Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with p2p

Making Money from P2P File sharing!

storybored — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:14:24 -0800

Do you know of any attempts to monetize peer-to-peer file sharing? That is to say if a user is sharing a file, she gets compensated for uploading bits of the file? I'm interested in knowing who's looking in to it and what kind of success they may have had.

Spotty-what?

nam3d — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:48:56 -0800

Ways to improve my Spotify experience? I've been using Spotify for a few weeks now and find it really meets my requirements, I don't listen to music a lot and tend to listen to podcasts/audio books when out and about.

I'm just wondering if anyone had any tips/hacks to improve my spotify experience.

How safe is P2P?

The Ardship of Cambry — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:04:28 -0800

How worried should I be about the recent rash of stories in the mainstream media about P2P software being used to commit identity theft? For instance, this article about medical data being found on P2P clients like Gnutella. Or this one about a family's financial data making its way onto LimeWire.
I have no experience with these particular clients, but I have used Grokster and Morpheus back in the day. Is it really possible for someone else to download your files if you haven't taken a positive action to indicate that you want to make specific files available? Is this just a case of people who are even less l33t than yours truly not understanding how P2P software works and/or having lousy security on their computers? Or is this just another case of the MSM trying to mess with my head?

What's the best P2P direct connect software for University networks?

ilumos — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:43:24 -0800

What's the best P2P direct connect software for University networks? Which is the best software (not necessarily the most widely used) software for running a darknet on my University's network?

DC++?
Alliance?
Waste?

I'm off to Uni in a week and would like to share some of my files with the rest of the uni network, as external P2P programs aren't allowed at all.

I'm aware that most people use DC++, but I cant say I like it, its a bit clunky.

I recently discovered Alliance which looks promising. Anyone have any experience with this sort of thing?

Any tips at all on the subject would be greatly appreciated. I'm thinking of setting up a hub, running my (thankfully silent) PC 24/7 and inviting people with calling cards slipped under doors, or something...

Cheers :)

Alternative to Soulseek

MrMerlot — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:03:37 -0800

Can the hive recommend a good alternative to Soulseek? My version seems much more creaky than it used to and the inventory more empty each time I use it

Someone didn't follow the first rule of usenet... now we're all screwed.

willie11 — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:02:06 -0800

Grrrr, Time Warner Cable has unceremoniously removed their stellar USENET access. What do I do now? First of all, Noooooooo! For those of you who didn't know, Time Warner gave unlimited d/l and awesome retention at shocking speeds, so this is a big loss for a lot of file-sharers and online discusserers.

1) Any recommendations on premium USENET Providers? I end up using around 12 - 20 gig/month.

2) WTF? Do I have any legal recourse here? Well, not legal for obvious reasons... but is there anything I can formally do to make myself feel better about Time Warner's dastardly removal of the second best thing on the tubes?

3) Now I have NO reason to subscribe to TWC/Roadrunner. But in my area (Raleigh, NC), there seems to be no other alternative. Any thoughts? Could I shift down to a lesser bandwidth solution and still get eye melting speeds through my premium news server?

4) I've been known to accidentally d/l the occasion bit o' proprietary material. Audiobooks and daily shows and the like. Should I be concerned about giving my credit card information over to a premium provider?

Thanks!

This Nightmare of Listening Freedom is Almost Over!

tmcw — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:09:16 -0800

So which P2P networks garner the most RIAA lawsuits? The lawsuits are, of course, a sort of cloak and dagger affair, but isn't there some data on this kind of thing? (disclosure: my school just got reamed by the supreme court. I #1 live off-campus, #2 don't download much)

A bit on bittorrents

barrakuda — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:04:13 -0800

Can someone explain to me the magic of bittorrents? How do they work? How are they different from programs like Limewire and Kazaa? What's the deal with seeds and peers and how can you optimize your downloading speed (i.e. how to make it quicker)? Finally, which are the best sites where you can find downloadable files? Thank you.

Downloading

Wanderlust88 — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:14:26 -0800

I'm looking for a complete or brief history of downloading. Starting out with Napster preferably, or even before if its interesting enough. The evolution of downloading, from p2p to bitorrent, etc. I'd like to see when the RIAA and the MPAA first started suing people, and when controversy really began.

If you were trying to explain the entire ordeal to a layman what would you be sure emphasize?

peer to peer folder sync

matholio — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:12:10 -0800

Can anyone recommend software to syncronise files between multiple servers ? I have staff creating multiple large files, >1gb, daily and I need to share them with multiple organisations. (medical research data, medical research institutes, univercities, etc)

I'm considering using bittorrent and handrolling a solution.
Scan a folder for new files, auto seed new files, check other servers for their new autoseeded files.

When staff want to commit a data file for synching, they would just move it to a specific folder and wait for the servers to sync overnight.
An enhancement would be a webpage for staff to tick boxes, to publish data, queue for syncing, etc.

As far as I knopw the data will be static, once it's created it won't change, there will just be more of it.

