ES5

[eclectica]

http://www.es5.com/
ES5, ESV, EarthStation5, EarthStationV, Earth Station 5, Earth Station V, or whatever other name they go by.

The IP address of their website resolves to 213.152.100.163. According to a RIPE whois, the site is owned by Ras Kabir or Nasser Kabir. Additionally, I have seen the name Steve Taylor of Speednet mentioned with the program, who is said to be their spokesman. Online names of people associated with the program are FileHoover, SharePro, Monyak, steve15, and uri21.

I've read that their company is incorporated in the Pacific island of Vanuatu and their servers are located in Jenin in Palestine. They have 70 employees and have developed the program in many languages. They also have a lot of bandwidth.

Where do all the money and resources come from for this program? I have seen this program spammed on many p2p boards and I am suspicious of it. I feel it could be the work of the RIAA, MPAA, some government, or a software consortium.

Here are some excerpts of their rebuttal, written by SharePro, of the rumors that they are actually owned by the RIAA, in this forum thread, which you have to be registered and logged in to to read at their site:

ES5 is not Kazaa. We dont do spyware or adware. We dont sell out to the evil empires of hell. The reason people make up the lies about ES5 is because they know they cant compete with ES5 the program and/or the other stuff that we are doing.

I would love to see another P2P program stream movies and have all of the security features that ES5 has. Unfortunately, there are none.

Take a good look at who spreads the negative bullshit about ES5. You can note that over 90% of them are full time paid workers of the industry. They get on forums, spend some time 'making a name for themselves' and all along they are industry spies getting paid to misguide you.

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BTW, in most countries, it is legal to download, just not upload. So saying that we are with the RIAA is pure bullshit. Fortunately, in Palestine, it is legal to do both upload and download.

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The RIAA is very much in tune with P2P. The problem with Zeropaid is that if a user makes a post "I just downloaded Matrix Reloaded", then the RIAA can get a court order within 15 minutes and force Sephiroth to give out the IP address of the user.

ZP is in the United States, and is subject to both local (state) and federal laws. I dont personally trust ZP, not because they are bad people, but because they could be forced into a situation that either they give out their members IP addresses or go to jail.

That is what happened to ISONEWS. The government got ahold of the domain and servers of Dave Ricco (previous owner of ISONEWS) compromising the security of all of their users. ZP is not immune in the US.

Here in Palestine where we host ES5, you can be damn sure that nobody will ever get a hold of our servers or routers. We planned the security from day 1. Mr. Kabair, the owner of ES5, would have never invested the money into ES5 if there was the slightest chance that someone could penetrate our system. We have one of the most secure systems in the world to protect ourselves from the faggots at the RIAA.

Its not personal against ZP, but today it is not safe to post P2P material (besides maybe general news) on a board that is hosted and/or located in the United States. However strange and stupid this may sound, you could be brought up on charges of racketeering.

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Using ES5, it doesnt matter if the RIAA connects to you and downloads because they cant see your IP address. They see a proxy address. Who owns the proxys? Mostly huge companies who have big time lawyers to protect themselves.

The RIAA will think that its the big company or an employee of theirs. They wont be able to know that you are the one who used the proxy. The big time companies obviously will protect their interest and will fight the RIAA because they themselves wont have any idea and/or proof that someone outside of their company used the proxy.

When the RIAA shows up at a big company with a court warrant to search and seize their computers, the big companies will join our fight. Not necessarily because they like or dislike P2P, but because they will be against the great powers the RIAA has over America's inhabitants.

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The RIAA (or the 'advertisement companys' can use the logs in court against you or do whatever they want with the information because you agreed to the spyware when you downloaded Kazaa.

That's why I hate spyware. That's why ES5 will NEVER do spyware.

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ES5 is the only P2P program that can really protect the entire P2P community. Sure we have bugs in our software, but then we felt a need to release the program ahead of schedule so that people know that their is an alternative to Kazaa, and that they can upload/download files and remain safe.

We didn't just show up at the 'right timing'. We knew that the RIAA would be running after people sooner or later, and that is why we built the ES5 program.

A smart or intelligent man is one who has the capacity to accept, remember, and process a large amount of information. A genius is a person who can answer a question that nobody asked. I think ES5 software, streaming movies, direct downloads, etc., has answered many questions that nobody ever thought to ask.

Why should you pay for cable tv when you can watch whatever you want whenever you want at ES5 for FREE?

The tone of this is not genuine to me. They try too hard to distance themselves from the RIAA, and their stance feels unnatural to me. My intuition and gut feeling is that these advocates and spammers of ES5 are liars. They are trying to dissuade p2p users from using both the Kazaa program, which is the biggest p2p program, and the Zeropaid forum, which is the biggest p2p forum.

[eclectica]

Here are more excerpts from SharePro, who is an admin at the ES5 forum. He is not a believable liar, especially on the issue of Palestine. This is taken from the "Earthstation 5 in the News" subforum.

I think we can all agree that both Piolet and Imesh were not built for security. I believe that since Kazaa has lost almost 16% of their users over the last week (16% was quoted from ZP), I believe that ES5 will be the natural home and domain of most of those P2Pr's. People require an alternative.

I think within a year, Kazaa will become another thing of the past. To build a program with real security would mean for Kazaa to start from scratch. To build a secure Kazaa version would take a minimum of a years work with a full time working force of hi-tech programmers who excel in the field of security. Besides, once people lose trust in Kazaa, that means that Kazaa has no future.

The other issue is that the future creators of P2P programs will be held both criminally and financialy liable for building a P2P program that supports proxys. Palestine is the idea place to set up a P2P network, but then since ES5 is very well established here in Palestine, it would be very difficult for anybody else to set foot in these areas

[eclectica]

I noticed that most of the news releases of ES5 in their forum were from a source called PR Newswire. That site is actually a propaganda machine posing as a news service that companies can pay to give out their news. Here is a description of it from its site:

Whether your news has to go around the corner or around the globe, PR Newswire serves all of your information distribution needs. PR Newswire is the world leader in the electronic delivery of news releases and information directly from companies, institutions and agencies to the media, financial community and consumers.

PR Newswire's services begin with news distribution, but also include targeting, evaluation and measurement services. Whether your news requires the broad distribution of the wire or a VNR, or the targeted distribution to individual journalists, investors and other key audiences, PR Newswire has the tools to cost effectively drive the results you are looking for.

At PR Newswire, you can become a basic member for $100 a year. I'm not sure what the fee is to be able to release news stories, but I imagine that if you pay more you get the extra features that ES5 has. They even made it easy for people to create and upload their own news:
https://prndirect.prnewswire.com/

With freedom of speech comes the freedom to lie. There's nothing illegal about lying, and skillful manipulation of the news is good PR.

Basically this is just more evidence of the investment EarthStation5 has made in their program, as well as casting more doubt on their honesty. Here are a couple of news articles from PR Newswire:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+09:04+AM
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+05:00+AM

One of the reasons ES5 has gotten away with so much bullshit is that many people want to jump on the p2p bandwagon when something new comes out, and want to be part of the process. So they behave with irrational exuberance and do not properly scrutinize a new program or company that shows up on the p2p scene.

[eclectica]

The spokesman for ES5 is said to be someone named Steve Taylor of Speednet. ES5 is hiring an additional 1500 people and they have given an announcement in their forum with a mailing address of ras@earthstationv.com, asking for resumes to be sent to them. In Zeropaid's ES5 subforum, they also have requested that people send their resumes, but this time to an e-mail address steve@17q.com. 17q.com seems to be owned by Speednet Ltd. They have the domains speednet.com, speed-net.com, speednet.net, and speed-net.net. Doing a whois on the domains, I get an address of 25 Hasivim Street, Petach Tikva, Israel 49170. But looking up that address I found it to also be listed to Golden Channels cable TV, and Golden Lines Telephone. Maybe there are several businesses located at the same address.

About a couple of weeks ago, the domain information on all the ES5 sites, such as es5.com, earthstation5.com, and so on, were all registered to raskabir@gaza.net. Now I see that gaza.net is not online, and the domain information on the ES5 sites has been changed. Gaza.net is also owned by the same person who owns beautifuldomains.com, but that latter site never worked at any point. If the gaza.net site goes back up I'll look at it more closely than I did a couple of weeks ago. It may be a bogus site.

