Build Date: Sun Aug 16 04:30:15 2026 UTC
Life's too short to go out with RenFaire people.
-- Mr. Bad
Life After Napster
2001-02-23 23:20:20
By setting up a central server to act as a gateway to the service, Napster set itself up as a big fat target for the music industry. To provide free music, you need to be able to hide in plain sight. To be reachable, but not have an address. To be known, and yet anonymous. Enter Espra...
"Espra is an open source file-sharing client. It uses a decentralized architecture and has no central point of failure like Napster or similar systems."
FreeNet is a distributed, decentralized, anonymous information storage and retrieval system. Espra is a Freenet client that allows people to share catalogs of music with each other. Since it's based on Freenet, the service it provides is distributed, decentralized, and anonymous.
FreeNet has found its Killer App.
From the Freenet web site: "Unlike the Web, information on Freenet is not stored at fixed locations or subject to any kind of centralized control. Freenet is a single world-wide information store that stores, caches, and distributes the information based on demand. This allows Freenet to be more efficient at some functions than the Web, and also allows information to be published and read without fear of censorship because individual documents cannot be traced to their source or even to where they are physically stored."
If you've been looking for a reason to check out Freenet, this is it. If you've been looking for an excuse to set up a Freenet server, now you have one. If you've been meaning to find out more about Freenet but haven't had the time, now is your chance to take the time to find out more.
Go Freenet! Go Espra!
T O P S T O R I E S
John Dvorak has passed. I’m of mixed emotions. First off I’m more positive about his contribution to the overall technology journalism of the early PC days through the 90s, despite how many things he got wrong. He was a firebrand and commanded attention. (More...)
America's National Recording Registry Inducts Culturally Significant Artist - Weezer!
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California Glory Hole attracts huge crowds
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Republican State Senator busted after soliciting a teenage girl
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Parents claim measles is not that bad after having only one child die
The parents of a Texas girl who died from the measles are defending their decision not to vaccinate their daughter. "She says they would still say 'Don't do the shots,'" an unidentified translator for the parents said. "They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be." (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Datelined "Historic Mariposa," the fateful press release came in like an angry wind, announcing the release of a self-produced album, "Ordinary Hero," by occasional Pigdog contributor Thom Stark, in the language and tone of a Major Event, setting off a brief firestorm around the pigdog mailing list. (More...)
Brother Wayne Lays Down the Truth
Flesh interviews Wayne Kramer of MC5. (More...)
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Spock Went, Spock Wrote, Spock Kicked Ass
Every Labor Day weekend a large portion of the PDJ staff joins 30,000 other freaks at one of the biggest and strangest art festivals in the world - Burning Man - somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. Our base of operations is always the ultra swank Spock Mountain Research Labs - the World Leaders in Beverage Science and Leisure Technology. This year, we hauled up our computers, printers and a massive digital duplicator, determined to become Black Rock City's third daily newspaper. Even Spock was surprised by our success - news will never be viewed the same on the playa. Read all seven issues of the 2002 Spock Science Monitor for yourself and see why. (More...)
Juggler Vain attempts to wrestle with the issues around the KPFA shutdown; Big-time wrestling ensues. (More...)
I just came across this coolio essay by Pigdog Journal Science Editor binky wedged between two staves in the back corner of the submissions barrel. It's on the origin of the cyberbilly and is definitely de rigeur for any serious student of this fascinating sociological movement. (More...)
