Now that LimeWire is gone for good, I've taken the time to compile a list of 10 alternative P2P programs that are available.

1. LimeWire Pirate Edition

2. BitTorrent

3. Usenet

4.

5. MP3 Rocket beta

6. WinMX

7. KaZaA Lite

8. Shareaza

9. Ares

10. eMule

While there has been high profile news stories like the legal challenge brought against Ray Beckerman from the RIAA, Danish ISPs refusing to be copyright police and ACTA getting stalled (not to mention earning a lawsuit in the process), the WinMX community has been quietly moving along with key developments to help the community regain a bigger footing in the file-sharing world at large – not just in the past few days, but in the past few years.

Early on this year, we conducted an interview with an operator of WinMXWorld by the name of Tigger. At the time, we discussed things like Deep Packet Inspection failing to detect WinMX traffic, developments in the network past, present and future and the community behind the WinMX network that’s successfully kept the network alive and well.

A lot of time has passed since this interview, but a lot of time to make significant developments for the network. We spoke recently to Tigger again who brings some exciting news for the WinMX community. About three years ago, the WinMX peer cache was taken offline without warning. The move was a major blow to the community at large and could have simply meant the demise of the network altogether had the whole community simply dissipated by moving to other networks. After the shut down of the main peer caches, many wrote off the network as dead – but many of those people underestimated the strength of the community behind the network.

Tigger described the time with the following:

The history of WinMX hasn’t always been smooth. Three years ago the official WinMX.com peer caches were taken offline with no warning. It was a time of sadness to all the users including myself. It was a time that many many online friendships where lost . Moving forward we come to more positive news and the end (and start) of an exciting project that we are now able to reveal.

Shortly after the shut down of the main server, a number of people in the community wanted to rebuild the network and put it back into operating condition. The problem was that there were two factions in the community that had two separate visions for the network. These entities were basically WinMXWorld and Vladd44. While the two separate factions in the community proved that there was going to be an effort to revitalize the network, it also unfortunately divided the network – not exactly the best thing to happen for an already fragile network.

There were different groups trying different solutions to bring the network back up and running. The work in this new patch is an effort to bring together these different groups together. There were developments including a prototype UNPNP and an improved filter during this time, but what about today?

“As you may be aware Drew we have been working for some time on replacing the entire system of connecting WinMX clients because of a dispute with the owner of the existing patch code,” Tigger told ZeroPaid, “this has involved replacing the entire range of peer caches and increasing their number along with making some significant DNS fallback enhancements, all this has now been completed and the final stage of the replacement program has arrived, after many months of testing we have reached a satisfactory build of patch replacement, the result is something called The WinMX Community patch, and to mark our third anniversary since the official closure of WinMX Technologies we have decided to release it on the reconnection anniversary. On the 23rd of September we are releasing the new patch.”

This will no doubt be exciting news for the WinMX community at large. It gets better, some of the things that were considered prototypes back when we conducted the interview have now become features. Tigger explains, “The new WinMX Community patch has many new features including UPNP port forwarding, an improved fake filtering system, a real time blocking counter and also has resolved a prior method of securing secondaries that was causing a network concern. Unlike previous patches The WinMX Community patch features an ini file that ensures the users get to decide some of the more important aspects of how their patch operates, including for example the ability to manually change the cache hosts names in the event of a major assault on the network.”

A major assault on network servers have been an issue in the eMule community. The servers holding the ED2K network together once had at least a good 20 plus servers keeping the network in tact. Since the shut down of Razorback, Razorback 2.0, Razorback 3.0, Big BanG, Donkey Server #, and numerous others, the network has dwindled down to a small hand full of legitimate servers, causing most to simply jump ship and switch to the Kademlia network instead and give up on the servers altogether. Clearly this development of being able to manually change hosts will help future-proof the network for now – making way for further future plans for the network.

“One of the goals of the Community Patch effort was to make for the provision of tools and technical information amongst the community to ensure no single group or individual has the power to affect the network unilaterally,” Tigger explains, “this goal has been achieved and a code base now exists of both peer caches and patches that can be tailored to fit any future requirements, this in itself is a tremendous leap forward and a comfort for many. The creator of the Community Patch is a third party programmer named “Eagle”, who has done a fantastic job in creating and negotiating its use within the community and it is certain now after many discussions amongst the two major groups to bring the community together, healing a rift of some years.”

As some may be aware, there has been a hope of building a completely new open source project.

“Its hoped that with this major project out of the way many more developers will be able to focus on the ultimate goal of completing a new client,” Tigger told ZeroPaid, “something that has been receiving much attention for over a year now and attracting many of the newer WinMX community coding talents to take an active part in building something equally solid.”

Clearly some bold and exciting plans in the works. Some might note the release date, September 23rd and recall that it was this day in 2005 that the resurrection took place, just two days after the original peer cache went offline. Indeed, it is the third year anniversary and this is also to celebrate the third anniversary of the new WinMX. One of the complaints being whispered in the community has been that things take a long time to developed. Well clearly, what we see here is a sort of, ‘hey, we are here, we are alive, and we are progressing and we will prove it.’ Perhaps the age old cliché of ‘good things happen to those who wait’ is ringing particularly true here.

