I might think about basing something like this on my FreenetGUI, but I would
have to find a way to get it to read ID3 tags and bitrates etc...

--Jeff
----- Original Message -----
From: <[email protected]>
To: <freenet-dev at lists.sourceforge.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2000 9:25 AM
Subject: Re: [Freenet-dev] An opportunity


>
> On Thu, 27 Jul 2000 10:03:01 BST,  Ian Clarke writes:
>
> > So, Napster has been shut down.
> >
> > This is probably bad news from a freenet point-of-view since it means
> > that we will probably see a marked increase in downloads as-of Friday,
> > despite Freenet still being incomplete.
> >
> > There is, however, an opportunity for someone here to take advantage of
> > this using Freenet.  I am not saying it is nescessarily a great idea,
> > but if someone is going to do it, I would rather they do it in
> > cooperation with us (since, because Freenet is GPL, there is nothing to
> > stop someone from doing this without our say-so).
> >
> > If someone created a simple (initially Windows) piece of software based
> > around 0.2 specifically designed for distribution of mp3s (as has been
> > discussed in the "LARS" thread), then at least it would serve as an
> > effective test of Freenet.  We should be cautious, however, to ensure
> > that people are encouraged to upgrade it when Freenet 0.3 comes out,
> > possibly by making it time-limited to 1st September or something.  It
> > should, of course, run a server if possible.
>
> I just got into work, so I hadn't heard about the Napster thing.  There's
> no way I could hack out anything significant before Friday.  I have way
> too much else going on in terms of workload and that 'having a life'
> thing that keeps cropping up (I promised the kids I'd take them to the
> water park this week, and my wife wants me to help clean house).  It
> looks like I'm out of the picture if the deadline is Friday.  Sorry.
>
> History calls, dudes.  If you don't mind some occasional press questions,
> and a possible nasty lawsuit, it's time to step up to the plate.  All I
> had to offer was the idea that you can really simplify things by assuming
> that everyone already knows the exact file name of what they want to
> request.  Use non-Freenet techniques to announce & list what files are
> available.  Do *not* use this for sharing programs, since it's trivial
> for someone to insert a rogue file under a known name -- virus city!
> Keep in mind that it's a temporary stopgap only.
>
> Oh, one more point.  The file format I quickly offered earlier is not
> well-thought-out.  Consider it more carefully before you commit to
> something, since the file name will in effect be your most critical
> piece of user-interface data.  For example, I now realize that you'd be
> better off adding an extra field or two in the file name to show the
> file size (in bytes) and perhaps a hash/crc value.  Keeping that as a
> separate data item is too dangerous and complicated for a quick ugly
> hack like this.  The user could just look at the file name & file size
> to see if they match.  In rare cases they could run a separate program
> to generate a matching hash/crc value to see if it matched the one in the
> file name, but I doubt if that will be used much in the real world.
>
> Oh, and you could dump the field for album name.  For the most part,
> "albums" are a historical artifact related to the manufacturing costs
> of the distrubution medium.  No need to prop it up.  Most people just
> wanted a particular song, not a particular album.  They can search Google
> or something if they really want to find out what songs were in an album.
>
> So, one posible format would be:
>
> - field for some kind of tag to identify the rest of the format
> - field for artist/group
> - field for song name
> - field for encoding (just something to differentiate different
> attempts to encode the same song or song segment).
> - field for a hash/crc/whatever value of some kind
> - field for the last 8 digits of the file size (in bytes)
> - field at the end for ".mp3" or ".mp4" or whatever.  It may be a good
> idea to force it to only a few value types, to discourage people from
> downloading any sort of program this way.  Those who are smart enough
> to safely share programs this way should be smart enough to change the
> code that disallows executable exensions.  Long term, this last field
> & the restrictions on it are pretty dumb; but it might actually help
> for the quick-hack purpose here.
>
>
> Ack.  'Gotta get back to my real job.  Have fun...
>
>
> --Will
> (Not speaking in any way for my employers, who probably will think I've
> gone insane if they ever read this.)
> willdye at freedom.net
>
>
>
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