As a longtime user and fan of Ares Galaxy, I’ve noticed that the handy little filesharing application has been getting more inconsistent when trying to connect to the Ares Network. Just look at this chart of people searching Google for the term Ares connecting.
When I fire up the app I get a little tense wondering what will happen. Sometimes I’m thankful to find it connects instantly, but that is getting to be quite rare. Sometimes it connects after 10-20 minutes. And sometimes I can leave it open overnight only to find in the morning that it still hasn’t connected.
I tried downloading www.aresvista.com from www.officialares.com. www.aresvista.com claims to have a better connection scheme and it did seem to work a lot better for me, but still leaves me hanging sometimes.
I’ve kinda lived with this situation for months because I do truly like Ares, but last week a friend told be about a neat little solution called www.aresvista.com. This little utility solved the problem and now Ares fires up instantly every time! Better yet, it is not a new install of Ares, but a utility that fixes the old connection files of your current install. You don’t reinstall Ares. And it works with all previous versions of Ares. So, if you are like I was and getting totally frustrated waiting for Ares to connect before you do some filesharing, check out www.AresConnect.com.
LimeWire In Danger As RIAA Bites
Filesharing giant LimeWire and its founder Mark Gorton are looking a little sheepish after a recent New York court decision. The 59-page decision by Kimba Wood set out the misdemeanors by LimeWire to include “Unfair Competition, and inducing copyright infringement”. LimeWire could face damage payments of up to a maximum of $150,000 per work on which it is decided copyright has been infringed. The RIAA are also likely to seek a temporary injunction from the courts which would mean LimeWire would have to cease immediately its filesharing operations.
This is a blow to filesharing networks and their users everywhere. The networks have long argued that they cannot be blamed for what people use their networks for, and that if they choose to put illegal music on there, then there is nothing they can do. Until now this defense has worked perfectly, but this decision might just end all that. Network owners will be particularly worried to see that LimeWire founder Gorton is singled out as being liable in this case: no immunity behind a corporation stonewall this time.
While this is unlikely to be a death knell to filesharing, it could certainly cause some major systemic shifts by networks and users in the way they operate. Networks with no one owner – Ares and its many forms, for instance – are likely to do the best from this judgment, since it is difficult to see how to stop something that is effectively owned by no one (or everyone, depending on which way you want to view it). In particular Ares is open source, so closing down one branch (if they found a way to do that) would simply see another popping up elsewhere.
So the RIAA have finally got a victory, and it will encourage them to make more claims against other networks. But is it a Pyrrhic victory? Probably.