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P2P Streaming Radio
sonicsft writes "RIAA, CARP, and streaming internet radio, oh my. Well these guys may have found a solution. With the tag line, pirate radio for the digital age, they've released a peer to peer streaming radio solution and claim that it is untracable/closable by the RIAA."
if you really want to set it free GPL it
I've gone from being completely indifferent about internet radio to being a huge fan of it in the span of about a year. I have not listened to broadcast music in a couple years now. Just about everything I listened to for a long time came out of my friends and I's CD pools. We'd make compilation albums for each other or just snag songs we particularly enjoyed from albums in each others collections. Broadcast radio has always been shit but recently it has been so bad I simply can't stand to listen to it. I began to go to dozens of concerts from LA to San Diego. Last year I think I tallied 35 concerts in about 9 months. Was I going to see bigass arena shows being hyped by radio stations? Only in a very small handful of cases like the Yahoo Outloud Weezer tour, when I went to the LA and SD shows. Most shows I was going to were indie rock shows and small local shows. Anyhow, I was going to these shows SPECIFICALLY because the bands weren't being played on the radio. People I find incredibly talented like Ozma and The Get Up Kids will be lucky to ever have a single played on a station like KROQ. Going to all the shows I did and picking up albums from bands I liked, I not only put money in their pockets but got introduced to more bands than I can easily recall. These are some badass bands in my opinion but they're not going to be found on the radio.
Then I started getting into more electronic stuff but was never really one for the electronic scene. I can't stand seeing a bunch of cornbread white guys revving their rice burners in parking lots. It isn't racism or anything, it just looks stupid seeing some pimply faced kid with his Fred Durst hat with a "Powered by VTEC" sticker on his read window. The drugged out raver wannabes aren't exactly up on my list of social affiliations either. Rather than tell them they shouldn't be who they want to be I just avoid the scene entirely. So that leaves me with nowhere to get music other than Napster or something. It is nice to see if I want to spend money on an album but most songs are recorded poorly at too low of a bit rate for my taste. Then I fire up iTunes on my Powerbook and browse to the electronic stations. Holy shit! Music that doesn't sound like ass when I plug it into my sound system and doesn't have an inane DJ being wiggity whack on the air. Fuck yes. Not only do I get a good stream of music but I also have a display of what song I'm listening to in case I find myself interested in the artist. Then there is the choice available, if one station starts in with something I don't like I can double click another one with a different stream. Internet radio has become the radio I've been wanting for years. In an hour block I get to hear about an hour's worth of music, not 10 minutes of decent music, 30 minutes of slop I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy and 20 minutes of inane advertisements for shit I don't buy and DJs I'd rather have shot into the Sun.
Now it is facing some stiff opposition in the form the RIAA and their demonic minions. I don't want to see internet radio go down because it is the only inexpensive way I've got left to get introduced to some good music. Sharing with my friends is nice but there isn't enough variety to really find off the wall shit I end up really digging. P2P radio seems like an obvious solution because of the P2P buzzword culture surging as of late. The model however runs into serious problems. The RIAA doesn't have to go after a single individual or group of individuals to take out P2P radio like they were able to with various sharing programs. All they have to do is make some deals with cable and DSL providers. Lets say there was a popular P2P radio in my town, all it would take is a deal or lawsuit against Charter and he would be toasted. We'd all end up with our bandwidth curtailed more than it already is and P2P radio would end up specifically forbidden in the AUP.
Switch to DSL you say? I fucking wish. PacBell couldn't find their dicks if they weren't at the end of their arms. Evne if DSL was viable for some people P2P regulating would still happen on the DSL system. Even with a competitive DSL provider like Covad or someone, they're still renting a pipe from PacBell and the bandwidth usage will make them be regulatory asses too.
P2P pirate radio is a noble idea I suppose, sticking it to the jackasses that are the RIAA but it is a short term solution to a long term problem. The RIAA has far too many lawyers on their side and enough backing to cow the major cable and DSL providers into line. An idea would be to get together with a bunch of schools around the country. Many schools have broadcast radio stations that don't have to stand up to RIAA scrutiny or lawsuits. They could house and host internet radio stations with the same function as broadcast stations, providing students with hands on experience either behind a mic or in an equipment room, but have much better standing in any internet radio lawsuits. Anything with P2P in the name is going to get turbofucked rather quickly by the RIAA no matter if they can track people down or not. It's sad but true. So who wants to build an island 13 miles off the Montery penninsula with an OC-192 hooked up to it? We could be Sealand Redux.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The first obvious problem is that by connecting to a number of servers, I don't even need a spanning tree attack to trace the source of the broadcast; I can do it all with the latency differential, to find the "root" node.
The second obvious problem is that you can't find a broadcast source unless it's advertised, and once it's advertised, it can be found.
The third obvious problem is that, even if you solve the second obvious problem using a distribguted naming service and... for lack of a better name for it... "AntiBGP", you still have the problem of being able to use differential to find the source of the inital advertisement.
The fourth obvious problem is that you can find the source through traffic analysis: it's the one without an equal number of packets in and out.
Something like this can only ever be effective with a distributed flood-fill model, where you can trust your nearest neighbor, or your nearest neighbor doesn't actually know what he has. Effectively, this means that you have to go to a store-and-forward model, use hard crypto on the interconnects, and then generate bogus traffic to avoid analysis.
At that point, you would have to find a legitimate an legal use for the network before deploying it, or you are minimally an accessory before the fact and/or involved in a conspiracy to commit. If they can point at your node in the network and prove intent, then you are screwed.
"BlackNet" is really unsuitable for streaming data.
-- Terry
Pirate radio stations tend to be low power, and serve their _local_ neighborhood. They can't be heard across the country, and thus they tend to avoid notice, so long as they don't interfere with other stations, and don't massively offend the listeners who discover them.
;-)
Since 802.11a and 802.11b traffic lives in parts of the spectrum where independent unlicensed transmissions are expected and are the norm, it might be possible to fly under the RIAA's radar with the following configuration:
- Set up a server with a 10.0.0.0/8 addressing space.
- DON'T hook it to the internet.
- Include a DHCP Server.
- Include a web page to describe what people have reached and allow links to software to listen.
- Include a submissions directory so anyone who wants to drop an MP3 or OGG on you, CAN.
- Play interesting music that YOU like, and even DJ the broadcast. (Voice changer might be desireable.)
Basically, all I'm doing is taking ideas presented in the movie "Pump Up the Volume" and thinking about how those ideas could be implemented using more modern methods. Done correctly, this could even be done with a mobile configuration in a vehicle.
'Cast Hard!