Ares Galaxy is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL. We all know that Ares is open source, but it might be a good idea to reflect for a moment on what exactly you are allowed to do, and what you are not, with the program and the source code.

Copyleft, GNU And Free Software

The GPL was originally created by the American software freedom activist Richard Stallman. It was written for the GNU Project, but has since been used in different forms for many free programs. GPL is the first instance of a pure copyleft license. Copyleft, a play on copyright, is the concept of using copyright legislation against itself.

The idea is that the law is used to not only allow for a certain idea or piece of programming code to be freely distributed and modified, but that any derivations of the work will be required to be filed under the same license as well. This is exactly what the GPL does for Ares Galaxy: it allows the Ares free download to be made accessible freely to all, to download its source code and modify it, but it requires that any modifications of it be filed under the same license. In the following paragraphs, we’ll go over in a bit more detail what you are allowed to do with Ares Galaxy.

Downloading Ares Galaxy

Obviously, the GNU requires the Ares free download to be freely available for everyone. But it also requires that a copy of the GPL be included in this download and that the source code is also made available. However, it is not technically illegal for some website to charge a fee for the program, even though you can download it for free from our website.

Distributing Ares Galaxy To Friends And Family

You are allowed to send copies of our program to whomever you want, or to make it available for others to download (say, on Ares Galaxy itself). But, in order to comply fully with the terms and conditions of the GPL licensing agreement, you should make the license, as well as the source code, available as well.

Modifying Ares Galaxy

If you want, you can inspect the source code, and make modifications. You can make derivative works based on Ares Galaxy or add or remove certain things and repackage it.

Distributing Derivatives Of Ares Galaxy

If you make derivatives of this free piece of software, you can distribute them and make them available free of charge. But, you must file them under the same license (so, the GNU General Public License) and make the source code available as well, thereby ensuring freedom of information for subsequent software “generations”.

Selling Derivative Works

You are allowed to charge a fee for your work, but it still must be filed under GPL. This also implies that you may not sue anyone for perceived patent infringement.

As you can see, you are allowed a great deal of freedom, with Ares Galaxy being filed under the GPL. So get yourself a copy of our free Ares download: it’s 100% legal.

In 2006, Yochai Benkler, professor at Harvard Law School coined the term “Commons-based peer production”: a system of socio-economic production in which resources are shared between individuals who cooperate with one another on a voluntary basis.

Ares Galaxy is such a system, as all users work together on creating a network that is larger than the sum of its parts, without any degree of hierarchy or authority directing them in any way.

Traditional Modes Of Production And The Advent of P2P

Before the Internet, there were only two distinct modes of production conceivable: command-based and market-based (and a mix of the two, which we won’t discuss here). The command-based model is strictly authoritarian, in the sense that, in it, all tasks are delegated via a line of command.

Examples of this model include that of the normal business firm, or that of socialist or fascist economies. In the former, decisions are made by owners and executives, and those on lower ranks perform the tasks delegated by their superiors. In the latter, a whole society is organized as a single corporation or regiment, and individuals are reduced to being cogs in a machine that is controlled by those who have political power.

The market-based model has individuals acting in their own self-interest, based on the incentives provided by profit-and-loss considerations in an economy in which prices are formed spontaneously. This laissez-faire model of spontaneous order produces, through the market-mechanism of what can be called an “invisible hand”, an outcome that is generally more efficient than the command-based model.

However, the Internet in general, and P2P in particular made a new form of production possible. A website like YouTube or software like Ares Galaxy offers the individual “consumer” a certain service or provision of information which was created by neither a single command center, nor the “invisible hand” of rational market actors.

Ares Galaxy’s Wealthy Network

In Benkler’s 2006 book, The Wealth of Networks, he describes how a model of commons-based peer production differs from the others. We argue here that Ares Galaxy is a typical example of this new, and previously inconceivable, mode of production.

Individuals who participate in the Ares network by getting the free Ares download do this for mostly self-interested reasons, but not monetary gain. There are no prices on Ares Galaxy because everything, including the program itself, is free. There is also no CEO or any other person or group who coordinates activities on the network. All members of the Ares network have their own selfish reasons to be there, usually a sense of love for P2P in general and the kind of information they share, as well as a kind of mutual responsibility for the greater network.

The result is a large, open network on which an enormous amount of useful and valuable information is accessible to all who have the free Ares download. No one in particular organized the network, and none of its contributors were driven by market prices. Yet the whole would be virtually impossible to replicate in a traditional model of production. Therefore, Ares Galaxy exemplifies the possibilities of voluntary P2P cooperation in a world of free transfer of data.