It would be nice to have some reporting functions too.
Platform would be windows or linux.
Encryption during transit would be nice.
Estimated new data is 15gb day.
Initial seed would be 1,000gb+ (may post harddisks to start off)
Server locations are global.
Bandwidth not a huge problem, academic networks will be used.(keen to be efficient though)

If there is a existing solution, I'd like to hear about it.

I considered PowerFolder, but the techs there say it doesn't doesn't support multiple sources. I'm really looking for something that support multiple sources at a block level.

If there's an obvious way to do this, I'm missing it.
I'll admit I like the idea of using bittorent for legitimate purposes, but that should not be the driver.

Ghost bit-torrent tracker

daksya — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:50:39 -0800

How do torrents work? I thought I knew. Something like this, basically:

Person A wants to share files. She creates a .torrent which contains
file-list +
pieces & their checksums +
tracker address +
maybe some other stuff

She uploads it to tracker, which loads the torrent, and if there's an associated directory, also gets it indexed.

Persons B, C, D come across the listing in the index and open the .torrent in their client. Client contacts tracker which, in short, returns list of seeds & peers. Client contacts seeds & peers and individually tries to hook up all connections it can. Enter DHT, which means, I think, is that you get peer lists from peers you already are in touch with.

***

Now it turns out that a pretty famous public tracker went down a couple of months ago, but with some lingering hope of its resurrection still present. I found a torrent on one of the *novas, with the only tracker listed being that of downed-site. On a whim, I open it in utorrent, and although tracker status is "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.", I get some seeds and the torrent is "working".

My question: where did it get the list of seeds from?

If it's from the downed-site, is the moral that it's "down" but not really?

Advanced Gnutella Client

KenFox — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:00:05 -0800

Help me find a Gnutella client with advanced search options I am looking for a Gnutella client with some advanced search criteria.

Currently, I am using an old version of Bearshare which has everything I want but is not Vista compatible and has some visual and stability issues.

The most important search criteria for me are:
Filter by file type (music, image, etc.), Exclude files with more than X words in filename, Exclude files with X extension (i.e. .tiff)

Does anyone know of a client with these features that is current and Vista compatible?

TIA

UUSee TV

RavinDave — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:52:04 -0800

Anyone ever use the Chinese streaming software UUSee? If you go to there download page, you'll see links obtain the latest version of "UUSee". The software and installer are all in Chinese.

What is UUSee? Well, I'm not totally sure myself -- which is why I'm asking if others have any experience with it. One web page explains: "UUSee users download an application for their desktop, allowing the machine to become a node in their peer-to-peer network. A press release in January claimed an installed base at around 30 million. They offer over 60 live channels, including China’s largest network, CCTV. " It actually seems to offer much more than that. Lotsa sports, news and old movies.

It's a slick program that works very well. One thing causes concern however -- when I run the program my Symantec firewall constantly alerts me to intrusion attempts. I don't know if these are genuine hacking attempts, government monitoring -- or maybe something entirely innocent; some by-product of their coding that doesn't follow the usual protocol. I dunno. Another reason why I'm asking if anyone else has played around with it.

Will my money get to the musician, or all end up with the record label?

intermod — Tue, 22 May 2007 05:46:31 -0800

Help me make sure that my money gets to Handsome Dick Manitoba: downloading vs buying music, and how to find out if an artist actually gets money from their own album sales? Having recently heard the The Dictators' album Blood Brothers and realizing that they are a blind spot in my collection, I'd like to buy some of their stuff. This album is a classic and in print so I'm sure that I can buy a copy, however I also have access to a free download of it. These days I'm, uh, flush enough that I can afford these things and so I'd rather just buy the record and support the band, however it occurs to me that little to none of the money may actually end up in the hands of the original artists.

Is anyone aware of any resources to tell if a particular musical artist gets more or less of the money from the sales of their own records? Say, Artist A got a crappy contract and gets pennies on each sale, vs Artist B who held their ground during negotiations and gets dollars.

This seems like the kind of information that probably exists out there somewhere, perhaps in a wiki or otherwise community-contributable form.

Azureus 2.5.0.2 + force seed = ?

mykescipark — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 07:45:40 -0800

Has the "force seed" option been removed from the latest version of Azureus (2.5.0.2)? It used to be a simple right-click away, but now I can't seem to locate it anywhere... (I've searched the Wiki.)

Legitimate p2p examples?

spock — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 07:32:56 -0800

I need compelling examples of legitimate/legal uses of bittorrent or other p2p applications/protocols. I'm an I.T. guy on a committee that advises a university Chancellor on tech matters. I'm disturbed by the university's bowing to pressure by the RIAA and the responses being taken. We already have a Packeteer in place that (while not banning it) "prioritizes" p2p traffic into such a narrow amount of bandwidth as to make it all but unusable. Now the university is looking into Audible Magic's CopySense appliance/application. Besides the fact that such things are easily defeated by encrypting the shared files (and are therefore a huge waste of university dollars) they also give the university the ability to completely shut off the functionality p2p programs (allegedly). It seems to me that this is wrong-headed — like making VCRs nonfunctional simply because they CAN (and are) used to make copies of copyrighted material.

It seems to me that the best way to make a case against this is to cite situations or cases for which bittorrent or other p2p applications or protocols are used legitimately. I'd appreciate some examples to cite.

