KDX? That’s so obscure that absolutely nobody, not even the “MAFIAA” is going to care about it. That doesn’t make it useful though.

PeerGuardian is nothing but a glorified packet filter which is the simplest firewall possible and PG is most-likely the most primitive. Every half-decent OS already comes with a packet filter, so its reason d’etre kind of escapes me but that’s hype for you. Any half-decent P2P filesharing application can filter and block IP address ranges, some even maintain their own list (LimeWire for example). That’s far better and powerful because PeerGuardian doesn’t know any P2P protocols and cannot look inside packets. Also banning IP address ranges is never surgically clean. There’ll always be collateral damages becauses ranges are shared and overlap all the time. If the application filters itself, it’ll only matter for the application but not anything else like IRC, email, web, ftp etc. Many banned ranges are also used by YouTube and other big websites which have nothing to do with their P2P spamming neighbours. That’ll cause a lot of fall-out which you might not even notice because you might not immediately think of PeerGuardian when something doesn’t load or work.

The worst isn’t the software “PeerGuardian” but actually BlueTack who are just a bunch of egomaniacs with mediocre skill and knowledge. All they do is a bit of googling, whois lookups and the like. They have a really bad record of banning innocent guys just because WHOIS showed something that looked suspicious to their paranoid minds. They also block ranges just because some random guy in their forum suggests it.

You could even get the idea that BlueTack operate under a false flag and are actually anti-P2P. However, one should never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

1. Spread trojans and virii on P2P networks in order to scare folks away from them.
2. Distribute new release via P2P networks in order to get them to their partner radio
stations quickly. A fact that .. if it were to come to light .. would destroy their litigation
campaign since the fact that they are putting them on P2P themselves would imply
consent to distribute by the copyright holders. pretty neat, eh ?

yu dun reads my articles? well gursh dungit, thanks billybobjoe. heres us hopin uz gets first place in the hog show tarmmera ! ”

I think I just shat myself laughing.

” I would doubt that MediaSentry would deliberately spread trojans ”

What planet do you hail from ?

PG is a small, open source firewall application that can take filter lists (or “blocklists”) from any source. We used to run our own blocklist website where users could vote on and monitor specific ranges, as well as connect them to WHOIS data and other useful stuff. Sadly after events listed here – http://www.p2pnet.net/story/6275 we haven’t been able to successfully restart this website – copyright on the code was owned by the server admin who hijacked our paypal account and domain names.

Most people use the blocklists from http://bluetack.co.uk/, but several others are also available and are presented to the user when they first start the application.

I did a bit of list-editing back when the blocklist website was up, and ranges were either listed for fake files (like those old Madonna “f**** off” ones) or because they came up as a “mediasentry”/”baytsp” style company on WHOIS. 90% of the time, the fake file sharing servers just resolved to one of the various media orgs and it was easy to extract the entire range.

Obviously some list makers have been over-zealous, but that isn’t our fault – we make a very lightweight filter designed to block a list of IP addresses without overloading your RAM – adding lots of ranges into a standard firewall will probably max it out – it certainly did when I used to use Sygate and Outpost back in the day.

As for this specific block, I’m afraid I’m completely unaware of anything related to this. I would doubt that MediaSentry would deliberately spread trojans, and don’t forget that the best protocols are always Open Source.

Have a great day,

Joseph Farthing
Public Relations
Phoenix Labs

stw

I love it! In an article about MediaSentry trying to catch people for copyright infringement, Surfer posts instructions on how to avoid being caught. The direct implication is that you can use KDX to safely share copyrighted material. However the very first step says “Yes, you have to pay for it”.

I’m tempted to post a crack for KDX just on principle.

yu dun reads my articles? well gursh dungit, thanks billybobjoe. heres us hopin uz gets first place in the hog show tarmmera !

What are his technical qualifications?

he uses P2P?

Any fucking drone can use P2P. That is why P2P was made.

What a load of BS.

I reads this guys articles before on this site.

surfer, as a “p2pnet technical editor” better put out a fucking amzing article or I WILL rip him a new one and cast him as the wannabe that he is.

Surfer, who pretends to be the lord of warez says:
“the above message is brought to you by Norton Firewall, the fastest, lightest, online protection.”
—

fuck, if you don’t know this, then lord help you.

But yeah if you don’t have a firewall to put in the IP ranges, then peer guardian is for you (and it black list is hyped, look in their own forum).

Over a year ago, maybe 2 I don’t remember, I went through their forum and basically they were adding any friggin IP/IP-ranges kids were tossing at them.

Legit companies blocked, company IP’s that had the name of any of the cartels listed, shit even Bell Canada IP’s were blocked. In Bell’s forum it was filing up with question on why peer-guardian was blocking their forum IP.

That peer-guardian is a load of bull to me. Yeah sure, it may block a legit cartel or legit mediasentry IP, but in a lot of cases its block list is a load of hyped crap.

Anyone can get a range of IP’s to snoop, peer guardian won’t even block them. I don’t see the point in this over-hyped app. But, anything is better than nothing though. So that point makes the case (nothing else does).

‘whats good for the goose is good for the gander.’

I have about had it with these asshats, therefore I am going on the offensive. Hacking them down would only make them move locations, therefore, I am going to use another tactic, information.

Exposing their bullshit to the p2pnet readership will at least allow the users here to better defend themselves against the stupid ploys currently being engaged by these greedy conglomerates in order to force feed you garbage content, when, where, and for how much they dictate.

stay tuned…