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P2P Not Dead, Just Hiding
adavies42 writes "Contrary to media reports, P2P is not dying (PDF); it's just becoming harder to detect. In a paper for CAIDA, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, researchers present evidence that the supposed decline in P2P traffic is actually due to a decline in easy-to-track protocols as those that change port numbers on a regular basis become more popular."
I use torrent most of the time these days...
Shut up already, let them think it's dying!
they laugh at it.
second, they fight it
Third, they accept it as truth.
The journey that is p2p is just starting.
It WILL gain proper mainstream recognition, someday.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
Somebody wanna clue me in? ;)
P2P "researchers" still unable to find suprnova.org...
DRM = Digitally Restricted Media. This is a viral sig, pass it on.
the day that corporate interest in america and other
equal nations dies off, is the day that hell will freeze over.
its unbelieveable what legslaion will pass, in favor of corporations
and its even worse when they use propaganda
to influence it that much more.
end.arguement(); fin
MS-DOS is not dead. It just smells funny.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Current connected Kazaa users: 2,319,581
Sharing 1,360,174,152 files (38,675,976 GB)
I don't think peer to peer networks will ever die out; they're simply too good a way to distribute files and information, and I don't Just mean warez and the like, just look at the number of torrents running for various linux distros and the BSDs. The thing general populous is beginning to realize that the fasttrack network Kazaa uses is a pile and are moving to decentralised networks like bittorrent and as such the various organisations which would like to monitor the usage of peer to peer networks are having a much harder time getting accurate figures.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
Freenet - not only hidden, but actually impossible to find and decrypt. This is the future of illegal (illegal pr0n, piracy, avoiding censorship in oppressive regimes) P2P. Actually, it is not the future. It is the present. The only disadvantage is speed, but it is getting better and connections are getting faster anyway.
Bin Laden
if you are revealing it still exists, doesnt that cause more problems?
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
Tools such as Waste make this very easy to set up.
I'm not going to take this report seriously until Netcraft confirms it.
if the conclusions of the article turn out to be true
Breaking the asymmetrical bandwidth assumption. If P2P
traffic continues to increase and legal complications are overridden,
the P2P paradigm will bring dramatic changes in supply and
demand in edge and access networks. Bit rates of many access
links, in particular for DSL and cable modems, are currently provisioned
asymmetrically with significantly lower upstream bandwidth.
This provisioning was based on the expectation of users
downloading much more data than they send upstream. The relevance
of such technologies will be challenged and their market
share will dwindle if alternative broadband technologies can offer
comparable upstream and downstream performance.
The effect of P2P could propagate from the access points upward
the network hierarchy to Tier 2 and even Tier 1 ISPs creating
the need for more peering among ISPs. Current practices
require balanced bidirectional load among peers10, a stipulation
easier to achieve with symmetric link utilizations as the
norm. There is no doubt that the P2P paradigm will change Internet
engineering as we know it today. Given the observed trends,
the only remaining question is when, not if.
as I can not find anyone whod be willing to give me a symetrical here in worlds end; maybe thatll finally change.
Life has become the ideology of its absence - T.W. Adorno
and I'd have noticed I didn't close. Anyway, of course the last line is not a citation.
Life has become the ideology of its absence - T.W. Adorno
It means people aren't scared of RIAA-MPAA hyenas and that more and more art and information is shared on the Internet for all of us to enjoy. Good. Anyway I think, given the bad legal situation of file sharing in USA (and soon in Europe), that we should begin to use more secure P2P clients. The eDonkey network is easily traceable, let alone networks like DC or SoulSeek. I'd like to try MUTE or FreeNet, but I'm not fully sure about how hard their security is, and about the possible drawbacks. What do you think about?
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
I could have googled it.That however was not my intention.
Much less to invoke Gandhi.
What I'm saying though, p2p is first derided, now its being actively fought.
and one day people will see the truth.
That it is another method of distribution, a much more advanced one.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
... It's just pining for the fjords.
www.clarke.ca
How could you accurately (and more importantly quickly) determine whether some traffic is some P2P program as the article suggests when you have a really BIG haystack and a tiny needle?
dtach - A tiny program that emulates the detach feat
That networking would be more and more private? Basically it's gone back to word of mouth and individual trades.. much like it's been for years via "sneaker net".
(y'know we only have rotate the port frequencies... or was it port harmonics... to keep them from getting a bead on us...)
Don't tell anyone!
Yes, that's it. BSD is not dead, its just hiding. :)
38,675,976 GB?!? As in, 38 petabytes?
I'd make a "welcome our new overlords" crack, but somehow the thought seems more scary than funny.
dinosaurs buddies Bob, Dawn and Rex?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I've been getting my music via second hand stores or I've been getting free (not bootlegged, but totally freely given) music from places like http://www.modarchive.com.
I'll keep going until the companies that support the RIAA are bankrupted or they relent with their assault on fair use rights.
I know all my favorite buttorrent trackers are going under ground. This for example...
Well we know what you're downloading now don't we...
