In response to the reopening of an investigation into inadvertent file sharing with peer-to-peer software, an executive for Lime Wire told Congress in a letter on Friday that the new version of the program is "the most secure file-sharing software available."
The main investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives reopened a probe of Lime Wire and other peer-to-peer file-sharing companies last week, citing data breaches blamed on the technology.
In February, a security firm alleged that information about President Obama's helicopter was breached via P2P. There have also been reports of inadvertent exposure of consumer financial data and medical records over peer-to-peer, according to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
In a letter sent Friday to the Committee and congressional members, Mark Gorton, the chairman of Lime Wire parent Lime Group, said LimeWire 5, released on December 8, was designed to eliminate inadvertent file sharing in response to privacy concerns.
LimeWire 5 by default does not share documents, it automatically un-shares documents a user may have shared using an older version of the software, and by default will not share documents regardless of whether they exist in a folder that has been shared or whether a user shared the document in an older version, said Gorton's letter, a copy of which was obtained by CNET News.
"In short, there is absolutely no way to access a LimeWire 5 user's documents unless that user affirmatively elects to make them available," he wrote. "LimeWire 5 does not share any file of any type without explicit permission from the user."
Meanwhile, the company has no specific information about the reports of data breaches that the Committee had mentioned, Gorton said.
The Committee initially launched its probe into inadvertent file-sharing with P2P in mid-2007 and had called Gorton and others to testify.
Meanwhile, another congressional subcommittee is planning to hold a hearing on P2P technology. The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection has scheduled a hearing for Monday at 2 p.m. EDT on the "Informed P2P User Act," introduced by California Rep. Mary Bono Mack, a Republican, her office said.
Scheduled to testify at the hearing are the Federal Trade Commission, the Business Software Alliance, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Distributed Computing Industry Association, Tiversa, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation.
Lime Group's letter assures Congress that its new peer-to-peer software eliminates inadvertent file-sharing.
(Credit: Lime Group)Amidst the crowd of peer-to-peer file-sharing options comes an attempt to return file-sharing to its utilitarian roots and away from legal quagmires by emphasizing file-publishing. Free and open-source, LittleShoot is the brainchild of Adam Fisk, a LimeWire developer who wants LittleShoot to be "like Google for files instead of Web pages."
LittleShoot manages torrents as well as scouring the Web for most major file formats.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Where most P2P programs are standalone clients, LittleShoot is a browser plug-in like QuickTime or Shockwave that should work with all major browsers. It utilizes an AJAX-based interface at LittleShoot.org to search, publish, and download files. Once you've downloaded and installed the plug-in, it will take you to the LittleShoot.org search page unless you opt out. From there, entering any search term will return results with hits from YouTube, IsoHunt, Flickr, Yahoo, and LimeWire. A SafeSearch option attempts to restrict inappropriate content.
The most recent version introduces torrent-handling abilities. Check out any torrent site, download the torrent, and LittleShoot will automatically start downloading it. LittleShoot lacks advanced features like throttling, but for a basic set-it-and-forget-it torrent client, it's not too shabby. Helpful links on the side make it easy to Twitter or Facebook the torrent, and a drop-down menu gives you access to dozens more sharing options.
Non-torrent files found by LittleShoot will open in a new window, but can't be downloaded directly.
Unfortunately, the publishing option wasn't working when I tested it. When you click "Browse," you can search your hard drive for files to share. Once you've chosen a file, you can tag it--however, the JPG and WMV files I tried to upload didn't work. Even with these drawbacks, LittleShoot looks like an interesting attempt to demystify file-sharing by making it more accessible than it's been so far.
LimeWire 5.0 allows users to share files with friends on any Jabber-compatible system, as well as to have search results incorporate files from the LimeWire store.
(Credit: Lime Wire)LAS VEGAS--Get ready for the collision of social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing.
With the beta release of LimeWire 5.0 (download for Windows| Mac), which was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show here, the popular P2P service is incorporating a social element that will enable people using Jabber-compatible services like Gmail to share files with friends on their buddy lists. Lime Wire calls this a "personal sharing network."
The idea, said Lime Wire CEO George Searle, is to add trusted context to user searches for content, given that people are more likely to want--and feel comfortable with--content from people they know.
Additionally, Searle explained that the new social features of LimeWire--which has 70 million monthly unique users and more than 5 billion queries a month--will enable people to choose whether to make files available to the public at large, or just to their friends and family.
