Hi everyone, first of all I'll tell you that I'm happy to have recently discovered the existence of DarkMX, because using it calms my nostalgia for WinMX regardless. Unfortunately, however, it is no longer like it was in those days, when there was very little on the web and P2P represented that El Dorado that it would still represent today, if only people used en masse this tool that is as precious as it is unjustly snubbed.

Fact is that, unlike yesterday, today the web is so well-stocked that the average user has the impression that everything is there. And even if this impression is totally false, there is still much more material on the web than what can be found with P2P. And this triggers a vicious circle that makes the situation worse.

Now, the user who is searching for "X" first tries to search for it on the web, and if he finds it, the case is archived. If, however, he does not find it and KNEW (mandatory conditional) that he can find it with P2P in 99.9% of cases the user would continue the search with P2P. And it is at this point that the real problem arises... the user does not know that he can find "X" with P2P since "X" is only available when the user or users who share it connect and, therefore, the perception of The user is that "X" cannot even be found with P2P and, by extension, that if something is not on the web then finding it is impossible or almost impossible.

Well, if this obstacle could be overcome, I am sure that P2P would return, if not to the glories of 2000, at least to being the bottom-up sharing tool for which it was conceived and which once made it so popular.

So if "X" is not found on the web but someone has it, those who are looking for it need to know WHEN to look for it with P2P. And to this end, DarkMX could implement an optionally activated function for storing important searches. The user who is looking for "X" and cannot find it can mark that search so that the program memorizes it and repeats it infinitely every so many times even when the user is no longer connected so that he can consult the search history for find out, perhaps after months, whether someone who shares "X" has ever connected or not, and if so when.

For example, I let the program run even if I don't have to download anything, just because maybe someone might need what I share, but obviously we can't expect everyone to do this. However, at least for those like me who willingly share, it would be useful if the program communicated that there are "important" searches pending by other users regarding files that he shares, so that he can, if he wants, write a message to the user who is searching for "X" to agree on connection times.


Now, if there are no legal impediments, I think that since today, I repeat, the strong point of P2P is the possibility of finding rarities, to keep up with the times P2P should enhance its strong point in every way.

Thanks for listening to me this far and good luck to everyone!

That would be a mess. In the model you described, people would receive enormous lists of everything from everyone across the world to read and confirm/deny. Even if we ignore possibilities of deliberate spam, no one would do it. People need everything from 1975 Argentinian book about kittens to Tamil music video of a local pop group from 2003, and you, in 99.9…% of requests, have never ever heard of any of them. If we make it strictly filename-based and automated… well, there is a question of organizations interested in controlling illegal file sharing that would be happy to find users across the whole network instantly after a single request, but let's also ignore those… there's still a question of how to contact someone who is not online.

Channel owner actually can already make such shared database work one way by increasing storage time for file lists uploaded by DarkMX users. Those who search can at least know that something was shared once. That, of course, depends on someone's dedication and computing resources, and will probably become prohibitively expensive if number of users grows significantly.

There's also another thing. The whole Internet can vaguely be seen as database you imagine. People do find like-minded others, and share their objects of interest with them, and leave requests, and find what was lost together.

Thank you for the answer Guest but I'm afraid I don't understand... what do you mean exactly when you say "increasing storage time for file lists uploaded"? Is there really a way to know if a certain file has been shared on DarkMX in the past?

As regards the copyright problem, I think that if the police really wanted to find out who shares the latest film released at the cinema, they certainly don't need the system I hope for, given that there is always someone online who shares it. The system that I hope for would be used to find those things that are not of interest to the vast majority of people and, therefore, not even to the police since the amount of money surrounding these articles is irrelevant or almost irrelevant.

In any case, I didn't intend to send the request for everything to everyone, but only for file "X" only to those who share it. For example, if you search for "X" and can't find it, you can leave the search active until I connect and share the "X" file and the program notifies me that someone has requested it. At that point I will evaluate, if for example "X" is something that is easily found obviously I will ignore the request because you don't need me and this system to find it. But if "X" is something that 4 of us across the planet have, and not because it's worth its weight in gold but because no one cares, it's clear that I will be very happy to satisfy the request of someone who has the same rare tastes as me. I don't know if I can explain myself.

Having said that, I recently discovered that, if I understand correctly, something very similar to the system I hope for already exists: the soulseek wishlist... I don't know if you're familiar with it. Unfortunately, however, it doesn't seem to work very well, on soulseek you can actually find quite a bit of rare music... but as far as I understand it, if you don't find what you're looking for when you search for it, then you won't find it later with the wishlist either, given that after two weeks none of the wishlists I set up have produced results.

Sorry if I'm taking too long but I would also like to respond to the last part of your welcome message. What you said at the end is very nice, but it seems to me to be only theoretical... then in practice if I'm looking for example for the cover of "Tequila" played by Juan Ruts not only can I not find it, but even if I try to just search " Juan Ruts" google gives me zero results, yet I listened to that song. The same goes for "como tu lo sabes" by "Audio Network Canada" or "don't worry about me" by Maurizio Filardo. And obviously the list doesn't end here... So in my case I would have to find other music enthusiasts... except that everyone says they are and then they only know the songs they play on the radio or TV. Where can collectors of good unknown music be found? I don't know and the only least unlikely place seems to me to be P2P software, except that a P2P program is not a forum... at most you can write in the chat, but 0.000000000001% of users read it there so it's useless.

I can think of 2 ways to make sharing rarities:

1. Network of p2p friends (f2f) that has automated search queries rarity ranking. When rarity threshold exceeded the material becomes cacheable on friends nodes for preset time.

2. Forums that are thematically synced with file hierarchies. Hierarcy is a twofold meaning it has lingual and thematic hierarchy. In the simplest form it could be just concatination of words in UTF-8.