eJamming Audiio P2P Music Collaboration Beta 14 Is Out

January 31, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, Entertainment Industry, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

P2P is visibility gaining access to lots of sectors. While music industry goes on with its complaining about the phenomenon, p2p is being put to some good use musically speaking by people whom we can only call visionary. At CES 2008, Intel’s Paul Otellini used eJamming Audiio, BigStage, and the band Smashmouth to let everyone see how a several of artists situated in different parts of the world could be brought together through P2P and actually play live using a virtual environment.

BetaNews reports that they tested the eJamming Audiio software back in 2008 and confirmed that while it prove useful at recording and working with others in a VoIP-enhanced environment, it failed to show functionality and accuracy when instruments were played live: “In using MIDI drums, a guitar and bass in three different locations in the United States, each musician found they had to get accustomed to latency in their own signal, and then the latency of the others as well. In the end, it was nearly impossible to play live,” the site says.

As of yesterday, things may tell a different with the launching of Beta 14 which presents a close to zero latency “Jam Mode” as the default. According to the development team a user’s own instrument will now play back with nearly no delay, and audio streams from other musicians will be synched together to simplify live jamming.

The site is currently taking new beta testers, and if you want to give it a try you need to download the eJamming P2P client and then…just start playing.

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P2P Research Team Predicts the End of Copyright

January 31, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Dr. Ir. Johan Pouwelse, (photo) researcher on peer-to-peer technology at Delft University of Technology, has recently published in collaboration with a few colleagues an article which reveals some of the results and conclusions his research embraced. The article, 21-page long, makes a good read, NewTeeVee says, but the most striking thing stated in it is that the copyright issue (which is at the core of most legal battles in the music and film industry) will be abandoned not so far in the future.

Pouwelse thinks the existing copyright system could fall apart as early as next year unless significant reforms are put into place. He draws this conclusion from an analysis of not only movie file-sharing, but activity on social networks like Facebook and streaming video sites like YouTube. All of these platforms are prime examples of user-based collaboration, or peer production, as Pouwelse likes to call it. These forms of peer production are not only getting more and more popular, but also increasingly sophisticated, to a point where they pose a significant challenge to our established system of content production and monetization.

The more attentively you read the article the less doubtful you tend to become with respect to the theory Pouwelse and his fellow colleagues present here.

The p2p researcher has been analyzing with his team the sharing content phenomenon along with that of social networking for a few years and after linking the two more clearly to a social aspect and tendency they have finally managed to draw a larger picture of the whole file sharing issue (whether through p2p networks or social websites like YouTube) and make shocking predictions about the fate of the most controversial aspect file sharing touches – copyright.

“Collaborative web sites and sharing platforms like YouTube are getting more popular and more social, leading to more shared content and better mechanisms to filter though this content. P2P networks, on the other hand, are getting more robust and increasingly capable of adopting some of these social networking and filtering mechanisms,“ NewTeeVee sums up.

The article also explains the role security will have in this dramatic turn of events: “By 2010 darknets should be able to offer the same performance as traditional P2P software by exploiting social networking,” (i.e. networks that make possible file sharing protecting the identity of its participants to other parties).

Well, the article surely gives us something to ponder upon and considering that the ability to be “connected “ to as many people as you possibly can has become one of the current trends (with sharing content as the main way to do it) Pouwelse and his colleagues might actually point towards an inevitable evolution of the p2p phenomenon.

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Limewire Update: X 5.0.11 Beta

January 31, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services 

Limewire, the file sharing application that’s been around since the early p2p revolution (and managed to keep its good rep) has been updated to the version X 5.0.11.This new release comes to fix numerous bugs detected in the previous version of the client, but not only.

LimeWire X 5.0.11 Beta addresses especially a memory leak by taking out a listener for a friend’s library, according to the changelog. Another problem that the new version claims to repair is an exception when holding down the Shift key while left clicking on a column header. Reportedly, a series of other general auto complete fixes have been included in the new version.

