Broadcasting Live Phish Shows 24/7

Proposal:

Start a peer-to-peer file sharing network for live Phish music.

Intro:

With all of the bad publicity surrounding peer-to-peer file sharing software and music piracy, should the Phish Community should create a legitimate network of people dedicated to sharing only Phish Music?

Phish has always been kind enough to allow us to record and trade their live performances. As of late, with the help of the Internet, this process has become much easier. First and foremost, there was rec.music.phish, which offered us a forum to reach people with those hard to find shows so we could trade via the mail. Next came the Mp3 revolution, and along with it a new lossless format called SHN, or "Shorten". Then, slowly but surely, broadband Internet access found its way into homes around the world. Now, not only those of us at large corporations or academic institutions have fast enough Internet access to take advantage of trading larger Mp3 and SHN files, removing the necessity for us to trade audio cassetes or recordable CDs through the mail. More and more of us are able to simply download these files into our homes and enjoy our favorite band's live music without the hassle of copying tapes or CDs and worrying about shipping and postage.

Great, so what's the problem?

Currently, to find the music you're looking for online, you're stuck with several options that don't actually give you what you really want: searchable, fast, easy to use access to shows you're looking for. Here's some examples:

FTP Sites:

Require knowledge of FTP client program(s)
Often full
Not easily searchable
Often unorganized

Web Pages:

Broken links
No resumable downloads without 3rd party downloading software

Peer-to-peer file sharing networks (ex: Napster, iMesh, Gnutella):

Slow search responses
Often banned by ISPs or college network administrators
Polluted with copyright infringing illegal material
Polluted with spam, mislabeled files

What can we do about it?

We could use the Gnutella peer-to-peer Internet file sharing software to create a Phish-only GnutellaNet. Why Gnutella? There are several advantages. With a Gnutella network we could avoid most of the pitfalls of the above mentioned means of downloading live Phish music. Gnutella clients are available for a multitude of platforms. Gnutella fits well into the Phish taping philosophy, because while you're searching and downloading new shows for yourself, you're also sharing your collection with other fans on the network.

What obstacles do we have to overcome to make this happen?

This section is a work in progress, and problems, suggestions, and solutions will be updated as they are brought up. Perhaps a newsgroup would be a good idea for this discussion?

Problems:

Naming convention
We need to decide collectively how we want to name Mp3s and SHNs from different shows so we can do searches that make sense and return the results we're looking for. An example would be (Year)(Month)(Day)(Space)(Dash)(Space)(Songname).(filetype), or 00-07-08 - Punch You In The Eye.mp3

Connections to the BIG GnutellaNet
Would one person connected to the BIG GnutellaNet as well as our GnutellaNet expose us to all of the extra traffic from searches and all of the extra files that are available on that network? How can we avoid this?
Note: My initial thought as a first step would be to use an unreserved port that is uncommon for standard GnutellaNet connections.

Do we want this to be a JamBand Net or keep it to Phish only? (Naming convention would need to change.) Will it possible to keep this band or genre-specific?

Will we need a single or multiple host catcher machines to be online at all times so people can always connect to the network? Who should run this client so we can be sure of reasonable uptime?

Will it be necessary to filter out abusers of the system? How will this be possible?

Can It Work?

The concept sounds good, but is it really possible in the real world? Is Gnutella the right way to go? How do we solve the problems listed above? Are there more problems that what are listed above?

For starters, I'm interested in feedback from people in the Phish Community with some experience with Gnutella, or other methods of sharing software via the Internet. Let me know what you think. Am I crazy? If feedback is positive, we'll come up with a place on the net to discuss how we should implement this idea.

It'll need a name too... Should be something clever. GnuTelaNet? The name is something else that'll need suggestions.

Please send your ideas/responses to Phishcast@hotmail.com.

I've got this grandiose dream that someday I'll be able to download any show I want at the click of my mouse. Wouldn't that be something?

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.