports magnet sites which is a start, but not exactly p2p either. And did I mention that it's adware?
Third, there's a mystery company. Someone is paying Sloncek. He won't say who, but there's a history in the p2p world of secretive development. Since Exeem is to be adware, someday it will have a billing address, which means the legal issues faced by predecessors like Napster and Kazaa will be forthcoming, which is of course why we have a mystery company that Sloncek won't talk about in the first place. We definitely haven't heard the last of this.
Personally I was hoping for more: source code and cross platform compatibility never hurts. These are the things that made BitTorrent a huge success. I guess I was hoping for a new protocol instead of just another Kazaa. I guess I was hoping for a monumental leap, and instead Exeem to be a more incremental step. I'm sure we'll learn more in the coming weeks.
I can't help but wonder if BitTorrent is the application that finally pushes people towards Freenet. That would appear to be the obvious way of decentralizing it, without requiring platform specific software, and providing anonymity for both producers and consumers in the process.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I really need to be able to mod slashdot errors...
-1 Annoying!
-1 Obvious! *sigh*
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
So it's Windows only and adware. This is nothing like Suprnova.
The parent article is a Troll.
you can already find cracked copies of the latest version on *gasp* bittorrent sites :)
Investing forum
what makes this better than other peer2peer programs like limewire or bearshare or mldonkey. If you remove the tracker/website approach then all the stuff out there becomes unverified and you lose the appeal of using BitTorrent.
Have you metaroderated recently?
If you know where to look, there's a closed beta of eXeem avaliable - however, it needs a beta key in order to join the network - and it can't be a random key, i.e. it's assigned by the Suprnova team. At the time of writing, the version I have is 0.16, and does NOT include any adverts of some sort, although yes Sloncek did confirm this earlier this evening.
The basic user interface is friendly, and it's basically a "compact" version of Kazaa (you have to use it to really understand).
As for the release date, it "won't be this week, or next week, but very very soon". It'll be an open beta, to chink out all the bugs.
... from the remaining BitTorrent tracking sites. Now all the kiddies can go download Exeem and the MPAA/RIAA/ can cook Exeem over the coals of the SuprNova fire while the rest of us keep using the many other tried and true tracking sites. I doubt Exeem will be around very long if they're advertising themselves as the new Suprnova.
Shouldn't these developers take a look at some of the research in this area?
Tangler, FreeHaven, and Publius come to mind.
No thanks ..
But at least they are upfront about it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"In Europe, he would have been a just lawyer, an original philosopher, a bold psychologist, an influential teacher. In Russia today, he could only be a novelist."
In some alternate universe, suprnova would have been the next indispensable web site, the next Google, the next platform for innovation, the next great leap forward for human knowledge. But in today's world, it's nothing more than hype for some new bullshit adware.
I for one have no intention if even trying this piece of rubbish, but I welcome it simply for the fact that it will attract attention away from the more traditional torrent sites that seem to be getting so much unwanted legal attention at present.
"It'll work obviously: my headline on this story mentions Suprnova, and so will hundreds of websites around the world in the coming days."
Yep. You couldn't have chosen another title for the article that wouldn't have worked for them. Nope. Had to go with that one. And then complain that it's just a marketing scheme. Yep. I'm feeling really sorry for you for being duped here!
*laughing*
Kazaa? Programming quality?
*laughing some more*
You're kidding, right?!?
*head explodes*
Bittorrent has some interesting methods of making sure all parts of a file are available (sharing rarest parts first, for example), but I've been unable to find a complete list of how a file is shared.
There are some things I think would be interesting additions, such as sharing a the rarest part to users with the quickest turnaround time (determine how long it takes to download the file and then immediately upload it, and choose the person with the shortest time). Of course, that might already be the case, but I haven't been able to find out.
Some of us DID use 'nova for legal stuff...
Me personally, for both 'freely distributable' software, and 'timeshifting' of broadcast TV programs that are available in my market..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is probably really offtopic, but that's OK because I have bad karma anyways, and no one is going to see this.
I am a student in university, and I don't have much money to my name, so I don't buy DVDs, music CDs, and so on. What do I do instead? Simple: I download them for free off of the internet. Now I get to watch movies and listen to music without spending money. I relate it to taking donuts out of a dumpster being Tim Hortons after hours.
I don't even consider things like "freedom" or "ethics," or anything for that matter. I enjoy getting something for nothing. I like it when things are one click away.
