Slashdot Mirror
BitTorrent Community Running For Cover?
govatos writes "Bandwidth issues and DOS Attacks brought Bytemonsoon, a popular BitTorrent
page down, but now pages are closing for scarier reasons. Torrentse.cx 'recieved a cease and desist letter during the day of Wednesday, July 16, 2003 for copyright infringement. The entire website has been removed and will not return.' Will corporate pressure kill the BitTorrent movement, or will it keep flying from site to site before it settles somewhere 'safe' like Sealand's HavenCo?"
Well, on the plus side, the summer movie season is almost over.
Mike
I'ts being used as another warez distribution method plain and simple.
The redhat iso is about 0.00000000001% of all bittorrent traffic.
Btw, pr0n is copyrighted too, just like any other piece of entertainment.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Well if the DOS didn't take bytemonsoon down, the slashdotting certainly would have.
Why would need an offshore hosting solution? Bittorrent files are just index/key files right? Same as eMule, eDonkey, etc. No central host required. Here one day, gone the next, so what?
On the legal transaction side, bittorrent will remain alive and well for a long time, I think.
As for the illegal transaction side, as long as the demand remains (and it's enormous), people will create sites for torrents. It'll take more then DDoS attacks and cease and desist letters to stop pirates. One one good site goes down, another will spring up.
index/key/tracker files
The tracker is a url of a server to contact. Take down that server, and the bittorrent files that contact it are no longer valid.
If only they combined the decentralization tracking of other p2p protocols with BitTorrent's distributed and simultaneous upload and download, we'd have a winner.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
I don't think so. Bittorrent is just going to go back to be what it was really designed as: a great way to distribute legal files. The Torrentse's and the Bytemonsoon's where just taking advantage of a hole in the media companies radar. I'm surprized they lasted as long as they did.
Quack, quack.
I took a look at Torrentse.cx the other day when someone linked to it in a /. comment. The whole thing was pretty much full of illegally-traded software, movies, music, the whole 9 yards.
Bittorrent is a great application for those situations when large downloads like the Red Hat ISOs are hard to get through the normal servers. Piracy is piracy, and it should be shut down. End of story.
Who would run a DoS or a DDoS attack on a bittorrent site? It seems like the people who administer such attacks would go against Microsoft, or Amazon, or eBay. Not only something they ethically disagree with but something that would be a challenge. It makes me kind of sad, just like the whole attacks of EFNet and all the other IRC big boys makes me feel.
Does anyone know who hit them with the cease and desist? (Be nice if their site said who it was. They can't sue you for just saying their name.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This is silly. You can't keep people from knowing about them. You're being selfish and elitest. =) How did you find them in the first place? And what makes you so special?
On the matter of high loads, people who make sites should tackle that problem. If *they know* will attract a lot of attention, they should either prepare for that or find some way to reduce traffic to what they can handle (ala filesoup).
Besides there are link sites out there, and people will stumble upon them eventually. Such as...
http://www.btsites.tk/
http://www.torrentlinks.com/
Torrentse.cx died because the lawyers CC'd the co-loc provider and THEY pulled the plug, before torrentse even had a chance to respond. In other words, presumption of guilt.
Doesn't shock me though - they were getting such a cheap rate that it looked like one of those cut-throat co-loc operations anyway and they aren't much into protection of customers.
Just another bit of the mentality of the DMCA: assume guilt, ask questions later.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Don't know how much sense that made, but p2p is too big to stop now, even with a million bazillion lawsuits.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
well, if someone wanted to have a stable bittorrent site that didn't have to bow to legal pressures to stop. torrentse.cx really shut down because the colocation facility pulled the plug after the cease & desist - the cease & desist was just for one musical artist (BT), and the admin removed the albums from it right away(as per the request - they stated once that was done they wouldn't be seeking any legal action), but the colocation facility obviously didn't wanna get in the middle of anything. so this is just going to keep happening
I've used BitTorrent once or twice myself, and found it to be a good system. That's only once or twice, because there just isn't that much legally distributable material that can reach the required "critical mass" for BitTorrent to be effective and necessary.
