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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.
At least under U.S. law, it's a bit more difficult to find the makers liable as long as the software is capable of being used for innocent uses, which I think (BitTorrent) surely is."
But that doesn't mean that they won't be sued into bankruptcy anyway. Anybody want to bet that is (MP/RI)AAs next move? Sue the creator and coders of the various BitTorrent applications to bully people who might consider writing useful P2P software in the future?
Of course I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for anybody caught infringing on software/movie/music copyrights with BitTorrent. It's not anonymous by any means -- and the trackers provide a nice centralized target. Isn't it clear that BitTorrent wasn't designed with copyright infringement in mind?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Because of the main stream-ness of BT these days, it won't be long until it will be essentially shut down. It is too easy to obtain the IP address of those transfering and downloading, that the MPAA and RIAA will have a field day. More people will be sued than ever before. Sad day for file sharing.
It used to be ok to share funny commercial clips but sadly some of them might not be legal anymore.
[alk]
One interesting thing about Bittorrent is that most people are getting only a small bit of data from you, and from lots of other people.
How much material needs to come from your computer in order for them to be able to sue you? If I provided only a second of content (say for a movie) how liable am I then for damages since I'm not providing the whole work?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's a bit tricky since the .torrent isn't actually the illegal file you're downloading, and might not necessarily lead to the downloading of the actual file.
Well, I would say it is safe to say that the average file traded over BT is, say, 1GB. That's about typical for the stuff I download via it. Mostly (legal) live concert recordings. A typical webpage is perhaps 100kb. So that's 10,000 webpage views (Probably a weeks worth for even the busiest net addict, probably more like 3 months worth for a typical home user. I often pull 10GB a week via bittorrent (http://bt.etree.org/ is your friend...)
TODO: Something witty here...
Sandvine's product is being speculated as the culprit. More details here. Is there anyway around this? I don't want to be stuck downloading new distros (which are coming soon) with slow BT.
This is a lil OT, but is it legal to download mp3's if you own the physical cd? I know some people just don't know how to rip the mp3's off their cds. What if your CDs get stolen? Do you still own a license to that music? My music collection was stolen.. TWICE! What about dl'ing tv shows? To me, this is nothing more than a vcr, but is it legal??
I know the RIAA can bust you for downloading music, and the MPAA can bust you for downloading movies... is there any large organization (other than HBO, CBS, etc) that is looking to bust people for downloading television shows?
I have in the past downloaded shows when my VCR or DVR crapped out and didn't tape them so I was curious of the legalities of this.
I've received 2 DMCA notices for downloading "Dead Like Me" episodes... even though I'm a paying subscriber to ShowTime. Oh well, that's why I got a Tivo
because what hunting rifle has a bayonet lug
In reference to Suprnova "They're doing something flagrantly illegal, but getting away with it because they're offshore," said (Bittorrent creator)Cohen. He is not eager to get into a battle about how his creation is used. "To me, it's all bits," he said."
I've always liked Cohen's attitude, and his transparency about Bittorrent's lack of privacy. I do though wonder if Slovenian law might differ from that of the United States.
Three Squirrels
Other than freenet, what options are there for anonymous p2p?n ymous+p2p&spell=1
a google doesn't show much
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c2coff=1&q=ano
Can any bit torrent clients/plugins use anonymous proxies?
I know I _always_ have bittorrent running constantly. Right now I'm torrenting a couple gigs of Love Hina songs and miscellaneous stuff.
Seriously, who here runs bittorrent 24/7/365? Every college guy (like myself) should be running bittorrent. If not, you're missing some good stuff.
Actually, while we're at it, Caltrans and Honda enable me to speed on the freeway. The telephone enables me to call people to make slanderous remarks. The more I think about it, the more lawsuits I see that need to be filed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most of that traffic is people downloading the betas and stress tests, it'll go down once the game's released.
can't all be linux distros... I mean we're renowned for checking out distros at the drop of a hat, but 35% of all web traffic... now that's just not on...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Am I wrong in finding that hard to believe?
I'm with you on this one. I'm watching a big chunk of the internet. My top 3 numbers are as follow:
25% http
6% gnutella
5% bittorrent
Maybe what I'm looking at is atypical, but I'm just not seeing the numbers reported. The article does not seem to list any source for its numbers.
eMule!
Since the subject has come up, can anyone possibly explain why eDonkey/eMule downloads are so painfully slow compared to BT, despite them using essentially the same technique of breaking files into small packets and sharing them around?
Even if the file on eMule has hundreds of complete sources, I can still find myself "queued" for hours before receiving anything. On BT, even with a few sources and many leeches, data is received immediately and at decent speeds.
phozzBut if you're only uploading 2% of a given file to someone, are you still liable? if 50 people upload 2% of a file each, who gets nailed for sharing?
The best answer is the one running the tracker, but then, they're not providing any content.
So while it's easy to find out who's sending data, it won't be so easy on the legal side to actually prosecute them for it.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Uh, then please explain how the tracker works without a webhost.
I don't find it very likely that BitTorrent authors will be sued. Many Linux distributions use BitTorrent to distribute Linux ISOs. Many download sites, like Filerush.com, offer torrents as alternatives in addition to normal HTTP/FTP download sites.
Heck, even the entertainment industry could use BitTorrent-like technology to offer video or music on demand without having to invest truckloads of money into bandwidth.
Not at all. For one, banning tools like P2P clients just because some people are using them for illegal activities is silly. If that's the path we are going down, why don't we ban stuff like knives and guns? Or PCs. Or the Internet!Wheher BitTorrent was designed with copyright infringement in mind is completely irrelevant. It's seeing many useful legal purposes. I use it for completely legal downloads all the time.
Blame the people, not the tools.
Clever signature text goes here.
Technically, that should read "Suspected" copyright infringers.
I even took the time to write a Plucker BitTorrent mini-FAQ for the users who are misinformed about the technology itself. We've had great success overall, but it has definately tapered off. When we make our next release, it'll spike to 3-5GiB/day served up as before.
You can see some of our snazzy usage graphs of the BitTorrent traffic as well.
I also modified our tracker so you could sort and click to download the files directly from the tracker webpage itself, instead of using the normal download page from our site. Thanks to some helpful http and rsync mirrors, the load is spread out nicely, and the mirror links are randomized to make sure it spreads evenly.
If anyone is interested in seeding for us, or being an http or rsync mirror for Plucker, please contact me.
World of Warcraft's delivery system via Blizzard uses a form of BitTorrent. They honestly need it for the Closed/Open Betas and Stress Tests as the whole program weighs in around 2.7Gb.
When I was using torrent to d/l the latest Ubuntu Linux ISOs, I noticed a huge spike in the number of probes and scans to my system. It's not just the RIAA/MPAA that BT doesn't hide your identity from! :)
Interestingly, I don't see this kind of spike when getting (legal) concert recordings from bt.etree.org. But that's probably subject to change without notice at any point. