Suggestion for P2P Programs

[Unsueable Davey Brown]

I just read an interesting article here Dark Nets Vs Security Enhancements (http://p2pnet.net/story/1451) in which the author says:

But second and third generation networks and services like Fasttrack / Kazaa, Gnutella and Bittorrent lack one thing that Napster had: Community. Napster enabled users to engage in discussions and discover new content simply by browsing the shared folders of random people who happened to attend the same chat room. This sort of accidental collaborative filtering is very unlikely in modern networks.

This got me to thinking, rather than have a "View My Shared Files" button why not change it to a "Files I Recommend" thing, in which the user could add all titles from a particular folder, shared or unshared? The actual shared folder information would remain closed by default.

Under this method if you wanted to check out the file, you would simply click on it, and the program would do a search of the entire network, thus eliminating the particular user from legal culpability. Industry hackers could search the recommended files individually of course, to see if they existed on the user's machine as available for download, but would that be feasible? It would take a lot of time. The RIAA claims it wants to see a thousand industry copyrighted songs in the person's shared folder.

Is there a program that already does what I suggest? There must be a problem with this idea, or they would have already done it? So where's the downside?

[tamarisk]

As far as i know soulseek already has this feature

[paniq]

Or how about an "intelligent assistant" aspect where the program looks at the types of programs you (maybe giving you options to rate programs?), then connects to others and suggests particular files that you don't have but may like - sort of uses similar aspect to "intelligent agents" for those who know what they are.

Also allow "user suggestion links" where by the user links similar tastes (if you like band Y you'll love group X ; new TV series / film E has the same director as that episode F you liked). That way rather than finding about stuff elsewhere then using P2P to get it, new stuff is suggested from users you're downloading from.

paniQ

[mr.jip]

basically we need less p2p clients becoming multi network clients

[shawners]

what about this.. ONce you click on the download of a song.. IT removes it self from being shared to any other person.. And the song just isnt shared, doesnt get removed. But stays off the network for a couple hours.. and it says now listening to a song checked out. But no files get deleted, just unshared and reshared.

[Cardinal Number]

p2p networks need more security

[Mels_Smileys45]

Simple, keep your share folder clean with only good files shared. Get rid of the trash and share the rare stuff that has less sources. Winmx and DC still have a good sense of Community IMO.