Nevertheless, the fact that there are proven legitimate uses of the code should be enough to prevent the code from disappearing. That, and all the copies that are already downloaded.
The real question is whether people will feel safe to post BitTorrent links even when they are distributing something that is 100% legit.
BitTorrent has one major advantage/disadvantage relative to Freenet. You can control what material you are involved in the re-distribution of to match whatever your defintion of "fair use" is. With Freenet you distribute everything or you distribute nothing because you don't know what anything is.
Personally, I prefer the BitTorrent approach. It would be a shame if the RIAA dogs force everyone to the "know nothing" approach.
According to my server Slashdot is the most sophisticated Denial Of Service attack ever written... Distributed no doubt!
More artists are going to have to offer their creative works themselves. I decided to put all of my former band's work as well as stuff I'm working on now up for free (the site is 8x7.org if anyone cares), and I have actually started getting interest from other bands I know that want to contribute their music for free. The truth is that the chances that you are going to see any real profit off of a recording is slim to none, so why not just let people listen to it for free? Most musicians make money off of live gigs and merchandising, so why not cut out the middleman (the recording industry) entirely?
The same thing goes for other content. Look at Homestar Runner. They offer the content for free, and make money off of the merchandise - its a great formula. Just this week they introduced a set of figurines, and in the first day brought in over $15,000!
Sound waves should be free!
I know I didn't RTFA, but...
BitTorrent is one of those apps that proves that P2P does have legitimate uses... and everyone I know who uses it, doesn't use it for distributing/obtaining warez...
The *AA can't have that, or their argument that "P2P has no other use than to distribute pirated media" becomes moot when it is clearly shown that THERE ARE legitimate uses for P2P software...
5468652047616D65
I think what BitTorrent badly needs is a way to avoid the tracker bottleneck. If there's a way for more than one tracker to keep track of the same file, it would increase the resilience of the protocol enormously. Then, you would just have to get a link to any one of the trackers and when you connect to that tracker it would forward you to a random tracker, or something like that. There's another advantage to this too: You can no longer "shut down" sites like the *AA's doing, if you make every bit torrent node a tracker!. I don't see any theoretical obstacle to implementing this: all you need to do is to send the info about who has which pieces of a file to all the nodes, apart from sending the pieces of the file itself. Any thoughts on this?
Remember that not all people are as generous as your group is, and they want to make profit off of their creativity and music.
A better question would be: "Will the continued use of bittorrent by warez kiddies destroy its reputation as a good way to get legitimate files?"
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength on the Internet, we shall defend our BitTorrent application, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!
-Winston Slashdot
no thanks
Does this come as a surprise to anyone? Now, don't get me wrong - I love it. Some sites post the coolest stuff, including stuff you'd never find (or would take years to dl) on any of the popular p2p networks. Though, that being said, have you seen some of these sites? It's the most blatant piracy ever! These guys are just begging to be shut down. It's kinda like the way it was when Napster first got popular and everyone was like "woah! free stuff for the taking!" This is the same thing; once again the ability to steal stuff has been taken to a new level and it's only a matter of time before the rest of the world notices... I just hope someone comes up with a better way to let ppl know about torrents besides posting them on easily shut down web sites.
I'm sure the last thing the site needed whilst it was in its death throes was a good slashdotting... ;)
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
CX is the domain for christmas island:
.com, .net, .org, or .tk.
http://www.nic.cx/
There are a few popular sites with that domain that have some nasty content. But it's still just a domain like
I notice that the link to Torrentse.cx redirects to http://www.redcoat.net/pics/tubgirl.jpg, which is as cheerful a pic as goatse.cx. Am I the only person to follow links?
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I did and an appalling picture is there, don't know how the hell I got redirected there, but I am offended beyond belief.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
-Thomas Paine
...has anyone noticed that the Torrentse.cx linked has changed, a *bit*? I think the editors *might* want to remove that...just a thought...
Back in the day, Slashdot linked to them (when they were still up) crushing their server... so, the admins used mod_rewrite to send any Slashdot referred folks to a different site (with a similar url).
