ShareConnector blog

The new version is finally here. eMule 0.49 concentrates on improving Kad making it more stable, reliable and future proof. Of course other areas got some attention too:
The mainfeatures of this version are

• Major Kad protocol improvements, like kad obfuscation, better NAT handling, direct callbacks, flood protections, etc.
• Several changes to the message system to get rid of spammers (by Captchas) and stay in touch with friends with dynamic IPs
• Several GUI improvements like storing searches between eMule sessions, a searchfilter for shared files and easier access to the comment filter
• And as always fixing bugs and adding other small changes

This seems to be an interesting version because the most annoying thing has been fixed, being the spam search results. Also some nice other improvements and ofcourse the improved Kad and added Kad obfuscation.

Strongly recommended to upgrade to this version so download eMule 0.49a and enjoy it even more now!

I decided to put the blog back online, so any news we got will be posted here.
The recent happenings are also included in this post below.

Now, I just heard that BREIN is not demanded to start a standard procedure within 6 months. They seem to be happy with the decision, although what they really hoped and said is that we are breaching copyrights. So at this point we don’t know if they are planning this procedure at all in the future. If this doesn’t happen, it means we will never have the chance again to change the outcome and therefor ShareConnector should have to remain offline. Unless we go for an appeal, which is exactly what we did since that would be our last chance to make a difference.

The judge had a weak point so things are still not clear at all and that’s what we have been fighting for all these years, to finally have clearance of what is so illegal about indexing. Now that we have come so far, it would be a shame to stop just here while the end is near.
Since we are not sure if BREIN dares to go on with the standard procedure, there is little to say about what will be next so we will just have to wait and see.
As always stay tuned and watch this page for news.

Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for tv-links alternatives? Someone was so kind to post it so here is a nice list of the best TV link sites around.

SurfTheChannel

Highly recommended.

Alluc

One of the better sites.

and all the others.. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in July this year we reported HERE that tv-links.co.uk was one of the fastest growing websites on the internet blasting it’s way into the Alexa top 500 in a matter of months. This week unfortunately has seen the site being forced offline by officers from Gloucestershire County Council trading standards in conjunction with investigators from Fact and Gloucestershire Police the owner, a 26-year-old man from Cheltenham, UK, has been arrested along with others involved with the site.

The arrest and the closure of the site - www.tv-links.co.uk - came during an operation by officers from Gloucestershire County Council trading standards in conjunction with investigators from Fact and Gloucestershire Police.

Fact claims that tv-links.co.uk was providing links to illegal film content that had been camcorder recorded from cinemas and then uploaded to the internet. The site also provided links to TV shows that were being illegally distributed.

The legality of tv-links.co.uk had been questioned for months leading up to this raid but why go after a site merely linking to illegal content that is hosted on servers by the likes of Google, Youtube, Stage6divx? A Spanish court this week has already ruled that linking to content on P2P networks is not illegal.

The message we see being sent here is you cannot link a HTTP URL from your website to an illegal tv-show but it’s fine to host the video on your servers if you are a large corporation with unlimited cash resources for lawyers. If anything tv-links was actually providing a fantastic service to copyright holders of the material they linked too, if the copyright holders had stopped to think for a second they might have realized that tv-links actually provided them with a unrivaled way to track illegal uploads of their shows, and as the site was updated frequently is an easier option than trailing through video upload sites for their shows.

The copyright holders could easily have used tv-links to their advantage to track show uploads and send cease and desist letters to the video hosts who are sharing the content, no doubt this approach would save money and resources as always common sense and inventive thinking does not apply to the copyright holders, police or government.

It looks like this will be another one for the courts to decide whether linking to material on another website is illegal rather than being the content provider. If linking to another website can be seen as facilitating the internet will need to be closed down entirely to eradicate this issue.

source: p2pvine

Monday October 01 2007: fifteen percent of the people that are using P2P networks, are spying for the authorities or record and film company representatives like BREIN, MPAA, RIAA, FPFI and more. They are looking for people that share illegal files via the network to collect as much information as they can, so authorities can sue them for copyright infringement.

Three American investigators wanted to see how file sharers could stay anonymous on P2P networks, and it seemed an nearly impossible task. In 2006 they investigated the data traffic of a popular P2P network like Gnutella, for 90 days. “We discovered that an naive user stands no change at all to stay anonymous. All the time the unprotected sharing of files was monitored by people working for the authorities, collecting proof of copyright infringement.”

The use of Block-list software, like PeerGuardian, Bluetrack and TrustyFiles gave an improvement. The change to be monitored whit one of these block-lists dropped to 1%, but it would only have effect when the list is updated at regular intervals. No one suggests that downloading illegally is a good idea, but P2P technology is here to stay and the entertainment industry better think of ways to offer users a cheep and simple alternative of legally downloading copyrighted content, investigator Michalis Faloutsos says. The investigation report named P2P: “Is Big Brother Watching You” can be downloaded here (.pdf).