Get the Ares free download today, and join our network!

In this article we’ll give a short overview of the early days of Ares Galaxy, explain how it differed from the most current version of the program, and finally try to sketch out some future developments.

Ares Galaxy is a program that keeps evolving to suit the needs of an audience of P2P file sharers, who become ever more demanding. So far, Ares has succeeded in bringing top functionality to its world-wide users, completely free of charge.

The future is always uncertain, but we expect our program to become even better in the coming years.

Ares Galaxy History

In 2002, the first version of Ares Galaxy was developed as a spin-off of the Gnutella network. Originally, it did not have its own network, and was just a different interface through which the files on Gnutella could be accessed. About six months later, the decision was made to create the separate Ares network and this move turned out to be very successful.

The protocol was at the time very refined compared to others, which meant that it was one of the only programs that could not be blocked by large networks such as those of universities, leading to a huge surge in users of the program. Another large factor in its success, was the fact that there were comparatively much fewer fake and corrupt files on Ares’ file sharing network than on others, due to the innovative ultrapeer system.

More and more functionality was added over the years, and in 2006, the software had most of the functions it has today, but in a more rudimentary form (this was also the year bittorrent support was added). By 2008, Ares Galaxy had grown to become one of the top P2P software packages on the Internet!

(“A screenshot from an old version of Ares, dating from around 2006)

Ares Galaxy Present

Some anti-piracy groups began a crusade against our program around 2007, which led to a temporary decline in new users, but the network turned out largely unaffected in the end. Today, hundreds of thousands are actively using our program, and more get our free Ares download every day!

Ares Galaxy now connects file sharers around the globe through its own network, and offers full support for torrents, a built-in chat client, a powerful library organizer, Internet radio support and much more. The last few months have been good for Ares, as our program is surging and becoming more popular again, presumably due to the legal problems some of our competitors in the file sharing world are facing.

Ares Galaxy’s Future

No one knows what the future will bring, but at the very least we know that Ares Galaxy won’t go away. The last version dates from just last month, proving that we are still aiming to provide new updates to an old and hugely successful program.

Though the team has focused mostly on bugfixes and very small, incremental updates in the last few years, the future may have some surprises in store, and it can be expected that new features and functions will be added in the near future! One thing is sure though: it will stay free, forever!

There are a number of websites out there which claim to sell the Ares P2P file sharing program for a small fee. Other websites advertise new versions of our software, or upgrades to it, which will make your downloads faster.

You should take care not to believe these promises: the new versions, other versions and “download boosters” and for Ares Galaxy these websites want you to pay for, are basically scams.

Ares Galaxy has been and will always be 100% free, a fully open-source file sharing program for which no one will ever be asked to pay. In this article we’ll go over some of the promises these sites make and why they are not to be trusted.

Paid Versions Of Ares Galaxy

Some websites claim to sell the “full” version of the program, whereas ours just offers you a trial or freeware version. They then call “their” program by a number of different names. This is a complete lie. Our Ares free download is the full version, and there is absolutely no reason to pay a cent for it, as the software is under the GPL license, which clearly states that it is free to share and even change it.

New Versions Of Ares Galaxy

The newest version of the program at the time of writing is the one which is available from our website, version 2.1.8#3042, released in February 2012. This is the only version that is worth downloading, as there is no “Ares 3.0” on the net (yet). We guarantee that our free download will be updated when we launch a new version so please do not fall for the empty promises of scammers who claim to have access to future versions which do not exist yet.

Download Boosters

While we can’t rule out that there are may be some genuine download boosting software out there, we sincerely recommend that you never pay for one. We’d even suggest not to download free boosters either, because usually these programs will come packed with ads and maybe even malicious software. And, given how the Ares P2P program is structured, it is very unlikely that any additional program may be able to increase your download speeds anyway.

If your speeds are slow, and no setting change helps you, then it’s probably your connection that is limited, in which case no booster can possibly make a difference. Upgrade your connection and stick with “vanilla” Ares Galaxy to stay safe, and never, ever pay for a booster, no matter what some websites may promise you.

Ares Galaxy is free to download and free to share. Unfortunately, this has attracted a number of people who have set up websites which pretend to be official. They offer programs which do nothing or differ in no important respect from the official free download we are providing, but ask for payment, or pack their files with all kinds of additional programs.

