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WinMX Suspends Operations
An anonymous reader writes "Slyck.com is reporting that it appears the WinMX network has shut down its operations in response to the RIAA's letters threating legal action. Although the WinMX network is currently down, this may only be temporary as developers seem to have relocated from Canada to Port Villa, Vanuatu."
Some information about Vanuatu, as well as its capital, Port Vila (misspelled in TFA) can be found here and here.
As for why WinMX might want to relocate there, this link should shed a little light on the issue...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
talk about "change for the better"... from snowy days to sunny days... I kind of want the RIAA to send me one of those legal threats, I need a change of locale!!!
If not, they're still under the jurisdiction. Scratch that, under the DMCA they're still liable for any 'ip violation' that their product 'enables' in countries that follow the DMCA (such as the US).
Survival of the fittest, I guess!
The "Island of Fire"!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Maybe they'll be able to dodge some taxes while they're there too.
Sure it is very interesting. But I wonder what will happen if every p2p company takes refuge in Vanuatu. The laws specifically prohibit pornography and don't even think about applying if you've got money laundering on your mind. U.S. can easily pressurize a country of the size of Republic of Vanuatu to extend their laws to prohibit sharing copyright work!
It's not an encrypted P2P network, the downloader is known to the source, and I thought spyware was associated with it. If anyone wants to vouch for WinMX as being spyware free please do, but I've seen it only on two systems, both infected with spyware.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Seriously, that's the third YRO story in a row. It's as if someone had let Michael back online and now he's sitting there, manically posting YRO stories (and laughing his hideous laughter).
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
WinMX has sucked for a long time, I'm not sure if we should really count this as a loss.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
If they obfuscate their identity, and if the foreign country won't cooperate, then good luck prosecuting them.
No, the address on their domain name registration has been been relocated to Vanuatu. I very much doubt that developers themselves would move to Vanuatu over a barely-operational P2P scheme. If you're going to do make a move like that, there are much nicer places in the South Pacific.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
When all else fails...flee the country...or at least here, webhost.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
I didn't RTFA, but just by reading the headlines I know that these developers are dediacated...
They moved so they could develop their product. I don't know about you all, but I'd have a hard time justifying just picking up my life and leaving somewhere else because the RIAA sent me a threatening letter and has jurisdiction in my country...
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
This is where Vanuatu is.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanuatu
The economy is based primarily on subsistence or small-scale agriculture, which provides a living for 65% of the population, and online advertising thanks to sweaty nerds downloading free mp3s with WinMX and visiting the WinMX website which provides tribalfusion popups.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
but I wish eDonkey would be the one leaving. I hate those 2500+ queues.
:(
For starters, why not make a trackerless bittorrent-like network? Oh well, back to the land of unicorns and castles in the air.
I used WinMX for a while, as it was much more featureful than the crappy Napster client of old and the subscribership was outstanding. I don't seem to remember any feature or message in WinMX that helped users pirate music. It's true that some people used the software to trade music, but there is absolutely no proof that the program was designed for that purpose. I don't know why they took the network down. It is a simple P2P file sharing utility and nothing more.
Furthermore, WinMX is freeware. I presume the author made no money from it. Regardless, why is the RIAA challenging this poor guy on the grounds that he has broken another country's laws?
Dear RIAA,
I officially give up. This is the straw the finally broke the camel's back (it always seems to be the LAST straw that does this - hrmph). I will officially renounce my intent on pirating media, software, pr0n, and the like. I am currently burning my PC to stop enabling me to do bad things (did you guys patent the phrase "If thy eye offends, pluck it out; if they hand does wrong chop it off"?). Additionally, I will re-buy all my purchased media again - just in case some where along the line it was pirated. I can not take the pressure anymore - too many people have been hurt because of my negligence. Please oh please just call off the dogs before more people are hurt. With this latest action you have successfully reached critical mass of the "Piracy == Bad" meme, and people will understand. Thank you for your service in showing humanity where it went wrong, and that the red pill is not for us. To make it up to you, I will pay double for my CDs, send you a dozen roses every week, and mow your lawn. Please, take me back! I want to be loved again. I really didn't know I was hurting you like that baby. Sugar, you got to believe me!
xoxoxo
- modi
I wish to extend a welcome to the new media overlords. May they use their infinite wisdom to safe guard freedom and the natural order of things.
5) Pressure the major internet hubs to "cut off" Vanuatu from being accessible inside of america
6) Get every other country we have economic ties to do the same
7) ???
8) RIAA profits!
Tattoo: Bozz, bozz, ze plane, ze plane!
Mr. Roarke: Yes, Tattoo. Let us go meet our guests.
Tattoo: Who are zey, bozz?
Mr. Roarke: They are wanted criminals and nihilists. They have come here to set up an illicit P2P network.
