RIAA Sues Audiogalaxy

Frizzled writes "The RIAA has struck again, this time filing suit against Audiogalaxy's "Satellite" file sharing program. (Nevermind that Satellite is loaded with spy-ware ... good riddance)." News.com has a story. The RIAA's press release links to their complaint.

Get WinMX!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

WinMX is much better than anything now. Get the new version 3.1.

Re:RIAA

[Anonymous Crouton]

Probably when people stop pirating music.

Unfortunatly that is unlikely as sharing services will continue to pop up and become more and more difficult to shut down. If the silly group of corporate intrests would just realize that in the long run allowing sharing to go on is probably a good thing, they would save a lot of time and money on everyones efforts.

I don't even want to think how many cd's I bought cause I was able to download tracks from albums where I only had heard one song on the radio. Those that had at least one to two more tracks I liked I bought. In the space of a year my CD collection must have grown by at least thirty CDs.

With the exception of two that I can think of have been buying more music with the advent of MP3 sharing, I still don't understand the point of shutting these systems down when it seems people buy more music. But I suppose its all about control... Isn't everything?

Re:spyware on linux too?

[epsalon]

Simple - There is none.
[stupid lameness filter wants me to wait 20 seconds before posting]

This is just yet another reason...

[SlimySlimy]

to use a non-centralized network, such as Gnutella. All of these centralized networks (a la Napster, AG, etc.), while very good (AG tended to have a very large variety of music), are sitting ducks for the RIAA/MPAA to come after them. Centralized networks are too easy to kill, and it's raising the RIAA's spirits after each "victory". These people need to face something that is impossible to defeat, so they are forced to seriously reconsider what they're doing.

Also, if you're a Windows user and feel like trying Gnutella allow me to recommend Gnucleus, a GPL'd Gnutella client with Ultrapeers, file hashing no spyware, and multisource downloading. Check out http://www.gnucleus.net. Linux or other users, there are a plethora of clients available, such as Limewire (written in Java).

Audiogalaxy is spyware free!

[emkman]

Audiogalaxy does not contain spyware, nor does it require the use of spyware. The "official" audiogalaxy client however, does contain spyware, but only from version .609 and on. I use .608W for instance. It is 100% functional, and contains no spyware. Here is a download link. [omicro.com.br] Furthermore, audiogalaxy is a pretty much open protocol. There are a number of 3rd party clients, for various operating system, which are spyware/adware free. Some are AGStream [ractive.ch], OpenAG [mac.com], and Sputnix [biggerplanet.com]. Quit complaining if you are too lazy to use google and/or download another client, so you can get free mp3s without the company making any money.

file sharing is effective advertising

[bovril]

Snipped from the latest bit of news on the weezer [weezer.com] site.

...a fan writes: "I flicked on Mtv this morning as I was getting ready for school around 7am and Mtv News came on, talking about how Eminem was completely against the use of the internet for the purpose of downloading free music. His argument was that it was taking money away from the artist. The announcer then went on to say that on the other end of the spectrum was Weezer, who released most of their songs from their new album (Maladroit) on their website many months before it even came out! They had a few quotes from Rivers too. Since Maladroit is doing so well (#3!), Weezer is living proof that downloading music online has actually helped record sales by getting their music out there and waking people up to their music." ---Melissa

It's anecdotal, I know. But I'd say that the RIAA spends more money on lawyers than the industry loses as a result of file sharing... They should probably cut Audiogalaxy in on the profits rather than sue them.

Did anyone use AG back in the day (before RIAA)...

[acidfast7]

IIRC, back in 95...

AG was:

- written/maintained by someone at U of Texas.
- sort of an FTP search engine BUT much better than ftpsearch.ntnu.no
- would list how often an FTP was online (pretty trick back then).

and my personal favorite:

- you had to access it through some hidden directory on a commercial website.

Those were the days. I didn't even care about bandwidth because I could download a few MP2/MP3s simultanously (gotta love campus EtherNet).

Perhaps I am remembering some of this incorrectly as I did drink excessively during undergrad. Would someone confirm this because I'd hate to think it was much cooler than it really was.

Re:Audiogalaxy is spyware free!

[Soul-Burn666]

Download AudioGalaxy Lite (from the people who brought you KazaaLite)!
http://www.kazaalite.com/nuked/module s.php?op=modl oad&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownloaddeta ils&lid=5&ttitle=Audiogalaxy_Satellite_Version_060 9W

Also, the AG linux client isn't spied out...

Re:Audiogalaxy is spyware free!

[Anonymous Coward]

And for unix/linux there is a GPLed alternative called FAGS (Free AudioGalaxy Sattelite).

http://www.tty0.org/page/fags

//Fatal

Re: File Sharing

[BabyDave]

The Gnutella network does do what you want to some extent - users have the option to set themselves up as Ultrapeers/Supernodes, which create an index of some/all of the files on nodes connected to them. So instead of searching all of those nodes, you just have to search through one or two ultrapeers, which then tell you where the file is located.

Other than that, there is no permanent indexing - when you send out a search, it first goes to the nodes that you're connected to, who pass it on to their peers, who pass it on further ... and in the same way the search results are passed from peer to peer and eventually get back to you.

Therefore searching will often be slow until people learn to use the Ultrapeer system properly - currently there are a lot of Joe Sixpack 56Kbps-modem users setting themselves up as Ultrapeers (sometimes without realising it - Gnucleus by default has "Ability to become an Ultrapeer" checked), then finding lots of people trying to upload/download info all at once down their tiny bit of bandwidth. This slows things down for everyone.

When you download a file, it is a direct TCP connection, independent of the two nodes' positions in the Gnutella network. If a file is slow to download, it's nothing to do with Gnutella, it may just be that the other person has a slow connection, or is throttling bandwidth, or that there's a bottleneck somewhere in between the two of you.

If someone who actually knows a reasonable amount about the Gnutella protocol could clarify/correct any of the above, I'd appreciate it.

Spyware

[LiENUS]

If you run linux theres a guarenteed spyware free client (its open source) called Free Audio Galaxy Satellite available at http://pumjttwccjhamzza.sess.tty0.org/page/fags/ [tty0.org]