[eclectica]

One thing ES5 doesn't like to talk about, is their business model. In the Zeropaid ES5 subforum, a few people asked them how they got their financing. The answers were vague, but what was given was that it is the strategy of ES5 to spend a lot early on in the game so as to dominate the market. Also, they said Ras Kabir is a wealthy Saudi who is financing the thing himself, along with investors. What they've said is vague, and there have been no answers about their future plans. I asked this question in the ES5 forums, but got no response:

(posted 2003-07-16 in the ES5 forum here)

We're lucky to be able to know ES5 in its infancy. In a way all of us here feel like we actually play a role in its development, because we can give you feedback and suggestions on the program.

While we share files and develop p2p applications due to our common hatred of the RIAA, I know at some point though the bills will have to be paid for all of this. I read that there are around seventy employees of the company, some volunteers obviously, and with the high bandwidth servers located in Palestine, those too must also cost money. Will ES5 become a pay service in the future, or perhaps have two versions; the freeware and the premium version that has a paid subscription? The possibilities for ES5 could include an even wider audience, like businesses which want to establish private networks so that they may exchange proprietary information.

Did you ever see the 1978 picture of the Microsoft corporation? You ought to get a group picture so we can get a good laugh 25 years from now too.

wow, E., lots of good information and excellent research!
i still have my doubts about this program.
i beta-tested at the very beginning, but absolutely hated everything about it.
although all that i hated about it, was supposebly intent on protecting the user, ie) no info on downloader...browsing, how many uploads, etc.
the interface, slightly silly....probably for the kids.
not very user-friendly.
and much more.
their forum on the other hand, is growing....but i am still leary and won't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
believe it or not, i still use winmx, with peerguardian and leechammer, and that is it.
i'll let others cry about queues, when i'm 56k and get everything i need at first click.
oh, well.

[eclectica]

Zeropaid is partial to ES5. They already created an ES5 subforum. By doing so they've elevated the status of the program to some type of worthiness. Whenever there is propaganda on behalf of ES5 there, it is left alone. But the moderators keep closing threads which question how secure ES5 really is. Their response is, that such issues should be addressed on the ES5 forum. But if they are to provide a public forum of discussion, then they shouldn't direct people to other forums. In Zeropaid's ES5 subforum, only positive comments towards the program are tolerated. Negative comments cause threads to be closed. Furthermore, note that ES5 has bought banner advertising space on Zeropaid. This means that Zeropaid must be wary of the treatment of who provides their income, for as the expression goes, "don't bite the hand that feeds you".

[eclectica]

Let's see how long this Zeropaid thread lasts which I just made:
http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/showthre...threadid=13084

don't bite the hand that feeds you

It's not too hard to notice the ES5 banner advertisement on the top of the page. Does this at all affect how you can deal with Earthstation 5, because you are a business partner with them?

Scrolling down the General P2P forum, I see it has subforums devoted to various p2p programs, and the ones you have are: Bittorrent, EarthstationV, Blubster, Direct Connect, Edonkey/Emule, Piolet, Napster, Shareza, and WinMX. I'm wondering what causes you to decide to create a subforum for a certain p2p program. Is it because it is new or is it because there is a lot of "buzz" in the community about it?

Here at Zeropaid you've taken the air of being neutral on the ES5 question, as to whether it is good or bad. Yet by creating a special subforum, you've already taken a side. By doing so you're saying that it is a program that is worth some attention to be paid to it.

I see there is much controversy that keeps getting repeated and you are trying to reduce it by closing threads. You direct people instead to the ES5 forums for further discussions and flamings. This is the part I can't figure out. To what purpose is your creation of a forum if you are going to send people to another forum instead? I thought we would be able to get to the bottom of the issues at Zeropaid.

[eclectica]

Here's a PM I got from a Zeropaid moderator named "Krell". The thread that I posted a half hour ago has already been deleted. This affirms to me a general trend, that heavy forum moderation tends to foster ignorance, duplicity, and lies.

getting to the bottem

This is what you need to get to the bottem of, after months of trying to settle ESV propaganda and flame, we are, thru a LOT of effort, at a comfortable level, and you will not stir it up for your own satisfaction.

I have previously stated that I have many many pages of dialogue saved and in the crib where the other moderators can all be on the same note with things.

I have worked hard to keep the ESV fanboys at bay, and their advertisment has nothing to do with anything in the forums.

The decisions that we make regarding ESV are for the overall good of the whole site, and from much discussion.

