Audiogalaxy's gone. What next?

Morpheus is still there ... now on Gnutella. Not got everything but I'm still finding some stuff on it.

soulseek

sshhh!!! ;)
someone might hear you.

no,really,i have gotten some very nice listens on soulseek over this past week.

in my audiogalaxy groups people have either moved to soulseek or filetopia.

Sigh. None of these programs have the selection that AG did.

Kazza.com is good but very slow with an average of 1.5 million on line at any given time.

I had a go on something called Limewire a few months ago. It was a bit slow and unreliable, I don't know what it's like now.

winmx is key for broadband connections.

I suggest everyone migrate to KaZaA. I look forward to cherry- picking each of your wonderful collections.

KaZaa is still boobytrapped with trojans and spyware. Unless you can hack out the spyware (and use a virus-checker every time you use the program), I'd advise against using KaZaa.

WinMX has a good selection, but the queueing is a pain.

I like Limewire for the format, but the choice is non-existent.

Where should everyone go?

What are Morpheus and 'filetopia' like?

KaZaa is still boobytrapped with trojans and spyware. Unless you can hack out the spyware (and use a virus-checker every time you use the program), I'd advise against using KaZaa.

I haven't had any problems with it. During the install they give you the option of whether you want to install the third-party add-ons. I always say no.

you can get a spyware free kazaa at kazaalite.com (apparently). i've just tried soulseek, and it's quite good for dance music.

I haven't had any problems with it. During the install they give you the option of whether you want to install the third-party add-ons. I always say no.
You're might be one of the lucky ones, then. Or maybe not. After the original fooforaw about the spyware/trojans, they added that option to the install. But the first couple of revs still put some stuff onto your system even if said "no". I think KaZaa-lite was someones way of saying that "No" means "NO!"; I don't know if KaZaa learned their lesson or not.
Besides, The RIAA seems poised to knock out Morpheus and then KaZaa next. Lets see how long KaZaa stays up...

Gnutella usually has crap selection, but it does seem to stand the best chance of withstanding the RIAA's legal moves. Since it's a decentralized system, who are they going to sue to shut it down? If KaZaA goes down, I'd probably head there next.

so what's up with apple/mac users? we're fucked, no?

It will be interesting to see what happens now.

The standard line of cyber-types is that "you can't shut down a decentralized system" and "another service will always come along."

The former has already been proved false (both Audiogalaxy and Kazaa are decentralized systems; the only reason Kazaa is still going is because they changed their business ownership just before the industry won the lawsuit against them). We'll see about the latter...

Anyway, Audiogalaxy was the only really good service out there. Kazaa's selection is mostly limited to relatively mainstream stuff, and the other ones are even worse. Boohoo...

nathalie,have you checked out this linux version of soulseek. i don't have a mac,but this fellow feels it should work on your system.

nah, tried it, i couldn't get it to work. then again i am an old skool mac user: too dumb to use a pc. haha

"both Audiogalaxy and Kazaa are decentralized systems"

Not entirely true. Audiogalaxy definately uses a centralised server to allow you to select your tracks, and I'm sure Kazaa has a centralised serer much in the same way as Napster.

Protocols such as Gnutella or WinMX use a true peer to peer connection relying on users with faster connections to work as the centralised server. The problem is that although programs such as these are open-source, and use no centralised server, they can still be theoretically shut down if pressure is applied to ISPs to block their use. Of course this opens up another legal field (I'm sure in the past ISPs have been cleared of any responsibility in how they allow people to access the internet) but the RIAA seem to be winning every battle so fat, and I see no reason why this won't continue.

We just jave to hope that people come up with more and more ingenius ways of overcoming these obst

'the RIAA seem to be winning every battle so fat'

obviously I mean 'so far'

last sentance should have read"

'We just jave to hope that people come up with more and more ingenius ways of overcoming these obst acles'

.

Yeah, Audiogalaxy has a single website that everyone uses. But the file-sharing itself is not centralized; it goes direct from computer to computer. Kazaa is not the same as Napster; it uses Fasttrack technology, which also lets individual users hook their computers up directly.

I'm not really a tech expert at all. Maybe people will come up with even more decentralized versions of this software. But it seems to me that whatever you do, everyone has to be using the same software for it to work. And the software has to come from somewhere...

SoulSeek seems to be a good one.

WinMX is too slow...

