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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."
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.
good god. am I the only one that is sick of this gandhi quote being used for _everything_???
To compare the struggle that gandhi went through, to P2P apps. Okay, I do see the freedom of speech angle, but really, this gandhi quote turns up about every third article. It only cheapens it. Much the same as the martin niemoller quote "first they came for the communists..." and so on.
And parent didnt even get the quote right!
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Throw a "then profit" step in there, i dont care, at least get it right!
And again, if you use it for each and every topic, it loses meaning. Please reserve such things for _important_ things. Maybe you consider this topic to be that important, okay, in that case I don't fault you directly. Im just sick of seeing important quotes from important people used on non-important topics.
no offense.
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
Freenet is still fairly slow, but that doesn't really matter. The goal of Freenet is that you can post and download stuff, completely anonymously. 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. On Freenet, you can do whatever you want, and no one can find you or stop you. That's the purpose of the network, not petty copyright infringement.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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.
And Waste is impossible to detect because each person running Waste can set their own port number (from the default 1337), and even set it to run on port 80 if they wanted.
Anonymous P2P like Mute is calling itself the next generation in P2P, and sacrifices performance for privacy - i.e. you don't know who's requesting a file, you only know who you're connected to, so you could actually be a conduit for dozens of people sharing files.
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.
Private networks suffer from the same problems as ShadowCrew - if you let too many people in, one person could comprimise the entire network and learn the identities of everyone. There are websites out there that share waste networks. That just seems silly to me. Waste is about *privacy* so publicizing your existance is just stupid. The problem then becomes finding a group of people you trust who have different content from you.
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)?
I know this is meant to be funny, but on a serious note, it's probably NOT a good thing for people to think P2P is on the decline.
i) It would mean less people would join the P2P community, which means less sources and less content for sharing.
ii) RIAA et co. may just think that their heavy-handed tactics are working and step-up their efforts.
If anything, we WANT everyone to know that P2P is alive and kicking and there's no way of stopping the revolution.