When we think of ubiquity, we think sunshine, ocean, sand, air and more recently, unfortunately pollution. If we personalize ubiquity, we think of people, clothes, food, cars, football/baseball (the lack of every night on Tele).

If you were Bill Gates, you might think of the number of Microsoft Operating Systems that you have sold as being ubiquitous.

In other words, ubiquity is an individually defined quantum.

ICQ – Internet Relay Chat set a record as the most popular program ever downloaded in 2002.

This meant that the Internet was working as advertised. People could reduce Telecommunications costs by utilizing alternatives to chat to friends, relatives and business contacts.

In May 2003, that record was broken by Kazaa which was recorded as having been downloaded 230 million times.

Emule has been downloaded by 412,185,686 users worldwide from its official home.  This number doesn’t account for the millions of downloads from third party sites, the P2P networks themselves, from friends passing on the goodies and from the different variants like iMule, Amule et al..

The emule sourcecode has been downloaded 20,411,791 making it the number one program that programmers are interested in and working on developments too

Because of its ease of use and automatic operation upon installation, most users load it and use it as it comes from the programmers without making any changes to the configuration.

This means that automatically, they are announced to ALL servers globally, AND all servers are saved in their server configuration file by default. 

The Media Sentry and Media Defender (now one company) servers then identify the IP numbers of file sharers by both downloading and uploading movies/music to and from the file sharer. As soon as a PART file (1/50^th of a movie) is successfully transferred, the notification goes out to BAY/TSP to send the Take-down notice.

ISP’s then disconnect the users and read them a blurb saying “further file sharing may result in our company disconnecting you from the Internet permanently”.

So Newbie file sharers then either stop or get smart. Smart entails reading the FAQ on how to stay under the radar. Smart includes switching off automatic server updates. Smart includes using an ipfilter,dat.

Those users that are not smart – wind up receiving a takedown notice and many give up right there.

The industry is going after the Servers that are the initial backbone of the network and have interdicted 147 of their own servers in an effort to entrap new users, however the real action takes place behind the scenes – experienced users don’t use servers. They use direct P2P connections.

The industry’s strategy has the result of catching the little fish (officially – according to peerates.net - less than three million users) because apparently they don’t understand what is actually happening.

Some of the coders who remain several jumps ahead think that it is because the industry has no clue.

Perhaps the real issue is that the industry believes what it is told by Media Sentry and Media Defender – whose business is built around the same value proposition as the pharmaceutical companies. They make money not from curing the illness, but from treating the symptom. All the take down notices just address the symptoms. – and BAY/TSP et al, do very nicely out of the Take Down Notice business.

Ironic really. Someone should actually make a movie about it. The plot is after all, pretty familiar:

A group of free-thinking, individuals believe that they should be free of the yoke of the empire and its soldiers. They have developed a more than ubiquitous technology that enables them to operate away from the overpowering authority – and tax structure – of the colonial power.

It reads like The Empire Strikes Back, Robin Hood, The Boston Tea Party or any number of movie scripts….

And if the content industry was paying attention, they might notice that in all the best plots, the rebellious free-thinking individuals always win in the end. Happy endings are what Hollywood does best. How come they aren’t following the plot?

Sources: Download.com Emule-project.com Limewire.com Cnet.com

References:

Darknets and the future of P2P investigators

Darknets live on after P2P ban at Ohio U

Nearly half of web users have illegally downloaded music - Newmediage

Macintosh Installed user base 16%

www.peerates.net