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Actually those that know how to look find the increase in P2P traffic easily. The tendency to hide is also not surprising. Many people have predicted this. I know I have.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Their stale software that doesnt warrant elitist registration. Used to be be great, especially the audiobook and the audiophile apple stuff.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
a wireless lan is nothing new
You can change ports but once Layer 7 knows port changing is point less. Pay the servers to shut the p2p systems down it would not take long killed in months.
Just the record companys don't want to pay for their protection they want it for free.
Gnucleus used to be fairly usable... but now days connecting to any ultrapeers seems almost impossible.
I liked the ideas behind G2. And even though it wasn't perfect, it seemed better than some of the alternatives.
Playing with eMule I was able to find a lot of movies using the hashes found at www.fishhash.com and download many movies. Unfortunately after just two days of use I received a cease and desist notice from MGM. Talk about fast.
WinMX offers great results, but kind of sucks in most other respects. Though admittingly if you're just downloading music WinMX does fine.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but this would only work if the participating computers correctly "labeled" the packets they send as p2p packets. once this gets used to "block" p2p traffic, i'm sure the p2p programs and protocols will very quickly stop doing that.
Not only is it not dying but it is being more and more adopted for non wzrez/moviez/pr0n related tasks. You can find pretty much any distro of unix/linux on p2p which takes a lot of strain off of the ftp sites. There is also a few schools i know of that use bittorrent to distribute movies that students create in class. So maybe the "P2P? Oh that is that software/movie piracy thing??" mindset is being corrected slowly but steadily?
Not against your comment, or saying your anti-p2p.
Just like you, trying to straighten out my point. ")
Anyways, maybe I'm wrong, but the general derison on p2p?
"domain of thiefs and perverts, to trade pirated mp3s and porn"
also, the general view that p2p contribute to adware/trojans. p2p affects(effects?)it, but I'd raher pin the blame on the user.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
That's cool. Switching ports on the fly during data transmission. You could transmit the next port to use encoded in the data packet using PGP public key encryption. For that matter, encrypt the whole thing before sending. This makes the port and data nearly impossible to guess. Of course, any IP that's constantly transmitting seemingly random ports becomes a becomes a beacon.
TCP was designed with the assumption of a symmetric bandwidth path between the involved end points.
To try to put a figure on it, for around 80% to 90% of the Internet's history, the Internet has been run over symmetrical bandwidth links eg. 56Kbps full duplex point to point links, T1/E1s, T3/E3, Frame Relay, ATM, Token ring, the Ethernet variants etc. Asymmetric links such as DSL and cable are the exception.
TCP has performance issues when run over paths which involve asymmetric bandwidth links. They are described in RFC 3449 - TCP Performance Implications of Network Path Asymmetry.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
If the RIAA had even a microscopic degree of intelligence, rather than simply being a cabal of cash-fixated boomers, they might have been able to predict this.
I remember going to DCC warez channels a few years back on IRC, and seeing constant ads/notifies there about bedroom FTPs set up via dyndns and so on...not to mention the "leet" (private) IRC servers you'd hear about. (although I heard about those a lot less often)
If the RIAA had been realists, they would have realised a couple of important things straight off the bat:-
1) The Internet was designed to be able to withstand a nuclear exchange, and P2P in particular probably operates more purely via decentralised mesh topology principles than just about any other net application in existence. (As opposed to say IRC, which typically uses branch topology...which is why a single netsplit on the wrong server can lobotomise the entire network) In other words, they have less than no chance of EVER being able to stop it, or even tracing the origin node of a given file in most cases.
2) Given the fact as stated above that they'd have more chance of moving the rock of Gibraltar than shutting down P2P, the truly clueful thing for them to do would have been to try and figure out a way to use it as a source of revenue for themselves. On a network where anything is available, the neatest trick is isolating/finding what you want...so they could have had "featured" lists stacked with their own artists and used a subscription model for their search service, OR run their own private show AKA Kazaa and again used the subscription model for that. For another thing...in an environment of files, just about everything is a generic copy of a copy of a copy. With the "mashy" thing a bit back, David Bowie's fans demonstrated that what they really wanted was personalisation...something that an individual could feel was uniquely theirs, and not just an identical copy of what everyone else had. This would be more difficult to make money from, to be sure, but in different ways I'm betting it could be done.
Yet *another* way they could have made major cash for themselves would be by mining the online indy scene. They encourage the proverbial bedroom DJs, who then not only produce more fodder for the subscription model, but could even in some ways go towards satisfying the "individual" demand mentioned above via exclusive/semi-exclusive concert type recordings, individualised remixes, etc. The possibilities are endless.
3) The very LAST thing they should have wanted to do was push this underground, because once they've do that, they lose the ability to a) monitor/police it AT ALL, and b) profit from it because they either don't know where it is, or because they've already destroyed user goodwill by previously attempting to destroy it.
The problem with too many corporate bodies these days is the desire to make money via scorched earth techniques...but what they never think of is that by destroying the host environment today, (whether online or off) they lose the ability to make money from it tomorrow...whereas if they were smart, they could capitalise on these things indefinitely.
the likes of programs such as protowall and peerguardian, both of which have huge active communities constantly updating IP block lists, blocking all the p2p evils out there like bayTSP and other monitoring agencies.