The Brits can take it back with a section of Royal Marines anytime they want.
They're just not motivated to, yet.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Editors should remove the link to torrentse.cx, it goes to the tubgirl picture. yuck.
Just start torrenting Freenet file keys. That would be totally legal. Then Freenet would keep the actual file private and anonymous. This would also save much bandwidth on the trackers as the torrents would be really small. I don't know much about Freenet but it sounds reasonable to me.
for one of the aggrieved parties, let me just say that BitTorrent is nothing short of the Denial of Service attack. I hope they are taken down. When is /. going to learn that you can't flood sites, steal music, or copy DVDs without repercussion?
BitTorrent is nothing like a Denial Of Service attack, infact, it's the exact opposite.
If 99% of the population wants to copy music, and we live in a free world where Democracy wins against tyranny, why is it that 99% of the population are being oppressed by draconian ideals that are out of date in the modern world we live in? Why are they wrong in this democracy? Society should serve the many, not the few, and certanly not the dollar.
Maybe if the aggrieved parties are so concerned about money, they should just get a different job? Like everyone else who doesn't have enough money? Just like coal miners and town cryers have been superseded, so now have shit artists!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Seeing as most gaming sites make you pay to download patches along with everything else bt is a nice program to have now. Instead of being charged to join a site i.e. shacknews, etc. you can just look through the forums and download the patch , etc. for free and much faster.
Even if its not gaming you can usually find whatever file you're looking for with bt. BT itself does not make you download warez or copyrighted music but if you do thats your business and no one else's.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
go to a p2p client and type
.torrent
into the search option.
You'll find all sorts of stuff..
BTW, that was just an observation.
I use torrents to get new distros, getting them from the official
ftp sites is impossible when they are hot off the press.
BT lets me download 3 ISO's in less than three hours..
the torrentse.cx folks are pure grifter-fucks, plain an simple. They got away with a new server, and probably a boat load of cash on top of that to burn.
8 46251&mode=nested&tid=141&tid=97&tid=1 23
They are selfish shits who didnt even release their code (which bytemonsoon did).
The least they could have done is stand up to the DMCA , i mean, theres a very notable and recent case that streamcast/grokster won against RIAA/MPAA http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/25/1
that applies perfectly to them.
Could have hired some lawyer time with the money....instead they blow it like the children they are.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Incidentally, I used the goatse site "as contact me info-page" in a reply to one of the Nigerian scammers. Suffice to say that, he was none to happy, as the following reply shows :
And a month or so ago Torrentse.cx were asking for donations for a new server. A bit after that they'd got the cash and purchased the server. Then for several weeks the site was down, and installation on the new server was 'underway'.
Now the site has gone forever, and people's donations have simply gone to buy somebody out there a brand new kick-ass server for whatever they want to use it for.
Nice.
Tracker-Tracker.com? That site has been up for ages, but only because of the difference in architectures between Hotline/Carracho and Bittorrent. But I still say that the author of Bittorrent should think of a way to create something like, it seems readily possible.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
Even if you don't want to share your content on Freenet, which it might not be big enough to handle yet, you could always share your torrent files. Replacing the centralized part with a totally decentralized network.
Why does Bittorrent always get posted up as a "FILE SHARING" program, its no more a "fire sharing" program than windows IIS. Bittorrent happens to make it convenient for a single distributor to allow access to his files without incurring a major bandwidth costs.
IN fact to find out someone who does just that, go to gametab.com, or redvsblue.com
they have saved craploads of bandwidth on there completely legal files. Bandwidth has made it so files can be available that would otherwise be completely unavailable otherwise as the main host went down.
Bittorrent is being abused as a file distribution method for movies and such, but so is IRC, and so are chat programs and e-mail for christ sake.
Are we going to ban file send capabilies from chat now because someone might send the HULK over it?
How about just ban the entire internet? You can argue that Bittorrents greatest use is for downloading large, illegal files,and I might agree with you. But the internet, by your same thinking, is just a big illegal file sharing network too, all you have to do is prove taht more than oh 50% of the bandwidth USED on the internet is used to download illegal content, or hell if your the RIAA just try to prove 20%, and then you could say "well the internet is just a havent for filesharers we should see it shutting down"
what rediculous bullshit. I have loved bittorrent, I use it to download licenced anime, and to download redvsblue episodes and the odd movie that gets slashdoted.
The main difference between bittorrent and kaaza, is bittorrent is not an anonymous fileshare program, there is always a single point of distribution, and thus a single person that can be tracked down to have started it.
why is this a "good" thing? because its not a filesharing program, using bittorrent is not an excercise in your fair use rights, you may be using it as such, but it has a very powerfull, very real legal use for it.
Unlike kaaza, with a littlle tweaking, bittorrent could be the "big" thing patches and such being distributed, even by companies such as IDSoftware, your not going to do that with a program like Kaaza, because you have no trust of what the file is going to be. On bittorrent since it comes from a single original source file, you have complete trust of the content being sent to you.
I dont know, i am repsonding to the few threads i saw "but bittorrent is illegal" and i started in a new thread cause i could easily see them getitng modded down.
Buzz OUT
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
For all your bitching and bleating, I bet you have never been in a voting booth or been part of any kind of political organization.
Government does the things that it does because people like you bitch & rant on messageboards or to your friends, but never take your concerns beyond that.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
A girl has to make a living. I used to be an html coder but since the crash I haven't been able to find work. They paid me in cash to take that picture, sure it was nasty, but after showering and brushing my teeth it was over and I had enough to pay the rent.
--Tubgirl
First off, it's very important to note that bittorrent isn't a P2P network; it is a completely new protocol, fundamentally different then anything that has come before it. In that regard, the "movement" so to speak will not die. The technology will continue to be improved on and it will continue to be used by people who love to get distros the second they come out. Hopefully, we'll finally see bittorrent get some commercial use. There is no reason every game company shouldn't be releasing their betas/demos with bittorrent. It is perfect for these companies that use very little bandwidth, but then every so often require HUGE amounts of bandwidth that force them to use mirrors, which are becoming increasingly annoying. Bittorrent is really a revolutionary innovation, IMO.
But, it has some serious shortcomings that need to be addressed. For a technology that promises infinitely scalable bandwidth, the tracker isn't very scalable at all. Multi-tracker functions (both the interconnectivity of trackers and the use of multiple isolated trackers within the torrent) are an absolute must for this technology to prosper. Also, an apache mod where you could simply upload the file to your web server and not have to worry about running a bittorrent "seed" would be great. From the companies standpoint nothing has really changed, but instead of everyone flooding your website to get this file, the file is only accessible by your bittorrent tracker, so your bandwidth remains consistent. And the company doesn't need to run a separate seed process for the thousands of files it may be serving, the apache mod would only open connections for files that are requested by the tracker (which would only request the file if the full file wasn't already being distributed by those connected).
As for the piracy aspect, I don't really see it going anywhere but I also don't see it growing. There is always going to be some site where you can upload torrents, and that site will always die within 6 months only to be replaced by another.
Try http://autopr0n.com/torrents/. I doubt this experiment will work well (I haven't personally tested the link quality) and I don't know about legality, but there's a definite stab at appling BT for this purpose.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
It was designed as a way for people to distribute large files without paying gobs for bandwidth.
Wonderful.
So who do you think shut them down? Why? Because the RIAA will destroy any alternate distribution channel, regardless of content carried. If you have not noticed, the "promotion" business is mostly about suppressing other content. If a DoS won't do it, the **AA's will put their own content up and then send a cease and dissist letter.
The **AA are going to fail sooner or later. Their technology is simply obsolete and others are starting to produce too much for them to squash. They don't have the resources to fight everyone, and that's what it's comming to. They have enough money and resources to make a few people sorry before they go away. You have to wonder why they bother.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't think the original intent of BT was warez. And unlike Napster or Kazza each file forms it's own network, so infringing traffic is totally separate from legitimate traffic.
Honestly, hosting a Bit Torrent seed for a copyrighted file is no different then hosting the file itself, other then the lowered bandwidth bill.
