Thursday 8 May 2008

Perfect little art server?

While browsing my fav tech webbie (the Inquirer) I saw the MSI Titan 700, a small PC about the size of a can of coke. What really caught my eye was that it is based on the VIA C7 CPU which is very easy going on the power (60W) and quiet. I have been looking for a small PC based on the C7 to play about with for while but never found one that really hit the spot.

The Titan 700 which goes for about £230 would make an ideal 'art server' for an artist (or seriously dedicated fan) to continuously run P2P software day and night distributing files via the AUS. Drop on a Linux distro and run Phex (G1 network) and you have a good cost effective solution.

Hooking up a small LCD monitor or a second port on your monitor (should you have one) and this whole system can be part of your home network (with net access) and tucked away in a corner and forgotten about. It would be nice if there was a web browser based access solution (like many routers) to manage the little art server over the home network.

As a side note the C7 have hardware support for SHA-1 and SHA-256 hashing and I always wondered if a P2P software developer would take advantage of such a feature.

Dodgy files

Dodgy files on P2P networks are become such a huge problem that even the BBC has noticed: Fake media file snares PC users.

This reinforces the position adopted by Artists Unchained that magnet links are an ideal way to fight back against the growing tide of spam, virus/ Trojan infected files and incorrectly named files proliferating on P2P networks.

It seems that using the search function within P2P software exposes users to undue risks of downloading copyright infringing media or worse.

With magnet links hosted on the participating artist's official website their fans are assured that they will receive the correct file. Not only does this protect the fan for downloading dodgy files but saves them time, and more effectively uses the net's resources by not wasting bandwidth. It also ensures that there is only one version of a file and not hundreds of different versions of the same file with similar quality.

We are currently looking for a light P2P application that uses standard P2P networks such as G1 or G2, can fully handle magnet links but does not have a search function at all! If you know of one please get in touch.