Soulseek is great. The closest thing I've found to Napster yet; tends to be very reliable and fast. You can't find anywhere near as much music as you could with Audiogalaxy, but for certain types of music (most things electronic, Japanese bands) I actually have a higher success rate using Soulseek than AG.

*cries*

RIAA = Recording Industry Association of "America". One of the things these companies must do is incorporate outside of the States. The record co's would have a much harder time shutting down, say, the pirates of the Caribbean (I know, I hate me too).

Kazaa is incorporated in some Pacific islands.

If Audiogalaxy wasn't centralized, they wouldn't be able to flick a switch and instantly block almost every MP3 in the system, which is what they seem to have done. The reason that they are able to do that is because they do have a centralized server which is used to find the files. With Gnutella, there is no centralized server. Period. The only way they could shut it down would be to stop individual users from using it. That would be a much more difficult enforcement problem than what they have now, and it force the RIAA to go after individuals, which is something they have avoided until now. Even if the software was banned, it wouldn't be that hard for it to find its way to people who wanted to use it, what with FTP, e- mail, floppies, etc.

For once I (almost) agree with Ben Williams.

Anyone who wants to commercialize P2P file sharing has to have a centralized bottleneck... the place where the network touches them and they collect their money. That means, eventually the RIAA will be able to go after them and close them down. The only truly decentralized networks will be those run by amateurs who want the system for themselves.

Now where will the software client live where *it* can't be shut down? Obviously in the cloud itself. But how do you get into the cloud if you don't have the software? There'll have to be floating, temporary web2cloud gateways which move around too quickly to be shutdown. (Then of course the RIAA will go after such web2cloud gateways using *technology* such as Denial of Service Attacks, worms etc. This is a never-ending arms race.)

But without a stable web presence, how will it be possible to publicise such a service for those who don't already know?

Through weblogs, forums like ILM, rapidly updated search engines like DayPop etc. At this point the RIAA will be trying to shut down ILM for even allowing discussions like this, which alert people to the next P2P technology or where the next client is to be found.

I hope that by then even the lawmakers will have seen the impossibility of shutting down free speech to protect the not very justifiable right of the RIAA to monopolize music distribution.

But let's suppose not.

Then basically the US government will have to close down the Internet as a two-way communication mechanism. They'll ban weblogs, dicussion forums, public bulletin boards, usenet news, Instant Messaging robots etc. - any place where people can inform each other about file sharing techniques. They'll have to ban radio networks. Although, of course radio freeks will be designing new stealth networks based on ultra-wideband pulses and all sorts of exotic technology.

They'll enforce Digital Rights Management being built into all computer equipment manufactured in the US (and countries in the WTO like Europe etc.) The US will have to close down trade with all the other countries which continue to supply such illegal equipment or the components to build it. In the last resort, they'll have to go to war to bomb electronics plants that insist on turning out disk drives that can copy and replay files illegally.

Will the file sharers be able to fight back against this onslaught? In the countries not under RIAA control it may still be possible to share files through local internets. And fire sharers elsewhere will have to connect to these. File sharers will have to get into Steganography (hiding music files in other file types) so that they can bring music back from these free-zones disguised as giant spreadsheets.

Ultimately, you can't make the availability of a P2P system publically known without the RIAA finding out about it. But the price to pay to shut it down is ultimately the price of free-speech and I don't think people or government will pay that price. In 50 years time there won't be an RIAA we'll take file sharing freedom for granted.

I thought that all AG needs to do to block MP3s is make them inaccessible on the website. ie, if you can't click on that file to set the search process in motion, you can't search for the file, whether the search is centralized or decentralized. Everything I've ever read about AG has suggested that the actual process of file sharing is decentralized, but ultimately I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Phil I agree--but I don't think the RIAA will go that far. They don't need to completely eradicate illegal file-sharing (and they probably can't), they just need to marginalize it. If distribution of the requisite software has to be constantly mobile, "through weblogs, forums like ILM, rapidly updated search engines like DayPop etc.," then it becomes more difficult to get, and your average non-geek person will give up in frustration (like I did when I tried to use Hotwire once upon a time, pre-Napster). If only a few people are doing it, it doesn't matter; if millions are, it does.

no more eyeless in gaza. somebody get this on sseek

http://www.zeropaid.com/

Ben's right - filesharing existed way before Napster and similar programs (through usenet groups, for example) but it was Napster that made it easy for the casual user to get involved in it, like Mosaic/Netscape for the World Wide Web. It was also the stability of Napster and Audiogalaxy that threatened the RIAA; if the RIAA can turn filesharing into a nomadic exercise then they've instantly turned of ninety per cent of the possible filesharing market.

