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Skypecasting - P2P File Sharing

Posted by Zonk on Sun Apr 10, 2005 11:57 AM
from the hello-can-you-hear-my-warez? dept.
Networking Communications Media Music
shashark writes "Technologically savvy users are merging these technologies to "Skypecast", using Skype's service to distribute recordings across the internet for free. This allows expert users to run their own mini-radio stations, which can be accessed by any Skype user. Skype does not actively support these uses, but encourages its users to find new applications for their service. Other possibilities discussed by Skypecasters at Unbound Spiral or Moodle are to turn an MP3 player into a radio station for any of Skype's 29 million registered users to dial up using their Skype line. Instructions also are available on how to record a personal soap opera and use Skype to distribute it en masse. Even more ominously, some Skypecasters record Skype calls and post them on the Internet."
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  • RIAA? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bananatree3 (872975) on Sunday April 10 2005, @11:59AM (#12194058)
    I sure hope the RIAA doesn't ask the Federal Govnerment for wiretapping rights to see if VoIP calls are really U2 songs. [shivvers in corner]

    • They already have wiretapping rights (Score:4, Insightful)

      by John Seminal (698722) on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:19PM (#12194187) Journal
      I sure hope the RIAA doesn't ask the Federal Govnerment for wiretapping rights to see if VoIP calls are really U2 songs.

      Didn't the government already rule that wiretapping applies to internet communications?

      And having a phone would only stregnthen that argument for requiring ISP companies to have technology which allows for wiretaps.

      But I don't see how VoIP will help P2P, it is just between 2 people, not like Napster was, or BitTorrent where one person shares, and anyone can d/l.

  • Bad Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by fwice (841569) on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:00PM (#12194068)
    That link should be .html, not .htm


    click [henshall.com]

  • Blame Game. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:02PM (#12194084)
    " Even more ominously, some Skypecasters record Skype calls and post them on the Internet.""

    Remember: Blame the users, not the technology.

  • Wiretapping (Score:5, Interesting)

    by YrWrstNtmr (564987) on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:05PM (#12194100)
    Even more ominously, some Skypecasters record Skype calls and post them on the Internet.

    Wonder if the various wiretapping rules will eventually come into play. And if not, why not?

      • Exactly. This site [rcfp.org] has a good discourse on the various state laws and possible federal entanglements.

        For instance, New Hampshire [rcfp.org] (just picked at random).
        'N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 570-A:2: It is a felony to intercept, or disclose the contents of, any telecommunication or oral communication without the consent of all parties.'

        • 'N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 570-A:2: It is a

          felony to intercept, or disclose the contents of, any telecommunication or oral communication without the consent of all parties.'

          Now wait just a minute here. My friend Bill tells me that he just got a new job. (For effect, let's say that he told me this during a phone conversation.) I tell my friend Joe that our mutual friend Bill got a new job. Bill never gave me consent to "disclose the contents of" our "oral communication." If I live in New Hampshire, I'm now guil

          • Apparently federal laws are written by people from Major League Baseball:

            "This copyrighted telecast is presented by the authority of the Seattle Mariners and may not be reproduced or retransmitted in any form and the accounts and descriptions of this game cannot be disseminated without the express written consent of the Seattle Mariners."

            The Mariners scored three runs in the fourth inning today in their game against the Texas Rangers.

            Did I just violate someone's copyright? Will this post have to b

  • What's the point? (Score:3, Informative)

    by iantri (687643) <iantri@@@gmx...net> on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:07PM (#12194109) Homepage
    What advantage does this provide over running something like a Shoutcast station?

    It's not even difficult to setup -- there is a Winamp plugin -- pick it and hit "Play" and you have a radio station.

    Doing it this way requires to to plug a physical device (MP3 player, radio) into your soundcard..

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cuz not everyone has the bandwidth to support more than a couple of users? Skype is free bandwidth, which is the point you miss.

    • Its simple (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sanity (1431) * on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:20PM (#12194194) Homepage Journal
      What advantage does this provide over running something like a Shoutcast station?
      The advantage is that this has "Skype" in the name, which is great if you happen to work in Skype's marketing department.

  • Slashapple (Score:4, Funny)

    by lordsilence (682367) * on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:08PM (#12194113) Homepage
    Bringing you a friendly message from the Apple-zealot: In the name of the great Apple. We were first, and it's called PodCasting. Not mp3-streaming, internet-radio, skypecasting or anyother non apple-related term.

  • redirects? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Emugamer (143719) * on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:09PM (#12194120) Homepage Journal
    why is it that two of the urls have dw.com.com redirects? smells fishy to me

  • RIAA and the options left -- (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shashark (836922) on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:11PM (#12194134)
    Skype calls are encrypted end-end. Even if RIAA gets the wiretapping rights to see if VoIP calls are really U2 songs, it'll be hard for them to snoop in. And skype is just a beginning.
    With ever increasing options of sharing digital media, RIAA really has only two options left-
    * Get the govt to ban *any* kind of peer-peer activity. Might be a possibilty, esp given those money bags involved. Don't underestimate your govt. yet.
    * Embrace the change. Move out of media-brokerage business and let the artists provide their creations on whatever media they choose. Change Happens.
    --
    All your music are belong to us.
    • This really shows how little your average slashbot understands about the music industry in general and the RIAA specifically. The RIAA does not choose how music is distributed though they were responsible for getting the industry to agree on certain standards like the CD. If Sony wants to release their entire catalog on P2P they are more than welcome to and the RIAA can do nothing, short of kicking them out of the industry trade organization though I doubt they would do that.

      What really annoys me is this
      • So what should we do? Embrace stagnation? With arguments like that Ford would've been shut down right from the get-go and buggy whip manufacturers would be making a killing even today.

        Max

      • Re:RIAA and the options left -- (Score:5, Interesting)

        by acb (2797) on Sunday April 10 2005, @01:58PM (#12194886) Homepage
        There is a lot of pressure to "update" the IPv6 specification to establish a stratified internet of servers (which could be licensed and regulated) and clients (which would have low upstream bandwidth and be unable to act as servers), in the interest of protecting the content industry's business models.

      • Also, how long do you think it will be before bootleg concert recordings make the P2P rounds?

        What am I missing here, they already are? By a very small fraction of really devoted fans that goes to their concerts too. Because they love music and are fans all the way.

        Someone fanatic about a group enough to listen to a bootleg would surely own all the groups released material.

        And do you know what, I have yet to see ANY britney spears or christina aguilera bootleg shared...

    • Re:RIAA and the options left -- (Score:4, Insightful)

      by latroM (652152) on Sunday April 10 2005, @02:04PM (#12194943) Homepage Journal
      Skype calls are encrypted end-end. Even if RIAA gets the wiretapping rights to see if VoIP calls are really U2 songs, it'll be hard for them to snoop in. And skype is just a beginning.

      It's not Free software, how do you know? The intelligence agencies probably have their own back doors built in. I wish that skype will die and that it will be replaced by some open and free standard. Like the gnomemeeting guys said, skype is hype [gnomemeeting.org]

    • Re:RIAA and the options left -- (Score:5, Interesting)

      by arodland (127775) on Sunday April 10 2005, @04:15PM (#12195737)
      No, some people (who, by the way, work for Skype) told you that Skype conversations are encrypted end-to-end. But because the source isn't available, and the Skype developers believe that obscurity is the best security, you have no way of knowing that. For all anyone knows, it could be that there's no real encryption at all, but that the data is just whitened by a PRNG so it looks encrypted. It could be that there is real crypto going on, but the key-exchange is boobytrapped so that Skype and/or the appropriate TLAs have snooping power. It could be that any one of a number of flaws makes what was intended to be an effective algorithm vulnerable. We don't know any of these things, but the fact that the people who wrote the encryption software in the first place don't trust it to remain unbroken in the face of public scrutiny means that you shouldn't trust it either.
  • "Technologically savvy users are merging these technologies to "Skypecast", using Skype's service to distribute recordings across the internet for free. This allows expert users to run their own mini-radio stations, which can be accessed by any Skype user.
    Does anybody think that this has potential for indie artists promoting their music through this?

