--
That's very true, but if you told that to the software companies, they'd spit in your face. I don't download software from Gnutella for a few reasons:
-They're big and I only have dial-up, but that's beside the point.
-If people are sharing kiddy porn on Gnutella, it makes me uneasy to think what kind of things people could be putting in those zips and exes.
-"They" whoever they are, could track software easier. (Well, I don't <u>know</u> that, but it would only make sense, right??)
-They're probably all buggy.
Anyway, Mr. '______'s letter is a good chance to bring up some thing. Privacy. Who said RIAA and MPAA could track IPs all over the net? Even if they have permission, it's still not right.

P.S= I'm actually the Yoshi who wrote the original like, 3 months ago, but I've kind of changed my views a bit.

Kirby

______

are only a token effort by the Entertainment Industry... They aren't intended to stop the flow of data, they are intended to show that "They Tried"... (in legalese, "made a good faith effort")...
The reason that is necessary is to protect their image (public and legal) when they file suit against the "John Does" corresponding to all the IP addresses they have logged.

I couldn't help but notice the poor fellow who believes that "IP addresses are useless"... possibly because many ISPs give you a new one every time you sign on. However, they are required to keep logs of to whom each Address was assigned...

Please see the "Future of Gnutella" section of my (horribly debris-ridden, still under construction) site
http://members.aol.com/vbhydrophonic/index.html

Look lets just get to the point shall we as a child you obviously didn't have the best toy in your class and other kids teased you. Such feelings of tourment have obviously stayed with you. If your twisted sense of moral obligation means that you want to write to microsoft then let me make a sugestion don,t use the F@ckin system moron. For F@ck sake how can you judge one form of a file share against another. the whole point is te guntella community shares stuff so no one pays out and no one makes a profit unlike conventonal froms of priacy i.e. video where a retailer sells his or her unlicenced goodsin orderto make a profit. Now I accept that software houses may want to get every penney out of the public for there software and give nothing away but try to look at it this way we all go and buy some software at some points and stuff we download is likly to be stuff we would not have parted our cash for anyway so buy downloading games etc (like I do) it givesus a try before you buy option so if I like something I may go and by another product of that type in the future as everybody likes to have some genuine stuff.
So in closing all I can say is if you don't like it please don't use the system I'm sure I speak for most users when I say your participation would not be missed besides sounds to me like your the type of person who freeloads anyway.

I had a virus in a mp3.........only happened once, but still......
So what is safe to dl?
Well almost anything you find on the gnutella network, becouse most of the files are clean.
Just scan everything with a good virusscanner* AND a good trojan scanner
*(I found mine on the network)

Go for it, I am sure that is just what the network needs.

Are we not all little Robin Hoods.......(the ones that SHARE that is)

I always thought that we were.

I would be very interested in knowing how such a virus would get the system to execute it's code so that it could "do its thing". To my miind, such "virus code" would only be Played through Winamp and, therefore, never have a chance to infect the system. What I'm saying (trying to be nice) is that only files containing executable code can carry a virus. (Yes "macros", "VBscript" files, and even Java classes are executable. But, mp3s and jpgs are not!)


The Mandragora Worm was our reminder to check all executable code. ("Wear protection for all encounters involving penetration!"...)

I always thought that mp3's where safe, let me explain what happened.
I was dl-ing a mp3 by "Morphine" it was a track I never heard of and it had absolutely .Mp3 as extention
(I thought I had everything of morphine)
The dl is almost finished, then norton av pops up, warning! referring to the unfinished mp3, (at that stage a Phex mp3.dl file)
So I aborted the dl, and scanned the file, wich according to norton contained a virus and could not be repaired.
I deleted it a while ago so I am not quite shure wat virus it was, and I can't find it in the log anymore but when I wanted to report it, I got the message, it was well known and not necessary to report.

edit:
I haven't got a clue how this "mp3 virus" would get the chance to indeed do it's thing, but who would rename a virus to mp3 if it did not do anything?

I did a search and found a MP3 virus called BLOAT but it looks to have been a hoax...

http://www.mp3.com/news/111.html

Mp3 files do not have execution code, and even if they had some high level execution code (like Java), it would not be given full access to your system because that would be way to excessive for a music file.

What might have happened with that file your downloading was that, norton just looks for patterns, if you recall you said the file extension was "dl" not "mp3" (similar to DLL but that is not the issue), viruses have certain kinds of patterns and some like to hide themselves in data files, that kind of virus has to be executed to run in your system (some other program has to know where the virus is to execute it and mp3s again dont have executable code). So what likely happened is that coincedently a pattern in the mp3 file looked like a viruses pattern to norton.

Just in case though, I will do a little more research on MP3 viruses to see if there was any other hoaxs or any other issues...

Another possibility I have heard is an executable virus that has been renamed to look like an mp3 file... but it would be up to the media playing software to look at a file and figure out if its an mp3 file and if its not if its an executable and try to execute it... not many programs do this, I tried for example renaming an executable to mp3 and winamp didnt do it, tried renaming it to avi and windows media player said it was not an avi. So it seems in most cases an mp3 is safe...

I will try to find that Morphine virus again,and let you know if i'll find it .
btw, If you like jazzy music do some Morphine searching yourself

"I've got a head with wings...."

I do not think it is possible to insert a virus in a mp3, although I did find some weird mp3 wich were playable, but, to burn them as an audio track you had to convert them to a wav file (nero=unrecognised format, adaptec=copyright something...) And another kind of weird mp3 was playable fully but if I tried to edit it with nero wav editor I could only edit the first minute or so...

I doubt that any program that cannot load a file would try to rename it into a .com or .exe and run them.. it would just be looking for trouble...