I think it would be possible to build a service that *looked* stable, but was built on something shifting dynamically underneath. To ordinary punters the only thing awkward would be tracking down their initial copy of the software client ... which might be as simple as posting to ILM "where's Newster today?" to which someone who has a client (and who is therefore monitoring the cloud) could check their copy to find out an IP of a machine running the web2cloud gateway, and post this. The questioner could then point their browser at the IP address, download the client and run it. From then on their machine would be part of the cloud, ocassionally acting as a web2cloud gateway itself, other times just acting as a database of who has what.

Ben's right that Napster got going by a virtuous circle of positive feedback whereby more users brought more content and stability making the cloud ever more attractive. If the RIAA can poison this, setting in mode a spiral of disillusion with P2P, then maybe people will forget it and just go back to buying their subscriptions to the official RIAA resource.

So ... remember this is partly a propaganda war. Ben is talking down P2P. I'm talking it up. Both of us aren't just giving unbiased opinions but hoping to influence this spiral in a certain direction.

I think we'll win because the hacker community doesn't like being beaten. There'll be a hard-core of enthusiasts who keep writing the software and keep making the files available. The chances are, this group will intersect with the people like ILM who collect and listen to and love a lot of music. So those people will make sure good libraries are available for each other.

Non hardcore people, who are nevertheless now used to P2P, will always be open to the message : "what's the new Napster?" And be willing to try it out. That's why the RIAA can expect to be in constant danger of P2P flaring up again. And because of the positive feedback, any time it does, subscriptions to the official service will plummet unless they can stamp it out.

One thing which might stop all this, is if bandwidth providers start charging time for uploads. Which would put super-servers out of business. But as is suggested here the squeeze on bandwidth, which makes such charging tempting, is the fault of Telco's having the monopoly on the last mile.

It may be that the US government steps in to do something about that. Which would in turn make providing high bandwidth a profitable yet commodity business where flat-rate pricing models would rule.

Or maybe wireless networks will make ownership of the wires connecting your house to the net immaterial, once the local cafe or postoffice or cornershop has a node you can connect to by radio. Once again, we'd see flat rate pricing.

kazaa gave me the chernobyl virus! like two years late! hiss!

Is that John Robb writing the preposterous article about local loop unbundling the Membranes / Gold Blade bloke?

Jeez, he's even worse at basic maths than he is at making pop music!

To answer the original question. I don't think there will be a 'next', the RIAA's speed of response has picked up and will be even swifter.

Hey Phil--I'm not really "talking down" P2P, although I can see how it might sound like it (and I don't think what I'm saying has any influence on anything--you make me sound like a record industry infiltrator or something!) I love P2P. I used Napster constantly, and now Audiogalaxy is down I'm getting serious withdrawal symptoms (I want the new Ed Case before July, dammit!). I hope something comes along to replace it.

But if you want to know what I think *should* happen, I think there should be legal file-sharing services based on a more sophisticated and less restrictive copyright model than the one peddled by the record industry, at a price that's much more reasonable than CDs. Much as I love things like AG, I do ultimately think using them is stealing; musicians should get paid. Even the companies who put money into developing and promoting musicians should get paid (they just shouldn't get paid as much).

And I'm also tired of the techno-determinism that underlies a lot of the rhetoric about free P2P, which is partly why I enjoy taking the negative line on its prospects. I'm tired of people talking about networked computers as if they're magic, autonomous creatures that somehow exist apart from the boring, regular world of laws and human decisions, and about hackers as if they're revolutionaries.

Of course, the government, legal system, etc. will eventually reach some sort of a truce with the Internet. However, what the eventual shape of that truce will be is still very much undetermined. When you think about the Internet as a technology, I think it's hard not to get excited about the potential it offers for radical decentralization. If you look at the technologies that had the biggest impact on culture in the 20th century - TV, radio, etc. - you'll see that they actually helped to bring about more cultural centralization, since the cost of become a content provider remained very high and the bandwidth was extremely limited. The potential of the Internet is to reverse that trend - turning every computer on the network into a potential content provider. That is an exciting prospect.

