…instead of sticking it in the middle of limewire.props as a line of text.

I'd like to be able to provide you folks with a half decent filter. Editing the limewire.props file works, but this is clearly beyond the abilities of the average user.

If I could just provide a standalone file with simple instructions on where to put it, a lot of people would enjoy the benefit of being able to block most of the spammers and hostiles out there.

See "The LimeWire Fullsize Hosts Filter!" for details on how to install and use it.

Alternate link (If the forum moves to it's new address before you see this): "The LimeWire Fullsize Hosts Filter!"

Won't work. I spent a couple months using "block host" on the fake ipod search results whenever I saw them. After that time I hadn't made a dent in how many of them showed up. Whoever's behind it has apparently got multiple host machines in multiple regions, each of them connected through an ordinary ISP, rather than using a central server farm on a commercial connection. The result being they come from a dozen or more machines each of which has a dynamic IP address in a different range from the others. Unless you block whole swaths of the Internet, you can't keep out the damn ipod spams. And to top it off, not only is it much harder to block because they are running their scam from a handful of ordinary office computers on ordinary home user broadband connections, it's probably also actually cheaper than if they had a "proper" commercial server farm and a "proper" commercial network connection with a stable IP for each machine, too. :P

RIAA snoops are also impossible to keep out. They'll all have connections at home with various IPs that change from time to time, and you can bet they'll use those or even resort to cyber cafe surfing if they can't get the goods on illegal sharers from their work connections.

Other spammers besides the ipod spammer don't even rely on spoofed search results but instead distribute mislabeled or mutilated files the ordinary way. There's no way even in principle to distinguish those from legitimate sharing, except file fingerprints, and Limewire doesn't have a way to block certain file fingerprints for some brainless reason, it can only block by host or by keywords in the file name.

Even the ipod spammer doesn't rely entirely upon spoofed search results. I avoid them -- they're really quite obvious -- but I still get the odd ipod JPEG that must have come from a seemingly "normal" search result and I still see (but avoid) the odd abnormally small WMV that doesn't have a zillion T1 sources and a filename identical to my search. Apparently there's a second method of dissemination, probably by simply configuring each of their machines to not only generate spoofed search results, but also to have a handful of spams that are shared "normally", i.e. they are simply given various names that will match popular searches and stuck in a shared folder.

And since the jpegs (unlike the wmvs) are a perfectly typical size for legitimate files of the same type, there's no way to avoid them, short of the brilliant suggestion someone posted earlier in this thread of showing dimensions instead of bitrate for the right hand column when doing an image search. All the ipod jpegs are the same odd size, 356x598. I've never seen an image that size that wasn't bogus. (Even file fingerprinting won't keep them out. There seem to be dozens of different versions with slightly different sizes and even sometimes different host names in the spam -- all no doubt aliases of the same server somewhere run by whatever fly-by-night somehow has the resources to operate physical assets in multiple cities. No doubt the multitude of variations is precisely to defeat attempts at filtering them out by hash. Unfortunately, this means they would probably start varying the image dimensions too if 356x598 jpegs started routinely being filtered out by the major p2p clients.)