I moved your post to the crib, along with a copy of this PM. Any further pursuit in stirring things up will be handled to the extent needed.

E., i am familiar with what u r saying. i think they created the Es5 forum, so that all of the es5 stuff would stay in there and not garbage up the rest of Zeropaid.
they were getting sick of all of the spamming of the program and then the arguments insuing because of such threads.
so i'm not surprised at the deletion of your thread. where did u post that thread? was it in the es5 forums or general zp forums??? i think they will either move or delete any from the general area to the es5.
as to the banner advertisement....i think it was a kind of truce or awareness of the app, because of all of the, again, insuing arguments between members of the es5 forums and those of ZP.
and since some members belong to both, they created the es5 forum in ZP, i guess to show no hard feelings.
a kind of mirror of 2 forums we used to both frequent, eh?
i am still very interested to see where es5 is going.

[eclectica]

The thread I made was made in the ES5 subforum at Zeropaid. Then it was quickly moved from the public forum to a private forum that only moderators have access to by Krell. I noticed on the ES5 forums that they were saying two things you shouldn't do is use the Kazaa program or use the Zeropaid forums. Yet they continued to benefit from recruiting new members at Zeropaid. It is a great resource to tap into, with its 160,000 members.

[eclectica]

Here's an interesting posted message, asserting that ES5 is owned by the RIAA. ES5 claims this is an attempt by the RIAA to discredit them.

http://lists.firenze.linux.it/piperm...ne/000829.html

-- forwarded message --
From: blurpnroll <blurp76@_nospam_Libero.it>
Newsgroups: it.comp.software.p2p
Subject: Earthstation V collegato alla RIAA??
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 12:41:08 GMT

Se ne sta discutendo in un thread su alt.music.mp3.winmp3; ecco il
messaggio originale....

The Earthstation 5 (ES5) P2P app, which boasts anonymous sharing
and security, is actually software designed by contractors hired
by the RIAA! The "Dating" feature was designed to trick users
into entering their personal info, which makes it easier for the
RIAA to compile statistics and track down users. All traffic
statistics are routed through proxies operated by agencies
working for the RIAA, most notably BayTSP and MediaForce. The
cheesy outerspace theme was designed to appeal to newbies while
appearing to have a feeling of security to it without scaring
away the non-techies. Company info for ES5 is very vague, ...
can you guess why?

ES5 is just one of the many projects in effect by the RIAA. The
MPAA is staying somewhat neutral at the moment, but has similiar
plans in store.

BOTTOM LINE: DO NOT USE ES5!


aloha, Steve and Danno
blurp'n'roll

-- end of forwarded message --

well, i guess es5 sits in the position to be used by both sides to discredit each other.
especially with such "vague" information about the app itself.

[eclectica]

I was lurking around the ES5 forums, and I noticed that they were mentioning ES5 being in the news on both CNN and in Time magazine. Well both of those are owned by AOL-Time Warner, which is one of the units of the RIAA. The RIAA has five units and they are: Sony (Japan), BMG (Germany), EMI (UK), Vivendi Universal (France) and AOL/Warner (USA).

[eclectica]

Here's an article at CNET News.com about ES5:
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5063402.html

they are supposedly waging war now against the riaa and mpaa
hahaha we will see wont we :p

[eclectica]

Here is the staff of Zeropaid. As you can see, Christopher Hedgecock is CEO of Zeropaid. He is also EVP of ClearKey Solutions, formerly known as EmpireDRM until July 2003. The company is a Digital Rights Management provider. This is from their website:

ClearKey Solutions is a Rights Management solutions provider that enables the secure delivery of digital media and critical corporate information. ClearKey Solutions' Dominion™ solution secures digital content for delivery via the Internet, CD, peer-to-peer networks, and email, allowing customers to secure company information, gather data, and sell content.

When it was discovered some time several months ago, that Chris Hedgecock had a job with a company that opposes the interests of p2p, people were either wary of his intentions, due to a conflict of interest, or supportive of his desire to make extra money.

But it was forgotten and business went on as usual for Zeropaid, until I read this poorly written Zeropaid news article written by Jorge Gonzalez. Then the questionable intentions of Zeropaid again surfaced to me. Is there a connection between Zeropaid, DRM, and the ES5 program?

