File swapping shifts up a gear

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A new generation of peer-to-peer tools is finding its groove on the Internet, spelling tougher times ahead for movie studios' attempts to quell online piracy. Going by names like eDonkey and BitTorrent, many of the latest generation of file-swapping tools have been designed specifically to increase the efficiency and speed of transfer for large files such as movie files. Some of these tools have been in development for several years, but are just now reaching the critical mass needed to make a dent in the file-trading world. Some in the copyright community say these new tools are finally starting to rival the piracy potential of the post-Napster generation of swapping services.

"We see people downloading like crazy," said Mark Ishikawa, chief executive of BayTSP, a Los Gatos, Calif., company that monitors file-swapping networks for movie studios and record labels. "eDonkey is passing Gnutella, and is even on its way to passing FastTrack." FastTrack is the technology behind Sharman Networks' Kazaa and Grokster.

File-swapping tools such as Kazaa and Streamcast Networks' Morpheus are still enormously popular--indeed, on Friday, Kazaa passed ICQ instant messaging software as the most-requested technology ever on Download.com, a software aggregation site owned by CNET Networks, the publisher of News.com. Kazaa has been downloaded more than 229 million times, according to that site. The new generation of tools has been designed much like the old, by individuals or small teams of programmers working to correct the perceived shortcomings of earlier software.

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News source: c|net

Release Notes:

Digital Theater Pro:

Full interactive plug-in support

DVD Player:

VMR9 support
Support for 32KHz audio and mono MPEG audio
Added decode support for 1080p 24fps digital cinema content
Added support for Matrox Parhelia graphics cards
Added scripting support to control NVDVD from web pages
Added support for Title menus from DVD menu button when no root menu exists
Added reset of timescale to 1X on Stop or Quit
Added support to fallback to default mode if user selected VMR deinterlace mode not available
Performance improvements for video, audio and skins
More robust FF/RW support
More robust time scaling support
Improved default saturation and contrast values
Improved S/PDIF support
Improved Dolby Headphone performance
Improved Dolby Pro Logic II features
Improved MP3 ID3V2 tag support
Fixed subpicture wrong color after navigating between menus and movie using DXVA
Fixed crash when frame/audio capture to invalid directory
Fixed NVIDIA audio/video decoders not found issue
Fixed disc still appears as inserted after ejecting it while in file player mode
Fixed 24bit/48KHz audio support

Media Center:

Added support for 32KHz audio and mono MPEG audio
Added compliant capability bits
Added support for Microsoft Media Center File Converter
Improved FF/RW support
Fixed suspend/resume problem
Fixed misaligned subpicture during resume to DVD menu

File Player:

Added save/restore of CD audio volume
Added support for Elecard MPEG2 demux
Added hot keys for volume, quit and full screen
Added display of correct number of audio channels
Fixed wave out getting muted during file playback with EWS88MT audio
Fixed crash when Alt-Enter with no video playing
Fixed hang after suspend with shuffle enabled

#1 XP-RTM on 27 May 2003 - 21:35

File sharing will never stop!, well maybe in 3003 , but I wont see it

(1 reply) #2 Niels on 27 May 2003 - 21:51

New? The Edonkey network is not exactly new now is it... Where the heck have these 'experts' been all this time, just noticing the 'next-generation' of p2p software. Pffft is all i can say

#2.1 YaddaMe on 28 May 2003 - 00:04

"Some of these tools have been in development for several years, but are just now reaching the critical mass needed to make a dent in the file-trading world."

(2 replies) #3 Daedalus on 27 May 2003 - 21:52

I could never get eDonkey to work properly from behind my firewall

#3.1 tntomek on 27 May 2003 - 23:03

Give it another shot and try eMule. eDonkey/Overnet/eMule are far superior networks that have a very established user base that has index almsot every known quality release in one way or another

#3.2 thundros on 28 May 2003 - 04:39

Yeah, eMule is a good choice, just opened up the ports it needed on my router and never had a problem with it. You can also try Shareaza (starting from version 1.9), which uses a few file sharing protocols (even eDonkey).

#4 Michel on 27 May 2003 - 22:06

Last week the 'Star Wars Kid' news item featured a BitTorrent download location.

Neowin Article

#5 OPaul on 27 May 2003 - 22:09

Well this isn't exactly news.

#6 Mav Phoenix on 27 May 2003 - 22:14

Old...stupid CNET.

(2 replies) #7 antareus on 27 May 2003 - 22:26

Yes, because BitTorrent was designed for P2P. Thank you media.

BT is nice because it *isn't* P2P-centric.

#7.1 Saturn2K on 28 May 2003 - 01:09

[neoquote=#7.0 by ]Yes, because BitTorrent was designed for P2P. Thank you media.

BT is nice because it *isn't* P2P-centric.[/neoquote]
Are you retarded. This is PEER to PEER.

#7.2 King_John on 28 May 2003 - 02:43

He never said it wasn't peer to peer he said it isn't used in the same way as P2P applications are used.
There is a difference between the idea of P2P and general peer to peer connectivity.

#8 Fubar on 27 May 2003 - 23:01

lol if there only just catching on to clients like edonkey and so on i think there all far behind stopping p2p............ they obviously havent a clue on what p2p app's are out there ......... they will be saying emule is the latest craze one year fron now lol..... stop wasting money ya pathetic arse's and get some sodding sense....... people who download copywritten stuff only add to a small loss to any area of entertainment..... the biggest loss comes from those who pay to try and stop it lol

(5 replies) #9 lexor on 27 May 2003 - 23:02

"designed specifically to increase the efficiency and speed of transfer for large files such as movie files"

what a load of bs... when did I see speeds over 10 kbps on a single file in eMule/eDonkey? NEVER!

