[FYI] For immediate release: http://espra.net/

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://espra.net/

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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.  

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