BitTorrent's Loss is eDonkey's Gain? 437
MrAndrews writes "According to this BBC article, users in South Korea, Italy, Germany and Spain are using BitTorrent less frequently these days, after lawsuits by the movie industry. However: "While the use of BitTorrent has fallen, file sharers have moved to an alternative network called eDonkey". "
decentralised? (Score:2, Interesting)
The most widely used ed2k server software is Lugdunum, although MLDonkey provides an open source alternative...(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eDonk
Doesn't seems more decentralised than bittorrent to me..
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Legit or not? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the previous uses of that technology were not valid according to the laws of the country in question, then the people who are sourcing the illicit data should be smacked around in court and life moves on.
If you don't like those terms, stay the fuck away from data that you don't have a legal right to transfer, and produce more original data which will have the transfer rights (public domain, creative commons, gpl, whatever) you prefer.
This has NOTHING to do with the trend to replace [insert your old P2P tech here] with [insert your new P2P tech here].
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
As an example, there is NO WAY you can find a movie called "Rojo Amanecer" (mexican movie abou the October 2nd massacre in Tlatelolco [wikipedia.org]) on any torrent, but it is available on Emule.
I also used sometime Winmx, that was when I was looking for the digital version of back iusses of the GAme developers Magazine [gdmag.com] which I could not find on emule (less on bittorrent of course) and I think some japanesse or chinesse had it on WinMX because it was there. These days, I could find only the CD 2 of those archives.
Re:Legit or not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you saying that because Jack the Ripper used a scalpel, my surgeon has to operate me with a spoon? That since crackers use Linux, we should forbid it (yay, forbid computers altogether!)? That since speeders use cars, we all have to walk only? That since Lucrezia Borgia poisoned people, we should ban chemistry?
Get the difference: there can be uses and abuses of the same thing.
Re:Every movie recently released is secretly porn (Score:5, Interesting)
Your behaviour is probably Bad© and AntiAmerican©, if not CommieAnarchistLibertarian© for US standards, but it's been ruled as perfectly legal in France, and therefore would probably be in most of Europe.
Re:Every movie recently released is secretly porn (Score:5, Interesting)
My trouble with eDonkey clones (Score:3, Interesting)
1: Do not offer as many features as their Windows counterparts,
2: Not as stable on Linux as they are on Windows,
3: Are plain ugly and
4: Are damn slow on Linux.
The only software I find a pleasure to look at and also exists for the Windows platform is OpenOffice.org and the GIMP. There are more open source softwares out there but I haven't found them.
The real problem with BT (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole BT thing is a good idea for software releases and large files people are looking to download from a single site, say I go to a distro site and have a choice of FTP/HTTP/BT but to use it for P2P is just useless in my eyes.
The whole Zen "the interface is no interface" thing was a little unsettling too as I had no idea that my downloads were being slowed by my firewall back when BT first came out until I used a version that showed that there was a problem.
I still think there is a place for BT and software like it, but not for P2P filesharing. As much as I hate to admit it, I like having n00bs and clueless users on my system so I can access stuff easier and faster. BT was more for the tech savvy and they tend to be smart enough/greedy to never seed a download unless they happened to walk away from a download that completed.
I still pine for the days when Kazaa lite was not full of viruses/spyware/fake files and instead was a great easy quick system to get exactly what you wanted ASAP.
Re:Every movie recently released is secretly porn (Score:1, Interesting)
That is a very plausible scenario as long as the so-called democratic system allows the appointment of Government, Inc., a subsidiary of Big Ugly Biz Co. One need look no farther than the world's greatest plutocracy for a case in point.
After all, one dumbass from Big Ugly Biz Co. has already had the audacity to suggest that if you skip a commercial, you are stealing television.
Re:This is news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cooler still is M.U.L.E. [worldofmule.net].
eDonkey? Yeah right (Score:3, Interesting)
All the DAP stuff I really wanted I got through torrents anyway.
Re:Every movie recently released is secretly porn (Score:4, Interesting)
That's almost the same thing I do with used CDs!
The local brick and mortar gets a cut, and I get an ever-expanding library of music that's correctly tagged, in a format I prefer, and at a good bitrate.
My experiences with downloading ripped media is that it's usually poor-quality. About the only thing useful is fan-subbed anime, and they're not on things like eDonkey
Once I get some money stored up for a new RAID in the TB-range, I'll probably start following the same process with DVDs (unless it's something I end up really liking, in which case I prefer the nice case and cover and quality of the version bought from Amazon, like Firefly for example)
Re:The real problem with BT (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't personally think eDonkey is a good solution either though. Poisoned files are too rampant these days to make these types of services viable anymore. What we need is something analogous to IRC where all but the higher intelligence/true geeks can do their thing without it being flooded by idiots and junk. Also some sort of file verification system is needed beyond a user rating system that is pretty fool-proof and solid to keep things legit and flowing smoothly.
Sure, easier said than done, but it is what is needed to get things back on track from the old days when filesharing was filesharing. Christ I sound like my father... damn aging.
Re:Every movie recently released is secretly porn (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
My main complaints:
1) Setup and use is much too confusing. While BitTorrent has streamlined the process by integrating such things as the "server" (tracker) into the torrent file, eMule tries to manage a list of servers, and doesn't seem to do a very good job of it.
2) It doesn't "just work". Getting your client to connect to the kademlia network is a nightmare, and after the client launches, IF you have previously been on the network, you CAN expect it to connect. Eventually. Azureus, on the other hand, connects to it's Kademlia network in under a minute, and it works every time. Azureus can also use UPnP to autoconfigure your router for BitTorrent use.
3) Downloads are slow. I thought I had left behind queues back in the days of fserves and Kazaa. There is nothing like having a file sit at 0% for several days because all the clients that have the file report that their queues are full. BitTorrent's method of isolating client instances into seperate swarms has eliminated this problem. Some clients, such as Azureus, have support for multiple swarms in one client instance, but ensure that each swarm is being properly handled, unlike eMule and it's queues (and queue limits).
4) It is hard to search. If I do a search one minute on eMule, and then try a minute later, I get quite different search results, and most of the results have very few peers. With BitTorrent, I frequent the few search sites that I use, and get consistant, fast search results. Usually what I want to download has quite a few peers.
5) eMule "swarms" have tons of useless peers. People who are leeching, or have full queues, or long queues, or are seeding too many files. In a BitTorrent swarm, EVERYBODY is uploading, because if they don't, nobody is going to upload to them, and they aren't going to get very far. BitTorrent users also tend to be dealing with less files at once (Such as only one or two), so they can "concentrate" on those files. An eMule client could be seeding hundreds or thousands of files.
I will give eMule one thing, it DOES have a lot of rare stuff. It's very hard to download, as I spent a week downloading a 90MB file, but it was sufficiently rare that it was worth it. I will continue to use eMule for when I just can't find what I'm looking for elsewhere, but for more popular files, BitTorrent is a heck of a lot faster.
The only real advantage of eMule, as I see it, other than having rare files, is that it is a tad more decentralized. Yes, it still has central servers which isn't, but a client can rely entirely on the Kademlia network (considering he can get the bloody thing bootstrapped with no servers). BitTorrent doesn't quite work like this yet. Trackers are now optional due to Azureus's own Kademlia network, and many torrents don't include a tracker at all (Of course this makes them azureus-only since no other BT client has a kademlia implementation that is compatible, or as good). BitTorrent still, no matter what else, requires a source of Torrent files, and that is usually going to be a web site.
I suppose that technically there is no reason that torrent files couldn't be served up via Azureus's kademlia network... I'm not sure I want that to happen though, as the centralized source that is websites like TorrentSpy and PirateBay just work faster and more reliably than decentralized search solutions. Still, in a pinch...
Re:Every movie recently released is secretly porn (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, why do rentals typically last only 24h? Because the video club cannot own an infinite number of copies of everything. Shorter rentals cut down on the number of required copies, physical storage space and operating costs. Some clubs are even refunding $1 (or crediting on the next rental) when rentals are returned within 12h or before noon the next day.
Were it not for the potentially questionable motives behind ripping, some clubs would happily offer half-price rentals for people who rip on-site using their laptops.
Re:Every movie recently released is secretly porn (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Every movie recently released is secretly porn (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is news? (Score:2, Interesting)
Regardless, the ed2k network has been around for ages. I'd prefer all you attention-grabbing movie pirates go somewhere else rather than making ed2k the next target of the MPAA. The ed2k client/server model is much more centralized than bittorent, so it is naturally unsuited to low-profile filesharing. Instead of tracking down any one of the million tiny bittorent trackers they would just need to connect to one of the public ed2k servers for a list of files being shared. In short, it is much _easier_ for them to find you here. You made the wrong choice. Go away.