Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

LimeWire Brings Darknets To All

Posted by samzenpus on from the yes-have-some dept.

An anonymous reader writes "LimeWire's new version lets people create private darknets with contacts on any Jabber server (like GMail or LiveJournal). It's different than the recent p2p darknet announcement because it doesn't use onion routing. Sharing with a friend connects directly to that friend. If you're worried about exposing personal information, LW5 doesn't share documents with the p2p network by default."

35 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Great idea... by Chabil+Ha' · · Score: 5, Funny

    Until you start letting 'friends' join your peer network with usernames like Riaa250k into your 'private network'.

    --
    We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
    1. Re:Great idea... by briggsl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unfortunately, the social networking society we're in now, where the norm is to accept anyone who 'sends a friend request' will make darknets unworkable for the majority

    2. Re:Great idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, people still fileshare. I like streaming (youtube) but I still want high quality copies on my local machine which I can have access to even when the network/stream service goes down. And filesharing is useful for rare stuff.

    3. Re:Great idea... by meist3r · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Everything I want to listen to and watch can be streamed now. Thanks to Hulu and Netflix and iTunes I can get the latest movies and just about everything else! The costs for these activities are no longer prohibitive.

      Lucky for you, Windows using American. I as a Linux using European can use none of the aforementioned services. Arrrhhh. Off to the bay where they don't geo-judge.

      Segmenting the internet back into region specific chunks is probably the worst thing that happened since MySpace.

    4. Re:Great idea... by Ninnle+Labs,+LLC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Segmenting the internet back into region specific chunks is probably the worst thing that happened since MySpace.

      So you'd rather Hulu and Netflix be sued into bankruptcy for streaming content to places in the world they have no right to do so? Yeah, that'd be a much greater idea...

    5. Re:Great idea... by Tribaal_ch · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Where are my mod points when I need them?

    6. Re:Great idea... by Dorkmaster+Flek · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, we'd rather they be able to stream content into other places in the world. I don't give a rats ass about the legal crap. It's their mess, and they need to work it out. Until then, don't expect us to stop going to places like The Pirate Bay to get content we can't stream otherwise.

      --
      I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
    7. Re:Great idea... by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So you'd rather Hulu and Netflix be sued into bankruptcy for streaming content

      You missed his point... he doesn't care what happens to Hulu or Netflix. They don't exist as far as he's concerned.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    8. Re:Great idea... by FredFredrickson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And filesharing is useful for rare stuff.

      Filesharing on a small darknet may not be useful for rare stuff, unless your friends happen to have it. -1 Downside.

      --
      Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
    9. Re:Great idea... by Scrameustache · · Score: 2, Insightful

      People still fileshare? Everything I want to listen to and watch can be streamed now.

      Yeah, nothing like low-quality, [BUFFERING] media that can suddenly "become unavailable" with no warning! That's the best!

      --

      You can't take the sky from me...

    10. Re:Great idea... by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The first rule of u*****: never talk about u*****.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    11. Re:Great idea... by cinnamon+colbert · · Score: 2, Interesting

      reading the neauseatingly gushing article, I couldn't quite figure out how this works - does it require limewire servers or exspose you to lime wire ? what is this jabber client ?
      my impression is that the software basically lets you share a folder, or the equivalent of a folder between a set of computers; the problem, for making this useful, is that only downloaded files appear - what if I just want to share some word docs ?
      surely someone on /. can offer a clean, simple explanation

    12. Re:Great idea... by poetmatt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So how's last year's season of movies and independent music artists who are not crap, working out for you? Can't find them on the streaming websites? Enjoying your guns n roses, aerosmith, metallica etc? I'm not saying those are great artists but just easy examples.

      The only way to get the stuff at the real cost of distribution is to instead get it at completely scam-worthy prices online (10$ for a digital CD? 4$ for a movie?) simply because you didn't record it yourself and/or get it off filesharing networks for free, which is what it's truly worth: 0$. Honestly why should you pay later for something that you could have recorded yourself for free?

      whoops.

      Guess you can't do that, because they're all taken down or removed due to licensing issues, or label you a pirate for daring to fileshare.

    13. Re:Great idea... by MightyYar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I figured that gig was up after they went after the alt.* hierarchies and forced newzbin to go private.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    14. Re:Great idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As a similarly affected European, I empathize, but I think it's important not to bite the hand that feeds you here; Hulu is one of the good guys. If they can succeed at showing the cartels at the local level that digital distribution is a good idea, then it will eventually expand to the global level. I wish them none but the best success.

      Until that actually happens I will join you in pirating, however.

    15. Re:Great idea... by foniksonik · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm certain that Hulu at least has tried to get international distribution... most likely it is because the organization which holds the rights to that is not interested.... often each country will have a company which has previously negotiated distribution rights for various content. The details of these contracts are likely very convoluted due to some special circumstance.

      I can imagine a scenario where a media company gives some other media company distribution rights to general content so that they can get Brittany Spears concerts approved or so they can get Olympics coverage set up for 4 years in the future, etc.

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
    16. Re:Great idea... by AtomicJake · · Score: 2, Informative

      And that's why I do not own DVDs: region codes.

    17. Re:Great idea... by Jurily · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Filesharing on a small darknet may not be useful for rare stuff, unless your friends happen to have it. -1 Downside.

      Luckily, noone targets the rare stuff with lawsuits.

  2. Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I thought we had gotten past this whole INVITE PLZ PLZ PLZ PLZ business years ago.