A huge amount of p2p clients (most kazaa lite buids, azureus, one of the most popular bit torrent clients) have methods built in to support these block lists, and are turned on by default.
My ports are all stretched out and infected from my "friend" Napster (and his buddy Kazaa, they're rough). I need a break, something a little slower, with some feeling to it.
-Actual Quote from the "Man 2 Man" weblog http://man2man.losersfightit.com/media.html The people know what they want. Go ahead and give it to 'em! Bring back the BBS.Posting anonymously for obvious reasons but here is a simple thought experiment. Feel free to punch all sorts of holes in my argument. My aim is to expose the futility in regulating P2P or cracking down on infringers if you can't do that legally. If the content cartel want to put P2P out of business, make the media too attractive and too cheap to bother stealing on P2P.
Anyway, here is the proces:
1) Take copyrighted-song.mp3 and XOR it with copyrighted-song.mp3-prndbits.bin of the same size to get prndbits.bin-copyrighted-song.mp3
2) Share both files BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME ON THE SAME MACHINE! In fact, with this approach, the files could be posted on the World Wide Web in an analagous fashion.
3) After time, both files are on the P2P network of your choice. You need both to get copyrighted-song.mp3 back and yet mere non simultaneous possession of either of the two files on a machine that 'form' the song is not (seemingly) illegal. If the labels come after you for sharing such a file, tell them to sod off as the file in question is worthless without the other file which you did not share at the same time, did you?
The only way the content cartel can get the last word in is to simply make encryption illegal worldwide except for authorized parties.
That means no more legal use of such encryption software like PGP, GPG, CipherSaber, PCP, and the like by the average Internet user.
Just envison the backlash such a move would cause....
Well, congratulations - you beat me to it and you're a fellow lumberjack to boot. As soon as I saw the headline I thought, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, say no more!
and are moving to decentralised networks like bittorrent
As much as bittorrent is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it is not decentralized. It is 1st gen P2P with a centralized tracker, despite actually being better than 2nd gen networks like KaZaA. And I certainly wouldn't want to compare it with 3rd gen networks like Freenet, MULE etc. which are at present even worse. So there's no shame in calling it 1st gen, far from it.
Of course, bittorrent more or less emulates a decentralized structure as each torrent operates independently of each other, but bittorrent itself is not. That does make it considerably harder to take down torrents than e.g. Napster, though.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
But it'd be kind of obvious that it was just a way to subvert copyright, once you got "caught". If the other machine didn't belong to you, maybe, but I still doubt it.
Why not just encrypt all the transfers/requests with session keys? The only loophole there is that a fed could still get on the network and ask you for something copyrighted -- if you have it, you're busted -- so it's got to be a Costco-type dealie.
Personally, I like the FreeNet theory.
What changes to HTTP would be required to effectively turn it into a working P2P protocol? Then the activity could move to port 80 with little or no conflict with existing services. Could HTTP be prohibited for being flexible enough to accomodate P2P applications?
From RFC 3449: "performance often degrades significantly because of imperfection and variability in the ACK feedback from the receiver to the sender."
prioritizing ACK packets with PF on OpenBSD
This was posted on Slashdot a while back. I personally use this for my home network with pretty much the same results posted there (as far as I can tell without doing formal testing). It's pretty much the only way I can keep my connection usable when my web server or torrents are having a good day.
PF is now available on OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and DragonFlyBSD. I think some of them may still be lacking ALTQ support (needed to do the stuff in that link), but I'm not sure, I don't keep track of all of them.
I'm vaguely aware of NetFilter on Linux having similar capabilities, but AFAIK you need to tell it how to detect ACK and URG packets, it doesn't "just know" like PF does. I could be wrong about that, as it's been a long time since I looked into it. IPF and IPFW may or may not be able to do this, I have no knowledge of their capabilities in this area.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
BSD is hiding.
Apple hiding since 1984.
Elvis is hiding.
All your .torrents are belong to us!
Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond the existence as mere clients and consumers- those people ride
Maybe some sort of mini-DNS like thing, parts of the who-is-online db replicated amonst the clients, etc.
E.g. something with no central server.
Maybe there are problems with this architecture, beyond having to open some ports in your firewall?
Just curious, but haven't thought about it too hard...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
funny coincidence with your sig and this article and thread. An episode of "the Prisoner" was the first "video" I ever saw being copied for sharing/timeshifting/what have you. Way before home VCRs of course. Guy I know had a super 8 cam and a tripod. A few of us locals were all sci fi nerds and would meet at each others homes for discussions, etc,we called them "cons" but really just like a dozen folks or something like that, anyway usually we would time them so that we could all enjoy something off the TV. He setup his cam and framed the toob and made a copy, don't recall how many reels of film it took, but he got the whole show, and after it was developed we watched it again. It was at best passable, by todays standards dismal, but all of us went WAY COOL!
With more and more people discovering the community enhanced joy that is bittorrent, I'm not surprised.
