We interviewed Jake Daynes, a spokesperson for the Pirate Party of Canada recently and we had some interesting responses to our questions.

ZeroPaid: What is the Pirate Party and how has it grown since the launch?

Jake Daynes: The Pirate Party of Canada is the Canadian counterpart of the international Pirate Party movement, which has gained seats in Sweden and Germany. We are fighting for fair copyright, patent reform, net neutrality, and government transparency. Our goals can be found here.

ZeroPaid: We’ve heard about a Pirate Party distribution platform that is being launched. What is the distribution platform exactly? Has it been officially launched? Are there any partners involved in this project?

Jake Daynes: Right now I don’t want to say much, but I can say that it utilizes a very “pirate-y” distribution method. Right now it has been started up, though we have not made it live, and we have several partners in this, such as Musicians United Against Censorship, Electronica Artist/DJ: Frozen Ice Cube [Author's note: The latest music is currently here due to recent technical issues] , and Fading Ways Music.

ZeroPaid:What sort of artists are you looking for? Is it genre specific or location specific or can anyone around the world with any musical style join in? Is it moderated and if so, how long does it take for something to be posted?

Jake Daynes: No, we are not genre specific, we are looking for anybody and everybody! We do have a slight moderation system, which is mainly me going through every track, just to make sure it isn’t a copyright violation, but it shouldn’t take more than 24 hours to get something posted, once the project is live.

ZeroPaid: For artists, what kind of reach does this platform provide (like, how many people are accessing it)? Do you expect this number of people to grow?

Jake Daynes: This platform is access to a global stage, with Pirate Party support in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Sweden, Germany, and the US, we have access to millions of people that are all looking for new music to listen to!

ZeroPaid: I’ve noticed on your home page that you have a sufficient number of members, but you seem to have a second bar for people sending in forms. Are you able to officially register as a political party yet or do you have to have that number of forms handed in before that happens?

Jake Daynes: Right now we are asking everybody to send in their forms, as we need to have a minimum of 250 to register with Elections Canada, though those that sign up are still counted as full members, as membership is free!

ZeroPaid: It’s been talked about plenty of times that the Pirate Bay had a major influence on the success of the Swedish Pirate Party. The only big things like that happening around in Canada seem to have been copyright reform legislation which is already on the back burner because of the copyright consultations. Would you say that the Pirate Party’s growth is attributed to a reaction to major copyright related events or is it more of an ongoing growth for the Canadian Pirate Party?

Jake Daynes: Actually, few people know it, but Canada has it’s own Pirate Bay right here in Richmond, B.C.: isoHUNT, which is run by Gary Fung just south of Vancouver. Copyright is a global issue that is affecting everybody, and even though the copyright consultations are putting reform on the back burner as you put it, the PPoC is continuing to grow, with members and chapters all across the country.

ZeroPaid: There have been a number of countries that have Pirate Parties officially registered, but all these countries seem to be in Europe. Is it the goal of the Pirate Party of Canada to be the first non-European country to be an official political party?

Jake Daynes: Yes, currently the PPoC is looking to become the first non-European party to be officially registered.

ZeroPaid: There are rumours that there could, on a remote chance, be an election in the Fall. If that happens, is there a chance that the Pirate Party could be in that election?

Jake Daynes: Sadly no, because of current election legislation, the PPoC would have to have been a registered party 60 days before the writ of an election, though we will continue to push our issues, and hope that the voice of fair copyright is heard by current parties.

ZeroPaid: There are a number of people out there who might suggest that the party doesn’t stand much of a chance with the First Past the Post system along with the established parties. Having said that though, is it the goal for the party to win seats or is it more about sending a message to government that said Canadians are concerned with certain issues in the copyright, privacy and technology related fields of policy making?

Jake Daynes: Yes, it is in fact very difficult for a new party to break into the First Past the Post system, take, for example, the Green Party, garnering 13% of the popular vote last election and still not gaining a seat. Our goal is indeed to gain seats, though one important point is that our message is heard, because lets face it, we as a party prove that Canadians are concerned, and some even passionate about these issues.

ZeroPaid: Do you have anything further to add?

Jake Daynes: I, Jake Daynes, would just like to add that if anybody is interested in the Party, my personal email is JakeDaynes@PirateParty.ca, and I would be happy to discuss them with you. If you would like to debate the Party’s views, our forums are very lively.