  • bitrate? (Score:3, Informative)

    by radarsat1 (786772) on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:14PM (#12194156) Homepage
    i don't use skype so i don't know... but i assume, it being a telephone-oriented service, that it has a hard-limited bitrate?

    usually telephone conversations only need 8 KHz recordings, in mono. If converted to mp3, this would result in FAR inferior-sounding recordings for music than CD-quality.

    but, like i said, maybe this is not a limit.. i don't really know.

    in any case, why do people always have to take a decent service and twist it into something the authorities will find "questionable"? It's like they are trying to help discourage VOIP or something by exposing its potential for misuse. Use it for what it was intended -- telephone conversations -- and no one will care. I imagine the current P2P technologies are better adapted for spreading music anyways.. but i guess the rule is, if there's a crack, someone will always fill it. humans are weird.
  • Motorola is developing cellphones capable of making calls via Wi-Fi networks. They have plans to add internet telephony software via a partnership with Skype. With these phones, Skype customers can call each other at no cost (for most cases). This causes a great concern to the cell phone industry because the calls would now be diverted from the cellular networks hence affecting usage income.

    Anything that threatens the big Telcom companies will get shut down by government. The companies will find some exc

  • I call bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sanity (1431) * on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:17PM (#12194172) Homepage Journal
    What is the point of this? Skype's codec is optomised for voice, not audio. There are perfectly good open source tools like Icecast which have been around for years and which work with codecs designed for music. I also doubt Skype will scale up to be able to support more than a small number of listeners at a time.

    This sounds like some marketing droid at Skype trying to invent a phenomenon by pretending that it already exists.

    • Re:I call bullshit (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "There are perfectly good open source tools like Icecast which have been around for years and which work with codecs designed for music."

      Maybe the average user does not know anything about Icecast? Maybe they'd find it hard to use (I don't know, I have to admit I've never tried Icecast myself, though I do use Skype). But yeah, the quality would worry me, too. Still an interesting thing.

      "I also doubt Skype will scale up to be able to support more than a small number of listeners at a time."

      Could be. Bu

      • Maybe the average user does not know anything about Icecast?

        Have you seen their instructions for doing this? It is far from straightfoward for the average user. In contrast, I believe this is trivially easy to do with WinAmp.

        Could be. But the arcticle says this: "Skype's peer-to-peer infrastructure--similar in construct to Kazaa, Morpheus and other file-swapping programs--makes it well-suited for turning Net phones into a broadcasting system".

        That is completely wrong, either a wilful lie or this pe

        • very poorly suited to broadcasting. Every listener requires that the transmitter sends a new stream across their Internet connection.

          Wrong. [slashdot.org] In a multi-person conference, one computer is elected as the "central hub", that relies all communication to the other parties. If you're not the central hub, you only have to send your stuff once and receive it once. Interestingly, the central hub is always determined by comparing the upload and download bandwiths of all parties.

          So, in a way, Skype is indeed a broa

    • Good Call (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wirefarm (18470) <jim@mmdc.COMMAnet minus punct> on Sunday April 10 2005, @05:08PM (#12195982) Homepage
      The point of this is that someone wanted to use the word "Skypecast".

      Look at the the "bullet points" from the article:

      >>A growing number of people are sharing the digital music on MP3 players and other music devices using freely available software and Skype, a free Internet phone service.
      How are mp3 players part of this? Sure, you could rip the stream from skype, tag it and save it, then transfer it to your iPod, but it would be a pain and sound pretty bad.

      The enthusiasts are borrowing heavily from another personal broadcasting phenomenon called podcasting, in which digital recordings are posted on a Web site for download to a variety of music players, including desktop PCs and portable gadgets like Apple Computer's wildly popular iPod.
      They're borrowing more heavily from kids who used to play songs for each other over the telephone, with similar results.

      "Skypecasters," as they call themselves, use Skype's peer-to-peer telephone network to distribute recordings over the Internet directly to each other for free. ...In a way that has little to do with any of the advantages of modern peer to peer distribution, as Skype uses P2P merely for point to point, one to few transport.

      This is a case of someone tossing around buzzwords without understanding the technology, in an "iPods! P2P! Skype! Isn't it all just so neat!" kind of way.