Tattoo [rubbing hands together]: Ooh, I cannot wait see what you have in store for them, bozz. And who are those people, bozz?
Mr. Roarke: They from the Recording Industry Association of America.
Tattoo: Why zem, bozz?
Mr. Roarke: Let's just say, Tattoo, that I enjoy putting spiders and flies in small jars together. [arms out to guests] Welcome to Fantasy Island!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I really liked WinMX. It could be difficult at times to get the songs you wanted, BUT IT HAD NO GODDAMN SPYWARE OR ADWARE AND WASN'T FUCKING WRITTEN IN JAVA. And it was easy to use.
At one point it was loaded with spyware even if the other two posters don't agree.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
That sounds like it came from the Weekly World News.
Don't worry, the President is meeting with the alien and Bat Boy RIGHT NOW to figure out a plan.
How about some of these filesharing companies get together, buy an island, and create their own nation?
Im sure that countries like China wouldnt care about US sanctions against this new country, so if secured near the mainland it would be easy to get supplies and keep things running smoothly.
Not to say that filesharing is shady business, but I am surprised that this sort of thing hasnt happened already by some criminal organizations or large-scale pirating rings. Perhaps there is an obvious answer to that...
Should read: "....and ship them to the United States for persecution."
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
The bad news is that plan involves looting everything that isn't nailed down and then flying to Jamaica to party with Bigfoot and Elvis.
Vanatu seems like a really nice place to live. I found this on their government's news site:
Vanuatu has a new Government. Please revisit this site next week
From what you describe, Taiwan would work nicely.
Oh, wait, they're not on good terms with China.
Never mind.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Don't forget: Invade because of WMDs! (Weapons of Media Distribution).
Were going streaking to Vanatu! Who will join me!?
...Good luck crossing most of the Pacific naked. Guess I'll take a ship.
while they may be "liable," their servers cannot be shut down or confiscated. This is I'm sure they received legal advice about this matter, and I'm sure that whatever actions are taken its better for them to have the service relocated. BTW InterVideo Launches New DVD Copy 4. Yay!
It wouldn't exactly take an uber-leet submarine to cut cables and fiber-optic links. If the cables just happened to "break" somewhere, would Vanuatu even have the resources to fix them?
19 survivors will be standed on an Island for 39 days while they attempt to avoid the RIAA.... Reward challenges will give legal mp3 credits which of course can only be played on limited devices and burned once...
Its strange that the RIAA would bother sending a letter to a Canadian company.
Music is quite legal (until the government changes the law) to download in Canada. It is most likely legal to have it available for download too, provided that you are not "distributing", which seems to require active promotion.
I would think software developers would be one step further removed from that. Good luck to the RIAA pressing their case in Canada under the current law. CRIA was already stupid enough to take it to the Federal Court http://www.cippic.ca/en/projects-cases/file-sharin g-lawsuits/ and lose.
Considering they're bound to be owned by anybody BUT the government (its only in places like the US, UK, Ireland etc where the state actually owns significant amounts of the fibre), some ISP's insurance somwhere would have the resources to fix them, yes.
...Perhaps I can offer a little bit of background.
I've been living and working in Vanuatu for the last two years, and have some experience in the IT sector here. So let me try and provide a little perspective.
First, the vanuatugovernment.vu website is NOT the official government website. It was put together by some less-than-reputable individuals who took advantage of their connections with certain politicians to try to sell 'honorary consulships' to 'independant businessmen'. Basically, this is a way of making money from the sale of diplomatic passports. Among the people found to be using Vanuatu diplomatic passports are a Northern Irish 'contractor' working in Sierra Leone and a convicted member of a Chinese triad.
Second, the information on wikipedia.org is far from complete - and in some cases, inaccurate. And yes, as another poster has mentioned, The capital is Port Vila (one 'l'), so the summary is mis-spelled.
Third, Vanuatu has for quite a long time been associated with businesses who need a more flexible set of business rules than they might find in the US. Kazaa, for example, is incorporated in Vanuatu. As a gesture of appreciation, we now have the Kazaa Cricket field, which will be hosting international competition in the next couple of weeks.
There are some seriously large online betting operations interested in setting up shop in Vanuatu. Without telling tales out of school, I can confirm that one operation recently received approval to install one 7m and one 4m satellite dish, giving it total bandwidth capacity of about 40 Mbps. This in a country that currently has a national total about about 4 Mbps for voice and data combined!
Shades of Cryptonomicon, there actually is a 'bunker' here - a hardened server room with independant everything that is being used to manage data more or less along the same lines that Neal Stephenson suggested in his book.
Vanuatu has some of the most expensive Internet services in the world. I'm composing this message on a 56k dial-up line shared with 6 others computers. Unlimited dial-up costs a paltry USD 200/month, and dedicated access typically runs about USD 1000/month when bandwidth is factored in.