Do not fall for these lies. Stay safe, and stick with our download instead. We guarantee we won’t ever make you pay for it!

Note: the following review was added by a user, but has been edited for grammar and comprehension; screenshots have been added by the editor

About 6 months ago, I took advantage of the free Ares download on this webpage and installed the program. Over the months I’ve been so pleased with it that I took the time to write a short review of my experiences with Ares Galaxy.

Huge network and great download speeds

The Ares network usually has everything I’m looking for, and more, but the ability to download torrents with it as well really tops it all off. I never have to spend more than a couple of minutes searching before I find exactly what I need! And, whereas eMule (which I used before I got Ares Galaxy) tends to bring up a lot of garbage and suspicious results, on Ares I’ve only had a single security alert, which my scanner promptly disposed of, in months of care-free downloading.

I haven’t done any official tests, but my download speeds seem to be significantly faster on the Ares network than on eMule. Sometimes less popular files can take a while to download, but at times I’ve experienced speeds of over a megabyte per second, while listening to high-quality internet radio at the same time!

One piece of software to rule them all

I hate having a ton of different programs on my PC that each do a little thing and just sit there doing nothing the rest of the time. But after I installed Ares Galaxy and learned of all the awesome features, I began uninstalling old software which had now become obsolete for me.

I now use Ares not just for filesharing, but also as a bittorrent client, a video player, a music program, an internet radio streamer, a library organizer and a chat client! You won’t believe this, but I even used Ares to improve my Spanish and discover great new Latin American bands (my girlfriend is from Chile)!

Completely free

I’m a big fan of free software, but with most programs that are advertised as free, there’s usually a catch somewhere down the road. Either you have to pay extra for so-called “premium” features, or it becomes paid software after a while, or you get bugged with constant advertisements when you just want to use the program. But not so with Ares Galaxy! There is no catch, it really is free. All features are included and there are no ads anywhere! I don’t really understand how it works, but I’m glad that it does!

My conclusion and score

I would give Ares Galaxy a 10 out of 10 and would give it more if it were possible. It’s great as a simple filesharing program to browse the huge Ares network, but considering that it also handles torrents, audio, video, radio, chatrooms, and more, it really is phenomenal! And, best of all, there are no hidden fees or other kinds of tricks to get you to spend your cash.

I’d really urge you to try the Ares free download. You’ve got nothing to lose and you might grow to love this excellent program so much that, in a few months from now, you’ll decide to write a spontaneous review just like I just did! THANKS ARES!!

Some things are universal. We all like to download all kinds of files. We like watching videos, listening to music, exploring internet radio stations and chatting with people. Roughly speaking, there are two ways of perform all of these tasks. Either you can get a dedicated program for each and every one of these separate activities, or you can get the free Ares download, which is a single program that can take care of everything on this list!

Downloading files from different networks

If you like downloading back-ups of your files (and who doesn’t?) and you don’t have Ares Galaxy, then you might need two or more programs to be able to download from the bittorrent network, the Gnutella network, the Ares network, etc. With Ares Galaxy, you’ve got access to both the bittorrent and the Ares network with one single program!

Watching videos you’ve just downloaded

Once you’ve downloaded a video, you’re going to have to open up Windows Media Player, VLC, Media Player Classic or any other media player you may have installed on your system. Unless you’ve got Ares Galaxy, that is, because you can play these files directly in Ares without having to install any extra programs!

Listening to music

What if you’ve just downloaded a backup of one of your most played CDs? Well, you won’t have to install another program to play the mp3s and yet another one to organize your music, because, with Ares Galaxy, both the media library as well as the audio player are fully integrated into the program! This means that you can sit back and listen to your favorite tunes while you download others, all right inside Ares Galaxy!

Discovering new music on Internet radio stations

Winamp hasn’t been the only program that can handle internet radio for a long time, and, today, Ares Galaxy is right up there with the best of them with its fully integrated radio player and radio station directory presets. Just choose any genre you want and start listening to your heart’s content. And all while you browse for files, download, organize or chat!

Talk to people online and exchange files with them

If you want to chat to people online, you’re going to have to download another program, this time a chat-client like mIRC. Or, you can just stay right inside Ares Galaxy and use the integrated chat function and talk to people from all over the world in the same program you use for all of the above!

Conclusion

The days when you needed dedicated programs to perform all the specific activities covered in the above paragraphs are over. Ares Galaxy offers the user a single program to do almost everything you’d want to do on the Internet, from downloading torrents to chatting about sports. And, best of all, it’s entirely free of charge! So get the Ares Galaxy free download right now and see what all the fuss is about!