      I give it a week before some bonehead is yammering on about how "BlueCasting" is all the rage.
  • Ok then, I'm interested. Any links to Skypecasts or sites indexing them?

  • ShoutSkype Bridge? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:27PM (#12194245) Homepage Journal
    Is there a way to fit an MP3 client backend to a Skype server frontend? Then that middleware could put existing Shoutcast (Icecast, etc) servers onto the Skype network: instant content for those 29M Skype consumers. An easy way to improve one's up/download ratios - quantitywise, at least.
  • A lot of people here are questioning the worth and/or validity of skypecasting, citing out technologies that will do the same thing, same as, I believe, Winamp, and other players that will allow you to stream your audio to some other person on the net.

    But skype is p2p, so that instead of you streaming directly to your audience, listeners may stream from you AND some other listeners, obviously minimizing the bandwidth required of the originator. The other alternative software packages are client-server, one to one, correct?

    Also, one thing that makes this worthwhile as a slashdot topic is that there is already an established base of about 30 million skype users. So, this could serve as a jumpstart, just as napster did bittorrent, even though napster, like skype is proprietary....

    • -1, Completely uninformed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sanity (1431) * on Sunday April 10 2005, @01:13PM (#12194593) Homepage Journal
      But skype is p2p, so that instead of you streaming directly to your audience, listeners may stream from you AND some other listeners, obviously minimizing the bandwidth required of the originator.
      I know how Skype works, and it does not do this. It may be P2P in the way that it finds when users are online, but conference calls are one-to-many, just like Icecast. This is why, last time I checked, Skype must limit conference calls to at most 4 participants.

      PeerCast [peercast.org] does try to do what you describe, but last time I checked it didn't do a very good job of it.

  • This just in (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:39PM (#12194323)
    Humans come equipped with aural input devices, called ears. These devices are NOT protected against copyright infringement activities! Looks like we need to get into the brain and change the bios around a bit to fix that.....

  • Spypimps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Sunday April 10 2005, @12:43PM (#12194349) Homepage Journal
    Why did shashark [slashdot.org] ebmed the links to Unbound Spiral [henshall.com] and Moodle [moodle.org] (defanged here) in dw.com.com SPYWARE [iss.net] links? Is this the sleaziest submission scam yet, which actually forces us to install spyware to follow a frontpage Slashdot link? Are all those jokes about soulsucking NYT registrations really true about shashark? This should be the abuse that finally forces Slashdot editors to check the links on submissions.

    "dw.com.com is advertising-oriented spyware (adware) that downloads and displays new advertisements in a popup window while a user is browsing the Web. dw.com.com is difficult to remove, as it does not provide an uninstaller."

    • Re:Spypimps (Score:4, Informative)

      by shashark (836922) on Sunday April 10 2005, @01:25PM (#12194683)
      My mistake. I copied the links 'as is' from here

      http://news.com.com/VoIP+calls+get+podcast+treatme nt/2100-7352_3-5645776. (Read last paragraphs)
  • Lets hope that such a great telephony application doesnt become an illegal file trading application and get shut down by RIAA

  • What happens to Skype when The Aussies sue Sharman into oblivion?

  • Legal status of internet radio? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 10 2005, @04:17PM (#12195747)
    Does anyone know how legitimate internet radio in North America really is?

    Radio stations pay a fee to broadcast music. The companies that broadcast the music you hear in stores pay the same fee. Churches pay a fee so that people can play and sing music. What makes internet radio different? There is an established system where you must pay to broadcast other people's music in public.

    I'll probably get modded as a troll but it is a serious question.

  • OT: Skype-based Ham Transceiver / Shortwave Radio (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ivi (126837) on Sunday April 10 2005, @05:14PM (#12196006)

    Australia has had a Shortwave Receiver
    (for verifyably licensed Radio Amateurs,
    it's also a remotely controlled HF/VHF/UHF
    transceiver) based on Skype for yonks!

    (Make a Skype call to it to listen...
    access a web page to control the radio
    and (if licensed) transmit. A bit like
    the receive-only JavaRadio (Javeradio?
    these days...?)

    I guess this is a bit different, since
    the radio-based Skype applications are
    Real Time, not recorded.

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