I really don't want that, but I don't see an alternative. If you look at LimeWire's host graph, there has been a sharp increase in the rate of decline of the network size. It started about 3 weeks ago, and it coincides with reports of an increase in fake query hits and download troubles.

There was also a recent paper that shows that all it takes is a small decimation of a population in order to cause a catastrophe. In Gnutella's case, targeting less than 1% of the high-volume servents sharing files can cause a mass exodus of users from the network.

Therefore, the choice is in the hands of the users.

Notice that FastTrack, AudioGalaxy, iMesh, et. al. all have proprietary networks and they have the highest download success rate and best search results.

And no, Secure Channels authentication features are not vulnerable to a replay attack.

And even if they break the key, we have facilities for rotating the key schedule from an external source using special messages which are digitally signed. The method used to rotate the key schedule is such that a client has no knowledge of the "next" key in the rotation until a piece of a secret share (Shamir's secret sharing algorithm) is retrieved.

Besides, reverse engineering is a violation of the DMCA, and no legitimate company that receives venture capital would dare to do such a thing - they have too much to lose.

Comments welcome.