Vanuatu was once a site of significant money-laundering activity. Since 2001, the regulatory regime has been strengthened significantly. And yes, it was because the US 'pressurized' the government to act. They simply informed Vanuatu that if they didn't conform to certain minimum standards, they wouldn't be able to buy US dollars. Very persuasive.
Vanuatu is still a major tax haven, and is increasingly of interest to Australian investors. As I write, the private yacht of the richest man in Australia (Kerry Packer) is anchored in Port Vila Bay.
There are over 100 native languages in Vanuatu, but the language of commerce here is Bislama, a pidgin English that is really interesting to learn. Here is a quick and amusing sampler.
As far as WinMX is concerned, I've heard nothing about their arrival in Vanuatu, but some people are fairly secretive about the business they do here, so maybe I shouldn't be skeptical....
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I convinced two more people never to buy another CD, and showed them the alternative ways to obtain music that do not involve being financially raped. I suggest that everyone who opposes extortion and price fixing do the same.
"If the cables just happened to "break" somewhere, would Vanuatu even have the resources to fix them?"
No, but it's okay. Vanuatu doesn't have undersea cables. Nor does it have the USD 20 million to have one laid. As I mentioned in a previous post, total national bandwidth - for both voice and data - is somewhere around 4Mbps, all through satellite.
Businesses who want to work online typically install their own satellite equipment. Typically, only the cash transactions occur in Vanuatu itself. That means that if you make a bet online, for example, you've placed your bet on a server somewhere in the US (or wherever), but your card actually gets debited through a transaction queued through a server sitting in a air-conditioned room in Vanuatu.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
...his michael account got hacked? (Not that I'd know about it...)
If the US of A completely cut off all its trade with Vanauatu, they wouldn't notice. We don't buy much from them, we don't sell much to them. It would be hard to hurt them in any meaningful way if they decided that the money they were making was more than they would otherwise make.
Australia and NZ, on the other hand, are in a position to be really annoying to Vanauatu.
ps. They don't have static electricity there (way to humid). The natives have never experienced it. When they leave the island and do experience it, they often jump to interesting conclusions like: "Oh my gawd, the electrical system is giving me shocks. This hotel is going to burn down."
4) Use a team of Navy SEALs or elite FBI commando units to land in Vanuatu and kidnap all individuals
Bah... these fools would have to swim to the shore, and to do that they'll have to get by the sharks with laser beams on their heads. Bwahahaha!!!!
Current Title of TFA (21 Sep 6:45pm EST):
7 1&cid=13615388
WinMX PNP Network Mysteriously Ends Operations
WinMX was a plug-n-pray network? Who knew?
By the time you read this, it will probably have been corrected to 'P2P'.
--
Public service astroturf warning:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1627
... ok, intresting article, but I thought
that WinMX was replaced by the more secure WinNY.
Trouble is, WinNY isn't to easy to find, especially the latest version transalated from japaneese (i.e. into english menus).
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen for real" - Phil
Wanna Slashdot a country?
I hate to be ignorant, but where the heck is Vanuatu? It really bugs me that they still have countries out there I've never heard of. But, if they reasonable intellectual property laws I won't complain. Any country that is unfriendly to the RIAA is decent and civilized in my book.
5) Pressure the major internet hubs to "cut off" Vanuatu from being accessible inside of america
6) Get every other country we have economic ties to do the same
This was talked about here. Blocking a Nation's IP Space
The problem is that there is always a way around having your IP blocked. Open Proxies are to blaim for that.
9) China doesn't give a monkeys, sees a way to extend its influence and power, and sell stuff (a la Zimbabwe; didn't know about that? Google it) and gives Vanuatu what it wants.
10) West loses; profit irrelevant.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This is why you need a de-centeralized network for this sort of thing.
Even if the *AA's didnt exist, the risk of a single failure point should scream at you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
5 - block all traffic to this country, and then prosecute the company(s) providing the backbone connectivity.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I thought they had "embraced" it, by allowing sites like itunes, and sony connect to operate.
You mean how long are they going to expect you to pay for music, rather than getting it free? Or is 99c a song just to much?
From the It Would Be Nice department, it would be nice if Slashdot could say something nicer like Duplicate Submission in a case like this. After all, you don't know if it's a duplicate until another version of it goes up, then you feel ripped a bit.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
But *please*, don't tell anyone else...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I just punched "Elvis" into the search box and got 404 lines of output back almost instantly.
Uh, China just successfully sued their own local Google for enabling locating and faciliting the downloading of .MP3 files. I don't think China is where a P2P company should be considering going.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I don't get how this is "news".
My reasons for dumping WinMX:
First off, the only reason WinMX fails in comparison with some networks or programs is because there is no tagging. All of the files are indexed by filename. One difference in a byte and then it becomes a completely different file.