Is a P2P download safe?

chef_boyardee — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 18:45:04 -0800

Two-pronged question: (1) How common are virus/spyware-infected applications on P2P, assuming the filesize is big (50+ MB) and it's not one of those stupid 50 KB bait files? (2) Are there any good free or shareware virus scanners that are especially designed to examine the contents of executable setup programs? Most protection programs just look at existing files on a hard drive. Short background story on this:

(1) I always buy software, but in this case I found a useful application that hasn't been on the market for awhile, even as an upgrade.

(2) Last time I tried buying a virus protection system with Mcafee or Norton (not sure which), it was offered only as a service that required renewal. Given all the fine print on their site I had a hunch that they were going to sign me up for stuff I didn't want and make it a PITA to cancel.

Thanks.

Slow P2P downloads.

stammer — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 21:30:26 -0800

As of two weeks ago, my (entirely legal) Soulseek downloads won't go any faster than exactly 4.1 k/s. If I download more than one file at a time, they'll each go at 2 k/s; four at a time go at 1 k/s each; any more than that and they all fail. My internet is otherwise speedy and the relevant ports are forwarded. Why is this happening to me? What have I done wrong?

P2P for small group of friends

thebabelfish — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:15:00 -0800

Are there any P2P protocols (with clients for Windows, OS X, and Linux ideally) that are ideal for sharing files between a small group of friends? I found Waste and DirectConnect, but Waste doesn't have great OS X support and Linux is effectively non-existant, and DirectConnect has similar issues (though it seems more mature than Waste).

The actual problem is how to let all of my dorm floormates and myself easily share music between each other.

Cool Newsgroups Providers

PenguinBukkake — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:53:26 -0800

Usenet question. Is TITANNews still the way to go? Are there any newer, cooler, hi-speed, no-logs-kept, Mac-friendly places? thanks!

P2P download software

falameufilho — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:49:17 -0800

I haven't really downloaded music since the days of Napster, then Audiogalaxy and then Soulseek (until it started to suck). I want to start ~~stealing~~ downloading music again. What are the kids using these days?

FYI: I tried Shareaza, but it looks like I can only download something if it's on more than 50 sources, other than that it stays "pending" forever. Is there some network I should connect it to?

my pings dont come back

ugrndhg — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:09:27 -0800

I only ping intermittently if at all, to a wireless router whenever bittorrent is started. Its not upload/download limits/bandwidth or the usual, as there does not need be any data tranfer to time out, just having the BT program running. Bittorrent itself is fast as a button throughout. Upload downloads are limited, ports forwarded, the torrent speed is not the issue, its solely that while using BT, even if all torrents are stopped, there is really bad browsing, and pings to the router are randomly returned. As soon as BT client is closed totally, pings all return. it only recently started so i restored factory setting and reset all, but has anyone else fond the cause?

How to universally disallow P2P?

Afroblanco — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:11:56 -0800

Is there any easy way to universally disallow P2P traffic on an office lan? Part of my job involves administering the office LAN. I want to make sure that nobody on the network can run any sort of P2P. This includes "secure" P2P such as Hamachi.

When I say an easy way, I mean easy. If there's a program that I can install, that would be great. I would rather not delve into server internals or router/firewall configurations.

If there is no easy way to block P2P traffic, I would be just as happy with a tool that could diagnose P2P traffic.

Network information -
Windows and Mac OSX boxes
Servers are Win2K
Using a Tasman router and Pix 501 firewall

All known P2P and IM protocols/clients?

loquacious — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:04:21 -0800

I need to begin to secure a network against IP "theft" liability and security breaches. Please help me compile a list of every known IM and P2P/filesharing protocol and/or client. However, I don't need to list every single IRC client, simply naming the protocol of IRC is sufficient.

Yeah, it's a terrible task. But it needs to be done. Thanks in advance.

WHy does Windows periodically decide it can't find the internet?

ajp — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:11:25 -0800

Why does my Windows XP laptop keep losing the internets? Seemingly randomly, Windows decides it can't resolve domain names. This could be immediately after bootup, or more often, after a few hours of use. Filesharing programs like Azureus seem unaffected - their downloads/uploads continue. But browsers simply stop working, and pop up "Domain cannot be found" when I'm trying Gmail.com etc. In fact, I've noticed that the problem seems to be more frequent when I have a lot of P2P connections open. Could this be consuming some sort of Windows resource, and preventing other apps from making DNS queries?

It happens irregularly but often, like once a day. A reboot of the laptop usually fixes things, but logging in and out of any account doesn't.

Also, occasionally the signal strength of my wifi connection drops to near zero, even when the laptop is mere inches from the router. This doesn't happen often, and is again remedied by similar sledgehammer tactics.

I have no idea how to get into the bowels of Windows to debug, so any pointers to useful tools will be greatly received. Maybe it's time to put this box out of it's mysery and install a real OS :-)

Setup is:

Windows XP on a Clevo notebook

Belkin wireless USB adapter (model num F5D7050)

Buffalo Airstation WMR-G54

ISP is Zen ADSL

Thanks for any suggestions.