BitComet's default setting is to use a randomly generated port, and you can switch from port to port with the click of the "Random Port" button as often as you'd like.
Or you can choose to not listen on any ports, if you're like that, but you'll take a hit to the download speed.
MySpleen is one of the greatest torrent communities I've found, and if you're interested in MST3k, ATHF, Venture Bros, or the other Adult Swim 'toons, check us out!
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
... that does edonkey, gnutella 2, gnutella 1 AND bit torrent.
http://shareaza.com/
I can find anything on there, and it's open source! I wish there was a IM client that integrated it, but if you AND your IM friend both have shareaza, it's very easy to send a URI link to that person, and they can get the file that easy!
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
should i stop shipping pr0n by carrier pigeon?
rehab, captain ahab, you're chasing the wrong fish!
The only way the content cartel can get the last word in is to simply make encryption illegal worldwide except for authorized parties.
We're working on it.
-- Your friends at the RIAA
If you take some sugar, put it in baggies and sell it as cocain you'll still be arrested and convicted.
While this isn't quite the same thing, they'll figure out a way to make it so.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
"Contrary to media reports, P2P is not dying (PDF); it's just becoming harder to detect.
This is one of those honest statements that is like fresh air. It is trivial to beat today's firewalls and perimeter defences and have P2P right at your corporate desktop. Spyware also uses it. And if your network management does know it well they must have a good supply of crack.
The recipe is simple. Most companies and firewalls allow port 443, SSL -- right out to the internet. Oh yea, they can monitor the connect IP and maybe byte count but that's about it. Once connected through the proxy or firewall, you can tunnel any freaking protocol you want. One of my favorites is Secure Shell/PuTTy as setup right it is flexable and no coding required just some config work.
Now secure shell to your home Linux system to port 443. Yep, you don't have to run to port 22 -- protocol abuse today is rampant as it has ever been. Be sure to setuip a local port tunneling to your squid proxy at the home linux. And then use the port forwarding capability to send requests to your home system's proxy, which will relay the requests unhindered. All your company will see is SSL bytes going to a DSL or cable modem block. Keep the bytes down and it is likely they are not going to notice.
Now it is amazing how dumb assed users can be for needs of work. But don't under estimate what they will do for themselves. USERS DO DO THIS!
All a real good security pro has to do is put a shim on your computer to log your URLs. More advanced places might use "SSL in the middle" but not with IE. I is as secure as Charles Manson is stable, built to hack and is a hack. But there are ways of doing this but 99% of you out there they don't do it.
Why do they don't be more cautious about security? T'is simple, management stupidity followed by lack of discipline and careless non-caring employees. I/T techs today would do more if they had a product that was designed with some security and the management incentice to enforce protective policies.
But many admins have to get defensive their position for locking out a sheel account of ftp with a password of password that is live on the internet.
So unless your admin is really good and your users and management really good, your INSECURE.
The question to the business is threat, risk and cost. But most are too cheap until it is too late.
1/ Install super-secret p2p filesharing thingy
2/ Run monitoring firewall
3/ sue all ips that connect
4/ repeat 2-4
Perhaps slightly reverse enigineer all those neatly open-sourced programs to distinguish between incoming downloads and 'other stuff' (doesnt freenet store parts of other people's data on your computer?)
We're working on it.
-- Your friends at the RIAA
And we are way ahead of you.
Sincerely,
John Ashcroft & Tom Ridge
The name of the game is STFU. keep it on the down low. You can do anything you want, ...anything, just keep it quiet. ;) It has alway been that way and always will.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
"Bittorrent was never meant to be a p2p sharing program. It's meant to be an augmentation to the browser, allowing instantaneous burstable bandwidth, for free, in essense. Like ftp or http get but better."
Shame we can't mod this up. The primary difference between BT and P2P is the ability to hide your (usually crimminal) actions from the long arm of the law.
That fact alone destroys the argument that Kazaa, eMule, etc are for legitimate purposes. Legitimates use BT, with the benifits of P2P.
Illegals hide their actions and the distributed nature is just a side-benifit.
I used to have my P2P client running on a full tower. Now all of my p2p apps have been transferred to a mini atx system. They may think I've stopped, but under the blanket in the closet I use p2p in secret. Soon, I hope to use p2p on a wristwatch, forever pushing it further into the shadows.
"That's the purpose of the network, not petty copyright infringement."
It's all fun and games till you put an eye out.
"No one really cares if you download the latest movies from BT, but you'd get tracked down and in major trouble if you posted classified documents or other such material."
And exactly this attitude, is why I proposed Artnet. Just remember technology cuts both ways. It can be used by legitimate artists to keep pirates out of their hair. Of course there's the little matter of all the good stuff being on Artnet, while all Freenet will have is the...um, crumbs that fall off the table. Sorry about your luck, guys.
"I read somewhere a while back about a Japanese DVD trading ring - they actually mailed DVD's back and forth, perhaps pirating them once they had them. When you joined you had the name of the person who invited you in attached to your name until you built up a reputation. People looking to go underground would be wise to adopt such a policy. Invitation only, stay small, and develop a reputation system. Don't these people watch undercover movies like Wu jain dao (Infernal Affairs here in America)?"
