few questions

[beangirl]

first i just want to say that im not a newbie to downloading music, ive been doing that for quite a few years now but i gots a couple of questions.

does kazaa lite k++ actually hav an IP blocker??
does it actually work?
how does the RIAA actually track u down on the internet and stuff cuz ive heard many ways as to how they do

ugh...my parents made me get rid of kazaa lite cuz they think that we are gonna get sued, im so mad

[aqlo]

Your parents are right, no k-lite/k++ doesn't even pretend to hide ips

On the other hand no one is getting in trouble for downloading, only for sharing

Right now the big names in anonymity round here are freenet and earthstation5, both have their limitations, freenet is slow and hard to search, es5 depends on proxies and so on, search the forums and you will find a lot more about both programs

A new thing is Waste, I don't know enough about it yet to judge but it only shares through your personal friends or something like that, theoretically much safer

[hawkburn]

I think the question has been answered here, so Im just going to comment.

In my opinion, the only safe way of downloading/sharing is to meet someone you know, become friends, exchange screen names, and file transfer between each other in an encrypted conversation, such as the new AIM.

Other wise, you dont know the person for sure, and third parties can see your activity, if not encrypted.

Who knows - maybe Janett works for the RIAA or MPAA.

Sorry - but you never know, anyway, for accusing you, you get some frogs. :fire :fire :fire

[FutureIverson]

sup beangirl, your parents giving you crap about kazaa too. Yeah kaza lite has a filter called peer guardian. doesn't come with real kazaa, and if you update it daily it's supposed to block the riaa. it depends, you probably wouldn't like es5, it's more for adults who are experienced. I think you would like WinMX-great for music, and user friendly. for videos and whatnot i wouldn't use it, the ques are pretty bad.

They have Teen chats, it's probably the best option for a user who isn't that experienced, but knows what their doing.

[serrebi101]

I've been using aries
www.softgap.com
I think that's right, it's a small network, but the chat, lol, it's good for some popular stuff, soyeah.

[aqlo]

Wow sorry I wasn't thinking about peerguardian, I misunderstood what you meant by "ip blocker"

But I have to add that filtering known corporate ips is just a placebo in my opinion, I'm familiar with several cases where people were doing this, some with gimmicks and others manually, who received "cease and desist" notices anyway, though so far I don't know anyone who has been sued

See the problem with doing this is that there is nothing forcing the riaa or retspan or whatever to use their own corporate ips when they are poking you, they can be anybody as easily as we can (more easily, because they have a decent budget)

Do you understand about proxies? es5.com maintains a fairly current list of free servers in many less-legalistic nations which you can set your computer to use as a gateway, that way instead of suing you they have to try and send a process-server to the Jenin concentration-camp or the Russian bordello or whatever (and I'm sure someone here knows an even better list, I'm just too lazy to look it up right now)

But I don't think web proxies work with Kazaa products? though I don't know exactly why, it revolves around the idea that most p2p protocols are very different from ordinary http and ftp

Freenet apparently really does protect your identity, or at least we can't crack it so far, unlike kazaa and gnutella (and unproxied es5)

Touching on what hawkburn said, I believe waste is supposed to take that "trusted friend" idea and extend it from mere messaging to true sharing, you might want to investigate that further

Finally there is Imesh, so far they haven't had much trouble because (like es5) they are in the "Holy Land" where a lawyer or warrant cop is likely to "meet God" at any time

Any smart people please feel free to correct or improve on my ramblings :)

[beangirl]

They have Teen chats, it's probably the best option for a user who isn't that experienced, but knows what their doing.

i am experienced thank u very much

thanks aqlo u helped a lot i think ill check out es5 and freenet