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.
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 ----
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
There are such sites:
Filerush.com: The purpose of this site is to serve Bit Torrent files for recently released game demos, updates, and movie trailers of games.
and
BitTorrent Files for Slashdot Effect Victims.
and
Run But Cant Hide: Legal, Free BitTorrent Downloads
Between these three you can usually find most legal files that are in high demand.
Good luck and long live the bt!
-Fred
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public." - H.L. Mencken
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.