Ares Connect

Reports have been flying around the Internet this week that Virgin Media has come to some sort of agreement with the UK music industry to begin a scheme that would deter filesharing.

Virgin Media has denied these claims, but admitted that it had discussed the infamous three-strikes scheme with the music industry, so it looks likely that the clampdown on filesharing is about to become a reality in the UK, although it’s unclear what this will entail.

People who use filesharing services like ares to get free music downloads will, under the proposed scheme, be given two warnings before their final strike, which will result in their Internet connection being cut.

Virgin Media has actually come out and said that it isn’t really in favor of such actions against filesharing, citing privacy and legal issues. The three-strikes system proposed by the UK music industry has come under fire from all corners of the Internet.

Due to my old filesharing software no longer working on Vista (‘increased security settings’ or something) I had to find another version that could get me down to business in no time at all.

I’ve used filesharing apps before but I am in no way any kind of authority. What passes as a ‘review’ below are simply some initial observations on the software I downloaded, Ares Vista.

I chose Ares Vista because it seems to have been designed to solve exactly the problem I was facing: namely that it played nicely with Windows Vista’s increased security.

Ares Vista shares the handsome looks of Windows Vista so that’s a good start and while it adds nothing to the competency of the software it does, in my humble opinion look ‘just right’,

I really liked Ares Vista’s music cataloguing system because it gave the flexibility to be as picky as I liked with my organizing. And believe me I like to be picky.

Really though the most important plus in the Ares Vista bow is its ability to work with Vista – that was a lifesaver for me. It does, apparently, work with other computer systems too but that doesn’t concern me at the moment. It’s working for me. Hurrah!

What others are saying:
Good results with Ares Vista
Ares Vista worked for me

The guys at The Pirate Bay stuck a finger up at the IFPI as demands were made for damages totally $2.5 million. Chief Pirate Gottfrid Svartholm Warg told a newspaper that he told lawyers from the IFPI to “go screw themselves”.

Four Pirates were indicted in January for allegedly aiding the piracy of 24 albums, nine movies and four videogames.

Svartholm laughed off the indictment, saying that the $2.5 million figure likely came from multiplying the number of items by the number of times they were downloaded. Most downloaders would never have paid the full price for their music, games and movies, he added.

All this comes as Swedish artists came out this week in support of filesharing. Also this month, Trent Reznor uploaded part of his Ghosts I-IV to The Pirate Bay. It seems that all the action with regards to filesharing and music downloads is currently going on in Sweden.

Would you believe there is another free filesharing service available? These filesharing programs seem to pop up like flowers in spring. Most of the new ones we’ve covered recently haven’t been very good because there are now so many filesharing programs to get free music downloads that the market is saturated.

Also, for new filesharing services, there are hardly any users, but the point of some of them is just to upload files for other people. File Dropper offers a service that boats no sign-up and 5GB capacity. It ain’t Limewire, but it has it’s uses. You just pick the file you want to share with the world and upload it there and then.

You don’t even have to fill in any personal details, which is novel for a filesharing program. Uploads are fast enough and before you know it you’re provided with a link to your file to share with your mum or whoever. Files and links stay live for as long as people keep downloading your stuff, which doesn’t mean much really. Check it out if you’re into trying out new things for the sake of it.

Another new website for music downloads slipped into our radar this week, this time its MusicMP3.ru. The guys at MusicMP3 were kind enough to open an account for us to check out the service. After a quick browse around, we were surprised to find the new Moby album available for download for $2.10. We bought the album right away on principle.

The album has only been released for a few days in the UK and the US. Looks like we got a bargain music download. The rest of MusicMP3 is cool enough. There’s a decent selection of tracks for downloading. What is amazing is that it isn’t just the Moby album that costs 2 bucks. Everything on the website is available at totally reduced prices.

The guys behind the website claim that it’s all completely legal and that they can do this because they are in Russia. There is also mention of an organization called ROMS. We have no idea what’s going on here, because brand new albums are available for about 1/8 of what you’d pay on iTunes.

There’s tonnes of new stuff on the website, too, as well as older albums. If you need some inspiration, they also have music news and album reviews to check out.