    1. Re:Funny by aliquis · · Score: 2, Funny

      Let me guess, you don't have a facebook account?

  3. Darknet != Freedom by onion2k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Being anonymous is not the same as being free.

    To that end, using a darknet is actually reducing how free you are because you're not standing up to the authority or laws you're circumventing. Freedom is being able to do what you want to do without having to hide it.

    --
    http://twitter.com/onion2k
    1. Re:Darknet != Freedom by impaledsunset · · Score: 4, Informative

      And how is the ability to exercise a freedom which you weren't given, but should have been, is bad for you? Of couse that if an essential freedom is missing, anonymity won't give it back to you, but it will still give you the ability to exercise it.

      Of course, after reading the first half of TFA, I don't see what anonymity you're talking about. It's about sharing files only with people you want. It's a cool feature, which I would find usefull, but it seems useless if you want anonymity.

    2. Re:Darknet != Freedom by unixan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Freedom is being able to do what you want to do without having to hide it.

      Hiding is what precedes freedom.

      Otherwise premature openness can get you shot down.

      --
      This signature intentionally left unblank.
  4. Re:Those services are not international by syrinx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...you are guessing that iTunes is Windows-only? Just to be clear, we're talking about the iTunes from Apple, not some other iTunes? ;)

    Netflix is not Windows-only either, btw. I don't know about Hulu.

    Being US-only is a concern though.

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
  5. huh? by Cornwallis · · Score: 4, Funny

    "LimeWire's new version lets people create private darknets with contacts on any Jabber server (like GMail or LiveJournal). It's different than the recent p2p darknet announcement because it doesn't use onion routing." For some reason reading that statement brings to mind Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    1. Re:huh? by Aladrin · · Score: 3, Funny

      I have to admit. I got a mental image of a guy looking at an onion and then throwing it away. Magic.

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
  6. Re:Those services are not international by Ninnle+Labs,+LLC · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hulu and Netflix, AFAIK, are US-only, and I believe there are still countries where iTunes is unavailable. I would also guess (not using any of them) that they are all Windows-only.

    iTunes is clearly not Windows only. Hulu just streams things via flash so it's accessible via any OS with a flash player (which is basically all of them). The Netflix service can be accessed on OS X and Windows via Silverlight and on Linux with Moonlight. So no, none of them are Windows only.

  7. Sounds like a good idea by wjh31 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If it's what i actually think it is. Which is private sharing within your own group without others being able to see what's going on. It would only take a modest half dozen or so friends to share thier video collections, and you could have a pretty extensive collection, with some reasonable speeds and redundancy. And by videos i of course mean all those silly videos from when you were drunk that night, definately not those feature length things shown in cinemas.

  8. Terribly dangerous in a way by meist3r · · Score: 2, Funny

    So right now we have open, public sharing infrastructure that can be arguably used for both purposes. Legal and illegal sharing. The people trying to sue users can't automatically assume that just because you're using the technology you must be a criminal. Darknets are satan's work and for terrorists only amirite? So you get caught using one of those and you're auto-screwed (interval 5sec).

    This is of course adapted thinking from the way our authorities work atm.

  9. Somewhat unimpressed .. by stevied · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So basically it allows encrypted file transfers between people who are communicating on a chat / IM network? Is it me or is that not exactly a huge innovation?

    1. Re:Somewhat unimpressed .. by jonaskoelker · · Score: 4, Funny

      Is it me or is that not exactly a huge innovation?

      Haven't you read other news in IT lately?

      MSN msgr, Yahoo chat, ICQ, Google talk et al. all reinvented IRC each in their own mutually incompatible way. Then they added file transfer that wasn't FTP.

      Web 2.0 is a reinvention of the mainframe with thin clients on dumb terminals. JavaScript is becoming a reinvention of python, except with curlies. JSON is a reinvention of XML, which is a reinvention of s-expressions.

      Next up, someone's going to reinvent the business process of reinventing the wheel in slightly different and incompatible ways ("for added value", of course) and patent the method. Hey, that'd be a good use of business method patents.

      Can you tell I'm bitter? ;)

  10. Re:Those services are not international by horza · · Score: 5, Insightful

    iTunes doesn't work with Linux, as jopsen says Hulu is US only (and the BBC iPlayer is UK only), and Moonlight is never going to gain any traction under Linux. Even Flash has only just arrived for 64-bit computers recently. The only reliable cross-platform and international way to watch movies is to download them via file-sharing.

    Phillip.

    --
    Property for sale in Nice, France
  11. Kill hulu with fire; salt the remains by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Funny

    Segmenting the internet back into region specific chunks is probably the worst thing that happened since MySpace.

    So you'd rather Hulu and Netflix be sued into bankruptcy for streaming content to places in the world they have no right to do so? Yeah, that'd be a much greater idea...

    Yes!

    Well, no, I wish them a violent, painful death. But bankruptcy is an acceptable compromise.

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  12. Yeah, but... by Crimson+Wing · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...does it still autonomously and secretly download malware in the background?

    --
    Sig? What's that? Oh, 'signature'...and it's supposed to be witty? Right...
  13. Silverlight 2 vs. Moonlight 1 by tepples · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Moonlight is never going to gain any traction under Linux.

    And let me guess, somehow this will not be the fault of Linux, and the blame will be squarely leveled at Microsoft.

    It'll be the fault of Microsoft if Microsoft continues to make questionably necessary additions to the Silverlight spec to make the Moonlight developers fall behind, and then continues to push Silverlight app developers to "take advantage" of those additions.