AllPeers BitTorrent Plugin Preview For TechCrunch Readers
Nick Gonzalez
21 comments »
UK/Prague based peer to peer file sharing startup AllPeers has launched a sneak peek of their latest release candidate (0.7) just for TechCrunch readers (available here), which includes a fully functional BitTorrent client. AllPeers is a Firefox plugin that lets you easily share files amongst your contacts, using BitTorrent to speed their progress.
Although AllPeers started out as a peer to peer file sharing FireFox plugin for friends and family, they have recently broadened their horizons under the pressure of new entrants. The recent versions have come with some useful updates. AllPeer has opened their torrent network beyond your buddy list to any torrent file for some time, but has now enabled unregistered use and social torrent sharing.
Advanced torrenting users may be put off by the lack of fine grained control, but the system is meant to be accessible for people who don’t already use BitTorrent. To that end, it adds much of the simplicity and transparency offered from other torrent downloaders like Wyzo and FoxTorrent, but with an added social layer (if you register).
When you start downloading a torrent, you can share any or all of the files with users on your AllPeers buddy list. When a contact starts downloading the file, they download it from the public torrent network as well as your own system - given the nature of BitTorrent, this will have the effect of speeding up the file download for everyone. Tying into this social layer, AllPeers has also included an auto-download feature that automatically downloads files as your friends share them.
Most excellent extension. However, have they not stated that they will be monitoring for illegal downloads? Let’s be honest, if they do, then that severely cuts down on it’s usefulness…..to most people
did they say somewhere they are going to try to monitor downloads to determine if they are legal or not? That would not be a good move.
Well, they did mention they were gonna work with companies to prevent to much copyrighted content from being distributed, that equates to monitoring. I sure do hope they don’t monitor, merely from an ethical standpoint, I want whatever I share with my list of buddies to be firmly between just us
yeah, it that is accurate it is a terrible policy. Ed, can you point to anything?
Sad i cant use this with my IE7…cant download FF just for this.. i love my IE
This software is for criminals!
Is that new video Osama? Vista answers!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
allpeers has some ease-of-use appeal, but in the end its just another bt client, thats how people will use it. viable as a volunteer open source project, but i doubt there is a business here
http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2.....r-to-peer/
Mike certain members of the so called p2p community have tried to paint Allpeers and any other company using p2p for profit as working with the MPAA and RIAA especially after the Grokster and Kazaa decisions .
Michael
It’s a “terrible policy” to make sure everything is legal. Oh well! More situation ethics from an attorney. GO figure. Sharks are everywhere.
and to the Fake Steve Ballmer
You sure know a lot about software criminals.
It’s SO easy to “steal” video already via P2P, this seems fairly unremarkable. Do Firefox users really need easier ways to steal content and share it with each other? Don’t get me wrong, I do understand many people who download such stuff paid for HBO already and want to be able to watch Entourage while they travel or whatever…but they already could do that easily enough.
Does TC have warrants in this company? Otherwise why the special TC Beta? And does TC really want to be involved with this in that way? I understand why TC would write about it, especially in light of all the Firefox users it has — but a special beta just for TC readers?
Another White hat P2P network? How can they ensure the files being distributed are not illegal in large scale?
http://www.techtalkz.com
“the system is meant to be accessible for people who don’t already use BitTorrent”
Call me crazy, but I don’t see a whole lot of overlap between these two groups:
* People who use Firefox, know what extensions are, and how to install them.
* People who DON’T use or don’t know HOW to use BitTorrent.
Sorry to be negative but if this is your target audience, well, you have about 3 potential customers!
Sean,
Good point. Actually we’ve seen that for many of our users AllPeers is the first extension they’ve ever installed. One of the cool things about this new release is I can give it to friends and then share torrents with them, so they don’t have to go through the pain of discovering them themselves in the initial stages.
Matt
Oh, and by the way, we never said we would monitor for illegal downloads. Actually that would be impossible given the nature of our P2P network.
Matthew Gerner why dont you put the features of say Tribler in your client ???
Such as?
Um Just a few things Tribler has that Allpeers does’nt and Tribler is a open source research project Im sure they would be happy that a commercial developer is using thier code .
Please check out what they are up to and try and incorporate some of these features into Allpeers and we might use it
https://www.tribler.org/
* PermID: Permanent Identifier of peers to enhance the security of Bittorrent
* MerkleHashes: Secure identifiers of content which removes the need for .torrent files
* OverlaySwarm: A secure method of communication between peers in different swarms
* CooperativeDownload: Double your download speed by sharing upload capacity amongst friends
* DecentralizedRecommendation: Websites for finding .torrent files are no longer needed, Tribler knows what you like and finds it
DistributedTracker: Replacing the bittorrent tracker with a gossip protocol
# BarterCast: a protocol to exchange the altruism levels of peers. Altruism is defined as the amount of uploading versus downloading of a person
# Buddycast3: This version of BuddyCast adds ratings, comments, faster .torrent collecting, access to more content due to RSS subscription integration, and superior scalability
We already do some, but not all of that. Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll definitely have our networking developers take a closer look.
new way to search for torrents:
http://www.prrvid.com
click on the torrent live search and start typing the name of the torrent.