Limewire has recently added iTunes integration on both Mac and Windows platforms, and also a browse-host feature, functional even through firewalls. The program connects to the network using GWebCache, a distributed connection system and is one of the very few p2p file sharing applications that work with Mac OS X.

Below are the main features LimeWire X includes:

• Ease of use – just install, run, and search
• Ability to search by artist, title, genre, or other metainformation
• Elegant multiple search tabbed interface
• ‘Swarm’ downloads from multiple hosts help you get files faster
• iTunes integration for Mac and Windows users
• Unique ‘ultrapeer’ technology reduces bandwidth requirements for most users
• Integrated chat
• Directly connect to a computer
• Browse host feature–even works through firewalls
• Added Bitzi metadata lookup
• International versions: Now available in many new languages.
• Connects to the network using GWebCache, a distributed connection system
• Automatic local network searches for lightning-fast downloads. If you’re on a corporate or university network, download files from other users on the same network almost instantaneously!
• Support for MAGNET links that allow you to click on web page links that access Gnutella.

Requirements:

• 256 MB RAM.
• A live connection to the Internet.
• Java 1.5 or later

The novelties in this version: 

• Fix a memory leak by removing a listener for a friend’s library.
• Fix an exception when holding down the Shift key while left clicking on a column header.
• General auto complete fixes.

DOWNLOAD

LIMEWIRE X 5.0.11 Beta

LIMEWIRE X 4.18.8 (stable)

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Song.ly Lets You Share Tracks as Tweets

January 30, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

There’s a new service available for those who want to share an MP3 with friends on Twitter. Its name is Songly and is able to take the URL of any MP3 hosted online and condense it for micropublishing tools such as Twitter and also package it in a neat little Flash player.

There are advantages and disadvantages with this new service: for the first category – there’s not a catalog of licensed music to limit your choices (unlike with TinySong); for the second category – to be able to listen to that audio file it must constantly be hosted somewhere.

Besides its Web interface Songly includes a newly-released Firefox add-on that allows users to shorten and share any track they stumble upon with a right click.

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Eircom to Help Music Industry Fight Illegal File Sharers

January 30, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

The Irish ISP agreed to impose ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy

On Wednesday, Irish ISP Eircom and four major record labels always in search for deals to eradicate pirates, (whose names you’d probably guess anyway) Warner, Sony BMG, EMI and Universal signed an agreement to introduce a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule against illegal file sharers. The deal will also have Eircom working with data provided by the music companies so as to legally nail online pirates more efficiently. The deal was inked at Court No 7 in Dublin’s High Court.

Willie Kavanagh, chairman of IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association) expressed his enthusiasm with the settlement: “This is a breakthrough. I think all parties will be happy that’s the end of it.”

“We will talk to the other ISPs in the country to hammer out a similar agreement. This move we believe will increase legitimate downloads as well,” Kavanagh added.

In 2008, the four record labels wanted Eircom to install filtering software (such as Audible Magic) and even pushed forward legal proceedings against the ISP.

Other details concerning the agreement were given:
“Effectively, a third party will be hired by the labels to find out who are the largest illegal P2P downloaders,” said a spokesman for Eircom. “They will then come to us with the IP addresses of the suspected parties.”

“We won’t reveal the identities of the users, but we will contact them and if they fail to comply we will follow the process agreed with the music industry. Currently the industry pursues these individuals in the court. We will now begin a three-step process that will begin with the issuing of a warning.”

The record labels seem determined to pull in their backyard other ISPs as well though some of them have already stated their lack of enthusiasm regarding such a deal:

“While we obviously do not condone illegal downloading or any illegality on or over the Internet, we firmly disapprove of any draconian measures that would compromise the privacy, speed or services offered to broadband users. We do not need measures to further impede the development of next generation broadband in Ireland,” said Ronan Lupton, Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators (ALTO). Amen to that!

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