Open Content Network (P2P meets Open Source)

Orasis writes "The creators of Swarmcast have announced a new peer-to-peer content delivery network called the Open Content Network. The OCN will allow users to download open source and public domain content from multiple peers and mirrors in parallel. The system is designed to augment the existing mirrors with bandwidth from the p2p network and should eliminate the "Slashdot Effect" for popular open source content."

Comments

Need for Checksumming

[skroz]

A secure system for validation and verification of downloads will obviously need to be implemented. Imagine all of the fun things someone could do if they, say, inserted a rogue module into the linux kernel code. Or the latest release of samba, gtk, glibc, Mozilla, ssh, openssl... the list goes on and on.

Re:Need for Checksumming

[popeyethesailor]

It is part of the specs

1.2 Untrusted Caches

It is currently unsafe to download web objects from an untrusted cache or mirror because they can modify/corrupt the content at will. This becomes particularly problematic when trying to create public cooperative caching systems. This isn't a problem for private CDNs, like Akamai, where all of their servers are under Akamai's control and are assumed to be secure. But for a public CDN, the goal is to allow user-agents to retrieve content from completely untrusted hosts but be assured that they are receiving the content intact. The CAW solves this problem by using content addressing that includes integrity checking information.

Open Content, Open Source, whatever

[new death barbie]

Maybe it's just me, but this makes me a little nervous that when the "Open Content Network" gets too popular and dragged down in litigation, the "Open Source" folks are going to find themselves tarred with the same brush; guilty by association. Not what's needed at this juncture.

Guesses as to how long this is going to last?

[inkfox]

While this is a great concept, it scares me a bit.

I'm fully expecting that if we ever reach a point where a substantial percentage of users' traffic becomes outbound traffic, the cablemodem and DSL providers are going to start to rethink the current pricing and service packages.

How long before we find ourselves NATted away, able to originate connections only? A few cablemodem providers have already done this to reduce the traffic from file sharing and to knock out code red and other such silliness. And each time a major ISP does this, it leaves a slightly smaller number of other ISPs providing the outbound service, causing the traffic on the holdout systems to rise.

At some point it's going to snowball, and most of us are going to find ourselves NATted away, with only those paying premium prices for real IP addresses getting the priviledge of having their uplink monopolized by strangers.

Great idea, but I can see a problem

[Rogerborg]

The problem being that people are bastards.

• "The Open Content Network will work with the Creative Commons to use their machine-readable licenses to automatically identify open source and public domain content to be distributed through the OCN"

Why is this a problem? Well, what's to stop an ignorant or malicious individual wrapping up some content with an CC complaint license and injecting it into OCR?

I'm thinking of:

• Advertising porn with embedded html links that pops up adverts (gnutella is rotten with this stuff).
• Virii.
• Other people's copyrighted content.

Why would anyone do this last one? Pure malice, to open OCN up to DMCA attack, simply because people (as I said) are bastards, and can't be trusted to behave in a rational civilised fashion. OCN will be a trusted network, and that leaves it open to abuse. I really hope that an actual trustable human will vet everything injected into it.

such a good move?

[tps12]

Okay, I'm sure I'm with the rest of the slashdot communisty when I say that my first reaction was "wow, awesome, score another 3 points for Open Source and freedom."

But I've reconsidered. Before you mod me down, please read what I have to say.

Basically, we are talking about P2P filesharing here. Now remember, other P2P services, like Napster, Gnutella, and IRC, were all originally based on good, sound, legal, moral ideals. But in the course of time, they each became corrupt with those who would use the infrastructure for illegal filesharing and copyright infringement.

Now, I don't want to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. And I don't want to get rid of a useful tool because of a potential for abuse, since by that logic we would not have silverware, cars, or handguns. But we in the Open Source community need to ask ourselves, is now the time when we want to risk associating Linux, *BSD, and Open Source with illegal activities? Don't we have enough anti-hacker rhetoric to fight against?

We need to pick our battles. This isn't one of them.

Eliminate the slashdot effect? bah!

[ipmcc]

If the goal here is really to eliminate the "Slashdot Effect" a much more effective solution would be to set up a network of load-balanced caching proxies on geographically distributed fat pipes.

Some will argue that this is in essence what a P2P network is, but why not do it right, using technology we already have that everyone can use(squid.)

Other users' comments regarding the cumulative effects of NAT on P2P networks are incredibly apropos.

But realistically, theres nothing I love more than when the story submitter posts a link to a Google cached version of the content he's posting. We're an agressive bunch and that calls for aggressive measures :)