FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
|
for immediate release:
::: san francisco feb 14 2001 :::
esp worldwide today released the first public beta version of the espra internet media-sharing application. this first beta is available for download now. By an amazing historical coincidence this release comes just two days after a major court defeat for the prominent file-sharing application napster, which unlike espra features a centralized architecture; it also comes on the first day of the o'reilly peer-to-peer conference in san francisco, in which visionaries from around the world are gathering to discuss the new decentralised network applications that are taking the computing world by storm. In addition to addressing issues of anonymity and decentralization, espra is dedicated to enabling and encouraging users to support their favorite artists and creators directly, through a "tip artist" link built into the espra client.
"espra is the future of content distribution on the internet", said tav, esp's ceo. "a year from now, when people want to find and download content, whether that be a book, an album, or even a movie, they will want to use espra. and most importantly, thanks to the gift economy system being built into espra, they will be able to give back to the content creators".
jacob everist, the project leader of espra, explains the advantages over other p2p (peer-to-peer) applications: "i think the biggest thing that sets us apart is our vision. we aren't trying to circumvent the current infrastructure and rip off the artists, what we are doing is creating a totally new infrastructure that will revolutionize the whole notion of content distribution".
john hurliman, a lead developer on the project, describes some of the innovations in the software: "we are taking a new approach to p2p file-sharing. instead of searching for files in espra, you browse through lists of files available and download what you want. this provides a more logical approach to retrieving content from a distributed file system. the software is built to be extensible too, users can write their own additions, or even rewrite the core however they want".
"by utilizing the third generation network architecture of freenet, espra has an inherent advantage over napster and gnutella because not only is it anonymous and reasonably secure, but its decentralised p2p network is fully scalable. that means there is no central server to be breached or shut down, and users of the service have negligible risk of their activities being tracked by a malicious outside party", explains mathew ryden, one of the lead developers of espra.
the initial release features a stunning windows-only graphical interface (gui)- see this page of screenshots. still to come: a cross- platform command line client, to be released under the gnu general public license with source code fully available.