Thread: Limewire and other peer to peer programs

Stevo

I've been using limewire (Freeware version) for a couple of years with no problems. I think as long as you have decent antivirus and firewall software you're fine.

Make sure you set uploads to zero.

Cheers.

i use limewire as well also in conjunction with this site for music

helps me to remember the old days songs .............

post edited for legal reasons

Top 100 Chart Hits, Songs, Singles, Albums Artists & Musicians

Wow, people still use Limewire!
Many programs have made this one quite redundant.

Xav

such as???

Guys - sorry to spoil your fun but if anyone starts providing links or instructions on how to download copyrighted materials your posts will be deleted and warnings \ infractions may be handed out.

Remember downloading copyrighted materials is illegal and therefore we can't have people posting links and so forth on here. The same applies for offering \ asking for copies of CDs, DVDs, Videos etc.

Just be careful what you post.

peer to peer file sharing is fine

[I guess this turned out to be not-so-clear, and I rant in places, sorry. Hopefully it is informative for some].
The peer-to-peer paradigm is a revolutionary method of data sharing.
Previously, the client/ server paradigm was the only way to distribute data as information consumers (dumb terminals and early PC's) simply did not have the computational power to manage the distribution of data. It used to make sense to spend big bucks on a centralised 'server' and have many dumb 'clients'. And it was HEAPS cheaper. Now, my PDA has more power than an old supercomputer posessed. It has the power to be an information/data consumer AND producer. In other words, it can be what we call a 'peer'. This paradigm shift is a revolution in the way that information is managed and distributed.

[from memory, and hopefully not treading on djhampson's toes.]
Napster was the early, publicised, version of peer-to-peer technology. Although it was still highly centralised. Your file list was uploaded to a central database for searching, that was mapped to an IP address for you to get the file.

DON'T use limewire, among the knowledgeable computer community it is simply not trusted. Last time I saw the limewire installer on a colleagues computer, it came with stupid I.E. pluggins and malware that trample your PC (and that goes for KaZaa and Morpheus).
Once you execute a program on your PC, it can run MILLIONS of instructions per second, and if you run an insecure OS like Micro$oft Windows, that means that the program can do ~anything~ it wants with the information on your computer, without limitations.
Most people often don't care about this because they only use their PC for stealing music and watching, um, burlesque movies. And that’s fair enough. But if you put information you ‘value’ on your PC you should know what your doing. People CAN screw you by just knowing your bank account number [1].
These programs were really designed to share copyrighted music, knowing that it was illegal. And that means your running software written by a crook.

These programs use the Gnutella protocol which does not include incentives for people to share. I.e. set your file share to 0 so you don't waste bandwidth uploading. Which makes the whole p2p fabric fall down. The few that do share are often MPAA controlled 'peers' that share modern songs that have beeps and electronic interference in them. (That ruins your experience of any music you hope to preview).

The BitTorrent protocol, written and developed by Brahm Cohen is the most recent installment in the peer-to-peer protocol world. It includes a reputation mechanism based on 'tit-for-tat', where you receive credit or 'reputation' for bits uploaded, this provides an incentive for you to share. If you don't send, you don't receive. Which is great. It includes a mechanism for encrypting traffic and hashing content so some idiot can't inject bung data and ruin your downloaded file. A recent version of this protocol is closer to being truly peer-to-peer, in that once the initial sharer (called a 'seed') has sent a full copy out, it is possible to retrieve the entire file your looking for from other peers. i.e. it is decentralised, unlike the above protocols that rely on some centralised aspect.

There are HEAPS of legitimate things that you can retrieve from the interweb using peer-to-peer s/w. This technology is useful for other things that don't breach copyright.

Software called Asuerus uses the BitTorrent protocol.
If you use Azureus, it includes a menu and interface for downloading free (creative commons) movies and previews that people have posted.
Admittedly, the addition of this menu of public downloads has bastardised the interface with advertising, cest la vie. TV is D-E-A-D, you can spend hours watching movies from youtube, metacafe and possibly nothingtoxic without infringing copyright.
There are almost no ads in most of this content either.

Don't be stupid enough to think that anything you do on the Internet is anonymous. It is, unfortunately, not the case.


[1] - BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Clarkson stung after bank prank

oh, yeah. OR you could read a book.