Second, the news section of WinMXs site hasn't been update since the middle of last year. Surely a sign of lack in production?
And third, because there are those nifty key word whore files that are ads from some cheap or nonexistant porn site.
However, back when it did work, there were some awesome chat rooms. And the diversity of files is amazing. But those are gone now.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
Then help us out and update the Wikipedia. That's what the whole thing is all about!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Uh, other people in the world have USDollars to sell as well. Doesn't sound like the biggest threat I've heard this afternoon.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Would be funny if it was found out that this all happened because, during the confusion over at PeerGuardian, someone slipped an update into PG that blocked out all the WinMX Peer Caches, so nobody could connect.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Sorry sir, but we had to replace the sharks with Sea Bass. But they are mutated Sea Bass...
If I remember correctly, WinMX was merely a Windows client developed to operate using the same protocol as BeShare on BeOS.
At the time, BeOS popularity was waning, and as web sites supporting it started shutting down, the BeShare network quickly became -the- place to get freeware and shareware applications that no longer had download mirrors available, and were unsupported by the original developer.
If memory serves, there was quite a bit of porn on it, too, but not a lot of music -- applications, drivers, config files and BeOS demos were definitely the overwhelming offering.
Of course, once WinMX came out and Windows people started using the network, it became overwhelmed with music trades. Still, for once, you can safely claim that this particular P2P "network" was created not to trade in pirated goods (which was frowned upon in the BeShare days) but in fact as a technical proof-of-concept that was quickly leveraged as a legal software distribution tool, much like BitTorrent is trying to be.
Banks rely heavily on correspondent accounts for clearing foreign currencies. Unforunately getting shut out of the U.S. banking system and/or having US-based correspondent accounts frozen is a credible threat.
After Napster died, and Napigator stopped being worth a damn, I then moved over to WinMX. It having a Napster type interface was great, but it had one VERY HUGE practical usage flaw. Members were not required to share anything, but yet anytime you did a search, all of these non-sharable files were visible. Out of 500 files returned in the search query, maybe two or three were actually available. This noise made using WinMX a non-starter, the non-shares would show up on the query, drowning out any truly sharable files. If one could have filtered out all non shareable files, maybe that would have worked, but with this flaw, I moved on over to Kazaa.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thank you (and LedGem in the comment below)! Always count on slashdot for providing great information.
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen for real" - Phil
You forgot:
5) Nuke 'em till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark!
Patrolling ftw
Leak it out on Freent, if nothing else.
Btw, how does Freenet avoid the problem of needing PeerCaches?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Vanuatu has some of the most expensive Internet services in the world. I'm composing this message on a 56k dial-up line shared with 6 others computers. Unlimited dial-up costs a paltry USD 200/month, and dedicated access typically runs about USD 1000/month when bandwidth is factored in.
did you not get?
Damn, I will have to find another way of getting movies with Japanese subtitles. Winmx is great because it can handle double byte characters. And I do agree with other posts here regarding the interface. Simple is best. It just gets the job done. In fact, here in Japan, Winmx is one of the biggest P2P networks; again, due to the fact it handles double byte characters. Oh, and did I neglect to mention that it is possible to chat to individual users, search only certain users' files, change queues, promote people in the queue, and start-stop users that don't share? All in all, I consider it to very powerful, actually. And yup, I still have not found another P2P service that offers all of these features.
Here's my two cents. As a U.S. resident, I have lots to be thankful for these days. Naw, let's take a more honest approach. WinMX was my P2P choice for stealing files, sad to see it go the way of freedom. Now I use the word "stealing" because sharing is just too delicate a term... problems I've got with being one of those politically correct dipshits the world has come to know and love. I have read your threads and I must have missed the part about someone taking action. There is a larger issue here you all. Our fat bastard leaders are robbing us by saying we're robbing others. It's not just the P2P stuff, but guns, speech, press, media, health (I.E. our own bodies), etc... and all I hear from we citizens is non-stop complaining. When is the last time you remember whining being an effective way to solve any reasonable or worthwhile conflict? I'm so sick of these pampered little cunts thinking it's all just going to go away. Guess what folks, there is no happy ending headed our way unless we start knocking down doors. If history has taught us anything it's to fight back. Don't dismiss what I'm saying because you think you've heard it all before. Stop being so damn weak minded. This is the point of no return... time to fuck or be fucked. And I am through.
Wikipedia is a collection of gross plagerism posted by a bunch of kids with delusions of grandeur.
The Open Naps still work! And these people are actually more likely to share, not to mention have more obscure stuff.
wouldnt it be better if you send a british,austrailian or NZ S.A.S.after all they are probaly the best special forces in the world and NZ has the best trackers.haha