MUTE: Simple, Anonymous File Sharing

Photo: woodleywonderworks, Flickr CC

MUTE: Simple, Anonymous File Sharing:

Looks like a good solution for sharing files anonymously via p2p. Uses encryption and a prette cool «ant-like» way to do searches and sharing in a non-transparent way. The site also contains great easy to read articles on p2p in general, disgussing ways to improve and increase security.

There are of course some other solutions for sharing without leaving a wide trail, but this is the first I’ve seen where it all comes in a neat package and where I don’t have to fiddle with NAT and firewall (you can if you want to increase speed).

The downside are: It uses its own network, so there are not that many users apparantly, even casting a superwide search like mp3 gives very few hits. Which also means really slow download speeds. I saw a client with gnutella options, but I haven’t checked it out yet. It also seem to attract the worst kind of people, searches for avi and mov gives a few hundred porn titles and not much else (well, porn and a few disney titles, go figure). And it’s mostly the kind of porn that sucks, I won’t go into detail (please please please go and shoot yourselves you disqusting bastards)

The clients that exist are very minmal, lacking simultanous searches, possibility to choose multiple shared folders, and even lack proper queueing, but I suppose that will change if more people use it.

As a matter of fact, Mute looks like a good way to create walled gardens, removing the default host setting and adding your friends perhaps?

Update:
Left Mute on tonight downloading a few small files, and when I repeat searches for .avi og .mpg now I get a few more results than before. I suppose it slowly expands my reach as others get content from me. But still, mostly boring or bad porn. Why the hell download porn anonymously, it’s not like the RIAA of whoever are going after porndownloaders! I think they’ll rather get people sharing Hollywood movies first?

Av Morten Skogly

Creator of Things