#9.1 tntomek on 27 May 2003 - 23:05

Maybe you shoudl try downloading 10 movies at a time and then I assure you you will get higher speeds. I was easily gettin 150k/s when having 20 items on queue

#9.2 lexor on 27 May 2003 - 23:50

I know that combine speed can be high, I'm saying that each file doesn't go over 10kbps for any significant moment of time.

#9.3 King_John on 28 May 2003 - 02:39

I've had 50K on some files before.

#9.4 YaddaMe on 28 May 2003 - 04:30

I've (and i think this is the recomended way by many) found what works best (at least here)....

D/L only 1 file at a time, set it to "release" in your shared files.... by releasing it, you upload that file far more than others, and those running emule give you upload credits that shove you to the front of their queue b/c you've uploaded to them.

It still has a long way to go in catching up to the speed avail by some other networks, but then its more about sharing and not near as friendly to the leecher as Kazaa may be.

#9.5 Napalm on 28 May 2003 - 09:28

FFS! Only put rare files on release, otherwise they don't get spread around... *sigh*

Oh, and I average speeds of 40-60kb/s on a regular basis, but that's probably because I upload all the time so get rewarded by the credit system.

(1 reply) #10 Tobbe on 27 May 2003 - 23:21

Screw piracy! I could live without it!

#10.1 Mav Phoenix on 28 May 2003 - 00:15

(2 replies) #11 Michael Lerner on 28 May 2003 - 00:34

FastTrack is the technology behind Sharman Networks' Kazaa Correction: was

#11.1 123_kid on 28 May 2003 - 01:52

It isn't?

#11.2 Quick Reply on 28 May 2003 - 12:08

Actually, Kazaa still uses FastTrack, your thinking of Morpheus, which used to use FastTrack but then moved to Gnutella.

(3 replies) #12 Mr. Black on 28 May 2003 - 00:48

Oh ho hum...piracy doesn't hurt the artists at all.
Look at all of them - they live in Million dollar + houses...and they claim were hurting them? Total bullsh1t.

Don't believe the RIAA or any other company that whines and says they lose sooooo much money over piracy.

#12.1 mopper on 28 May 2003 - 01:48

[neoquote=#12.0 by ]#1 Posted by Mr. Black on 27 May 2003 - 17:48

Oh ho hum...piracy doesn't hurt the artists at all.
Look at all of them - they live in Million dollar + houses...and they claim were hurting them? Total bullsh1t.

Don't believe the RIAA or any other company that whines and says they lose sooooo much money over piracy.
[/neoquote]
true true

#12.2 King_John on 28 May 2003 - 02:41

Not all musicians have millions. Some make as much as myself. Nothing.

#12.3 btallack on 28 May 2003 - 04:53

Perhaps, but I'd love to see some of my music on Kazaa. I really don't care about profit.

#13 Dark Vageta on 28 May 2003 - 02:08

bittorrnce for the Win

really suck people like to Take away everyones fun

(1 reply) #14 drewster2100 on 28 May 2003 - 03:47

well arent the artists given an upfront amount of money? the money made from cds and such go to the company that *bought* the rights to their music. correct me if im wrong.

#14.1 antny_uk on 28 May 2003 - 08:24

yeh - i think its called.... er... a record contract

(2 replies) #15 Napalm on 28 May 2003 - 09:29

"BayTSP, a Los Gatos, Calif., company that monitors file-swapping networks for movie studios and record labels"

Ha, they don't monitor my downloads, their IP ranges are blocked on my PC.

#15.1 garymchughuk on 28 May 2003 - 09:57

what is there IP range? could you pm me or post it here. ta

#15.2 Napalm on 28 May 2003 - 10:05

209.204.128.000 - 209.204.128.255 , 100 , BayTSP (Sonic.net InHouseA) (p2p monitoring)
209.204.191.000 - 209.204.191.255 , 000 , BayTSP (p2p monitoring)
209.122.130.000 - 209.122.130.255 , 100 , BayTSP
209.204.190.003 - 209.204.190.255 , 100 , BayTSP
172.178.102.003 - 172.178.102.003 , 100 , BayTSP

For more, check out my reply in this thread.

(1 reply) #16 Tager on 28 May 2003 - 11:53

I have a theory. If the RIAA/MPAA and the media didn't make a big boohoo about p2p, then maybe it wouldn't have skyrocketed to where it is now. I mean, didn't Napster really take off until it was spotlighted in the media? I remember back in the time when I had Napster to myself before my computer illiterate friends were asking me about Napster, how to access, etc. If certain things were kept in the dark (like it's only 1 freaking cow that got mad cow disease

) then everything wouldn't be blown out of proportion.

know what i mean

#16.1 Glen on 28 May 2003 - 19:15

This is so true. Before the whole Napster fiasco, you only saw a few copies of any file you searched for in Napster or Gnutella. Now that everyone knows about it, you can open just about any file sharing program and find tens or hundreds of hits for just about anything you type it.

If they just kept their mouth closed, they probably could have found better ways block this type of piracy and recoup the damages, but now it's just way out of control.

#17 kemical on 28 May 2003 - 12:30

xdcc catcher is god

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