bearshare : proprietary download ?

[Robo action]

At the current time, Gnutella servents absolutely must not allow browser downloads. We hope to change this situation (with forced sharing, when anonymity is implemented) but presently, web site operators who profit off Gnutella based search engines will kill the network.



BearShare has an "Auth" token that allows browser downloads.

This was part of a feature where you could browse a user's files using a web browser, and then download the files directly. The user had to turn the option on, though.

The idea behind this, is that in exchange for allowing a browser download, the downloader has to look at that users home page, which may include advertising, or any other message or content they want to provide.

So its not really leeching - the guy sharing the file gets something (he gets traffic to his web page) and the downloader gets a file.

We scrapped this feature, because it wasn't particularly useful.

[Lady]

This URL is generated from the "Browse Host" feature by BearShare. This way, you can still use a regular browser to download the file. Without it, all browser are blocked (that is, browser like MSIE, Opera, etc.). This was done in response to public "Gnutella Portals" which allowed everyone to leech, but not return anything for it (thus causing a big imbalance, especially if the Gnutella client serving the browser has limited upload slots).

Regular Gnutella -> Gnutella download requests work fine for BearShare. Download Bearshare on your own PC, connect to it with another vendor's client and try to download something. You'll see it'll work.

[Shauna Abdouche]

Yes Vinnie, you should be the only one who profits off of our Gnutella network, how dare anyone else !
And your type of greed won't hurt Gnutella at all, but if other people do it, it's a big problem.
You have been saying block browsers from the start but at this point there are enough nodes to allow this.
You said this back when there were only 10,000 nodes, so now what's the problem?A really cool video producer I know dropped your client because he couldn't DISTRIBUTE his very funny and original comedy video files anymore with it.
The concept with distribution is to let people get your content as many ways as you can.
Since he's not a big technical type, as most of these people are not, he hasn't put his files back on line since.
THANKS VINNIE!!!!!
As usual, a dumb **** short sighted, no vision move.

[1alien]

Okay you got me. We dropped the feature temporarily because the upload logic was completely re-written, and it was going to take at least a week to re-implement the web page feature. There are some other improvements that I wanted to make to it (like a Web Publishing Wizard type script component) so that was going to drag it on for more days.

I agree, it was a useful feature for those wanting to self-publish.



I think you misunderstand - the browser download feature that was enabled through the "user web page" is OK, because it was opt-in, and the person who was allowing the browser downloads got something in return. This, we should allow, for the reasons you mentioned above.

But allow *direct* browser downloads, from a link off any web page, without going through the user web site "door page" is most certainly a bad idea.

Well, at least for the Gnutella type downloads. If you really want to serve a file to anybody with BearShare, all you need to do is drop the file in your Html directory and use a URL like this:

http://{ip_address}:6346/{filename.ext}

That always worked, but people don't usually put their shared files in the Html directory.

[The Real Britney]

I liked the browse user feature. Actually, I was using Gnotella then, but you could also see Bearshare users as well.

Ivan
"In the dark we make a brighter light"

[Dr. Zoidberg M.D.]

One of the ways you can get people to download your not so known content is to post a link in a forum with a message and curious people might try your file.
Making this a user option is good (empowering the user) because you never know what people will do with this, and it makes Gnutella look better because it's not just for pirating music.
Gnutella developers should always provide features to publishers of original content since it ****** off the RIAA that they can't get $$ for it.