Why eXeem shouldn’t be replacing our bittorrent clients
written by Joseph Farthing and Taliban
http://www.methlabs.org/
From the early days of peer-to-peer (p2p) networking, most of the interest in the p2p scene was centred around Napster. However, this network had a fatal flaw.
In one of the most famous technology lawsuits of recent times, various recording companies managed to shut Napster down in the courts. Their argument was that the Napster network was centralised – totally dependant upon the central Napster servers to transfer files. Thus, Napster themselves were party to the copyright infringement that occurred on the networks, since if these servers were turned off no copyright infringement could happen.
The next step in peer-to-peer networking, at least the type of network that tried to evade censorship, either politically or through civil means, was to decentralise the network. If the system could exist without a central server, at least in part, then it would be harder for the operators of the network to be sued. This worked, and soon networks like the FastTrack (used by KaZaA) and Gnutella2 were capable of operating without anything more centralised than a list of currently connected users.
This tactic worked, at least from the point of view of network developers. The lawsuits against decentralised networks dried up, and it was ruled that users, not operators were responsible for activity on decentralised networks.
However, Bittorrent is now the most popular peer-to-peer system, purportedly accounting for 35% of Internet traffic. Certainly not all Bittorrent traffic is illegal – a large portion of Bittorrent use is used to transfer large legitimate files such as Linux distributions. However, for those who wished to use Bittorrent to download more “questionable” material the network was just too centralised – the network depends upon a central tracker, as well as a source for downloads.
This means that, just like Napster, Bittorrent sites could be taken down by attacking the source – a series of lawsuits and raids by organisations such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), who’s former chairman described people who infringe copyright as “Terrorists”, has targeted a number of Bittorrent sites, such as Lokitorrent and, ostensibly, Suprnova, one of the most popular torrent “link” sites.
However, Suprnova closed only after a number of other Bittorrent sites had closed, and it is in this article that we will examine exactly what the reason for the closure of Suprnova was, and will look into the history and existence of eXeem, the new “Suprnova” application.
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