FileMirrors
Many sites list a number of locations where you can download a file--sometimes buried a few pages deep. Different users will click or find different locations for the same file. As different users share the one URL they clicked on, the FileMirrors.com database will add them as possible mirrors for a file. With enough users sharing, this will let everyone find more mirrors for files, helping everyone to get faster and more reliable downloads. All this searching and sharing is done automatically when this FileMirrors.com searching is enabled.
Using FileMirrors.com for searching is off by default when you install GetRight, so you need to turn it on if you wish to use this service.
- To enable using FileMirrors.com with GetRight:
-
- Make sure you have GetRight 4.5 or higher.
- On the Mirror Search configuration item, the bottom block describes this and has a checkbox to enable this method of searching, plus options to enable the sharing of the URLs.
- When enabled, GetRight will then (when you choose to search) use FileMirrors.com to search for more mirrors!
The more people who enable the URL sharing when using this, the better the
database will be for everyone. The Peer-to-Peer programs (like Napster) are a good comparison: if nobody shared,
they would be useless. (Unlike the file sharing programs, you are not sharing the files themselves, and are not sharing your computer's resources,
just the URL where you found a file--a small extra bit of text added to the search request.)
PRIVACY: Using this service with GetRight is Optional (and even when using this service, sharing URLs is also Optional.) When searching with this service, GetRight will send at least the file Name and Size. You may optionally also include the URL so it can be added to the FileMirrors.com database and help others searching for the same file. With any Internet connection, your IP address is available to the server you connect to; but no other personally identifying information is sent. If you do not want to use this service, make sure the item is unchecked in GetRight (it is turned off by default.)
The intent of this service is NOT to track individual user's downloads. It is to anonymously build a database of mirrors for downloads so everyone can benefit from faster and more reliable downloads.
Even when enabled, GetRight will not use this service for all downloads. GetRight will only use this service for: 1) EXE or Compressed file types--EXE, ZIP, RAR, etc. No images, MP3s, web pages, etc. 2) downloads that do not use a username/password. 3) and files at least 100K in size.
The information in the database may be used for aggregate statistics for things like "yesterday's most requested files" on the FileMirrors.com website.
