Peer Guardian

[puma50tb]

I have used peer Guardian when I fileshare, is their anything similar to this or better?

[Feather]

Go to this site.... http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?act=idx

sign up and read up on protowall.
If you are familiar with peergaurdian then you should know that these are the people who handle the block lists. I am not saying they are better but it is an option. I still use peergaurdian myself and am waiting patiently for 3.0 to be released.

[notbob]

baaaaaaaaaaah baaaaaaaaaah!

peerguardian is placebo peace of mind for sheep. just thought i'd chime in the devil's advocate for you. if you are really worried that what you are doing is illegal enough to need "security measures" to hide yourself, maybe you need to rethink what you are doing in the first place

[Signa]

i know we can argue this until our faces turn blue, but you cant deny that, when you see "media defender" pop up on your blocked IPs, is a good thing. you are right, you cant get them all, but if they are only connecting to you 1 out of 10 times, that means they can only prove that youve been doing 1/10th of what you really are. even 1/10th of the busiest pirates will look like small fish by comparison.

[puma50tb]

O I have after witnessing that nbc, abc, fox, etc. have been allowing the public to view their tv shows online. My main concern is downloading software such as, AutoCad, SolidWorks, Pro/Engineer, etc. One thing I notices was that student editions of the software are much cheaper, but lack much of the true capabilities of the actually software. Do you have any recommendations of how I could actually protect myself?

[DrewWilson]

While notbob's post could have been put better, he has a point in saying that PG isn't exactly a 'block the bad guys' solution. I had a chance to sift through the IP lists that were blocked on a few of the block-lists and compare it to the IP lists leaked in the big MediaDefender email leak, it didn't convince me in the slightest that the BlueTack lists were even remotely effective. Personally, the content I'm after is content the major copyright industry didn't "produce" (aka lift from creators) and I'm quite content at continuing my personal complete boycott.

[notbob]

if you run traces on ip addresses, many are just residential (or campus) addresses with nothing to do with mediadefender etc. heck, i worked at a plastics factory that was blocked. it's paranoid nonsense disguised as protection

[El Comandante]

Is this your article Drew?
http://www.slyck.com/story1593_MediaDefender_Leak_Offers_BlueTack_Users _a_Reality_Check

I have to say that these findings are very disconcerting. These lists seem to offer minimal protection. Nevertheless, I do not see an appreciable reduction in my speeds as a result of using them. I have also been trying some custom lists that are out there.

[puma50tb]

El comandante: what is a good website to download these custom lists? Last night I downloaded Blocklist Manager and I downloaded the lists using the program.

[El Comandante]

Try this. Use it with Utorrent.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=178440

[DrewWilson]

Is this your article Drew?
http://www.slyck.com/story1593_MediaDefender_Leak_Offers_BlueTack_Users _a_Reality_Check

I have to say that these findings are very disconcerting. These lists seem to offer minimal protection. Nevertheless, I do not see an appreciable reduction in my speeds as a result of using them. I have also been trying some custom lists that are out there.

Yeah, that would be mine. While I admit that I have had preconceived notions about the lists before I did this, I was even more disturbed by what I saw when I compared the leaked IP addresses to the blocklists. I only picked the first block of IP addresses because the lists are HUGE. What I did in that article took over an hour of solid research and that was a tiny amount. I seem to remember getting a little bit of flack over it, but no one countered the arguments with evidence of their own which, to me, is incredibly telling of what these lists actually mean. I can respect the effort, but the efforts, from what I saw, was followed up by results of a list with a fraction of a percent of accuracy. In BlueTack's defense though, I seem to also remember that they encourage custom IP blocklists too, but to my knowledge, that's something only few can actually do.

I'm more than happy to see evidence other than, 'PG told me it blocked the bad guys' but to this day, it's frankly something I haven't seen. IMO, you're better off dumping the MediaDefender IP list from the email leak into the program even though those IP addreses are probably long since outdated. Ultimately, though, if you want to be "protected", stop downloading 50 Cent, etc. all day long and get into some decent independent content because most of those artists are more than happy to have their content downloaded anyway if it means there are more listeners and more people who are willing to buy their albums.

Of course, I can accept the fact that my views on these things are not shared by a good portion of the community. It's fine, but I'll be more than happy to disagree with it.

[puma50tb]

Well my only concern is downloading software OS's, Autocad, ProEngineer, etc. What would you recommend? I understand I should not download them, but I really cannot afford full capabilites if it were purchased. However, I do have a Student Edition of one program, but they limit the student to part and not all of the capabilities they offer.

[DrewWilson]

If there's no open source alternative (I've heard great things about Ubuntu)...

Usenet and Binsearch.info might be an option (I wrote a guide on UseNet recently which should be findable on the front page)

Have you tried filez.com? (rapidshare link search engine, just either find some way to block the ads or simply ignore them) It seems to be good at finding mainstream stuff. While no issues (other than the on-site ads) so far, I still recommend scanning the stuff first. I believe it's easier to encrypt web surfing traffic.

If not that, then perhaps there's some way to get into a private BitTorrent site that specializes in that kind of thing. I don't download those kinds of things myself, so I'm less familiar with the best ways to get software of that nature.