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BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of Traffic

Pranjal writes "According to a reuters article on Yahoo, BitTorrent accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet -- more than all other peer-to-peer programs combined -- and dwarfs mainstream traffic like Web pages." The article goes on to talk about how BT is no longer beneath the radar of those who like to sue file sharers.

65 of 788 comments (clear)

  1. I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative
    Common Legal Uses:

    Linux and BSD ISOs (duh)
    Video Game Demos (those things are getting huge!)
    eBook Collections (e.g. Gutenburg)
    Publicly Available Videos (e.g. Star Trek fan videos, Presidential Debates, funny commercials)
    Software Distribution (How can a database application be more 1 gig in size?!)
    Website Content Mirrors (e.g. PDFs, promotional videos, images, etc.)

    That's a LOT of content right there. Can anyone think of items I'm missing?
    1. Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files by Noksagt · · Score: 3, Informative

      Live concert recordings with explicit permission from the copyright holders.

    2. Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files by crisco · · Score: 3, Informative

      Blizzard has also used it to distribute World of Warcraft videos. And Bram was working with Valve on Steam (NYT article), another legitimate use in the gaming world.

      --

      Bleh!

  2. Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by agoliveira · · Score: 5, Informative

    The answer in in the question itself: don't develop/store in USA.
    This kind of software is not ilegal here in Brazil, for instance.

    --
    Scientia est Potentia
  3. Re:C&D time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    Given that BT requires a link to a .torrent, how hard is it for companies to send a C&D to the ISP/owner of any site hosting illegal .torrent links?


    In many countries, hosting directions to find illegal copies is not in itself illegal. Many companies do send c&ds, anyway, but savvy overseas operators don't care.
  4. Re:C&D time? by Shakrai · · Score: 3, Informative

    Given that BT requires a link to a .torrent, how hard is it for companies to send a C&D to the ISP/owner of any site hosting illegal .torrent links?

    Who says you need to put the .torrent file on a website? I could just as easily DCC it to you on IRC and you could manually key it into your BitTorrent program.

    Not that your point isn't valid -- I'm just pointing out that BitTorrent isn't dependant on a webhost to function.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  5. BT is not secure by bludstone · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not even remotly secure. People can see what you are downloading, no problems.

    Now, I love torrents. I use them for mostly anime, which the companies have, so far, given us a polite nod to do so. Just take them down when they put in a request, and no scary lawyers. (Although I am confident that this is going to change)

    Of course, torrent has also made people used to convenient downloading of big in-demand files.

    So, what will the *AA's going after BTs do? The same thing that going after p2p has done. Create a new, more secure, more stealthy "sequal" to bittorrent.

    --

    no .sig
    1. Re:BT is not secure by LordLucless · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, it wouldn't solve the problem. That just encrypts the traffic end-to-end, which isn't how the MPAA would get thier information.

      BitTorrent works like this. Download a .torrent file. It tells your BT client the location of the tracker, and a unique ID representing your file. The client opens a connection to the tracker, and requests the IP addresses of some peers. The tracker picks about 20 peers, sends your client the IP addresses, and your client then opens connections to the peers and starts uploading/downloading to them.

      For the MPAA to get IP addresses, all they have to do is connect to the tracker and say "Hey, gimme some IP addresses", and the tracker will gladly oblige. Encrypting the tracker traffic would just mean nobody could eavesdrop on exactly *which* IP addresses the MPAA was receiving.

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  6. It's easy to track down bit torrent downloaders by Serveert · · Score: 4, Informative

    BitTorrent wasn't designed to hide your identity unfortunately.

    It's only a matter of time until they seriously crack down on Bit Torrent which is too bad because it's the only p2p app that will pull down 160KB/sec for me.

    The secret is to allow for unlimited d/l and u/l but then create a perl script to monitor netstat -na and kill those connections via iptables which have a high recv q. Otherwise they'll suck down all your upload bandwidth.

    --
    2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
  7. Great legal BT links? by freelunch · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about some torrent sites with great legal content?

    This site is excellent.

    If you have never used BT and watched how it consumes bandwidth, you really ought to check it out. Pretty neat.

    Tools like Etherape will draw funky realtime network connectivity maps. Watching your computer talk to that many other peers makes you feel pretty exposed.

    Azureus is my preferred graphical client under Linux. Any other favorites?

  8. Re:C&D time? by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Informative

    easy.

    how easy it is to host it somewhere where you can post such files/links(torrents) without fear? just about just as easy.

    for example, piratebay gets such threats regularly. here's one of their responses http://static.thepiratebay.org/sega_response.txt.

    how easy it is for a litigation company to milk a publisher for money, by offering them a service that they'll scan the net for infringiments and then bill them (the publisher) for every c&d they send(and sell it to the ceo's as if this created automagically more income for the publisher, however, conviently for the litigation company the effect of these c&d's on sales can't be measured at all so they got a good milking cow right there without any means for the client to measure their 'performance' ).

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  9. Re:Can you be sued for only transferring part? by LordNimon · · Score: 2, Informative
    Can you be sued for only transferring part?

    Yes. Any other questions?

    --
    And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
    To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
  10. Sad day for file sharing? by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 5, Informative

    BitTorrent was intentionally designed not to hide IP addresses as its developer, Bram Cohen, openly acknowledges. That's because his goal wasn't to develop a P2P tool that could be used to share content illegally but to develop a P2P tool that reduced bandwidth for legally shared content, such as Linux ISOs, etc.

    --

    "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
  11. Re:Do those uses make sense? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    "Linux and BSD ISOs (duh)"

    Doesn't it make more sense to get these from "the source"? No problems with bad labels here.

    No. Even back when I had an RHN membership, I downloaded RH9 from BitTorrent instead of RedHat. It was much faster. The official sites got slammed, so the distributed system worked better. BitTorrent is ideal for new releases because there are lots of peers active on those files at that time. This is exactly the situation BitTorrent was designed for, and it works well.

  12. Re:C&D time? by OverlordQ · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why? . . because all the .torrent contains in the hash information of the file and some IP's. Nothing illegal is contained in the .torrent itself.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
  13. Re:C&D time? by jandrese · · Score: 4, Informative

    The tough part is that the .torrent file is pretty small. Just about anybody can host it, in fact many .torrent files get hosted from several sources online just because they're so small and organizing them is so useful. ISPs have a much tougher time tracking down people who have .torrents hosted because they don't take up massive bandwidth the way they would if the people were hosting .avis or .mp3s directly.

    If you really want to shut down a torrent you need to shut down the tracker. The tracker needs a fair bit of bandwith (noticable by ISPs) and is necessary for the whole thing to work. That said, trackers require an order of magnitude (or two) less bandwidth than people who host files directly, so even these guys can fall under the ISPs radar. Legal challenges can be spotty (some ISPs remove the files immediatly, others (in foreign countries) don't care), and suing the user is obviously not a viable option except as a way to extort money from 8 year old girls.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  14. Here is the study by RealProgrammer · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... that apparently started all of this. It was published by Cache Logic, who make traffic statistics boxes.

    http://www.cachelogic.com/research/slide1.php

    --
    sigs, as if you care.
  15. Re:Television Shows by famewolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    MGM is big about cracking down on people downloading their movies or tv shows...recently they cracked down on several people sharing the "Dead like Me" show which is only available on Showtime.

  16. Re:Thank god.... by Soko · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wrong.

    I got a C&D letter from my ISP, who got one from AOL TimeWarner. My kid downloaded a movie via Bittorrent, and my account was at risk. It wasn't a legal thing other than my TOS with my ISP forbids downloading copyright protected works. Plus, I'm not convinced that trading of copyrighted works without some form of payment to the copyright holder is a good thing. Basically, what you're doing is showing them how large a market there is for thier crap. I'd rather everyone just boycott the crappy content (I gave the kid hell for risking my connection for "The Butterfly Effect") so they get the idea to produce better stuff, not try and suck all the downloaders into paying.

    I now only allow bittorrent when I need an ISO of ubuntu or fedora or something.

    If you're Canadian, be careful.

    Soko

    --
    "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
  17. Re:C&D time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Well, on Kazaa, you'll probably get a lot of old torrents that don't work anymore. & if you're using Kazaa or any other P2P program already, there's the question of why use two P2P programs.

    The problem with a torrent of torrents is that torrents are static. So each time you want to add another torrent to the set of torrents, you have to create a new torrent for that new set.

  18. Re:Thank god.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's legal in Canada to upload/download music. The judges decision does not include copyrighted movies or software.

  19. who cares by subzero_ice · · Score: 2, Informative

    The porn industry said that it didn't care as long as people share the porn within themself and weren't making a profit out of it, so most of us are fine and shouldn't be affected my our friends at MPAA/RIAA.

  20. Re:Nobody is suing file sharers. by phusikos · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's certainly true. For now at least.

    The problem arises when (MP|RI)AA lobbyists put it into the head of lawmakers that it the applications are partially to blame for the copyright infringement. This is what we saw driving the INDUCE act.

    With Bush's re-election and widening GOP majorities in both houses, I fear that we might see BitTorrent and other P2P systems targetted by a second incarnation of INDUCE. Hopefully the fact that BT isn't anonymous will innoculate against that possibility.

  21. Re:Has Major ISP started to throttle BT? by MachDelta · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try changing ports from the defaults (6881-6889) to something else. I've heard rumours that some ISPs are throttling the transfer rates on those ports in an effort to reduce bandwidth consumption. Not suprising if BT is now sucking back 35% of net traffic. Anyways, try switching over to a different series of ports and see if that helps.

  22. Re:C&D time? by bgalehouse · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ah, no actually. Tracker doesn't have any part of the file. Well, it has some checksums for the file, but then, those are already in the .torrent.

  23. Re:so little HTTP bandwidth? by zokrath · · Score: 2, Informative

    A torrent client can provide you with a sutatined bandwidth load as wide as your pipe is; generally several hundred kB a second for standard broadband, and three or four times that for professional or academic connections. Furthermore these programs are left running twenty four hours a day in most cases, and there are millions of clients running worldwide.

    In contrast, web pages are rather tiny, and you only load one every few minutes, or at most several times a minute. Certainly there are bloated flash-driven monstrosities pretending to be functional web pages, but they are in enough of a minority to not change the numbers by much.

  24. Re:C&D time? by Foz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why oh why would you not P2P without a condom? BT Plugins like SafePeer (for Azureus) or applications like Protowall use blacklists from places like Bluetack to filter out known *AA addresses, among others. I don't really know how effective they are, but I'd be curious to hear from people that use them and still get C&D's. I have heard of plenty of people getting C&D's but those people weren't using condoms.

    YMMV of course. I'm not advocating digital theft, nor am I criticizing it. I'm just curious as to why people aren't protecting themselves. Maybe I'm just fooling myself that they work at all, but I'd like to think they do.

    -- Foz

  25. Re:Do those uses make sense? by jdreed1024 · · Score: 1, Informative
    Google only caches HTML.

    That's not even a little bit true. Google caches PostScript, PDF, Word, Excel, just to name a few. In fact, according to their FAQ, they cache 12 file types, and plan to add more.

    Now, that's not to say that Google will replace BitTorrent, but they cache a heck of a lot more than HTML.

    --
    There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
  26. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by JaxGator75 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Since this is Bit Torrent we are talking about, it should be noted that you cannot Download without Uploading. That's what makes it inherently dangerous to those that prize annonymity...

    /brazen

    --
    Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
  27. Re:C&D time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Also, the problem with .torrents on Kazaa is that there's no authenticity. Sometimes people want to be sure that they are getting files from a specific group. You can solve the authenticity problem with signatures on Freenet, but the .torrent files themselves need to refer to specific URLs of the trackers, so it is still as shut-downable as before, no matter how you distribute the .torrent file.

  28. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 4, Informative
    It is not illegal to download or upload anything. Not yet anyway. It is a civil issue.
    Wrong. It is a civil issue (as opposed to a criminal one), but that doesn't make it "not illegal" -- it most definitely is illegal to violate copyright law.

    In either case though downloading doesn't count as infringement as far as I know. It's only when you start uploading that you have problems.
    Wrong. Read US Code, Title 17, Sec 106; the copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work.
    The only way they could get the IP of downloaders would be to set up their own Torrent/filesharer
    Anyone participating in a torrent will be able to see the IP addresses of other users on the torrent. And yes, infringement notices do get sent to Bittorrent users quite frequently now.
    and that would be considered entrapment
    Doubtful.
    * IANAL
    Obviously.
    --

    How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
  29. Re:Can you be sued for only transferring part? by ironfrost · · Score: 5, Informative

    >copyright law treats one second the same as a minute or an hour of material

    That's not actually true. According to the 1976 Copyright Act, as interpreted by the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives (Source):

    (9) Multimedia Material: Up to 10% or 3 minutes, whichever is less, in the aggregate of a copyrighted motion media work may be reproduced without permission. Up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds, of the music and lyrics from an individual musical work (or in the aggregate of extracts from an individual work), whether the musical work is embodied in copies, or in audio or audiovisual works, may be reproduced without permission.

    Considering the way BitTorrent works, a possible defence might be that you're not copying more than 30 seconds of the work from any one source, so your actions are legal. Of course, this is completely against the spirit of the law and would result in further restrictions just as soon as the Government got around to passing them...

  30. Re:Television Shows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    BayTSP sent the following letter to my ISP and they forwarded it to me so it looks like Paramount pictures is definitely enforcing their copyrights on tv episodes distributed through bittorrent

    Dear Sir or Madam:

    BayTSP, Inc. ("BayTSP") swears under penalty of perjury that Paramount Pictures Corporation ("Paramount") has authorized BayTSP to act as its non-exclusive agent for copyright infringement notification. BayTSP's search of the protocol listed below has detected infringements of Paramount's copyright interests on your IP addresses as detailed in the attached report.

    BayTSP has reasonable good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of in the attached report is not authorized by Paramount, its agents, or the law. The information provided herein is accurate to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this letter is an official notification to effect removal of the detected infringement listed in the attached report. The attached documentation specifies the exact location of the infringement.

    We hereby request that you immediately remove or block access to the infringing material, as specified in the copyright laws, and insure the user refrains from using or sharing with others Paramount's materials in the future (see, 17 U.S.C. 512).

    Further, we believe that the entire Internet community benefits when these matters are resolved cooperatively. We urge you to take immediate action to stop this infringing activity and inform us of the results of your actions. We appreciate your efforts toward this common goal.

    Please send us a prompt response indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter. Please reference the Notice ID number above in your response.

    Nothing in this letter shall serve as a waiver of any rights or remedies of Paramount with respect to the alleged infringement, all of which are expressly reserved. Should you need to contact me, I may be reached at the following address:

    Mark Ishikawa
    Chief Executive Officer
    BayTSP, Inc.
    PO Box 1314
    Los Gatos, CA 95031

    v: 408-341-2300
    f: 408-341-2399
    paramount-picture@copyright-compliance.com

    *pgp public key is available on the key server at ldap://keyserver.pgp.com

    Note: The information transmitted in this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, reproduction, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers.

    This infringement notice contains an XML tag that can be used to automate the processing of this data. If you would like more information on how to use this tag please contact BayTSP.

    Infringed Work: Star Trek Enterprise
    Infringing FileName: star.trek.enterprise.401.hdtv-lol.[BT].avi
    Infringing FileSize: 367181824
    Protocol: BitTorrent
    Infringers IP Address: xx.xx.xx.xx
    Infringer's User Name:
    Infringer's DNS Name: xxxxx.xxxxxx.xxx
    Initial Infringement Timestamp: 12 Oct 2004 xx:xx:xx GMT
    Recent Infringement Timestamp: 12 Oct 2004 xx:xx:xx GMT

  31. BT and Blizzard by meplaysocr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Blizzard is using BT for transfering files to their Testers of their World of Warcraft game. Every time we get a new client download its well over 2gigs of data they are pushing. Patches are around 250-300megs. That's a lot of data to be pushing around.

    --

    Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
  32. Re:C&D time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    the tracker file points to a centerlised server, the server delegates to each client other client ip's to p2p connect to

    just like you need a hub in dc, you need a bt server for bt

    and since it is a centeral point, you take that centeral point down, and that tracker file is next to useless

  33. Solution: Publisher Anonymity BT with I2P by Famatra · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Given that BT requires a link to a .torrent, how hard is it for companies to send a C&D to the ISP/owner of any site hosting illegal .torrent links? "

    A few people are working on an anonymous BT tracker tool system for I2P.*ONLY* the BT tracker will be anonymous in this subtool that is being worked on as seen here on an update from 2 days ago. This would allow for publisher anonymity and should be fast since the tracker only coordinates the peers, with the peers doing the heavy lifting.

    Of course having full anonymity (for the peers as well) would be useful , and maybe possible, but as your post suggsted - BT is vunerable at the tracker/publisher source. This is a solution to that vunerability, and in any event I2P is fully anonymous itself, if you want peer anonymity for a file :).

    This BT tool is not ready yet for I2P, but I2P itself is making remarkable progress so I would not be surprised if it is ready within less than a few months. For more information you can also find the #I2P channel, with the #Freenet channel, on irc.freenode.net , I2P's chat network and IIP (I2P and the Metro IIP are linked).

  34. Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by antiMStroll · · Score: 4, Informative

    Use Peergurardian and Blocklist Manager. Not 100% bulletproof but still a greatway to protect your computer from most unwanted visitors.

  35. Torrents and the *AA by colonslashslash · · Score: 5, Informative
    Myself and Matt from The Linux Mirror Project run BitTorrent 24/7/365, seeding out from 4 servers on 100mbps pipes, and thats just for the Linux ISO torrents, I also am usually running it from home a good 18 hours a day.

    The thing to consider is that unlike Kazaa-like networks where the big bad *AA could search for their albums / movies and find out how many illegal files a user has by viewing their shared folder, torrents exist only for a single entity at a time, so the *AA trying to sue someone for downloading [insert crappy pop album here] would only be able to sue for that particular infringment, and they wouldn't be able to prove the user has 10,000 other albums on their system.

    This, I would think, makes it dramatically harder, and alot less financially viable for them to start dragging BitTorrent users downloading illegal files into court, and is probably why it hasn't happened yet.

    --
    She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
    1. Re:Torrents and the *AA by sheddd · · Score: 2, Informative
      "No, but it DOES allow them to see every single IP address of every single peer, seed, and client using that .torrent... which gives them enough ammo to go to ISPs and begin scaring people with threat letters."

      So do most other p2p apps I'm aware of:

      Fasttrack Network (Kazaa, Etc.)

      Direct Connect (If you can join)

      Gnutella, Emule, more

      I'm not saying most of these programs easily allow you to get ip's using the client, but once it's running you could figure it out with netstat, or could modify the code to show you what information is available. With the funds the xxAA are spending on this, I'd imagine they have some nice programs to easily compile p2p data and spit it into some database; if I were them I'd say,

      SELECT from P2PDB * SORT BY 'Cooperative ISP','SizeofISP' WHERE 'ItsOurClientsMaterial' (well something like that)

      And start from the top of the list.

      The only anonymous p2p I'm aware of is freenet.

  36. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Informative

    The only way they could get the IP of downloaders would be to set up their own Torrent/filesharer

    The torrent announcer is basically just a web CGI. A properly made wget command will give you the list of all the IPs, without having to mess with actually connecting to the swarm.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  37. Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by shadowjk · · Score: 5, Informative

    The university through which my own university's connectivity is provided, has quite a hefty firewall setup, with the capacity to classify traffic based on content rather than port usage. They then later used this to setup traffic shaping and limit p2p activity to a mere fraction of what it was before.

    As the hotlinking whore I am, I will just link to their week-long sampling of traffic, which shows that BitTorrent accounted for 44% of outgoing traffic. This is before traffic shaping. No graphs of after-traffic shaping has been provided (yet).

    In: http://www.cc.utu.fi/verkko/maarat/sisaan.png
    Out: http://www.cc.utu.fi/verkko/maarat/ulos.png

    Translation:
    Muut = Other
    Rest should be self-explanatory.

  38. Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by pthisis · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not "illegal" in the United States either.

    Yes it is. It's not criminal, but it is illegal. The fact that you won't be prosecuted by the DA but rather sued in civil court doesn't mean that it's not illegal.

    --
    rage, rage against the dying of the light
  39. Re:Thank god.... by debrain · · Score: 4, Informative

    Both the parent and grandparent seem to touch, but not quite hit, the mark.

    Downloading is protected under, at least, Part VIII of the Copyright Act, which is "private copying". From it, you can infer that you can download as much music as you like. Private copying arose from the days of tape cassettes; it gives musical copyright holders the right to levy blank audio media as a form of remuneration for private copying. It only covers music. Movies and software downloads can violate copyright without permission.

    Uploading was upheld on an evidentiary matter. There was insufficient evidence to show that the user intended to upload the music, but rather uploading seemed to be a side-effect of using the peer to peer software, according to the judge.

    To be clear, the judge did not "legalize" uploading. He simply stated that there was insufficient evidence to show that the user intended to upload, in other words, he never had the mental culpability (ie. mens rea) to have infringed the copyright.

    So, as another posted noted, you can have a shared folder if it is unlikely to be shown that you intended to share its contents, and you can likely download music under the private copying provisions of the Copyright Act.

  40. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Here's a few linebreaks, they're free

    That said, neither case is entrapment. The whole "if you are a cop, you must say so" thing is absolute utter rubbish, and always has been.

    It would not be entrapment to simply stand on the corner and make the standard hand signals for "want/got weed" and bust people as they buy. Entrapment would be a cop offering you a free joint then selling you a bag of the stuff, and busting you for possession. Or pressuring you (not just inviting) you to engage in the activity you're busted for. However, it wouldn't be entrapment for him to offer you a joint and bust you for carrying 20 kilos of coke while he was selling you a quarter of pot.

    Basically, entrapment is a form of planting evidence using self-incrimination. Using it to bust you for another crime in a sting is perfectly allowable.

    (no ranting about the idiotic drug war please, you'll be preaching to the choir where I'm concerned)

  41. Re:Do those uses make sense? by mcmonkey · · Score: 4, Informative
    Google would be better for most of this. For most of this, it makes more sense to get the files elsewhere. For now, BT makes the most sense for copyright infringement materials, where for the most part no-one dares to host them on typical static web pages or download sites.

    AtariAmarok completely missing the point of BitTorrent and has probably never used it.

    BT is crap for most copyright infringement materials. Why? Actually, for the exact reason stated--"for the most part no-one dares to host them on typical static web pages or download sites."

    BT is nothing like napster or kazaa or that sort of P2P app. There is no search function in the BT client. Most BT links are on typical web pages. (Ok, they're not static--the list of torrents is probably in a database or flat file and page generated. But then again, look around the web, the typical web page these days is not static.)

    As far the best source for ISOs, Gutenburg, game demos...

    WHERE THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

    No, not Earth, silly...this web site. /.

    Hello, McFly. Ever hear of the slashdot effect? Ever hear of so many people hitting a server at the same time the poor thing dies? DDoS?

    So when the DNF demo comes out, and a million fanboys on DSL at home and T-1s at work all go to download it at the same time, "the source" is the ABSOLUTELY WORST PLACE ON THE INTERNET to try to grab a copy.

    Now, follow me, over the rainbow.

    Imagine...it's easy if you try...an internet where we harness the bandwidth of all those fanboys. A system where instead of the flow of information getting choked off, the flow actually increases as more people download the file!

    AtariAmarok mentions mirrors. Well, what if--I know this is crazy, but hang with me here--what if not only did each person downloading a file share that file to others to take advantage of downstream and upstream bandwidth, so that each download becomes a mirror, but what if this could happen simultaneous to download. Each user could share whatever piece of the file available locally without waiting for the download to complete. Each download, instead of being part of the problem, is part of the solution!

    If only such a wonder system of distribution existed. Oh wait, it does.

    AtariAmarok does make one valid point. How do you know what you are downloading is what you think you are downloading?

    You don't. But then again, someone could hack the DNS server so when you try to visit slashdot you actually end up at some goat-related web site.

    So, for AtariAmarok the solution is to unplug your modem, turn off your computer, and encase your hard drive in carbonite.

    For the rest of us, BT is here. Ask your doctor if BT is right for you.

  42. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by Sparr0 · · Score: 2, Informative

    It is also a criminal issue, if you do it enough.

    TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 5 > 506 Prev | Next
    506. Criminal offenses
    Release date: 2004-04-30
    (a) Criminal Infringement.-- Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either--
    (1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
    (2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
    shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code.
    For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.

    TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113 > 2319 Prev | Next
    2319. Criminal infringement of a copyright
    Release date: 2004-08-06
    (a) Whoever violates section 506 (a) (relating to criminal offenses) of title 17 shall be punished as provided in subsections (b) and (c) of this section and such penalties shall be in addition to any other provisions of title 17 or any other law.
    (b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506 (a)(1) of title 17--
    (1) shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500;
    (2) shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense under paragraph (1); and
    (3) shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, in any other case.
    (c) Any person who commits an offense under section 506 (a)(2) of title 17, United States Code--
    (1) shall be imprisoned not more than 3 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more;
    (2) shall be imprisoned not more than 6 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense under paragraph (1); and
    (3) shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000.

  43. Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those interested, PeerGuardian is here.

  44. Re:Great... by wickning1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I wondered about that too. I came up with three likely reasons.

    1) People share more than a couple files at a time with eMule. With bittorrent I never share more than 4 torrents at once, but with eMule there can be quite a few available. This doesn't slow the network down as a whole, but probably allows traffic to concentrate more strongly on the popular files.

    2) Tit-for-tat. Bittorrent is more aggressive in enforcing upload/download ratio, so the pure leechers have a somewhat harder time. It also encourages people to open the appropriate ports on their router/firewall, which can improve overall network efficiency.

    3) Many people don't realize that if you have an upload cap imposed by your ISP (DSL modem or one of many cable providers), bittorrent will clog it easily and downloads will slow to almost nothing. You'd think people would figure it out, but many don't, especially those using the traditional client on windows (you have to use a command line argument to choke upload speed). Those users who don't figure it out give the rest of us a boost.

  45. Re:BT isn't a P2P protocol! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    But it is a P2P protocol. What it isn't is a file sharing protocol.

  46. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Informative
    In either case though downloading doesn't count as infringement as far as I know. It's only when you start uploading that you have problems.
    Wrong. Read US Code, Title 17, Sec 106; the copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work.
    The way I understand it is that when a book is copied, the person who produced the copy is the one who infringed, not the person who merely received the copy. Similarly, in a digital situation the uploader is at fault, because they're the ones providing the copy. The downloader doesn't actually reproduce anything; they just receive it.

    Besides being more in accordance with traditional copyright law (for books and such), it also makes more technical sense: the uploader's computer is the one that actually copies the bits, puts them into packets and sends them. After all, how could the receiver make a copy if he didn't have one in the first place?

    For everyone's convenience, here's the relevant section of law:
    Section 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works

    Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

    1. to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
    2. to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
    3. to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
    4. in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
    5. in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
    6. in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
    Oh, and IANAL either.
    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  47. Re:Television Shows by Atlantis69 · · Score: 2, Informative

    MPAA has already sent me a C&D in regard to downloading TV show episodes, so watch out.

  48. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by jesser · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can download without uploading with BitTorrent, but uploading makes the download four times faster.

    --
    The shareholder is always right.
  49. BT is just an optimization by dtfinch · · Score: 2, Informative

    BitTorrent is intended to optimize download performance and reduce ISP costs through P2P techniques, with clear efforts to prevent it from degrading into a piracy tool. If you close the download window, and the file becomes unavailable from your computer to others. If you take out the tracker managing downloads of illegal content, you stop the downloads. You take the .torrent files off the web servers, you make it so nobody can find the downloads. If a file loses popularity, as is the case when you have lots and lots of small files, like music, it'll eventually become unavailable as people close their trackers.

    Unlike with traditional P2P, where your only route is to sue downloaders, copyright owners have several possible routes to police the network without suing the downloaders or the creator of BitTorrent. They can, if the law does its job, actually go straight to the source and sue the people providing the illegal downloads, just like you can with traditional client server protocols like ftp and http, while leaving legitimate users of the technology unaffected.

  50. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by cpt+kangarooski · · Score: 3, Informative

    The way I understand it is that when a book is copied, the person who produced the copy is the one who infringed, not the person who merely received the copy. Similarly, in a digital situation the uploader is at fault, because they're the ones providing the copy. The downloader doesn't actually reproduce anything; they just receive it.

    You don't understand it.

    It's not a matter of sender/recipient. It's who caused the download to occur. And that is generally the downloader, since no one made him initiate the download. The Marobie-FL case discusses this a bit.

    Now, if your computer had been taken over by malware and was d/l'ing things without you causing it to, THEN, you might get off the hook.

    I suggest taking a look at the Napster decision. It flatly says that downloaders are infringing on the reproduction right. And it's by no means the only such case. It's a pretty uniform holding.

    Besides being more in accordance with traditional copyright law (for books and such), it also makes more technical sense: the uploader's computer is the one that actually copies the bits, puts them into packets and sends them. After all, how could the receiver make a copy if he didn't have one in the first place?

    You didn't read 17 USC 101, which defines a LOT of terms in the law; common definitions often do not apply.

    A copy is a tangible object. Bits are not a copy. The hard drive or RAM in question is. When you download, you are causing a copy to be made by reproducing the intangible work into a tangible medium within your control. All that is needed to reproduce is to have access to the work. Not access to a copy embodying the work. It's no different than if someone were to read a book aloud and you wrote down what they said; that's illegal.

    N.b. that a single act of downloading may result in numerous instances of infringement, by various parties. But if you caused the download to occur, at least some of that is going to be your problem.

    --
    -- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
  51. Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by pthisis · · Score: 1, Informative

    Right, but I never said that everything that you could be sued for was illegal. I said that this particular thing (copyright violation) is illegal.

    --
    rage, rage against the dying of the light
  52. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by cpt+kangarooski · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not using your common sense, I see.

    See, courts and judges are not extraordinarily stupid, as a rule. They will see right through such feeble facades as that and still be able to throw the book at you.

    It's a bit like what went on during the 50's-70's with segregation. When obvious discrimination was overturned, subtle methods were tried. The courts overturned them just as easily, because what's illegal is the underlying behavior, whether accomplished through blatant or clever means.

    And your idea isn't even clever.

    --
    -- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
  53. MPAA is already issuing ultimatums by bacomage1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The mpaa isn't just contemplating going after bt users: they've already done it. A few weeks ago my ISP sent me an email saying that the MPAA had logged a specific complaint about copyright infringment from my IP address using the Bittorrent client. So... watch out.

  54. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by cpt+kangarooski · · Score: 3, Informative

    Without further details or reflection, I'd say that the direct infringer is the uploader in _that_ rather unusual situation.

    And then I'd also say that the person with the wishlist is a contributory and vicarious infringer based upon the direct infringement of the uploader.

    So they're both liable for copyright infringement.

    --
    -- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
  55. 17 USC 1008 exemption by redelm · · Score: 3, Informative
    IANAL, but downloading _music_ is probably legal, based on this exemption in the US Code, Title 17 Copyright:

    S: 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions

    No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

  56. Re:Native BitTorrent support for Firefox by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Informative

    SVG is more important for Firefox: it is significant for displaying content on web pages while BitTorrent is mostly useful for downloading big files (which websites and the content embedded in them usually aren't). Consider this: most popular websites have dynamic content nowadays, so there aren't any peers anyway (except for images). And with the overhead of initiating all the TCP connections to BitTorrent peers, it would be less efficient than just connecting and downloading from the web server for stuff that small.

    Integrating BitTorrent support into the download manager is an interesting idea, though!

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  57. Packeteer's lack of bittorrent support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    We are using the latest PacketWise v7.0 software. A week after the upgrade, noticed IP addresses that where eating up alot of bandwidth and not falling under any classification. After bounding the ethernet port and forcing the machine to re-establish it's TCP connections, we discovered from a tcpdump that the traffic was BitTorrent. And while Packeteer's PacketWise was labelling some 1% of our traffic as BitTorrent, it clearly had missed this (and *SEVERAL* other) heavy user complettely--even after bounding the ethernet port.

    After sending Packeteer "support" the tcpdump, they notified us that we should just rate limit the TCP port #'s that our tcpdump shows is being used. Since BT uses a different TCP port # for every session, their advice didn't help much. After following Packeteer's advice to the letter, we calculated that 25% of our T3 bandwidth was BT traffic that was remaining unclassified and unshapped.

    At this point, I consider Packeteer's claim to classify BT traffic to be fraud. I have asked my supervisor to switch to buying a NetEqualizer. Not only was their support staff able to provide more logical answers to addressing bandwidth hogging, the cost of their equipment/license was also less than a 1/6'th the cost we got robbed by Packeteer for!

  58. Re:Do those uses make sense? by ikkonoishi · · Score: 4, Informative

    You are correct sir.

    In fact... google searches torrent files.

    Actually... thats a nifty feature...

  59. Re:Bittorrent is legal.. by mowler2 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ah, I see.

    In Sweden, where piratebay is located, a BBS-related lawsuit years ago concluded that the BBS-administrator/owner could not be held responsible for "warez"/illegal-stuff traded on the BBS by the users of the BBS. The same is argued to be true for a torrent tracker. The tracker is simply viewed as the means by which you can share digital material to others. Now if the material is shared without the copyright holders permission, the responsibility lies with the uploaders and not the tracker administrators.

    Furtheron, as everyone knows, no actual copyrighted data is transmitted through the tracker, so I guess it should be even more legitimate than a warez-BBS. :)

  60. You don't understand by tod_miller · · Score: 2, Informative

    Suing bittorrent would be like suing tim-berns-lee for http.

    bit-torrent == http == ftp == smtp.

    If I email someone an MP3 are you going to sure Outlook makes (please pelase say yes, and I use thunderbird, but sue M$!)

    Right, 35% I am not suprised look at my previous posts on bittorrent, I predicted that ALL internet traffic will use this, so even 'http' pages will use a bit torrent architecture, either at client level, or as a higher node level, like proxy level.

    If the technology comes good enough for d/l web pages quickly via a torrent, then we may enjoy a more balanced and quicker routing internet.

    Of course, right now you wait 30 minutes, then it does its magic.

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
  61. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2, Informative

    Uhm, no. Firstly you dont have to allow Bittorrent to upload, it may cause issues if you dont, but theres no requirement. Secondly, just because the legal copyright owner is distributing the item, it doesnt legitimise the distribution by other people, as the copyright owner (or whoever the copyright owner has given distribution permission to), can distribute it as they see fit and that does not grant permission to others to distribute it. The people who connect to the copyright owners torrent peer may be getting a partially legal file, but this infers no legal rights on them to allow distribution, which they would be doing if they then uploaded it through bittorrent. The DMCA does not come into play, because the peers do not have rights to distribute the items in the first place, AND they are publically allowing access.