Shutting down BT wouldn't make any more sense then banning HTTP or SMTP, both of which can be used to infringe copyright. BitTorrent is hugely helpful for small content developers who want to distribute their work, especially if they become popular.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
BitTorrent was never "designed" as a piracy method, it just happened to be usefull for it, just like FTP and IRC. It does require a central server to 'get things started'.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think what BitTorrent badly needs is a way to avoid the tracker bottleneck. If there's a way for more than one tracker to keep track of the same file, it would increase the resilience of the protocol enormously.
;)
If you made this change bittorrent would be just another p2p app. It's main selling point right now is that you can offer up content and still track who's downloading and provide assurance that they are getting a _valid_ file. So RedHat could set up a bittorrent site for their files and still get some idea of how many people go to them for the files plus their users know they are getting a valid file without downloading the hash key from redhat and manually checking their file after the download. (As long as there isn't an untrusted man-in-the-middle between you and redhat.)
You can currently throttle your tracker and ask people to leave the application on after the download if you have bandwidth problems. It would be good to distribute more of the trackers duties, but this isn't trivial if you want to keep the good properties of bittorrent. I actually started working on something like bittorrent when I was on vacation last year, but when I found out about bittorrent it went to the back burner (Mine had FEC(&udp transport), it also conducted route discovery to try to find the cheapest path for the poor australians, and provided a means for ISP's to set-up effective caches, but I have limited time for unpaid work. I'll contribute to bittorrent once I learn some python
This is about websites, that are acting as a hub for warez activity.
It's got no more to do with Bittorrent than a pirate ftp site has to do with ftp. You don't blame FTP, you blame the site.
This is not at all the same thing as p2p networks.
This in a non-US country without a DMCA-equivalent.
More than mere navel gazing.
BitTorrent is NOT meant to handle pirated data! The tracker servers for the torrents are fixed targets, easy food for governments. BT is meant to distribute legitimate content. Frankly, I've been taking advantage of the pirate sites while they've been up, but I'm not surprised they're going kablooey.
Depending on the sort of illegitimate content you're looking for or distributing, try some other protocol. Freenet, or Gnutella2 or something else based on supernodes, will work a lot better than BitTorrent.
Actually, HavenCo is no longer a safe haven. Ryan Lackey will be doing a talk about the events that transpired in 2002 at DEFCON 11. Here's the text from the DEFCON Speakers Page:
HavenCo: What Really Happened
HavenCo, an attempt at creating an offshore data haven, was launched in 2000 by a small team of cypherpunks and pro-liberty idealists.
During 2002, the Sealand Government decided they were uncomfortable with their legal and PR exposure due to HavenCo, particularly in the post-DMCA and post-911 world, and regulated, then took over the remains of the business, forcing the remaining founders out. While HavenCo continues to serve a small number of customers, it no longer is a data haven, and has exposed the ultimate flaw in relying on a single physical location in one's quest for privacy.
Ryan Lackey was with HavenCo from inception until late 2002, and will tell exactly what happened (not the PR-friendly whitewashed version) from day one until the end, what lessons were learned, and how similar goals can be achieved in the future by motivated individuals and groups.
-Shippy
Bittorrent isn't going anywhere, and it's a great way to download legitimate works.
For example, the Animatrix shorts (the 4 free ones) or the Red vs Blue movies were valid uses that would have recently been crushed by slashdotting.
Bittorrent is the kind of enabling technology that can keep artists like the guys behind RvB from going under when they get popular... to suggest that nailing pirate sites is going to kill this great technology is just dumb.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
While the majority of traffic may be copyright violations, the point is the technology is not meant solely for that purpose. In this case, the technology clearly has uses that do not involve copyright violations. That clear distinction makes a big difference than what Napster was. If Napster had taken more steps to push the P2P concept for much more than just music MP3s (kind of like Kazaa and other P2P) things might have turned out differently, but Napster was meant to trade MP3s (music). Bittorrent is meant to provide a technical solution to file distribution, and several projects and a few companies use that to distribute their work. A cassette deck with the ability to record can be used to violate a copyright. But it can also be used for much more than that. Same with Bittorrent. That little detail makes all the difference in the world.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I, as the author of BitTorrent, would like to make it very clear than I have nothing to do with any of the BitTorrent sites, and that BitTorrent is not and never will be designed to be good for illegal distribution. In particular I'm not doing anything to decentralize the tracker or add anonymity. It is in fact quite anonymity-unfriendly. BitTorrent is also used for a lot more than just TV shows and movies, which people would find out if they bothered doing any web searching. I keep telling people that running warez sites is stupid, and they keep doing it. If you wanna brazenly run a massive warez site, that's your prerogative, but don't be surprised when the long arm of the law comes down on you.