Host filtering simply is not a viable solution to the problem of bad actors. Snoops can only be dealt with by some sort of secure anonymization scheme. I don't see that coming to gnutella anytime soon. If you want that use freenet or something -- it actually doesn't perform any worse than limewire. They're both huge bloated java apps that consume hundreds of megs of ram and are sluggish and semi-broken. Bad actors whose misbehavior is in what they try to push on you rather than what they try to catch you doing are a simpler matter. Their bogus files are as easy to vary as their IP addresses, however, so the only ultimate solution is better Bitzi integration. We need to be able to preview media files of all kinds (not just music) inside Limewire and right from in the previewer, delete and vote down files we consider to have been misleading. Not go to some slow and cranky Web site to do so, or to check whether a search result is ok. Nobody is going to do the Bitzi lookup menu thing for every single search result before downloading it -- not when every such lookup involves a sluggish web browser startup (during which LW doesn't respond) and then a slow page load, usually resulting in a "Bitzi fingerprint unknown" at the end, along with the usual assortment of annoying flashing banners and popups that were the chief culprit in making the whole process so slow and are utterly pointless since everybody completely ignores such trash now anyway. The rating should be indicated as part of the result quality. In fact, as far as I can tell the current result quality indicators are meaningless and can go to hell anyway. I've seen four star results languish forever in queue or "awaiting sources", had a whole bunch of intriguing one star results download in seconds so rapidly that Explorer crashed trying to redraw the download folder's window while it was in the middle of redrawing already, and the "new" icons? Forgeddaboudit. If I select a bunch of files and hit Download, limewire's UI freezes for a bit and when it recovers, half of them are now folder icons, half are still stars, and half are torn paper. All of the latter two category are sitting, intact, in my download folder (yes I have broadband), so where are the green checks? Green checks meanwhile frequently appear beside files I not only don't have, but have never heard of, and turn out upon downloading not to be duplicates under unfamiliar names either. Torn paper appears beside files that were corrupt, files that downloaded successfully, files I just plain don't have, and files that are in progress. Folders are likewise inaccurate -- maybe half are files downloading or queued; the others are files I already successfully downloaded but whose icons didnt change to green checks. And if anything the recent beta makes them even more inaccurate. If they can't be gotten right, best to trash the whole lot and replace them with Bitzi rating information. I suggest a faux-digital-readout bar as long as the current four-star icon, dark red at the left end, through yellow to dark green at the right, and the bars light up from left to right based on the file's rating. If it's deeply in the red it's probably bad as it's had a lot of negative votes. If it's well into the green, it's probably good. A ? icon can appear for files with an "unknown bitprint". And you can be encouraged to download the file and then rate it from the previewer I suggested above, so that when the spammers change their files to try to evade filtering, the new version of their spew has a strongly negative rating instead of a ? in a matter of hours. (Actually, it's likely to start out with a small positive rating. You don't think they won't try to stuff the ballot box do you? But there's only a few of them, and many of us, and even if they have access to a shockingly large number of unique IPs, we have access to ALL OF THEM and can therefore still outvote them. Unless they subscribe an account at every ISP in the world and hook up one computer to each, which would surely bankrupt them, their votes can never outshout ours as long as we can make ours quickly and easily the moment we are pleased -- or displeased -- with a file. And if they have the resources to actually operate a branch spamming office in every city in the world, each with a dozen or so PCs, one for each local provider, then we're screwed any way you slice it, since they're obviously the government or the Illuminati or the aliens from War of the Worlds or something of the sort.)

Wrong and wrong again. Neither of those links works. The first one just spins "looking up host" and the second goes to some full-page ad, which I assume is not what is supposed to be there.

You did remember to wait until after your site was up at the new url before taking the copy at the old one down, right?

Right?

Time to lock this thread O Moderator -- it's the end of the line anyway. This just in from the changelog: future released versions of Limewire will nag you for every file you click to download that doesn't have some kind of TPM in it, like a WMV or itunes file does, or some other sort of accompanying license info.

In other words, for all the files you download, save maybe one in a million, and, in particular, for any media file that might actually work in an open source media player.

I saw this mentioned somewhere else and didn't believe they'd sell out and do this to us. Then I checked their feature history page. It's true -- every word of it. They are shoving itunes and windows media down our throats. Linux and FreeBSD users can take a hike, or put up with endless nagging, or download files they can't use -- their choice. Anyone who downloads nearly anything in fact can apparently go hang.

So much for Limewire. It was nice while it lasted.

I wonder how long it will be before the flood of posts hits from pro users demanding their money back? I wavered myself, but now I'm extraordinarily glad I never plunked down hard earned money for what's now clearly about to become horribly crippled to serve the needs of some legal eagle who wouldn't know "usability" if the entire membership of the Nielsen-Norman Group sat on him simultaneously and is far more concerned about avoiding an RIAA lawsuit than he is with the company actually continuing to make so much as a dime.

The only feature request that now seems sensible to make is "Add a button to the Limewire Pro startup screen that says 'Uninstall and mail me a cheque'. And that actually works."

And since I just made it, that may as well be the end of this thread -- it's certainly the end of its usefulness.

So long.

hehe--it only shows once (unless you want it to show every time), and is a good idea.

I'd like the copyright cartels to set up a database of their files, somewhat like the Bitzi lookup. They don't deserve the free publicity and benefits of having their files popularized.

Nice move LW--this should help the Boycott RIAA folks. Perhaps the dialog could also add a link to the Boycott RIAA page, or any other group protesting the copyright cartel's tactics, and get the word out more effectively to the millions.

Oh--could you make the checkbox so that the warning dialog is only forgotten each session? I would like to be reminded once per session to avoid any cartel crap.

Or maybe not.

I guess they changed it. Since they didn't change the version number, my guess is this thing could be turned off all along but they didn't originally say so for some reason. And, not reassured that they couldn't avoid repeated prompts, some people didn't try the beta but did alert other people to the problem they perceived existed.

(I assume if they had tried the beta they'd have found out it could be made to not nag you, so they wouldn't have posted a warning about it. Since they did, they evidently didn't try the beta. As for why they didn't try the beta, they probably didn't dare, because if it couldn't be made to not nag them they'd have to go back to an older version. Going back to an older version, for those who don't know, loses your incomplete downloads and other settings -- perhaps if it didn't, people would have tried the beta despite the changelog suggesting they'd end up nagged into going back to 4.8.1? Also, weren't there earlier betas? You can still download 4.8.1, but if someone had 4.9.0 and wanted to go back to that rather than 4.8.1 after trying 4.9.2 they'd be SOL.)

Let's hope there are no more misunderstandings of this magnitude. I saw a post the other day complaining of a changelog not having been updated -- perhaps this is a symptom of it having been a rush job when it eventually was updated ... but a stitch in time saves nine, and that rush job might have cost more time than it saved in putting out some kind of political brushfire.

Thanks--I like the idea.

Perhaps rather than only blocking, the hostilefile could optionally be used to flag hosts/results with a different colour? Like amber, for a warning light, say.

(btw--your links are still working)

I'm going thru the pain staking task of searching for any filesizes of 399.0, 765.5, & 851.7 KB. As I come across new filenames I add them to the Keyword Filter. I'd like to be able to import & export (.txt files) to keywords & Host IPs under Tools/Options/Filter setup screen.

As the HOST IP and Keyword lists become larger it's harder to manage. To address I'd like to be able to 1. see more of the data on the screen to scroll thru and 2. I'd like to be able to sort the lists.

Thanks, Rick

Pointless. Better Bitzi integration is what we need, not more and more manual filtering on filenames and hosts. The spammers keep moving hosts and they keep changing their filenames. They even keep changing the files, so they come in different sizes and such. The only reason they stick to 356x598 image dimensions is because nobody as yet has the capability to filter on image dimensions. Once they do, the spammers will start varying that, too.

In fact, they will keep dodging every filtering method and forcing you to run a treadmill of keeping your filtering up to date. That is why the filtering has to use file hashes, and why the process of flagging a file as bad, disseminating this information, and generally staying up to date has to be integrated as smoothly as possible and made as automatic as possible, while still resistant to spoofing attacks.

Any filtering method not based on file hashes will cause false positives. As time passes and the number of names, hosts, etc. they've moved to has grown the proportion of false positives would get worse and worse. But the file hash of a spam is still the file hash of a spam, even if the spams they're sending now have different hashes. It'll be a very long time before the first legitimate file turns up that has a hash identical to one previously seen on a spam. Hashes can therefore pretty much eliminate false positives, and they're already used throughout the network anyway, so they are the ideal filter criterion. There is even already a way to rate them -- Bitzi. The problem is that as of yet it is too hard to use effectively -- you have to surf to some web site, look up your search results manually, and probably register and sign up for a load of spam to actually vote on files and not just use the ratings. Spam, of course, being precisely what we are all trying to AVOID here.

