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JackSpratts · 26-02-02, 10:00 PM

Since April, Morpheus users have been trying without success to get an answer to the Fasttrack network vulnerability question because Morpheus never seemed all that secure. Those mulling over a new app didn't really feel like repeating the Napster disaster. Opennap or not, if the network could be shut down by a court, it probably would at some point, and probably sooner than later. So, people were looking for a much more secure system to invest their time. Asked directly or indirectly, nicely or not, however, they never got a straight answer. I took an upfront approach, as in this simple question posed to MC2 at the MusicCity forum almost a year ago: “can morpheus be shut down - yes or no?”- 4/'01. I received yards of boilerplate but no answers. Later on, according to Fasttrack contract programmer jaan (who has not responded to several recent emails seeking comment), we finally heard that regardless of what the companies do with their updates, the same versions would still connect to each other. That means if you couldn't connect vertically to the next level up (the newest version) because the company (or the gov't) was blocking your older version, you should still be able to connect laterally, with the same users of the older version. Remember, in Morpheus' case, that would be about 60,000,000 people. No problem there, right?

As a matter of fact this happened once before, when v1.3 came out (who remembers that weekend?) with Morpheus doing the blocking that time. During that episode, on the public forum, jaan told me directly that older versions would ”always be able to connect with each other even if they could not connect to the newer ones”. He said this to reassure the 10s of thousands of users who were not installing the update. “Don't worry about the new version” he said, “you can always go back to the old one”.

This went to the heart of the issue. If Morpheus could block the entire network then so could the courts! But, if older versions still worked in spite of any attempts to shut down newer ones, the public network would survive.

With the first court date scheduled in less than a week, it's a bad time to find out the network may be as vulnerable as we had thought all along.

- js.

26-02-02, 10:00 PM	#1
JackSpratts Join Date: May 2001 Location: New England Posts: 10,018	The Unanswered Question Since April, Morpheus users have been trying without success to get an answer to the Fasttrack network vulnerability question because Morpheus never seemed all that secure. Those mulling over a new app didn't really feel like repeating the Napster disaster. Opennap or not, if the network could be shut down by a court, it probably would at some point, and probably sooner than later. So, people were looking for a much more secure system to invest their time. Asked directly or indirectly, nicely or not, however, they never got a straight answer. I took an upfront approach, as in this simple question posed to MC2 at the MusicCity forum almost a year ago: “can morpheus be shut down - yes or no?”- 4/'01. I received yards of boilerplate but no answers. Later on, according to Fasttrack contract programmer jaan (who has not responded to several recent emails seeking comment), we finally heard that regardless of what the companies do with their updates, the same versions would still connect to each other. That means if you couldn't connect vertically to the next level up (the newest version) because the company (or the gov't) was blocking your older version, you should still be able to connect laterally, with the same users of the older version. Remember, in Morpheus' case, that would be about 60,000,000 people. No problem there, right? As a matter of fact this happened once before, when v1.3 came out (who remembers that weekend?) with Morpheus doing the blocking that time. During that episode, on the public forum, jaan told me directly that older versions would ”always be able to connect with each other even if they could not connect to the newer ones”. He said this to reassure the 10s of thousands of users who were not installing the update. “Don't worry about the new version” he said, “you can always go back to the old one”. This went to the heart of the issue. If Morpheus could block the entire network then so could the courts! But, if older versions still worked in spite of any attempts to shut down newer ones, the public network would survive. With the first court date scheduled in less than a week, it's a bad time to find out the network may be as vulnerable as we had thought all along. - js.