>Where I live [Ottawa, Ontario]. Many drivers "slide" through stop lines [specially in residential areas where kids and such walk], they speed, merge without signaling, change langes inappropriate [many seem to think you cutoff people instead of going behind], etc.
Let's see the amount of accidents each of these cause in our province:
Ignoring traffic controls (ie: stop signs/lines/whatever) - 4%
Speeding - 1%
Failing to signal / inappropriate lane changes: 3%
Grand total: Accidents reduced by an absolute maximum of 8%. In fact, if it works as well as the photoradar blitz, accidents would be reduced by 0.5%. Somewhat less effective than the war on drugs. Well, a lot more than just "somewhat" less effective...
>Personally I think people rolling through stop lines should be fined 500$. I think speeders should have their license revoked. If the cops spent a day doing a traffic blitz they could probably catch a few hundred people [town of 50K here...] easy.
Personally, I think, as the stats suggest, there should be an enforced "dangerous conditions" speed (7% of crashes). Clearly driving when the weather is good is simply not a problem for Ontarians.
Also helpful would be proper patrolling of yeild signs (10% of crashes), and making it easier to arrest people for following too close (7% of crashes). I'd suggest a law about losing control of a vehicle (8% of crashes), but I think it's usually too late when that happens, anyways.
Technically, it should be illegal to drive properly (45% of crashes), but that's just plain silly.
I also think that speeds should be increased (the amount of people's lives that could be saved by ambulances being able to get to their destinations faster [from less traffic being on the roads] likely outstrips the "risks", which are so small they likely fall within the possible mistake zone of the statistics).
>Similarly, make piracy a huge penalty [e.g. compute ceased, fined 1000$ or etc] and blitz every so often.
Great. So you want to deny access to computers for piracy? Are you sure you've never taped a Hockey game? Do you realize this means offenders would have to be denied their right to use a phone? Do you realize that would mean the government would have to continue to support an extremely expensive and outmoded paper-based infrastructure?
Basically, you'll end up paying for their crimes.
Which reminds me, $1,000 would be a bargain if that's what it really was. In fact, it's usually more around the $100 - $200,000 range. A lot of pirate BBS sysops lost their homes, despite having, at best, maybe $20,000 of pirated software on their machines.
>If you report a pirate [who is convicted] you get x % of the fines. Get the geeks to hunt the pirates!
Yes, let's move from being a socialist country to being a dictatorship! You do realize that the method of control you suggest was the very most popular form of control used during Hitler's regime, right (it's simply a fact -- I'm not invoking Godwin's law here)? And that it was used as a control measure by the soviet union until the cold war was over?
Since we're making up laws to suit ourselves, though, let's outlaw those separate schools. I'm tired of paying for children to be brain damaged, and taught to violate our laws. And it's time to get rid of the CRTC (who make it illegal to have multicultural TV -- only Canadian monoculture is easily available) -- AND I'm tired of having these signals beamed at my house from space and not being able to manipulate them at will. It should be my right to do with any signals being sent to me, against my will, as I wish.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Maybe there was a lot of unauthorized content on BT, but there is a large group of users using it to download legal, live music. Look at Etree's Box of Rain forum, Groove Salad, and Sharing in the Groove as just a few example of the many message boards that have gigabytes of 100% legal, 100% lossless (.shn and .flac) music posted daily.
When the Phish summer tour aud sources come out, BT is going to be key. It sure beats trying to log in to someone's 3-slot FTP.
