This website is the holding page of the Damien Rice Live direct connect hub.
If you have never used direct connect before, it is basically a peer-to-peer filesharing system. To get started, you will need to install a direct connect client on your computer; for windows we recommend DC++; for linux we recommend DCGUI. Read our faq for more information about direct connect clients. If you are familiar with direct connect, you are almost set to go! The hub address is damohub.org, but please take a moment to read our hub rules before jumping in!
We (hub management) have used various methods of sharing files. Different systems have different strengths and weaknesses. ftp suffers from being extremely bandwidth-intensive on the servers; bittorrent is good for distributing material quickly, but generally suffers from a short-lived swarm; kazaa / overnet / edonkey / soulseek suffer from being one single huge collection of users - there could be no focus on Damien material. Direct connect gives good segmentation: each hub is an isolated community (although, many users can be found connected to similar-minded hubs). It also has good chat capabilities (better than soulseek, in our opinion) on top of filesharing!
The primary goal of the hub is to collect and archive live Damien recordings. The more people who are sharing, the better: this hub then becomes one huge distributed library!
In addition, the hub acts as a focal point for like-minded Damien fans to come together, to share live material, and to chat! There is a good community of Damien fans out there... and we believe the ability to chat in realtime is a valuable addition to the existing forums. Come along and hang out... oh, and while you're here, why not download some live Damien material? :-) damohub.org
There are perfectly good existing forums and message boards here, here and here, and probably many more. We (hub management) don't feel the need for another forum.
We are not changing the world. Trading by mail and ftp is going on now, and will continue to do so in the future. bittorrents are going on now, and will likely continue in the future (although a couple of tapers have expressed their desire that their shows not be torrented; it is possible that spreading shows via the hub, via the real fans, could be a better way forward). We will certainly complement the spreading of Damien material, but we will never replace it.