While Ares Galaxy continues to provide its user base with the free open source programme, which has built up over many years of hard work and continuing feedback, there are quite a few programmes that have looked to duplicate the free open source software and re-label it as improved and then try to sell it.

These sites are not only popping up all over, but they make claims that are usually false or exaggerated, to get people to part with their hard earned cash. To help you from being fooled by them we have put together this article to see what to look out for, when you are looking for and downloading Ares Galaxy.

Always Free

Ares Galaxy has ALWAYS been offered for free and has never asked for money from its users. This will be the first clue to spot a fraudster, when they make out that Ares Galaxy software needs to be paid for because of ‘continued improvement’ or to have a ‘24hr support line’, this is all nonsense and if you are ever directed to a website that tells you anything along these lines then we strongly recommend you to not download from that site.

Improved Ares Galaxy

The second claim that these false programmes will make is that they have taken Ares Galaxy and improved it in every way, while we can’t say that Ares Galaxy has no room for improvement the current up to date edition, provides you with everything you could want and at as fast a rate as your own connection can provide.

It has the awards, nominations and plaudits, even from competitors, to prove it. What is worth noting Is the fact Ares Galaxy was started in 2002 and has been continually developing and growing from then until now, so any copy of the programme would not have as extensive and proving testing phase, that is something that can only be duplicated over the same period of time and with the same fan base backing the programme.

Added features

The few programmes that we have tested that claim to have all the new added features for the Ares Galaxy programme, have been little more than flashy gimmicks that haven’t added any increase in performance or any innovation from what’s in the current programme.

This being said, we can’t account for every single duplicate programme that might exist, but what we know for sure, is that Ares Galaxy has always been developed to be as efficient and as bug free as possible.

Risk

While there are not only the financial incentives to stay with the original Ares Galaxy, there’s also the amount of risk involved with the duplicate programmes. We have heard and seen for ourselves the amount of adware, spyware and other malicious things that can be lurking in the back of these duplicate programmes ready to infect and ruin your PC.

The decision will ultimately fall down to each individual, but we remain convinced that using the Ares Galaxy standard from an official website, is the only way to safely and securely experience one of the best file sharing programmes around.

So, in the last article, we covered the basics of Ares’ experimental internet radio feature. But what exactly was so great about it? A lot of other media players do the same thing, so why use Ares Galaxy?

Well, apart from the obvious answer that Ares can do a lot of different things apart from internet radio, it also tends to do every individual thing differently and better than the competition. Read on to discover how Ares Galaxy manages to squeeze so much more out of a seemingly simple and straightforward thing like internet radio!

Some troubleshooting

But before we begin, here are some solutions to a couple of problems some of you may have run into. First of all, you might have had some trouble opening a playlist with Ares. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, some other media players also play internet radio, and if you installed one of these after Ares, chances are that the other player took the liberty of changing the file association for you.

Secondly, some directory websites automatically play the radio stations in your browser. While that’s good for listening on the go, it will make you miss out on the excellent and revolutionary features which you can only experience if you open the playlists directly with Ares Galaxy.

If you’re faced with either of these problems, there is one simple thing you can do to solve both of them. Instead of left-clicking on the station of your choice, bringing up the other media player or the browser player, right-click on it, and choose to save the file to disk. This should give you a .pls file in your browser’s downloads folder, which you can then open with Ares. If you want to associate the file with Ares, just right-click on it, choose Open With, and then Choose Default Program.

Saving to disk

Now we have that cleared out of the way, we can discuss Ares Galaxy’s outstanding feature to save internet radio directly to disk. Granted, there are dedicated rippers out there which can also save streaming music directly to your hard drive, but as far as we know, there aren’t any which do it for free. And even if they were free, do you really want to configure a separate new program, which will be clogging up more disk space and memory usage on your PC, just to do something that Ares Galaxy can do with just one click of the button?

To save the music you listen to on internet radio stations to your hard drive automatically, click on the radio button, hover over Save to Disk and click on Active to activate the feature. Too bad that you’re going to have to split the radio file into separate tracks to listen to it again later though, right? Wrong!

Ares Galaxy automatically splits the file! This means that if you turn on this feature, listen to an internet radio station, and discover a great sounding tune, you’ll have the file right there, labeled and everything! It just couldn’t be easier, could it? Download Ares now and try it out!