Look up the breaking up of the mob, and tell me you can guarentee your little private network will not be infiltrated, and we all go to prison five years down the line, and all because we're too cheap to buy things. Talk about the foolishness of youth.
Anonymity (Mute) vs. Privacy (Waste) are mutually exclusive. You either know who you're talking to reliably, or you don't. You can't both know who you're talking to AND be anonymous.
:-/
Actually there's a variation of p2p, which gives both privacy and anonymity.
When you join in, you connect to the person you know and whom you have a mutual trust with. That person may be connected to other nodes, but those are not directly visible to you. Your peer is proxying for them instead. This way (at a cost of a proxying overhead) you still have an access to the data at every single node in a network, but you have no idea where it actually sits.
The key here is to trust your neighbours, that is to trust that they will not be disclosing you to their peers. If you choose your neighbours wisely (for instance, only connect to your real-world friends), your anonymity on the network is guaranteed. If anyone 'defects', the damage is limited to his friends only. That's pretty good resiliency if you ask me.
It's just something that we've been discussing locally with few friends of mine; haven't got time to prototype anything working yet
3.243F6A8885A308D313
The first ever links deployed in the ARPANET were 56 Kbps synchronous links.
Technically the ARPANET wasn't the "Internet". My point is more that the default assumption when designing both the orginal and modern "Internet" protocols, including those of the ARPANET, was symmetric bandwidth. I'd even go so far as saying that this wasn't a indentified assumption - up until the introduction of DSL, Cable and some forms of wireless, all bandwidth was symmetric. There was no reason to consciously design for bandwidth asymmetry, as it didn't exist.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Am I the only one getting confused around the abbrevation for peer 2 peer and playstation 2 portable?
There's not a PlayStation2 Portable yet?
Then how can it be dead?
I am the lead coder of a BitTorrent client. A few months back I began to receive reports of ISPs either blocking or severely throttling the upstream (to a point where the protocol became non-functional) of BitTorrent connections. As a result, I modified my codebase to by default choose a server port randomly, rather than within the default BitTorrent port range.
Lately, I've gotten more reports indicating that these ISPs that have been blocking BitTorrent have been using more sophisticated methods of detecting the protocol, by apparently sniffing the initial protocol handshake.
My response was this letter. The next iteration of the BitTorrent protocol is already being planned, and if this sort of behavior spreads, the new protocol's handshake will be made nearly impossible to sniff out. Yes, it's true BitTorrent is being misused for trading pirated content, but it's also being used for good purposes, such as publishing Linux distros, and in some cases it is practically impossible to obtain content without doing so via BitTorrent.
This will of course make it difficult to meter how much network traffic is being used by BitTorrent, or to throttle it moderately, but the purpose of BitTorrent is to distribute content, and all other concerns come second.
[Tips for running a successful Freenet node]
3 Most important ingredients:
Permanent connection
Bandwidth
Disk space
Without these you'll be complaining like the rest. Go ahead and set up a node, but optimum performance is a dream without all 3 above elements. Also, count on 2 days of letting it just run before you'll be able to get much done. After you're integrated things run much more smoothly!
If you're behind a firewall you'll need to know how to setup port forwarding. Windows install is the easiest, GNU systems should be trivial and there's a port for FreeBSD. I believe MacOSX can run it as well. If you can run a modern JavaVM, Freenet should be no trouble for you.
(About firewalls - if your $50 router/NAT/switch thingy cannot handle the hundreds of TCP connections Freenet can generate, you might want to either invest in a dedicated box (OpenBSD works well for me and allows me to prioritize traffic behind my interactive_ssh and vonage queues - Linux floppy distros should be fine too) or specify in freenet.conf to limit the number of open connections. Just be aware as connection tables can overload and distrupt the connection for all behind the NAT. Then again your $50 box may have no trouble at all. Port numbers are all random high port numbers making Freenet difficult to detect and firewall. Connections out will be made but the portforward is necessary for other nodes to connect to you. If nodes can't connect to you, performance will most likely be horrendous.)
If you just install Freenet and immediately try and download large files, you will be frusturated and give up. DON'T! Many freesites will not appear at all. NEVER FEAR! Let your node run in the background for a few days and get itself integrated into the mesh. Nodes that are more useful to the network (fast connection, large data store) will end up the most successful when downloading or uploading content. If you can't leave your machine running all the time or want to use freenet over dialup, fine, but your performance will not match those of others that can provide more to the network. Leeching is fine, it allows others to leech off of you - but leave your machine connected and Freenet's performance may end up suprising you.
Towards the beginning you may just want to start a number of downloads and count on many of them not completing - JUST WALK AWAY or do something else. Don't waste your time. By grabbing whatever bits you can, you'll increase the data in your own datastore and your connections within the network. If others find those bits from your node, your status will increase, more will connect to you and they will then be potential sources for more desired bits of your own. The better connectivity you've got, the more you will find. Leaving your node up at all times and keeping your datastore intact are the best ways to increase Freenet's performance (not just for you but for all).