1) Alexander : There's already several "nexts". That's why we're discussing which to adopt. We just have to identify the next one to take off.

2) Ben : Sorry that was some mean rhetoric :-) Though I was trying to be honest by admitting I'm talking up P2P because it is a propaganda thing. (That's also the answer to your technical determinism complaint. If I was a determinist I wouldn't think it necessary to fight this. I'd just let the technology roll on and do it's thing.)

We *are* on different sides though. As you admit, ultimately you think the current freedom of file sharing is wrong. You think something else *should* replace it, that admits uncontrolled copying is stealing; and that artists should be paid.

I disagree with these positions. I think it's very nice for artists to get paid. And if I was an artist I'd want to be paid. And I think artists should be paid for the time and effort they take giving concerts, making recordings etc.

But I don't think information is *naturally* a form of property. Nor that copying without permission is a form of theft. Nor do I think an artist's desire to be paid should override my right to share information with my friends or appropriate information to use as the basis of further works.

In short, I view restrictions on me due to the legal idea of "intellectual property" as a form of repression against my rights to knowledge and expression.

Now you don't like the idea of hackers as revolutionaries, but it does contain a kernal of the truth. Remember that the "boring, regular world of laws and human decisions" had *failed* us when it came to raising this debate.

The legal profession had no incentive. They got paid for arguing about IP in court. No politician or government was interested in the debate about my rights of knowledge and expression vs. the rights of intellectual property holders. The US gov. was happy to keep extending copyright law every-time it looked like Mickey Mouse might enter the public domain.

It was hackers who forced the issue by making the technology available without asking permission, or waiting for the social conventions or government policy to catch up. Now we have the technology, it's become crystal clear that there *is* a issue about our right to share information vs. information "owner's" right to prevent us. (And that talk about "stealing" is just an antiquated, inaccurate analalogy.) But without the hackers this wouldn't be on anyone's agenda.

And the same thing is likely to happen again and again. It's technogy (and it's inventors, ie. the hackers) who raise the new possibilities that ultimately bring new powers and rights to humanity. That's been true ever since the printing press kick started the demand for wider access to the bible, which in turn led to the democratization of literacy, protestantism and universal sufferage. (Note this isn't techno-determinism. We might have had the printing press, as in China, where cultural forces essentially stiffled its effects. But it's hard to believe we'd have had widespread literacy or democracy without it.)

3) o. nate : I agree. The internet technology which is so dangerous for the IP "owners" is precisely the technology which allows free, unlimited two-way communication. That *is* an exciting new development, and something we need to defend the right to keep.

Phil--Well, of course intellectual property rights aren't "natural" (neither is any other form of property). But I'm not arguing they are. Property rights are a means of wealth generation, and an incentive to create. I'm fine with that (with appropriate limitations), and I don't think your quote-unquote "right" to "share information" (which is kind of a disingenuous way of putting it, but anyway) should obviate an artist's quote-unquote "right" to get paid. But that's a whole 'nother argument, and I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on it...

And yeah, I agree with your points about hackers. You're not using bombastic rhetoric ;) I do think P2P has raised the issues. But I would like to see a middle ground between the two extreme positions of the RIAA and hackers--and I think in some ways the "information wants to be free" position works against that happening, because it hogs the spotlight and makes it easier for the RIAA to make its case.

"One thing which might stop all this, is if bandwidth providers start charging time for uploads. Which would put super-servers out of business. But as is suggested here the squeeze on bandwidth, which makes such charging tempting, is the fault of Telco's having the monopoly on the last mile. "

My provider is starting this practice this month. Only 4 gigs upload allowed under my basic service, and $8 per addition gig. This actually goes for downloads too. It seems like this may be the beginning of the end.

It's especially annoying because I just started using Audiogalaxy about 3 weeks ago at the recommendation of a friend and was amazed by the variety- it had everything I'd been looking for and not finding on gnuttella. In comparison to AG Limewire has nothing, and seems to be getting more and more unreliable with each new version. Probably has something to do with the fact I have a Mac. Mac users are just out of luck, all around.

KaZaA sucks. It's too slow. I tried soulseek, but I haven't found it. Can anyone tell me its ID?. It's not www.soulseek.com.