Ares Galaxy isn’t the only P2P (Peer-to-Peer) program out there, but it’s certainly one of the best. With its bittorrent support as well as its own separate Ares network, the program provides you with access to the greatest file sharing community in the world, at no cost whatsoever. But what exactly is P2P and how does it work? In the following article we’ll offer a short introduction to P2P networking.

Sharing the workload

The basic philosophy behind the P2P architecture is built on the idea of identical content being shared by a multitude of users. It differs from the traditional server-based model because it is not completely centralized. To make this concept clearer, let’s bring in an example.

When you’re watching a video on a website, you’re using up some of the bandwidth of that site’s server. However, when you’re downloading the same or a similar video on Ares Galaxy, you’re using a little bit of the bandwidth of many different people who are sharing this video in the network. So instead of one centralized server having to send information to every single user, under the P2P architecture, we are all serving one another in a big happy family of peers.

Centralized and pure P2P

So P2P means that the bandwidth burden is shared by the many instead of concentrated on one single server. But certain functions were and are often still brought together in a single center. The most famous early giant of P2P, Napster, had a central server that was used for indexing of the files and bootstrapping, whereas the peers were used for the actual data transfer itself.

It’s important to understand that the difference between a centralized P2P architecture and the traditional server-client model is that the centralized P2P server does not actually host any content. Some other examples of this model are eDonkey and Audiogalaxy.

On the other hand, a pure P2P network is one which has been completely decentralized. Here every individual peer will have its own index of both the files that are stored locally, as well as those of neighboring peers. Information requests are checked against local content or forwarded to others.

Though this is the most decentralized model that is feasible, which is therefore very resistant against parts of the network going down (due to there not being any central servers which store crucial information), it is not without its problems. Specifically, the fact that files constantly have to be checked increases bandwidth requirements, and there is a huge potential for files being changed or becoming out of date. The early Gnutella network is the most famous example of this approach.

The hybrid model

Ares Galaxy was one of the early innovators when it came to the hybrid model of P2P architecture, which uses supernodes or ultrapeers which index information and process queries, then redirected to matching peers. The information is still shared by the whole network. There are no central servers, but some have a more extensive duty than others, depending on bandwidth availability. This combines the best of both worlds and also offers better protection against all the problems described in the above paragraphs.

Ares Galaxy is an awesome program with its own network of users all sharing an enormous multitude and variety of files. Additionally, it can be used as a media center, for all your audio and video playing needs, and as a communication center as well, allowing you to chat with other Ares Galaxy users around the globe.

And all you need to get in on the action is to get the small Ares free Download by clicking on the download link on the right! But Ares Galaxy has a lot more to offer than its core functionality. There are a host of lesser known, but amazing things you can do with Ares Galaxy, and here are a couple of them.

Playing incomplete files

It’s happened to all of us before. We downloaded something that looked really interesting, and spent some time and effort getting the file, but when we open it, it turns out to be something completely different, or have extremely bad quality, or it’s dubbed in a foreign language, or it has any other conceivable problem that may have been avoided if only you could have previewed the file without downloading it completely first.

Well, if you get the Ares free download, you won’t have to worry about this happening any longer, because you can use the media player that’s built right into Ares Galaxy to play any file, even if it’s incomplete and still downloading!

Sharing directly in a chatroom

You may think that the chatrooms are just for chatting, but you’d be wrong. Any chatroom you enter will put you in direct contact with the other chatters, enabling you to browse their files directly. This is great to find those more obscure files when you all have to go on is a genre or topic!

Showing off to your MSN friends

If you use MSN to chat with your friends, you can automatically share with your friends the author and title of the music you’re listening to on Ares Galaxy! To turn on this option, just go to the Control Panel and tick the “Show what I’m listening to on MSN” box under the General tab.

Downloading torrents

There really is only one contender to the Ares Galaxy network when we’re talking sheer size and content, and that’s the bittorrent community. But you won’t have to put two or more different programs on your pc to download torrents, because Ares Galaxy can download and seed torrents for you! Turn on the “Make Ares my default torrent client” under the BitTorrent tab in the Control Panel to avoid having to choose Ares Galaxy every time you open a torrent file.

So much more

There’s also the integrated library, the specialized search feature, support for internet radio, including SHOUTcast and more, but the most amazing thing is and remains: Ares Galaxy is totally free! So get the Ares free download now by clicking on the download link at the right side of this page and start exploring the Galaxy!