THOSE PARANOID: I've been running my Freenet node wide open (no throttle) on my Earthlink cable connection in the heart of Raleigh, NC for some time. No threatening letters or trouble, my Vonage works fine (I do use pf's ALTQ) and those in my house have no trouble with connections, download or upload speeds)
For those that are already on Freenet and trying to download large files, one tool is critical. FUQUD (Freenet Utility for Queued Uploads and Downloads). Find it. Use it. Fred (the built in web interface) isn't going to cut it.
Regarding disk space. Unless you've got around say 2Gigs to dedicate to a node, your node may not perform as well as it could (200M is practical minimum). Consider the value you choose to be relatively permanant. You can't trade it with other uses - you build a datastore and that's the size, unusable for your MP3's or ogg's for example. They don't grow or shrink. You s
A good, and working, anonymous P2P alternative to Freent is I2P. The creator of I2P has been around for a while and cross talks with Freenet developers on occasion as both the Freenet and I2P community channels are on the anonymous irc network IIP, and irc.freenode.net.
A lot of I2P is put into the public domain, with parts of it being GPL. Try www.i2p.net for more information.
Did you post this anonymously because you're karma is too high? The **AA will be applying for a patent on this exact idea tomorrow. Anyone who tries it will get sued for patent infringement.
And since the RIAA and MPAA more or less own Congress, it's a mute point. They will just have a new law passed that makes any "mathematical derivation" of copyrighted information even more of a violation than the original.
I have little doubt that many of the people paying those RIAA out of court settlements only had partial files. Most people don't have the money to fight a huge corporation in court merely on the chance of getting a sympathetic judge who also believes that the plaintiff needs to actually prove its case.
If you need a good legal defense, it's already too late. That's why I prefer plain old anonymity. Before they can take you to court they have to find you.
Still it's certainly better than nothing and would be infinitely faster than TCP/IP obscuration, many men in the middle, strategies. I've never seen a practical implementation of anonymous p2p that wasn't painfully slow.
If only ISPs included anonymous proxies with their service plans and only kept logs for 4-6 hours.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
n/t
I don't think it would work. If the owner of the copyrighted work figured out the scheme (easy to do since you are *sharing* the files and presumably the technique to reassemble the original) they will sue you anyway. These pieces are not "worthless". They are derivative works. Just because each doesn't sound like the original does not mean it isn't a derivative work. They just has to be derived from the original (which they obviously are).
Also, I can envision the "backlash" of making general purpose encryption illegal -- Lots of slashdotters up in arms and the general public completely oblivious. Almost none of the media would cover the issue since they would be behind the move in the first place. Hmm... sorta like DMCA...
Every time I get a new DHCP address from my ISP, I get endless knocks at the ports by the five different protocols that the previous owner was using.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Tippingpoint Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) blocks all P2P regardless of port selection.
You're not alone,
--John Ashcroft
If the labels come after you for sharing such a file, tell them to sod off as the file in question is worthless without the other file which you did not share at the same time, did you?
The copyright merely has to "subsist in" the data, not be the recording itself. Even though worthless in isolation, I'm sure this would not hold water in court; it'd be an absurd interpretation of the purpose of the act if the only reason this file existed was to infringe copyright.
Incidentally, the careful choice of the words "subsist in" originally comes from, I do believe, copying large parts of others books into your own. It is ironic that it would apply on these points. Even if the words were less precise, the golden rule of statutory interpretation would protect the copyright owners: it'd be absurd to have for a user to choose to offer a file that contained data only used for copyright to be free of infringement by not having access to it on his own. The intention to infringe is there, as may be the intention to circumvent the law. At worst, it's contributing to infringement, probably exactly proportionate in liability to the amount that it is shared.
Now, if the user didn't intend to share the file, it's a whole different story. As well, there is a question as to whether the person sharing the a 'key' to the copyright infringed it, or contributed to its infringement.
Perhaps steganography would be more viable, being un-prosecutable by virtue of being undetectable.
Has anyone noticed that the RIAA employed slashdot posters seem to have Saturday off? I'm sure on Monday we will see scores of anti-P2P "it's stealing, you dirty thieves" posts. Hey, it's a living.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"from what I hear not only is it impossible to find and decrypt, but also impossible to use."
Sounds fair to me. Actions (even illegal ones) should have consequences (1).
(1) Unfortunately those consequences don't stay confined to just the bad guys. The honest pay higher prices for all those who don't, which percipitates a viscious cycle.
You rotton bastard! You just made me spray apricot peach tea all over my poor 'ol SGI's monitor!
Curses!
*sigh*
Well I am a mathmatician and network engineer, and I see the holes in your idea. However a more important question is: why should those with skills devote their energies towards your effort? The MPAA/RIAA/Book publishers aren't coming after us. Our skills and knowledge are generating enough income that thievery is a liability in so many ways, and we can afford to buy the product.
The very nature of your activities will attract only the unscrupulous, some of whom might have adequate skills to stay ahead of the law. But I will not place any bets on it.