ZeroPaid: Thank you very much for your time.

Jake Daynes: Thank you Drew

We would like to thank Jake Daynes for taking the time out of his busy schedule to talk to us.

The Pirate Party of Canada was started somewhere between the end of June and July 2nd. It’s been seeking membership since the launch and has grown to roughly 500 members in the span of two months. Pirate Party of Canada’s official website home page.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Recently, we wrote about the 10th Anniversary of the launch of Napster. Among the things we’ve discussed in the article were how the legacy of Napster was essentially the popularization of the whole concept of file-sharing in the general public. Eric Klein, a co-host of “Living Room” on California’s KPFA radio station decided to interview us on the subject, briefly covering topics such as the legacy of file-sharing left by Napster as well as freedom of expression, privacy rights related to file-sharing and political stances.

The interview is available toward the end of this podcast formatted version embedded below, or the edited version here. We would like to thank KPFA’s Eric Klein for the interview opportunity.

Contact information for both of us:

Drew Wilson: drew@zeropaid.com

Jared Moya: jared@zeropaid.com

Last week, ZeroPaid reported on an interesting development occurring in France where a study was done to see how successful various ISP-level filtering were at filtering out P2P traffic. The results were described as many things including, “not perfect”

The study focused on a wide variety of P2P protocols in use today. One of these protocols includes WinMX. For the most part, it appeared as though WinMX was quite successful at dodging the two most well known filters. So discuss this and many other things happening in WinMX today, we turned to Tigger of WinMXWorld for an interesting interview.

ZeroPaid: First of all, who are you and what do you do?

Tigger: I’m a mum and part time student. I have been active in the WinMX p2p community for many years, helping users to enjoy WinMX. I currently operate the winmxworld help site with a group of like-minded users.

ZP: WinMX has had a colorful history, but it seems to me that there was a study released that touched on how well ISP P2P filters do. The statistics may surprise some. They suggest that the two filters that were tested show 7% and 0% detection efficiency. There was a regulation test that showed at 25% regulation, WinMX was only filtered out at 19% and 0%, then at 75% regulation, there was nothing but a pair of bagels on the board. Positively speaking, this seems to show that even the “old WinMX client” seems to dodge the filters unlike something like BitTorrent. Negatively speaking, it may show that the protocol is unpopular enough for filtering companies to not really focus on the network. Either way, it sounds like it’s good news for users who use the network in terms of filtering avoidance. How do you interpret the results?

T: I’m inclined to agree with your analysis on the Evolution Internet report. Whilst I’m sure some ISP companies don’t view WinMX as a major bandwidth consumer, many have been taking active steps to disrupt file transfers. In general the trend seems to be that some ISP’s are more active than others where WinMX is concerned. The report was good news for many users facing what amounts to an unfair penalty on using a service they have contracted into.

I would at this point like to explain the network architectural model, as many have no idea of what WinMX looks like mapped out on paper.

Most p2p users are familiar with the client/server model. This is utilised for the low bandwidth “secondary ” clients akin to Napster. Where WinMX differs from that basic model is the inclusion of a decentralised “primary” backbone. The “primary” backbone communicates chat room listings and search queries over a completely separate network utilising a different protocol. This is likely part of the reason WinMX is not a simple cut and dried case when it comes to ISP traffic interference.

A diagram of what the WinMX network generally looks like as provided by Tigger

ZP: There were some unfortunate scenarios facing WinMX users in the past. There was, of course, the shut down of the main WinMX server a couple of years ago. Then there was the appearance of a rivalry for control over the network between Vladd44 and WinMXWorld. Sometime after the rivalry began, I believe there was even a lawsuit over the WinMX patch to get users connected. The last thing I heard was that anti-p2p companies were trying to flood the network, but otherwise, things appeared to have been quiet. First of all, has there been any sort of resolution for the rivalry that took place a while back? What about the anti-p2p companies flooding the networks? Are there measures put in place to avoid the fakes?