Yep. I'd be happy to do a slashdot interview or write something for people to link to about this, either before or after defcon.
There is still hope for secure hosting -- I'm doing distributed hardware tamper-resistant location in a multiplicity of jurisdictions, which I think is ultimately a much better solution.
Sealand is still physically there, but I'd no longer consider HavenCo a "data haven" after the events in 2002 and 2003.
You can use a chainsaw to cut your winter firewood, or you can use it to commit a Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Does that mean we should outlaw chainsaws? No, of couse not. The act of killing is already against the law and has nothing to do with chainsaw technology. It is about actions and not tools.
So too is it with technologies like BitTorrent. Yes, certainly a large community of cheap-ass slackers who want goodies for free have exploited this great content delivery system for their own purposes. But to be sure, there are so many other legit uses for it. The LEGAL online music trading community has also taken up BitTorrent to distribute high quality live recordings of bands that permit taping. (The Dead, Phish, Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, etc to name even a few!) Sites like Sharing the Groove and eTree provide legal lossless audio in FLAC and Shorten format to fans of the music. These lossless files can be quite large and the demand for them can be quite strong the night after a good concert. Well, gosh... This is Just the sort of thing that BitTorrent does and does well. It serves high bandwidth and high demand files with grace and ease. This isn't about piracy. It's about access to technology. The Supreme Court ruled in the betamax case that there were enough legit uses for the technology that it couldn't be outlawed simply because some people were using it to copy porn tapes. I reserve the right to use this technology in a lawful fashion despite what others may choose to do with it.
More than once I have turned to a Torrent link to get a copy of some content that was in high demand at the time. (Animatrix previews, Gollum's Acceptance speech, etc.) All were legit downloads when the normal methods of acquiring the content were under heavy /. effect.
Let's try to keep this in mind during these troubling times of heavy litigation by big media. They killed Napster, they'll try to kill BT and any other centralized system they can find. The chilling new bill introduced in congress should be a warning to us all. The concept of p2p itself is under attack. Fight for your rights to these tools.
(Stepping down from my sagging soapbox.)
As you will notice (either immediately or after several seconds of high-throughput processing, depending on your current state of drug consumption), the question posed by the submitter is mere speculation. Not only speculation, but very cogent and reasonable speculation. You see, HavenCo is the ONLY place of its kind.
Not only is HavenCo one of a kind, but its hosted on an artificial island in the sea, christened Sealand. Navy sailors originally dubbed the island [expletive deleted], but it renamed after a feud with the local greenpeac..
In any case, no other city is like HavenCo. Except maybe LA. The writer said "like Sealand's HavenCo", emphasis on like. This suggests there may be, in the future hopefully, other service offerings similar to HavenCo's. At the moment, this is not the case. HavenCo has been a subject of several Slashdot postings and Wired articles; it surely piqued my interest.
If I was a major warez dealer, you bet hell I would buy a HavenCo account and setup a public FTP server. I'd have completely Sealand-legal new musical releases, movies (appropriate for children of course), as well as a myriad of software available for selection. My WaReZ site would be public, and I would have no user limits. I would rake in the dough through advertisements appropriate for all audiences. All within the jaundiced eye of the RIAA/MPAA.
They couldn't do a damned well thing.
And that's the point of this point. Its not a plug, its not an advertisement, its not a commercial. Its a way of life.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
Freenet does not have this centralization problem. And a very good new version just came out. I have been using both but because torrents are such a pain to find I have found freenet to be more useful. The freenet guys said bittorrent would run into this problem. I am surprised it has happened so soon.
but since the MPAA killed Archie, I can't seem to find the source for the server.
Microsoft remembers it as "that virus thingy." They've classified the authors as unamerican terrorist communists.
In other news, UUCP piped through ssh is the latest warez craze. The MPAA is declaring war on Canada to kill off the OpenBSD developers. (Terrence and Phillip as well.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Quiet, you fool! You'll ruin it for everyone!
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Of course they have a disclaimer "...The administrator of this site (www.zenith-net.co.uk) cannot be held responsible for what its users post, or any other actions of its users. You may not use this site to distribute or download any material when you do not have the legal rights to do so."