I know that it makes some people very sad to hear this, but that's Ok with me. I am a good friend and human being, and I feel really bad about the disaster in Asia. I just don't care to pay fucking money for a movie.
Thanks for listening.
I cared before, and now I know I don't need to care any more. So to me, this news story was useful, even though like you I no longer care.
501 Not Implemented
Link to a torrent of interview as an MP3.
With all due respect to the Freenet team, they have done a lot of good work, but the network isn't designed for things like bittorrent. What you need is a low-latency network like TOR or i2p. With that said, anonymous Bittorrent already exists, its available to work on the i2p anonymous network. Just go to the i2p website, , install the software and then click on this: There are already bittorrent trackers on the i2p network. Why this hasn't been on slashdot is beyond me.
eXeem 0.16 beta screen shots.
Yep, and the lack of virus/trojans was because of the open sourcedness. At least that was the reason the clients were not cluttered with adware and spyware, which I believe contributed to its success.
> most bittorent users don't even know what 'source code' is.
but they do know what Azureus, Bittornado, and ABC are, because they were allowed to be written due to the openness of the original Bittorrent's source code.
-------
Chunky Bacon
The reason i'm being plusmodded funny is the TITLE of my post. If you click on a slashdot story before it backpropagates (I'm not quite sure how the slashcode works) you get an ERROR (Title bar set to "Slashdot error) from /. that says "Nothing for you to see here, please move along." The reason it is -1 OBVIOUS, is because there's a big white/blank page staring you in the face....
Luckily, you didn't have mod points and those that do get the joke.
*sigh*
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
http://83.149.90.123.nyud.net:8090/interview_with_ slon.mp3
Yes, the iTunes Music Store is an excellent option for music. But currently there's no good way of downloading TV shows or movies legally. We need something along the lines of an iVideo Store. The ability to download individual TV episodes for $1 or $2 would be great.
I, for example, want to get Stargate Atlantis legally without paying an extra $30 per month to get a "good" cable TV package. I don't want all the other crap, just this one program. But like audio CDs, the problem with the existing system is that you have to buy it all just to get the one or two things you want.
I have this problem all the time! Really!!!
You have to use sarcasm tags!
e.g.
<sarcasm>...yeah and I'm a happy little elf!</sarcasm>
It's a little obvious, but for subtle sarcasm it's the way to go!
I've seen /.'ers suggesting freenet as possible {il,}legal content distribution method. I'd like to disagree with this methodology.
There is already a working way to have anonymous BitTorrent - using Onion Routing protocol. It's great for privacy concerned netizens and if more people set up Tor Servers, Tor would gain critical mass needed to support both tracker AND data connections for BT.
Most of torrent clients supports Tor out-of-the-box, as tor is nothing but socks proxy for your programs. Torifying various applications is really a snap and there is a detailed guide on how to make Azureus BT client work flawlessly with Tor (see section 2.2 Totally Anonymous BitTorrent).
Currently, the only concern for the Tor authors is the fact, that the Tor network may not be able to handle the amounts of traffic, bittorent is able to generate.
However, if each one of you would set up a server with couple of kbps spare bandwidth, the tor network would immediately start scaling up.
Since BT relies on multiple (slow) transmissions occuring at the same time to create the "torrent effect", even if all the transmissions pick different routes trough tor network (taking slight performance hit), the overall performance of BT would remain unchanged.
There is also a very important aspect of tor. It allows you to create hidden services. Basically they are accesible via bogus URLs (like LKbalkbsflKflasbd.onion). The anonymity of the server is assured. More about hidden services at this address.
So, before you let the *oids start reinventing the wheel (and charge an arm and a leg for it), do your bloody homework and use what's already there :)
PS. tor is free software.
But it won't work without a key. It can't join the network. Gives you a chance to check it out the interface spyware/adware free I guess. I don't think I'll be using it. I too was looking for a larger leap...not so much of a baby step.
http://82.149.22.18/eXeem%20BETA%200.16.zip
TV shows are my BitTorrent mainstay though; getting US shows outside the US is a nightmare; I thought the UK was bad, but while doing a little globe trotting at the moment I've found out I actually had it pretty good at home. By "pretty good" I mean that usually you can buy the DVDs of a show *before* the damn thing airs on terrestrial television which is, quite frankly, a ridiculous situation. I mean, who is going to watch a TV show, probably with adverts, if they already have an ad-free version of DVD? Plus, try as you might, if you like to watch shows without seeing any spoilers then grabbing the thing off BitTorrent is the only way to be sure.
Personally, I think a TV show/movie based version of something like iTunes would work; monthly subscription, per file billing or both doesn't matter. P2P has proven itself a viable distribution method for the media files, there's clearly an audience for data and it gives the MPAA the same "legal alternative" argument the RIAA likes to spout. It's not like they stand to lose much, unless they are worried that the DMCA won't stop a DRM removal tool from being released shortly after the launch...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I honestly don't think this [the exeem client] is totally necessary, depending on the outcome of the Lokitorrent legal case. Exeem seems as if it will make .torrent files much harder to find, which in turn creates problems. The http section of the web is a lot easier to navigate than an adware-filled, bulky client.
.torrent files, they are so easily tracked by anyone who cares! If Exeem could possibly get a better degree of anonymity, then it could perhaps boost p2p to an unbeatable level- forcing the MPAA and RIAA to actually work with the file sharers, rather than attack them.
Of course, even if it is legal for sites on the web to host the
Lastly, and on a bit of an off-topic note, if one is sharing only one part of a file, but not the full thing (or if the file being shares is obfuscated, but easily returnable), can they be prosecuted of illegal copyright violations? Is every single part of a film copyrighted individually? I've always wondered, so pegging it to the end of this post seemed as good a time as any to ask.
- dshaw
So the suprnova's of the world are being corporatized by "secret companies." The question comes down to, will it work? Does anybody care about napster.com since it was corporatized?
What about MUTE?
http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/
Thank you for generalizing that everyone with an opposing viewpoint from you is some type of spoiled rich kid. Actually, I have met quite a few people who are in favor of changes to "intellectual property", from liberals who have spent years helping with poverty-stricken families in third-world countries and have little sympathy for CEO's who don't make another million, to archconservatives including my father.
Which one I am, if either, is not really relevant to our discussion here. I do not understand the concept of "intellectual property". Want to "own" an idea? Keep it in your head with your mouth shut, and if you write it down or otherwise record it anywhere, make sure that it's somewhere no one will ever find it.
An idea, spoken in public, is public property. Period. Doesn't matter if the "idea" is a song, a computer program, a movie, or anything else.
Awwwwww, big corporation can't make money? Too bad. No one has a "right" to the continued success of their business model. They have the right to adapt and find a way to provide what the consumer wants, the way they want it, and make money, or die. Copyrights and patents create artificial scarcity and give "ownership" and exclusive rights to the first person to come up with something which cannot be owned-an idea.
But it'll stifle innovation? Biggest load I've heard. Those who have great ideas and are passionate about them need no reward. Socrates was KILLED for putting forth his thoughts, but even facing that he would not back down. And we suggest massive amounts of money are necessary to encourage this? It never was before.
Of course, there are those who can consistently do a great job at coming up with and putting into practice great ideas. They'll make a living. (No, I didn't say "killing").
All "copyright" creates is a massive media monopoly capable of controlling the distribution of 98% or so of creative work. The "little guy" doesn't even get heard amidst their marketing noise.
No one has a right to make massive amounts of money for the REST OF THEIR LIFE plus 75 years because they do a good job one time, or even several times. Most of us must go to work, every day, and do our job well each and every time. I don't get to say "Well you know what, boss? I've done a damn good job, and this company will benefit from that work for quite a while, so you owe me royalties for the rest of my life while I do no more work." If an artist/programmer/filmmaker/whatever is out of ideas and can't do his job anymore, it's not time for him to retire and profit at 31, it's time for him to find another job.
As for the **AA's, they are as animals whose ecosystem has been radically changed. They can either a. Act like nothing has changed, and face extinction, or b. Adapt. Right now, they're thinking they'll roll back the clock, and that does not constitute option c. or any other.
Collective license would solve this whole problem. If the "IP Industries" are unwilling to embrace this model, they have chosen option a., and I won't mourn their passing.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Alright then, I do understand. However please try to keep posts on topic in future. We want the signal to noise ratio high.
eXeem is a piece of shit. Not only that it will have adaware and spyware, it is also a "lock-in". You will only be able to use it on SuprNova. They have modified the torrent file. It is missing a lot of dictionaries ("key -> value"), and dictionaries that should have been subdictionaries start directly in the file. For example "files" is not in "info" it starts with it directly. This torrent changes were unnecessary. Also, the "announce" and "announce-list" are missing. eXeem has a hardcoded url of a tracker of all the peers on eXeem. The original seeder of a torrent acts as a tracker (so SuprNova won't have to host torrents), but eXeem is in no way decentralized because of the tracker that keeps in contact all the eXeem users (it does not care about torrents, just eXeem users). So, all you have to do is to kill the main server, and all the users of exeem will be disconnected (this happened when suprnova died). THIS IS WORSE THAN THE WAY TORRENTS ACT NOW. EXEEM IS HYPE AND A WAY TO MAKE MONEY. IT SUCKS! I think the best way to decentralized BitTorrent, is to have trackers that are decentralized IRC server style. If you people want something decentralized and a little bit of BitTorrent, get G2 (Gnutella2) and add BitTorrent's tit-for-tat to it.
... is create a SuprNova styled website filled with completely legal torrents. For example, drivers, game demos and updates, Linux and other open source distributions, public domain stuff, share/freeware, etc. We have to let politicians know that p2p has practical legal uses.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
So, the "mighty" owner of suprnova closed his website.
Very nice.
He advocates this new technology.
Who said the MPAA/RIAA did not stuff him some "funds" to provide the people some nice software
(ie: adware) that cleanly informs those nice
associations with the ip address of every peer/seeder. Think about it.
who did say the new software does not harvest ip
addresses and nicely hands em over to some place
accessible to the MPAA/RIAA ?
I do not know about you, but I am convinced some
donated funds from MPAA/RIAA could change the mind
of any site owner to join the " side"
just 0.02 euro
actually, i reckon the company behind it is called 'Swarm Systems Inc'...
Why?
- Becuase the whois on exeem.org shows "Registrant Email:contact@exeem.com"
- Because i cant find any info about them on the web.
- Because 'swarm' is a term used in the BT protocol/community...
Im guessing whoever is behind all this bought all the main domain names and are keeping quite until the launch.
Registrant ID:GODA-08316761
Registrant Name:Systems Inc. Swarm
Registrant Organization:Swarm Systems Inc.
Registrant Street1:Suite 4 Tample Building, Main
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Charlestown
Registrant State/Province:Not Applicable
Registrant Postal Code:1000
Registrant Country:KN
Registrant Phone:+1.304568187
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:contact@exeem.com
Any protocol that allows "show me what you're sharing" type command or maps content to IP addresses is inherently vulnerable to these 3rd party organizations that are being hired by the MPAA. It's a trival matter for them to fire off violation notices to ISPs at high volumes.
Thus, I would suggest:
An offshore site that allows users to remotely (over SSL or MSTSC) use P2P apps to download to local disks, and then permits transfer via SSL to their local machines.
A virus/worm that pretends to be popular P2P apps and appears to be sharing copyrighted material. Result: almost everyone in the US appears to be sharing, overloading the people monitoring such things.
People familiar with the law need to see what the loopholes are (e.g. IANAL, but I have heard that sharing less than an entire "piece" is legally different than sharing the whole thing...don't know if this is true, just an example). Result: we use the law against the same people who are using it against us.
I don't want to come off as an evil pirate here. I simply feel that:
Intellectual property needs a serious reworking.
When you don't offer your customers what they want (e.g. on-demand without-commercials video), and what they want is technologically achievable, the customers will use the technology, even if it happens to be illegal.
I pay $150 for cable + internet + HDTV channels. I would gladly pay the same for a single channel of on-demand video, and more for the same without any commercials.
But it'll stifle innovation? Biggest load I've heard. Those who have great ideas and are passionate about them need no reward.
At least here in the US, we were founded on exactly the opposite idea. You are right, many great thinkers did not ask for any reward. But the vast majority know that there's something in it for them to come up with a great idea. The "right", if you will, to be compensated for one's hard work and critical thinking inspires many minds to excel when they would otherwise flounder. Modern business, which churns out impressive innovations at a remarkable rate, would not be viable without a compensation system. Even in academia there are (non-monetary) compensation systems, such as noteriaty, which I suspect is important to a lot of researchers. The desire to be rewarded for hard work is innate and perfectly natural. (Think of the caveman who figures out how to set a trap, so he can catch animals more safely - he's certainly not obliged to walk to the next cave and share his insights.)
Although I agree with you that copyright terms are horrendously long, and that regulations on media empires are laughably flimsy, being able to own an idea is still essential to our economy. Consider the alternative - a world where all you can own are widgets, and your wealth is measured by how much material stuff you have. Doesn't sound like fun to me.
Plus, no one would have ever heard of the GPL.
I must agree with you in spirit, but I must also tell you that you are, at least in some respects, quite wrong.
The purpose of copyright is in no way to create false scarcity. You are missing an extremely (and I mean that truly) important distinction. It is a distinction that most people don't understand, and like to scoff at because they think they know how things work. It's the difference between what copyright was designed to achieve versus the mechanisms people have devised to abuse that original goal to serve their own ends.
Money is in fact a good motivation for innovation. The U.S. is a good example of the power of "opportunity". People believe money can be made here, and it can, based on innovation. A huge percentage of the major innovations in the last century were made by innovators motivated by money in the U.S. (mainly immigrants from other countries). This is a good thing, though your post would make it seem like it is bad.
But you make a very good point: copyright as we know it has been twisted and bastardized into something that just makes the rich richer, and the money they make is often at the expense of the public and the true innovators. This was never the intention of copyright. Read what the U.S. congress had to say about copyright in 1907, or what the judge said about copyright in the 80's in the Sony/Betamax case. Folks that make a living understanding the law recognize that not all business is bad, and that not all law is bad.
Copyright is being abused. But the idea of copyright is a good one: incentivize those that innovate to *continue* innovating. Don't pay them so much that they don't have to work anymore; pay them enough to sustain them while they continue their work, which ultimatly will benefit the public as a whole, often for generations to come.
But some big business has abused this system, and the question is: what are we going to do about it? It's too bad that people are so fed up with the status quo that they believe that copyright is evil and the answer lies solely in a system based around have our biggest innovators work for no money. I believe it does not - I believe it lies in bringing honesty and refinement to a broken system built around a essentially important and *good* idea.
So while I agree with your sentiment, don't drag down copyright because some corporations (and corporate alliances) abuse it to hurt others and ruin lives for their own gain. We must recognize them for what they are, but also recognize that there was a certain measure of insight and wisdom in the original ideal that copyright represents, and seek to find ways to restore that ideal in practice.
The successor to Bittorrent is.... Bittorrent. Killing Suprnova is the *best* thing that ever happened. That is exactly the form of decentralization that was necessary. Forget Exeem, or whatever it's called. Just continue to move to the hottest bittorrent site that has your file until it's shut down and them move to the next. Do people actually think the long arm of the U.S. law is that long??? I can't follow the bouncing ball around the world continuously with success. Stay with bittorrent, forget that new P2P and just move to the next Bittorrent site.
MUTE is a program I've enjoyed supporting directly. .4 was just released this week and has several improvements.
While it may not be as secure as Freenet, it does take advantage of IP obfustication and is a fair bit faster. No one user knows what machine is connected to what data. With enough users, it would virtually be impossible to determine data origin.
The author of the program continues to make progress as the funds continue to roll in - fair enough.
Give it a try at: mute-net.sf.net and think about supporting the ongoing project. It certainly seems to have more plusses than Exeem!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
An idea, spoken in public, is public property. Period. Doesn't matter if the "idea" is a song, a computer program, a movie, or anything else. Are you engaged in the production of one of these ideas? Because simply saying that "passionate people" will fill the production of ideas.. well, some ideas are harder to make than others. Movies with high production values cost millions to make. Games and programs do too. It's all well and good to say that they should be free, but I don't know any companies that are willing to risk millions in production if their competitors can legitimately sell the same thing on zero-day. I know a lot of individuals who would, granted.. but I don't know any individuals capable of "The Incredibles."
A quick WHOIS gives us the adress of the registrant for the Exeem.com domain: Swarm Systems Inc. Goggle couldn't find anything interresting about it. Might be some kind of a screening company?
Why not just use usenet to distribute the Torrent trackers? On usenet one can post anonymously, and they are automatically distributed to other usenet servers.
Used it to send out their 800+ meg installer for their free 12 month trial. I remember some game demo sites using it too.
"...simply because distributors of such material feel safer in distributing it, means that more people will upload more. I think that counts as encouraging."
So, because they feel safer, the prog itself is 'encouraging' it, and can't be used? Proxies may feel more safe for them, encryption may make them feel more safe, heck, maybe the internet istelf! Should we not use any of those tools, then?
Come to think of it, digital camera's may make them feel more safe: no need to go to a photo-developer anymore! So the same argumentation is possible to say digital cameras and the like is 'encouraging' CP; yet, I think most would see the absurdity of it. It's as absurd to say Freenet 'encourages' it, however - unless you interpret 'encourage' in the broadest way, in which case you can forbid all tools, basically. I'm sure the RIAA will like a broad interpretation of 'encouraging', however, especially when INDUCE gets passed. Then they can sue every P2P application (and many others) in existence.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---