I'm also downloading filetopia at this time. I will try everything. By the time, I didn't find a sustitute for Audiogalaxy.

soulseek.org

Just discovered by accident that Soulseek doesn't just restrict filesharing to MP3's, and like Gnutella, Win MX you can share videos, executibles etc.

Downloading a few audio warez at the moment.

I can see people running Soulseek servers getting a few stern letters if it catches on, and with Audiogalaxy down I can see Soulseek getting rather popular...

Anybody have any experience using winmx? I've downloaded it but when I try to search for something it takes an age. In fact I haven't found anything I've searched for yet.

In my little experience winmx. I deleted winmx after about a day because it was totally useless, i've used kazaa for months for video downloads but can hardly find any music, and i downloaded soulseek today (at the recommendations of this board) to replace audiogalaxy. it seems to be working all right.

this war has hardly even begun, foax

Alexander Blair John Robb didn't write the article and Gold Blade Rule!

haha late commentary it appears, anywho, in response to an early said comment about saying "no" to the additions that come with kazaa and they won't be installed in your system, well wrong, kazaa comes with self-installing software called "ezula" or something like that, you can "remove" it, but since the installer remains in your system ezula installs itself onto your system once again. Another program that comes with spyware is imesh, and this one is a drag because it seems as if you can't get rid of the spyware, both kazaa and imesh need this crap to run, to completely get rid of spyware I recommend you use "LAVASOFT AD-WARE" it works, I found it very useful. but anyway... anyone know of any other options I might have for music downloads? I've already tried the following and found them lame : Blubster, Kazaa, and Imesh. If u do just reply or something...i dunno.

Mariah if you search for Kazaalite this claims to be a hacked version of Kazaa minus the spyware. If you have doubts a Google search for "kazaalite" and "spyware" should unearth a few discussion boards etc examining whether the claims are genuine. (I'm pretty convinced they are but I'm not an expert). Note that there is a "dummy" file replacing the original spyware file which Ad-aware will still identify as spyware - it's all explained on the Kazaalite website.

I've found it works pretty well and although it still isn't as good as AG it seems to be improving all the time.

A third of everything I try to d/l on Winmx is problematic. They have a terrible selection as well. Kazza is virus central. Soulseek is a dream. Good selection, you can browse users files, add certain tracks to a wish list and haven't found a virus yet. The main problem with Soulseek is the d/l times. I've been told that if you pay the 5 bucks a month, things run a lot more smoothly.

millions of people have got millions of music files that are assking to be shared, no matter what RIAA says, no matter what it does, we'll always find NEW ways to share them.
people OSI is still alive and doing quite well right?
go and keep me from writing a program that does SHARE something in the way its never been done before, could you?
relax, we're all humans :)

p.s. isn't soulseek an reasonable example?

Soulseek ownz.

Soulseek does own.

I still prefer Audiogalaxy to any p2p before and since, but with Soulseek I've downloaded more music than I ever did before. If you don't like the selection, wait a day. I've never had to wait long to find something I'm looking for.

when napster was in its beginnings, i felt like the world was finally awaking from a deep dream of cheap riches. for a short 100 year window in the history of mankind, a select number of agencies could become fabulously wealthy because communication technology was in a fledgling state. powerful enough to be worldwide, but too unwieldy to be controlled by just anybody, and so we paid these companies to thank them for their distribution. in the past, there was no intermediate, there was a bard, or a musician and if you liked him you tossed them your equivalent of a quarter.

i felt napster turned the world into one giant street corner for performing musicians again, and i felt the next obvious step was to develop an analogue for tossing a quarter into the musician's hat. instead, thanks to wealthy distributor lobbying the government decided to dig its heels into the ground, to impede our return to a state which has existed for, really, thousands of years.

granted, i think musicians have traditionally been very poor, though a good musician could always make a living. however now, thanks to the much larger audiences, musicians can make an extremely good living according to their talent and to the taste of their audiences. and as soon as we're willing to emulate the past, they can make this living without the controlling and often meddlesome hand of a distributor.

when i first got napster, i acquired about 25 gigs of music over the course of about 10 months. napster died, and i've not downloaded music to that degree since, though i now have about 45 gigs of it. I'd say i own about 40%, intend to eventually own about 75-80 percent, and the rest i do not curruently feel like tossing money out for. downloading music has undoubtedly caused me to give money to artists i would not have encountered otherwise.