There is some specifics available on the WinMXWorld website on what this patch offers to the community. While there is a number of paragraphs to explain each point in further detail, here’s the main points:

Details of this list is available here.

While some may have forgotten all about the third anniversary, others in the WinMX community reminiscing already and discussing what the closure meant to them. With the network making very positive strides now, let’s wrap this article up with quotes from users who talked about the anniversary:

From Ghostship:

The community was one of alternately mixed emotions following the suprise [closure of WinMX], anger and despair took hold of many of the regular users, but for a hard core the desire to right the perceived “wrong” was strong and slowly they sought out each other to discuss technical solutions to the puzzle that had presented itself.
This they did and in a remarkably short space of time, with the best technical minds across at least 8 different countries the solution to the puzzle took a mere matter of days, 3 days in fact.

I ask you to join me in saying once again our thanks to those who worked around the clock in keeping the WinMX community alive, not just the tech folks you all know but the lesser known folks, those who made posts and worked in spreading the message to the internet of keeping faith that a solution would be found, users who answered the same question thousands of times without complaint, and those few thousand who kept their WinMX connected at any cost to ensure there was something left of the network to connect to, without the team work and support of literally thousands the breakthroughs and final solutions may not have been possible, without the faith of you all in each other we would not be the community we are today.

Cobra:

I am grateful for all of the hard work that was put into bringing back WinMX and keeping it going, even improving upon it in a way over time so that we can continue to share files freely as was originally intended by the creators of the program itself. Also, if someone on my slow speed can share without feeling restricted, anyone can.

Silver Stripes:

i used to and still do let [WinMX] run 24/7 (or back then as long as win98 would run) and all of a sudden after a reboot i didnt have a MX connection anymore… …to get my winmx working again… well.. every one knows that story…. what they dont know is i never used the ‘chat’ function till -after- the shutdown…. “hey! there are some cool ppl out there!”

long story short? ive still got my ‘lite’ (which is very ‘lite’ on newer hardware) P2P app that still finds nearly everything i want… and now ive got a forum of folk to thank for it and of course a new bunch to chat with…. dunno if the shutdown was a curse or a blessing….

HalOfBerg:

Happy Anniversary. I remember that day so well. All I could think of was “What about all the chatroom people? They have LIVES there. Friends. Woah.”

ZeroPaid would like to thank Tigger of WinMXWorld for taking the time to talk to us about this new announcement.

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

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/ZeroPaid_Interviews_an_Operator_of_WinMXWorld’;

For a quick recap, the lawsuit against the RIAA is for alleged racketeering. The activities the RIAA is being accused of include hiring an unlicensed investigator and forcing people to settle whether guilty or not based on flimsy evidence. While there is some doubt on whether or not this lawsuit would survive on the part of some, it seems as though there are those willing to fight the RIAA anyway.

Now, the RIAA has responded (PDF – hosted by Wired) to the case calling the lawsuit scandalous and hyperbolic:

Plaintiff has filed a massive complaint that is anything but the short and plain statement envisioned by Rule 8 and ordered by this Court. The document is now 108 pages with 353 paragraphs. It not only does not limit the causes of action at issue, but rather it adds several new claims. Nor does it clarify what facts support which claims or what claims are asserted against which Defendants. Instead, one of the ways in which the Second Amended Complaint appears to try to remedy the deficiencies of the First Amended Complaint is by adding significant verbiage that has little to do with the current Plaintiff and that relates to matters, even if true, caused this Plaintiff no harm. And, although short on specific allegations relevant to the claims that it attempts to plead, the document is long on rhetoric, hyperbole, and scandalous allegations that appear calculated not to state viable causes of action but rather to garner maximum press coverage, which it has done.

The document further states:

Plaintiff wants to take broad discovery, apparently including fact-finding regarding hundreds of cases outside of hers, from all Defendants regarding all of the purported claims simultaneously. Defendants, on the other hand, seek an approach that would allow the Court to narrow the case by carving out a large number of the claims that should be amenable to a prompt resolution with limited or no discovery.

Clearly, the RIAA isn’t happy about being sued, though it’s doubtful that this would be a surprise to anyone.

David Kravets on Wired’s Threat Level notes, “Whether the judge will allow the RIAA to argue their latest filing is unclear. Judge Brown had said she did not want to hear a renewed motion to dismiss from the RIAA.”

Hat tip: Threat Level

The caller offered to settle the matter for $4,600. “I thought it was a scam, to be honest with you,” Patricia Hereth said yesterday. “I didn’t know what they were talking about.”

But on July 18 the Recording Industry Association of America filed a federal lawsuit against Stephen Hereth on behalf of big labels such as Warner Bros. Records and Capitol Records, accusing him of copyright infringement for downloading and/or distributing songs ranging from Poison’s “Unskinny Bop” to Madonna’s “Into the Groove.”

It was one of three lawsuits that the industry group filed in U.S. District Court in Providence last week, accusing Rhode Islanders of online piracy — a common practice that often involves the unauthorized downloading or posting of songs at free Web sites such as KaZaA, LimeWire and the now-defunct WinMX.