[eclectica]

As far as ES5 is concerned, there's been a lot of animosity between ES5 and Zeropaid. It's been expressed more by ES5 admins than Zeropaid admins though. It is the members of Zeropaid who have questioned the program, while the admins of Zeropaid are giving it a type of endorsement by devoting a special subforum to it, and by closing or deleting threads which are critical of ES5. When I posted the information on Chris Hedgecock in this Slyck thread, it became more ammunition for ES5 in the Zeropaid versus ES5 dispute. The information about Chris Hedgecock is pretty old, like about eight months in my estimate, but it had been forgotten by a lot of people.

If there is collusion between Zeropaid and ES5, they could be trying to hide it by pretending to be adversaries. Or maybe the problem is, that Zeropaid will sell out for money, and the ES5 folks are well-financed, so it appears that they are colluding.

this is an interesting theory, E. i didn't know that info about Chris H.
hmmmmm.
interesting indeed....i would love to talk with u about this, in depth....one of these days.

[eclectica]

Someone suggested that ES5 is really run by Sharman Networks.

[eclectica]

random_nut is the developer of Kazaa Lite. He has studied the ES5 program and has issued a warning saying that the software contains malicious code. See more here:
http://www.p2pforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1340

well, i've had the pleasure of reading random_nut for awhile now, and i can also say that i respect him and his work, and also agree he has nothing to gain by disclosing this malicious code.
i too have had reservations about this app for awhile now, too.
has this been over at ZP, E?
i'm going to look now.
thanks for this link...i think we've finally uncovered the truth about es5...and that screenshot of the convo that sharepro had about the bittorent site....bears a lot more truth, as well.
i don't understand code, so i can have no opinion on random's discovery.
do u, E?
nevermind, i just read this...

It seems that there are very few people who actually wants to confirm this, so I will let you all know that jonnymnemonic (a ZP member) and matt (a ZP mod) have confirmed it.

See http://www.zeropaid.com/news/article.../10022003i.php . Search for their names to find their comments.

hmmmmm.
what an interesting thread over at es5.
i was looking for the intial post by random_nut, announcing his find on the malicious code, and have instead been reading up on sharepro's very knowledgable insight into the personal lives of Chris Hedgecock and Jorge.
if nothing else, he most certainly does have some major connections in the p2p biz.
u could make a friggin' movie out of his posts alone...lol.
i'm on page 20 right now of http://forums2.es5.com/index.php?act...&t=5645&st=285 thread..."Danger do not use ES5, ES5 too easy to hack."

[eclectica]

I was reading that ES5 forum thread yesterday and it was long as hell. I didn't even get to it today.

I don't know much about programming but it sounds like Random Nut is right about the program. There is a back door which listens and then can allow an outside party to delete files on the computer. Random Nut released an exploit program to prove the vulnerability. ES5 is not denying the vulenerability but instead is saying it was left there by accident, and Random Nut is saying it was put there purposefully. After the vulernerability was posted on several p2p boards by Random Nut, they released a new ES5 version without that particular backdoor, but still labeled it as having the same version number. That sounds like a coverup.

The question is, who do you think ES5 is: RIAA, MPAA, the government, the Business Software Alliance, or Sharman Neworks?

Originally posted by eclectica

The question is, who do you think ES5 is: RIAA, MPAA, the government, the Business Software Alliance, or Sharman Neworks?

i'd like to think that the makers of the app started out, honest enough, but my mind takes me to thoughts, which i've had since the beginning of the whole riaa vs p2p....and that is a tad on the paranoia side...lol.
i'm even wondering about the newest version of winmx....it's like it has been taking so long, because they've been paid off, to include the same sort of thing as es5 or something similar or worse, meaning they had to revamp.....if not paid off, threatened somehow...even though they r Canadian.
i could see es5 streaming the movies as a trap....like the old saying.....u have to spend money to make money...they have to give up something in order to get what they want, and that is a whole hell of a lot of users.......i believe the "honey pot" theory, really.
but who is in on it?? that is what i don't know.
maybe it is all of them.....the riaa/mpaa...had to involve the government....u know to pay someone off for future amending laws in their favor...i'd have to say them.....they have the most to lose.
all kinds of things i could think of.
but i'm glad i had some reservations about es5.


yeah, i will get to your pm....lol.