T: September 2005 was the start of a sometimes acrimonious struggle. I’m sure in hindsight we can all see the community was pulled too many ways at once with different groups competing to do what they believed was best. At the time it was not possible to reach agreement on many important issues and so for over two years the community was cleaved into two camps, vladd44’s mxpie and winmxworld/wimxgroup. Obviously this could not go on forever and over time dialogue between the major groups has been steadily climbing. Whilst, to be fair, mxpie where good at publicising their preferred host file solution, the technically superior winsock.dll hijack method was seen as a way to move the client forward without resorting to any modification of the WinMX file itself. Improvements included a fake file filtering system and a block-list to deny MediaDefender / Macrovision the ability to disrupt the network. One prototype even featured uPnP support, in short this has proved to be the Holy Grail as far as WinMX is concerned. No other p2p network can boast of such a flawless system.

In a more recent situation (July 2007) KingMacro the dll file creator made a decision similar to WinMX Technologies Kevin Hearn and closed the winmxgroup peer caches (the network connection method). This was unexpected and a quarter of users with the dll solution that relied on the winmxgroup peer caches where not seen to return. The patch was soon modified to point to three separate domains on different continents to reduce the risk of disruption and the vital peer caches are now safely spread amongst many trusted users.

ZP: Past aside, what about the present? How has the network faired in recent times? Networks like BitTorrent have grabbed a large amount of headlines these days between ThePirateBay, statistics on which BitTorrent client is popular, innovations made by MiniNova, etc. Is it a fair assumption that maybe that now WinMX has a slightly lower profile, that maybe it is now flying under the anti-p2p radar a bit more? Since all these issues, what sort of innovations have been put into the development of WInMX in the past year or two?

T: The network has been fairly quiet and stable for the most part in 2008. This is due mainly to increased co-operation amongst long-term users looking to the future and how we can best position ourselves to counter potential problems. We have of course generated a few offshoot projects that are slowly looking to reach fruition including work towards a new client.

We have three programmers working in our community research pool. Sometimes guiding them to work in the same direction is not always simple as you may expect, but we can at least look forward to a future of diversity and growth. The secondary client is proposed to be open source, there are unfortunately technical hurdles involved in open sourcing a primary client that will need to be resolved and some serious thought placed into retaining complete compatibility. After all, many improvements are possible but not all are welcome.

ZP: ZeroPaid get’s a number of interesting questions about untested networks. One of the main concerns is P2P privacy. Is there any way to either encrypt traffic or connect through a proxy? What does WinMX offer in terms of privacy? Is there protocol obfuscation like you see on eMule? If not, will there be in the future?

T: Whilst I don’t think anyone can with a straight face call WinMX “untested” given its long pedigree. I am surprised its not a well know fact that WinMX actually features a proprietary encryption of traffic between all client levels using a code table and seed method and this is from 2001. It is possible to utilise WinMX with a proxy and in fact the client supports sock 4 and 5 proxy methods. The community has many hobby coders who actively research and document its technical features. There is however one remaining problem that only a new client can correct. File transfers. These are, for some strange reason, not encrypted at all. This may have been an active design choice to ensure opennap compatibility was retained but it’s a godsend for an ISP wishing to throttle WinMX traffic. We are currently researching methods to remove this chink in the armour without losing complete compatibility and some great ideas have been placed on the table.

ZP: A number of skeptics might say, ‘well, I have BitTorrent/UseNet/eMule/etc., what does WinMX offer that other networks might not offer?’ Even if the other networks offer something WinMX offer, what would you say that might convince some to give WinMX a try anyway?

T: WinMX offers a collection of attributes that no other network is able. Aside from the obvious ability to obtain files of any type from two separate networks (WPN and OpenNap), it has a second role as a social community with over 1300 chat rooms catering from the weird to the wonderful. Combining these two features with the fake blocking technology has, in this case, created a solid user base that, instead of turning tail from the recording industries disruption efforts, have worked hard to defend the network. Its no joke to say many speak positively of a “WinMX spirit” when discussing a hopeless looking situation.

ZP: Looking into the crystal ball, what sort of things are on the horizon for WinMX and the community? What kind of things are in the works for WinMX at this point?

T: Whilst I’m sure you can appreciate we believe the user base “churn” rate is a little lower than most other networks, our major effort is to deliver primarily help and support for the network. Our second priority is of course to stimulate and support efforts to create a replacement client. I believe this is a natural progression given the demise of winmx.com and whilst we have been so far “lucky” in meeting each new challenge I also believe its never a good time to rest on ones laurels.

ZeroPaid would like to thank Tigger of WinMXWorld for taking the time to sit down to do this interview.

WinMXWorld official website

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