In many ways, this is much like many other content-sharing systems. But to Searle, adding a social component to LimeWire means making what is already an extremely popular service more personal to many users.
Essentially, the way the new feature works is that users will be able to decide whether to make files--photographs, for example--available to anyone on LimeWire, or just to people on their buddy lists. Similarly, users will be able to search for files from their friends. And this will take advantage of a sharing system that tens of millions of people already use, something that Lime Wire hopes will encourage many on the service to adopt the social elements.
Searle said he hopes that the social feature will allow users to trust the sources of the content they share across the system in a way that's not really possible when sharing with strangers.
LimeWire has spent a long time at the top of our Most Popular list for good reason--it's easy to use and gets the results people want. Though there is a certain amount of controversy surrounding file sharing, there are plenty of legal files that you can get through LimeWire. Once downloaded, you can even preview audio files with LimeWire's included media player.
Check out this First Look with Jason Parker from Download.com to get the lowdown on this extremely popular app for Mac.
Taking a slightly different approach to solving the multimedia lover's dilemma of how best to download torrents is BitComet, which goes to great lengths to integrate familiar features like bookmarking with torrent management and discovery.
Although the program has moved on from the scandals of its past, it's still heavily reliant on advertising. Join me in this First Look at BitComet to help you decide if it's worth the download.
If you're looking for something like LimeWire's genetically enhanced clone, look no further than FrostWire.
Featuring an ice-blue interface and all the features of LimeWire Pro, FrostWire should warm you up with fewer download restrictions and a connection-monitoring tab. Editor Seth Rosenblatt will show you what's hot and what's not in this First Look video.
FrostWire hopes to breathe some new life into the much-maligned P2P file-sharing client LimeWire.
LimeWire has become the Web 2.0 equivalent of Kazaa and the late 1990s Napster. What you think is last night's episode of Heroes turns out to be a villainous chunk of malware, and litigation issues have forced its programmers to include a license filter, warning you if you're about to grab something without proper copyright information attached. Plus, the interface is ugly.
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Peer-to-peer company BitTorrent is set to announce on Tuesday morning the availability of a new enterprise content delivery product, BitTorrent DNA. Designed for companies that use streaming video, large downloads or games over the Web, the launch of BitTorrent DNA marks yet another conscious move by the San Francisco-based software brand to move beyond its roots as the creator of file-sharing protocol that became nearly synonymous with digital piracy over the past few years.
BitTorrent described the new BitTorrent DNA product in a statement as "the ideal solution for publishers seeking ways to overcome the obstacles associated with centralized content delivery, such as slow downloads, choppy video streams, and inefficient use of network infrastructure." The inaugural client for the new content delivery network (CDN) is online video start-up Brightcove, which powers a number of large companies' broadband media operations.
BitTorrent DNA will be used to "accelerate" the delivery of the video hosted on Brightcove's platform.
With the rise of online video and large-scale media downloads, content delivery has become a crowded niche in the market. BitTorrent DNA will square off with industry leaders like Akamai Technologies--the force behind CBS' video distribution network as well as a host of others. BitTorrent is hoping, however, that its massive following (150 million downloads of its client, according to the company) will help give it an edge.
In addition, the peer-to-peer format has become increasingly popular in the streaming video space, with recent entries like Joost and Babelgum touting P2P technology as the backbone for their professional-quality video content.
In February, BitTorrent announced that it was creating a digital download store that would use that robust user base as a way to legally transfer large movies, games and other files. The company has also forged alliances with major movie studios for legal film downloads.
Meanwhile, the exhaustive battle over online piracy wages on.
In the turbulent, choppy waters where P2P networks and copyright law chomp at each other's fins for dominance, there's at least one beast that thinks it has a solution to keep everybody happy. Its name: Grooveshark. The tagline? "Everybody gets paid."
As content distribution has mutated from analog to digital, the companies that came into existence to control the distribution have panicked and floundered. Decentralized peer-to-peer sharing made this all possible, but it's also thrown nearly a century of copyright law beyond the deep end and into rough waters.
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CNET Networks)
Sixteen-year-old Emily has known her way around a computer from a wee age, but remains a bit naive when it comes to file-sharing safety. Ill-advised downloading practices from P2P networks compel her to restore her system three times. Is all the drama worth it for this teen computing queen? This week's Spyware Horror Story tells all.
