Well, just when you think FREEDOM is on it's way in, there's a huge pig industrial backlash from the sleeping pork giants. Napster, MP3.com, gar gar gar are all getting slapped down by the MAN! Mother fuck. Well, let's see what happens with Yo!nk.

It's been a bad month for freedom, folks. I mean, real bad. There've been more lawyers searching the Web for "bad" programs and "wrong" files over the last 60 days than porndogs searching for double-anal penetration. What's HAPPENING with this goddamned Internet, ANYWAYS!? Fuck, I think I'm just going to give up and go back to FidoNet, man. At least they've still got some FREEDOM there. Who's with me?

Aw, who'm I kidding? I'm gonna stick with this crazy ol' Internet until it goes down in a disgusting mudpit of legal terminology, Congressional hearings and e-fuckwad.com startups.

So, given that, what're the options for people who just want to trade files, share information, swap recipes, etc.? You could use Napster, sure, but that damn thing only works for MP3s (stupid patented music protocol).

This wiggity Gnutella from Gnullsoft sure looked good for a while, but the captive Nullsoft's corporate overlord, AOL/Time-Warner, put the hurting on them within a few hours and Gnutella is gone for good. STUPIDLY, they forgot to release the source early, so now that Gnutella's kiboshed, nobody else can develop it. Good going, Gnullsoft! Man, what a bunch of whack-jobs. Just goes to show you that if you sell out, man, you're going to STAY sold out. You don't become Steve Case's beeyatch without paying the price. [Last I checked there was a mirror of Gnutella here, if you're so inclined.]

So what's that leave? Of course, there's FreeNet, but it's got practically ZERO client support right now. So it's primarily for wily European Javur hackers right now. Go check it out, if you can, by the way!

But what this article is about -- I know you were wondering, folks -- is this new little program, Yo!nk. Clever name, eh? Combining the power of InterCaps with excessive! exclamation! points!, Yo!nk is a file-exchange client put out by the good-karma krew at Download Community. It's for trading all sorts of files, like whatever you want to trade. The architecture is pretty interesting, too: it uses the venerable IRC protocol, and the hot-young-pup XML, to make announcements and share data.

The guys involved with Yo!nk are pretty coolio. They asked to remain anonymous when I talked to them, but trust me -- they have street cred in Internet freedom. Would I lie to you?

I have some reservations about Yo!nk right now, though. The source isn't available yet, which is kind of a problem. However, the DC folks say that it'll be opened up Real Soon Now. Also, there's only a Winders client, so I haven't been able to try it out. But apparently the protocol is quite simple, and once that gets published it should be relatively easy to port Yo!nk to Linux and Macs and what not. Hell, Napster only has an official Win32 client, after all.

Anyways, give Yo!nk a try, and let me know what you think. Run the client, let information run free, strike a blow for LIBERTY, and send yet another industry exec to the ER with a cardiac infarction. And hey: tell 'em Pigdog Journal sent you, eh?

Check it out yourself

oarsman@pigdog.org