Voting especially must be made easier. We need a preview feature that works for non-music media files and lets you delete files, delete-and-vote-bad files, and start-sharing-and-vote-good files you've downloaded. We also need to be able to vote files good without automatically sharing them, at least so long as Limewire continues to scale really poorly to sharing large numbers of files. (500 -- ok. 1000 -- sluggish and unresponsive. 2000 -- it starts crashing. 10000 -- it basically no longer works.) As for looking up files -- the search results should show ratings by each file in some graphical format. The current equvialent is to right click every file in turn, hit "Bitzi lookup", and wait for a browser to spend ages (during which your whole system is unresponsive) starting up and more ages loading a slow, gratuitously graphics-encrufted Web page. Once for EACH RESULT, mind you. That is simply unacceptable. Nobody will bother. It takes less time to just view the files and delete the bad ones in Explorer -- or rather it would, save for the niggling problem that if you delete anything from Limewire's download directory, the next time it gets a file Explorer locks up solid with 100% cpu use and makes you reboot. Microsoft's fault, of course, rather than Limewire's, but it makes it just as slow to weed out bad files by testing and deleting as it does to weed them out before downloading them using the Bitzi lookup. Which means the Bitzi lookup is just too damn slow and manual. The rating info needs to be fetched for each file automatically and displayed to the left, replacing the current worthless crop of "quality" indicators, whose uselessness was driven home by the large series of sequentially-numbered interesting four-star results I saw earlier this evening, not one of which downloaded. All went to "need more sources" nearly immediately. Requerying them didn't result in anything but a five minute wait, then "awaiting sources". Four stars means about as much as a politician's campaign promises, as near as I can tell; possibly slightly less. Every other icon there is equally useless. Green checks mean you have the file, or a different file with the same content, or no file like it at all. At best they are probabilistic indications that you already have the file. Yellow folders mean you have the file, or it's downloading. Torn paper means you have the file, don't have the file, the file is downloading, the file was corrupt, or the file started downloading and then got interrupted - - i.e. that particular one doesn't tell you a damn thing. And any number of stars means you have the file, the file's downloading, you don't have the file but should be able to get it quickly (even one star), you don't have the file and shouldn't hold your breath (even four stars), etc. etc. you get the picture. Every revision to the system has left it at least as broken as before, despite frequent claims that "THIS time for SURE!"; it increasingly looks like it is not actually technially possible to make the things reliable, and any further attempts are doomed to the same sorts of failures we've seen in the past. So let's replace them with bitzi lookup info. That should be technically feasible and actually very useful.

But the most critical thing is to make participating in rating files easier. Make it possible from within Limewire, along with deleting/organizing/deciding whether to share new arrivals. Only if it's sufficiently easy will votes by legitimate people be sure to outshout the spurious votes the spammers put into the ballot box. Although they don't seem to as yet, they will once filtering by bitzi lookup is easy enough it's routinely done by everyone. And then the lookup results will become worthless unless actually voting becomes correspondingly easier for everyone.

In the meantime, here's a proposed fix for the limewire scaling problem with sharing big numbers of files (present since at least 3.something). A file with a huge number of sources elsewhere on the network doesn't need your help. Limewire can detect this through the mesh, I believe, and if so, it can, each session, share only those "shared" files that are sufficiently rare -- say the 500 rarest, in terms of the number of other hosts online sharing each file. If there's under 500 files, it shares them all. If there's over 500 files that don't exist anywhere else on the network, it picks 500 of these and rotates each session, so as to eventually cover them all. Or even rotates every hour or something.

Change the bouncing back and forth pseudo progress meter behind "loading old downloads" to a real progress meter. It just goes by number of files loaded vs. total number in list. On my computer at least it's fairly slow to do that, and an actual idea of how fast it's going and how soon it will finish would be nice. Not everyone has a quad opteron with a 500MHz bus you know.