When you’re getting music downloads for this cheap, it raises the question why you wouldn’t just use a filesharing program or BitTorrent. Still, we did feel slightly pleased with getting a bargain, even if we can’t work out how this is possible.

The quality of the files is pretty high and everything downloads fast enough. Songs for 15 cents? Get them while they’re hot. Only problem is that you can’t pay by Paypal or credit card. Take that for what it’s worth.

Students have long been the target of the RIAA and its many assorted cronies; they love P2P filesharing and they’re generally unwilling (or unable) to pay for the same material they can get for free on Campus. With fast network connections in rooms – as well as near-neighbors with huge file collections – colleges are well suited for hot P2P filesharing action.

Campuses are going on the offensive and encouraging students to use Ruckus. Ruckus is a music-download service catering specifically to this type of downloader. Naturally Ruckus files are DRM protected meaning there’s nowhere you can put this file but on your computer. The selection? Not as good as you would get with a P2P filesharing application like Ares, quite simply.

So where is this offensive of P2P filesharing likely to go? Not very far if you ask me. Students will find a way around the flimsy barriers erected by industry and by their learned academic institutions. Power to the people? Probably.

The future of CD sales looks doomed: it was predicted in a recent Forbes magazine survey that by 2012 sales from music downloads would outweigh sales of CDs.

Even that estimate looks to be shaky now as totally free, totally legal download sites have been given a huge boost in the unlikely form of Sony BMG. Sony BMG is not renowned for assisting any aspect of music downloads, and certainly not for endorsing sites that actively encourage it.

We7 – Peter Gabriel’s fledgling free music download service – has done the impossible and secured Sony’s backing for its venture. From the end of April all of Sony’s back catalogue will be available completely free for streaming from the site. In terms of securing a future for the site, and for music downloads in general, this is a coup of epic proportions.

Interestingly there are rumors of many other partnerships between big name industry players: mobile provider 02 has announced a partnership with music download giant Napster, who are also in talks with Vodafone. Interesting times for music downloads and for us, the users.

The British clampdown on filesharing is a real threat to Internet freedom. The British record industry is intent on coming up with ways of stamping out all filesharing activity. According to Jollyon Benn of the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI), people use filesharing programs like Limewire mistakenly believing they are not breaking the law.

Benn thinks that education is the key to solving Britain’s filesharing problem. That’s BS. People know what they doing. Education will not solve a damn thing. Yes, filesharing and BitTorrent is now easier than ever to use, but people aren’t so stupid that they aren’t made fully aware that downloading copyrighted material is wrong.

Apparently, the BPI is developing bots that can detect illegal filesharing. The BPI wants to take out larger filesharing networks. What happened to educating people? Could the British music industry be even more clueless than the industry in the US?

BitTorrent is a relatively new technology that allows sharing of files in an efficient way with limited strain on resources and with maximum redundancy. What this means to the standard computer user is less failed or corrupted downloads, less tie-up of computing power, and more opportunities for file downloads. Torrents are commonly used when huge files or groupings of files are offered for download.

Torrents are files which gives information on a download that is registered with one or more of the popular trackers. Torrents may be held in whole (a ‘seed’) or in part by one or more of the other users connected to the tracker. Each user (or ‘client’) can then connect to one another and begin to download the files in the torrents. Segments of the files are taken in no particular order from no particular client. The more clients connected to the tracker with this particular torrent, the more choices there are for downloading a particular section of the file. More choices mean less resource strain on any one individual source.

Sweden’s crackdown on filesharing is becoming more of a reality as days goes by. It was initially thought (hoped) that the Swedish government would not clamp down on filesharing, but then a couple of weeks ago it was announced that courts will soon be able to force ISPs to give up the IPs of people who use filesharing programs like Limewire to obtain copyrighted material.

Previous ideas to block Internet access of filesharing users have been dropped in favor of this new response. This takes a lot of the pressure off of ISPs, who would have had to police their own networks for filesharing highway bandits.

Now, it’s up to the courts to find people who are downloading music illegally. Sweden is the original home of filesharing website the Pirate Bay. This is just the latest in a series of Europe-wide steps to be applied to ridding the Internet of filesharing.