Uh yeah... I was shocked to see almost all the posted torrents were illegal.
... so I don't see how these sites going down affect BitTorrent for legit uses.
BT is decentralized, so taking down trackers that just have warez doesn't take BT down for trackers that have legit files.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Insofar as there is a "bittorrent community" (seems a little bit like saying the "ftp community" to me), this should be a good thing for it. This should help make it obvious that BT is not a very good choice for distributing "WareZ" (whether software, music or video), as it's too easy to find these sites and shut them down. Which in turn means that all the people using BT for legit purposes won't have to worry about being slandered by association with these types any more.
And geeze, does everything have to be a "community" these days? BT is more like FTP than it is like much of anything else. Why does it need a "community"? Can't it just be a tool that people use for various purposes?
The content was provided by MPAA. If they have a right to distrubute copyright holder's work, the download is legal. I don't see how they can display a copyright/legal use notice BEFORE someone downloads the .AVI, in all the language of the world including Navajo, with existing P2P software that doesn't display any notice before downloading a file. If not, the author can only sue MPAA because they misled private users.
You will think I put copyright authors in an impossible situation. But in fact, they just have to switch stategy by focusing on people who distibute their work without permission.
theres NO PROBLEM for a BitTorrent site if it
Torrents legal data. eg Linux ISO's, big patches
etc etc.
I see no problem with illegal warez sharing
Torrent sites being taken down. Same with misuse of P2P apps
grow up. use some sense. etc etc
I am an avid BitTorrent user when it comes to downloading LEGAL stuff like Linux distros. But Bytemonsoon got what was coming to them. A quick glance at the first few entries showed "Win XP Key Generator.rar" and "X-Men 2." To answer the question, "Will corporate pressure kill BitTorrent?" My answer is no, but idiots like the Bytemonsoon webmasters will.
To put it another way, too many people with technical knowledge to create or expand upon something wonderful such as BitTorrent allow their greed to cloud their judgement. It is possible to be greedy over non-physical posessions. Just think about how many people you know that horde movies and music, just to have them, most of which they have never even bothered to play.
Before p2p file sharing, people searched websites and ftp servers for files. Because the files were at a fixed address and were easy access, many sites got shut down. That is why when p2p came along, it was such a hit. Since p2p is distributed, there are no fixed locations to 'shut down'. It is much harder to go after the masses of file sharers than those who explicitly share music on web sites.
BitTorrent was a step back towards the days when the web and ftp was the main source of getting MP3s or whatever content.
I know BitTorrent has technical advantages when it comes to handling load. But in terms of anonymity, it is easier to find the person sharing on the web (or giving an access point) then it is via a peer to peer network. The site is always there. It is hosted by someone who is associated with the owner of a domain name.
This is me announcing my opposition to that movement, that way of thinking. One datapoint to be counted against all the others and a reminder that not all Slashdotters (and not all spoiled tehno-brats ;-), think alike.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
As always, I am surprised by a lack of recognition for eDonkey2000 at Slashdot. The ed2k is, I believe, technologically superior, it has better clients (and larger variety, and the leading ones are also open source). The system is also provides prolonged availablity much better.
.bittorrent files that have to be hosted somewhere. This is also the reason why ed2k-link sites are more resistant to lawsuits.
In addition to this, ed2k is better protected from "anti-piracy" attacks. There is additional server layer, very resistant to servers being temporarily shut off and requiring (I believe) less traffic. A lot of negotiation is performed directly between clients - the Overnet model does not require servers at all. Finally, the actual links are in the form of short text links that can be e-mailed, printed and even spelled over the phone, not in the form of
P.S. This seems to me just one more case of an inferior technology receiving an unfair share of coverage. Like MS dominates the media, BitTorrent seems to dominate Slashdot...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Will the continued use of bittorrent by warez kiddies destroy its reputation as a good way to get legitimate files?
No. It's like asking : "Will the continued use of guns by criminals destroy its reputation as a good way to protect oneself ?"
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel