Discordia rears its ugly head with Lphant
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- “Shareaza is one of the oldest multi-network p2P file-sharing clients supporting Gnutella2, Gnutella, eDonkey2000 (eMule), HTTP, FTP and BitTorrent protocols in C++, MFC and ATL, for Windows,” said p2pnet.
The story centred on how Shareaza team had taken on Discordia, an ugly corporate music-friendly outfit which had hijacked Shareaza, “wrongly believing to get away with bare-faced, blatant corporate theft, all you need is the Big 4, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG behind you,” we said when news of the theft first broke.
We also said, “Developed by Michael Stokes, what makes it unusual is: it’s free software licensed under the GNU General Public License and since 2004, has been maintained by a group of volunteers.”
A much more recent p2pnet post says we, “had an email from an RIAA victim – a student – who said she was going to kill herself because she`d heard from someone at an (the?) RIAA extortion settlement centre categorically promising her she`d be taken to court unless she came up with more than $9,000 to buy the RIAA off.”
What does that have to do with Shareaza?
“Bullet says to go to www [dot] shareaza [dot] com for the safest client around,” Jeff said in a Reader’s Write, going on »»»
While that may have been true at one point prior to the domain being taken over around October 2007, it is no longer the case. That is a fake version being pushed by Discordia, LTD., and is a scam (and also is apparently loaded with spyware).
The real Shareaza can be downloaded from http://www.pantheraproject.net/
He [Bullet] is either unaware of the takeover of Shareaza`s domain or is a Discordia shill trying to deliberately mislead people.
Now, “During the last few days, we received a flurry of emails from people worried about the BitTorrent and eD2K-compatible Lphant P2P client,” says enigmax on TorrentFreak, continuing »»»
The vast majority of readers won`t know or care about Lphant, and that`s understandable but most will probably be concerned when they discover that along with a steady stream of other P2P software, it has been taken over – backed by elements from the music industry.
As with the takeovers of iMesh, Bearshare and the Shareaza.com website (and the faking of their client), Discordia has cleverly replaced the original P2P clients with one of its own – one which neuters the content previously available (via now-dead inbuilt BitTorrent or eD2K functionality) and provides its own, DRM-ridden and filtered content. On the Lphant site, the `new` client offered is the same as that offered on the iMesh, Bearshare and the (fake) Shareaza.com sites – the old clients in each case have been killed off.
So did Discordia hijack Lphant in the same way as they did Shareaza.com? It seems not. It is unclear if the developer of Lphant did a willing deal with Discordia or if the deal was a pressured settlement, but a deal was definitely done.
Enter `Merlin Network`. According to its own website, Merlin Network is a non-profit organization charged with representing independent music companies in enhancing the commercial exploitation of their copyrights on a global basis, and it has just done a deal with the iMesh service. The deal adds music from the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand, not for free but on via iMesh`s subscription service.
So where does Lphant fit into the picture? It appears that US-based iMesh wants to expand its services into Europe. To facilitate this expansion it has bought (maybe acquired via `settlement`) Spain-based Lphant, castrated the client, and relaunched it as a `licensed` music service.
What this means is that Merlin`s member labels music – which they claim represent some 9% of the total US music business – will be available across all of the Discordia-linked applications including iMesh, Bearshare and both the fake Shareaza and Lphant clients.
In a statement, Merlin CEO Charles Caldas said, We are pleased that iMesh inherently recognized the value of the Merlin repertoire in expanding their footprint to the global market, and are happy to be involved in working with them to license and legitimize the Lphant P2P network. It shows again that the tremendous efficiency and global reach that Merlin provides those wishing to license the world`s most exciting and commercially valuable independent repertoire has been recognized.
In October 2008, along with Universal, Sony BMG, EMI, Warner Music Group and The Orchard, Merlin announced it had done a distribution deal with Spotify. Unlike Spotify, however, Discordia does not have a good reputation and has showed with its abuse of Shareaza.com that it has no qualms about using underhand tactics in pursuit of its goals.
“Other P2P client developers should watch their backs,” says enigman in TorrentFreak, “unless future assimilation into the Discordia collective sounds attractive”.
Stay tuned.
p2pnet – Shareaza takes the fight to Discordia, May 10, 2008
we said – Shareaza shanghaied, December 27, 2007
going to kill herself – Delete your file share apps RIGHT NOW !, February 14, 2009
TorrentFreak – P2P Client Does a Deal With the Devil, March 10, 2009
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