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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).
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
"We have every reason to believe that this tiny island country is harboring terrorist agents of Al-qaeda, and is developing weapons of mass destruction to threaten its neighbors with."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
i've been useing winmx for several years and it has worked well for my purposes. one of the key features was that it allowed you to log onto a large choice of "open nap" networks, and it was there i found what i was looking for. folks, who like myself, ripped old records and digitized then. i just cked and i am still hooked up with six open naps and have traffic up and down. to find a client for open nap ck source forge and search on open nap.
Were going streaking to Vanatu! Who will join me!?
...Good luck crossing most of the Pacific naked. Guess I'll take a ship.
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.
"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.
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."
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'.
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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
Who modded this insightful? Flaimbait is probably closer to the mark. I don't particularly care for the guy myself but that's just silly. I believe the parent was only half serious but the mod needs to take his/her tinfoil hat off.
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 ----
But *please*, don't tell anyone else...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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."
For starters, why not make a trackerless bittorrent-like network? Oh well, back to the land of unicorns and castles in the air. :(
Trackerless torrents are already supported, even in the official client.
If you're asking for a eDonkey-like thing with BitTorrent as the underlying protocol instead of the FastTrack network, that already exist too in the form of eXeem.
However, from my experiences, it's about as good as eDonkey in efficiency. That's the problem with less centralized networks. Since it's so easy to just seed yourself, people start seeding 20 copies of seemingly the same thing, where half of them were maybe misnamed torrents, and the rest 10 are forming groups of 5 instead of one group of 50, causing the speed to be about 10% of that on a centralized and more controlled tracker.
Also because such UI's basically encourages seeding and downloading from multiple sources, a lot of users may seed 5 things at once and leech from 10, and you run into eDonkey's problems with unfocused transfers. You think "yay, I found something with 20 sources", and then you see each source had about 2 kbps to spare for that specific torrent, since it's so easy for those to just start a lot of different downloads at once.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
Even when being half serious, one can be insightfull I would say.
And regardless, what grantparent post said points at a problem that is real and very serious, and that a substantial part of the US population is refusing/unable to see. Should I just conclude from your post that you are among that group?