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eclectica
2003-09-27, 22:35
http://www.joltid.com/design/joltid/images/logo.gif

Joltid (http://www.joltid.com) is a company founded by Niklas Zennstrom, the person who developed the Kazaa program. Both Kazaa and Joltid have been sold to Sharman Networks.

Joltid has two product lines, both of which are made to reduce bandwidth for ISPs that is caused by file sharing:
PeerCache (http://www.joltid.com/index.php/peercache/) and PeerEnabler (http://www.joltid.com/index.php/peerenabler/).

PeerCache is made for ISPs. They have a cache of commonly traded files in p2p networks, so that when a person downloads a song from another, he is actually getting it from a cache at a more local server. Otherwise it could come from a long distance p2p connection, which costs the ISP more. The record companies are now pondering whether to sue Joltid over the PeerCache software, because the cache, which is on a hard drive, to them represents a tangible hard copy of copyright infringement. This brings up an interesting question, which is: At what point is someone guilty of copyright infringement? If it is not stored on the hard drive but stored in the memory, is that copyright infringement?

PeerEnabler is made for the users, and it is special software which has a person store common files of internet sites on the hard drive of the person. This reminds of the way in which Freenet (http://freenet.sourceforge.net/) works, because it creates a decentralized internet. The selling point to users would be that their internet sites and browsing would load faster. But I think it will get installed on the computers of people without them wanting to particularly. It will probably come bundled with other software that people install, like Kazaa. The program uses DRM technology to verify the files that are stored on the computers of users. The advantage for publishers is that their files will be propagated through the internet using the bandwidth of users rather than using the bandwidth of a website. The program claims not to have any spyware, but there seems to be some kind of affiliation with Altnet (http://www.altnet.com/) and Brilliant Digital Entertainment (http://www.brilliantdigital.com/). See these links:
http://www.joltid.com/index.php/peerenabler/faq
http://www.altnet.com/about/pressreleases/press_release9.asp

eclectica
2003-09-28, 03:24
This was not sent as a real e-mail, but instead using an online form in which they asked my name and my e-mail address.

Hi, I was trying to find where to download the PeerEnabler program. Is there a link for it to be downloaded somewhere? I couldn't find one on your site.

eclectica
2004-07-19, 08:06
The latest version .43 of eMule now supports PeerCache. There is a discussion on the eMule board about it in this thread (http://forum.emule-project.net/index.php?showtopic=52576).

From the PeerCache FAQ (http://www.joltid.com/index.php/peercache/faq/) is this paragraph:
Which P2P protocols/clients does PeerCache currently support?

At the moment PeerCache supports the protocol used by KaZaA, iMesh and Grokster (FastTrack) and the one used by Overnet and eDonkey. Support for additional P2P protocols is planned to be added to the product, depending on their popularity.

I'm not sure how PeerCache works in eMule, but I speculate that it works by way of hashes, that verify the same file is in the cache as is the one requested by the p2p program. So that means that the eMule program communicates with the cache in some way.

This worries me to see eMule adopt compatibility with a product made by Sharman Networks. It is something that must be watched closely in the future, for fear that eMule may become corrupted by Sharman Networks.