WinMX Suspends Operations 192
An anonymous reader writes "Slyck.com is reporting that it appears the WinMX network has shut down its operations in response to the RIAA's letters threating legal action. Although the WinMX network is currently down, this may only be temporary as developers seem to have relocated from Canada to Port Villa, Vanuatu."
Pertinent Links: (Score:5, Informative)
Some information about Vanuatu, as well as its capital, Port Vila (misspelled in TFA) can be found here [wikipedia.org] and here [cia.gov].
As for why WinMX might want to relocate there, this link [vanuatugovernment.gov.vu] should shed a little light on the issue...
Are they planning to live there too? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pertinent Links: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pertinent Links: (Score:3, Informative)
Doubt it... (Score:5, Informative)
No, the address on their domain name registration has been been relocated to Vanuatu. I very much doubt that developers themselves would move to Vanuatu over a barely-operational P2P scheme. If you're going to do make a move like that, there are much nicer places in the South Pacific.
Google Maps (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pertinent Links: (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for
Re:Does anyone consider WinMX safe anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
As a Vanuatu-based geek... (Score:5, Informative)
...Perhaps I can offer a little bit of background.
I've been living and working in Vanuatu for the last two years, and have some experience in the IT sector here. So let me try and provide a little perspective.
First, the vanuatugovernment.vu website is NOT the official government website. It was put together by some less-than-reputable individuals who took advantage of their connections with certain politicians to try to sell 'honorary consulships' to 'independant businessmen'. Basically, this is a way of making money from the sale of diplomatic passports. Among the people found to be using Vanuatu diplomatic passports are a Northern Irish 'contractor' working in Sierra Leone and a convicted member of a Chinese triad.
Second, the information on wikipedia.org is far from complete - and in some cases, inaccurate. And yes, as another poster has mentioned, The capital is Port Vila (one 'l'), so the summary is mis-spelled.
Third, Vanuatu has for quite a long time been associated with businesses who need a more flexible set of business rules than they might find in the US. Kazaa, for example, is incorporated in Vanuatu. As a gesture of appreciation, we now have the Kazaa Cricket field, which will be hosting international competition in the next couple of weeks.
There are some seriously large online betting operations interested in setting up shop in Vanuatu. Without telling tales out of school, I can confirm that one operation recently received approval to install one 7m and one 4m satellite dish, giving it total bandwidth capacity of about 40 Mbps. This in a country that currently has a national total about about 4 Mbps for voice and data combined!
Shades of Cryptonomicon, there actually is a 'bunker' here - a hardened server room with independant everything that is being used to manage data more or less along the same lines that Neal Stephenson suggested in his book.
Vanuatu has some of the most expensive Internet services in the world. I'm composing this message on a 56k dial-up line shared with 6 others computers. Unlimited dial-up costs a paltry USD 200/month, and dedicated access typically runs about USD 1000/month when bandwidth is factored in.
Vanuatu was once a site of significant money-laundering activity. Since 2001, the regulatory regime has been strengthened significantly. And yes, it was because the US 'pressurized' the government to act. They simply informed Vanuatu that if they didn't conform to certain minimum standards, they wouldn't be able to buy US dollars. Very persuasive.
Vanuatu is still a major tax haven, and is increasingly of interest to Australian investors. As I write, the private yacht of the richest man in Australia (Kerry Packer) is anchored in Port Vila Bay.
There are over 100 native languages in Vanuatu, but the language of commerce here is Bislama, a pidgin English that is really interesting to learn. Here is a quick and amusing sampler [moodindigo.ca].
As far as WinMX is concerned, I've heard nothing about their arrival in Vanuatu, but some people are fairly secretive about the business they do here, so maybe I shouldn't be skeptical....
Re:Does anyone consider WinMX safe anyway? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.docsdownloads.com/Tier1/winmx.htm [docsdownloads.com]
From winmx.com cache:
"WinMX from winmx.com does not contain ANYTHING besides WinMX.
No spyware or other parasite programs will ever be in our software. We respect your privacy and security."
Re:There is NOTHING the RIAA or the USA can do (Score:5, Informative)
"If the cables just happened to "break" somewhere, would Vanuatu even have the resources to fix them?"
No, but it's okay. Vanuatu doesn't have undersea cables. Nor does it have the USD 20 million to have one laid. As I mentioned in a previous post, total national bandwidth - for both voice and data - is somewhere around 4Mbps, all through satellite.
Businesses who want to work online typically install their own satellite equipment. Typically, only the cash transactions occur in Vanuatu itself. That means that if you make a bet online, for example, you've placed your bet on a server somewhere in the US (or wherever), but your card actually gets debited through a transaction queued through a server sitting in a air-conditioned room in Vanuatu.
Re:Does anyone consider WinMX safe anyway? (Score:2, Informative)
They had Internet Explorer, right? Look, the kind of person who uses P2P software is also likely to be the kind of person who browses the dodgier side of the web, and if they didn't have the sense to use a secure browser, ownage is incredibly likely to ensue.
I can assure you that if WinMX ever contained spyware, then it was a form of spyware that Spybot never learned about. I can find no record on Google of anyone plausibly complaining about spyware in WinMX. In fact, apart from you and "Mustang Matt" a few posts up, I'm finding it jolly difficult to find anyone doing anything other than vociferously deny that it has ever contained spyware.
WinMX replaced .... (Score:2, Informative)
that WinMX was replaced by the more secure WinNY.
Trouble is, WinNY isn't to easy to find, especially the latest version transalated from japaneese (i.e. into english menus).
Centralized Servers (Score:4, Informative)
Even if the *AA's didnt exist, the risk of a single failure point should scream at you.