Why isnt this behaviour to prioritize ACK packets the default operation in Linux?
Can any one help shed some light on doing this for Linux easily?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
My boss told me about a friend/acquaintance/whatever of his that works for a company that gets hired by the ??AA for an interesting task... basically, they crapflood the p2p networks with the filename of a movie or song (I think it was movies) that ends up being basically random data.
I asked about the scale, and I think he said something like "large".
Interesting stuff; I haven't seen it in action yet, but it's a neat idea.
your dog wants accuracy
Nah, just kidding ofcourse...
But seriously, why would you name the last of the secret haven ?
If I had any mod points, I would mod you down so people wont notice your comment !
This technique was talked about in detail a while ago. The first attack on it is as follows:
- Since the only purpose for distributing the files is to distribute the copyrighted material, it is likely to be legally the same.
- Needing to download two files of the same length as the file you want from different servers is really annoying.
One solution is a large repository of seemingly random data with separately distributed "recipe files" that describe how to rebuild the files you want. If you make the random files sufficently interconnected, you can make it so that any order to stop distributing a specific random looking block of data will prevent numerous legal files from being built in addition to the copywrited data that is targeted.
There are still some problems with that system, mostly in lack of ease of use.
As long as eMule still works, it's unlikely that anyone will actually adopt any system so complex.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
P2P is not dead, and it is not hiding. Look at Bittorrent, which is repeatidly used for legitimate uses: Linux ISOs, game demos, etc. Those are all out in the open. As far as copyright infringement uses go, they are also out in the open and have their own frickin website for god's sake!
The next iteration of the BitTorrent protocol is already being planned, and if this sort of behavior spreads, the new protocol's handshake will be made nearly impossible to sniff out.
If the protocol spec is open, any decent stateful firewall manufacturer will be able to put together BitTorrent-NG sniffer in under a week. That's regardless of whether it uses dynamic ports, port-hopping or any other evasion techniques.
If the protocol has full-blown privacy and authentication (think IKE or TLS), it won't be possible to fully sniff it, but it can still be detected. And what can be detected - can be blocked.
The point is this - incorporating evasion and obfuscation techniques into an open protocol is a wasted effort. Please think about it for a second, and I'm sure you'll understand.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Perhaps steganography would be more viable, being un-prosecutable by virtue of being undetectable
e ss.org/detection.phpi /Steganalysis
Top Google Results for "detecting steganography."
http://niels.xtdnet.nl/stego/
http://www.outgu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik
the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed - w. gibson
... he posted a dupe! ;-)
While being technically right, explain that to the judge. :-/
But you can go even further:
Just XOR notcopyrighted-song.mp3 (of the same length) with copyrighted-song.mp3-prndbits.bin and you have a ligitmate cause to spread copyrighted-song.mp3-prndbits.bin.
Actually, I got a letter for downloading but not finishing a movie a while ago. I started to torrent a movie (Black Hawk Down, for the record), and about 10 seconds and 20kb in went "Nah, don't really want to see it and its going too slow to even waste my time on" and canceled it. Month later, my ISP emails me saying they recieved a complaint about me sharing this movie. I was like "WTF!? I barely even downloaded or uploaded a sliver of it!".
:)
So no, they don't take the quantity of the infraction into consideration when mass mailing their letters. I suppose from their view, it makes no difference if you steal one car, fifty cars, or someones bumper: they still think you're guilty of GTA. Though your punishment if convicted would probably be different depending on the degree of your actions. Fortunatly for me, I live in Canada where the MPAA (or whatever the Canuck equivalent is) can bite my shiny metal ass.
I usually get butttorrent after a night of hard-drinking and Taco Bell. I wasnt aware of the dedicated trackers.
AL-CAIDA?
(Troll me baby! Troll me till it hurts!!!)
Your proposal sounds interesting, at first. What happens when the content cartels set up 10 clients sharing fake prndbits.bin-copyrighted-song.mp3
and fake copyrighted-song.mp3-prndbits.bin? Instead of downloading copyrighted-song.mp3 10 times, now you have to download 20 times just to find it's all fake. If you're thinking of checksums, they don't really work until you get the complete file.
Why not just share legal songs, and delete all or don't share any of the cartels' contents? This is the only way to fight them, unless you want to advocate civil disobedience, but then you would want to get sued for that to work.
Actually outlawing this scheme would require outlawing the XOR operation, which probably wouldn't happen.
After all, with One Time Pad encryption one cannot tell the key from the ciphertext, with the proper key ALL files (with sufficient length) could be XOR:ed to any file.
as the RIAA and MPAA and all other possible Ass(es )of America go more agressive, the user will
1/ Learn to use and to love some fast open proxies that will effectively be the IP that is declared to the network (Azureus for Bittorent already allows this, with password management and all)
2/ Learn to use and love some private VPN with a few friends, so as to make "local" content available with like minded friends -- the guy that created winamp, I think, created an encrypted "collaborative network"... dn't remember the name, and the encryption was deemed "experimental", but it exists
3 / Learn to use and love a software that does it all - VPN, Encryption, Auto-proxy-connecting - and **AA will have to get 10% in Echelon to hack into it...
which could happen.
Anonymity (Mute) vs. Privacy (Waste) are mutually exclusive. You either know who you're talking to reliably, or you don't. You can't both know who you're talking to AND be anonymous.
Of course you can. If I have your verified identity (e.g. pgp key), and send you a pgp'd message over an anon network, I both know who I'm talking to and I'm anonymous.
Of course, the other party wouldn't neither know who he's talking to or be anonymous. But that might not matter if he is e.g. a resistance organizer in the US, while the other is an oppressed individual in China.
Naturally, both can't be anonymous. You can't at the same time know and not know who you're talking to. Btw, some of those closed-groups solutions are more legally disturbing than not, if you ask me. I don't know how far those "organized crime" laws go most places, but I'd be concerned it'd fall under those. Of course, those were made for the Mafia etc., but look what they use e.g. the Patriot act for.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
" *sigh* I hate having to say this over and over again:
ANONYMOUS NETWORKS LIKE THIS (or Freenet) ARE NOT JUST FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT!!! "
The obscuring of identity says otherwise.
And even the "I'm a political dissenter" rings hollow when you note that most of the P2P activity is in the US, not China or some other country.
If I were called CAIDA, I'd also be hiding, you insensitive clod.
The **AA will be applying for a patent on this exact idea tomorrow.
The RIAA is patenting the one time pad? Will wonders never cease.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Then why do we have a story a few lines up that P2P usage hasn't drooped and is actually on the rise?
Oh ya. its all about statistics, proving what you set out to prove in the first place..
Its all lies..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Great thought experiment, but it won't work. I guarentee that your XORed file will be what is called a "derivative work" and is just as much a copyright infringement to distribute as the original song. Sorry, thats just the may current copyright is set up.
because movies and music made these days are not even worth my time anymore.
Before there was Napster or IRC, there was ftp.
Today, ftp is not considered p2p, because of the strong delineation between servers and clients, but this delineation was not always so strong.
Once upon a time, almost any computer connected to the internet could be expected to have ftp, and an ftp daemon which allowed others to upload/download files. There was not this "a few servers run ftpd / many clients run ftp" asymmetry. It was a de facto peer-to-peer environment.
In a sense, the surge of p2p technology is a reclosing of the client/server gap, using more up-to-date user interfaces and protocols (eg, incorporating now the ability to search for interesting hosts; it sure beats grepping 'w' on the school server and trying IP's at random).
-- TTK
As you seem to have missed it, the issue is the behaviour of TCP when it operates over a path involving links which have asymmetric bit per second values.
I suggest reading RFC 3449 - TCP Performance Implications of Network Path Asymmetry for further information.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
actually though about this before y'know. See e.g. the Freenet FAQ to see how to counter both of your 'attacks'.
Here's a Freenet-only link On the Proper Care and Feeding of Permanent Nodes.
Contents include:
Changing Options
Running the Node
Monitoring the Node
Restarting the Node
Network Participation
Network Integration
Finer Points
Stable or Unstable?
Datastore Size
Bandwidth Allotment
Connection Limiting
When Things Go Wrong
Clock Skew
Quite helpful for tuning and optimizing your node once you get it up and running.
Regular internet link to the page is http://freenet.org.nz/freemail/
Freemail runs on Freenet or Entropy networks.
[from the page.... apologies for formatting - lameness filter...]
FreeMail is a peer-to-peer Mail Server program (aka 'Mail Transfer Agent' or 'MTA') that makes it possible for you to send and receive email messages with unprecedented levels of privacy and anonymity.
Normal mailservers (such as Exim, Sendmail, qMail etc) communicate directly over the normal Internet, and send/receive all of your emails in plaintext for Big Brother and goodness knows how many companies to see. Even if your ISP uses encryption for transfer of mail, a simple court order (or bribe) is all it takes for your emails to end up in front of prying eyes, even many years after you sent or received them..
On the other hand, FreeMail encrypts your messages and hides them within the privacy-protecting Freenet network, where they are picked up and decrypted only by the people you're sending your messages to.
Features
A lot of thought has gone into FreeMail's design, to arrive at a secure, robust yet user-friendly system to satisfy your email communication needs.
So far, FreeMail includes the following features:
Evolution, Outlook Express)
People familiar with Freenet will also understand and appreciate the following features:
At this time, there are no third-party certification. The author is open to suggestions from users about how this should happen. For example, a web of trust amongst linked freesites, assigning 'karma' to mail addresses.
A
On the Care and feeding of Permanent Nodes
and Information on FreeMail, totally private and anonymous email.
The 2nd and 3rd links are comments tagged onto the first.
Freenet is a little different. In freenet, files are encrypted with keys based off their own cryptographic hash - making it only possible to retrieve those files if you know the hash.
Due to the routing system, any server operator has plausible denyability about any data on their system, but specific files can be identified as being on specific hosts (and even as being stored in specific encrypted files on those hosts).
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.