p2p news / p2pnet:- WinMX is down, eDonkey seems to have moved over to the opposition, StreamCast ceo Mike Weiss isn’t talking, BearShare is keeping shtum, Warez P2P isn’t saying anything except ‘watch this space’, LimeWire has its head in the sand, Grokster will probably end up being eaten by corporate download firm Mashboxx.

Does all this mean the indie p2p industry is on the verge of collapse?

Nope. It just means it’s on the verge of change.

eDonkey has joined Sharman Networks in a move which’ll be far more advantageous to the latter than the former. On the fact that it’s signed up Sharmans’ DCIA, which touts DRM and Kazaa, “We believe that DCIA has many of the right ideas,” the company’s Sam Yagan told us yesterday. “But we don’t in any way agree with every position it takes.”

And on the fact the lamescream media were all a-twitter because eDonkey’s New York office wasn’t answering the phone? That’s not because eDonkey is going, or has gone, under, says Yagan. “We haven’t been in our NYC offices for many months, so this is a case of creative journalism.”

On the corporate side, Mashboxx’s Wayne Rosso still isn’t saying anything definitive about Mashboxx absorbing Grokster, but ex-Universal Studios and Pressplay senior vp Mike Bebel is the new ceo and president, with Rosso as company chairman.

But the turmoil only really means one thing. The wind of change is blowing.

Napster was replaced by Kazaa, Kazaa was nailed by spyware and BitTorrent which, as a new venture company, seems to be taking the corporate route, is being overshadowed by eDonkey. And let’s not forget open source Shareaza, which recently released a huge upgrade.

And in the background, creators and developers are grafting away, forcing change, making applications and coming up with new techniques and ways to keep the Cyber Space open and free.

Because p2p and file sharing are here to stay – locked in solid.

As carpefile commented in Of ‘dumbed down apps’:

This to me is actually a silver lining. As more of the commercial apps go the pay to peer route, more and more users will move to opensource, adware free, spyware free, apps that provide better protections.

And, says a comment post:

Open source p2p apps will eventually dominate. And so they should. They are well coded, peer reviewed and respond to user requirements better than their commercial counterparts.

Emule, Azureus, Shareaza are all good clients providing access to any files you could ever want. I find the advantage with apps like Emule and Azureus, they actually reward uploaders, so it reduces the leecher factor.

Bitcomet is another good torrent client, although it’s not open source.

I don’t actually think the learning curve is that high for these types of apps. I mean for emule, it’s simply a matter of selecting a ed2k server with a high number of users and files (razorback 2.0 is a good one). And connecting to kad. Although emule can be slow at times, the more users that come and share the faster it will be for everyone. If you don’t share you don’t gain reward points. Bittorrent uses a tit for tat system, which effectively does the same thing.

You get a bunch of bad users in a torrent swarm, then the whole swarm will die out as people leave it.

The RIAA/MPAA knows it can’t shut down open source projects, that’s why it’s only targeting registered companies. Like the article says, they are actually helping us by moving people onto open source based p2p apps.

As Bob Dylan sings, “you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’.”

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win

- Mohandas Gandhi

This entry was posted on Friday, September 23rd, 2005 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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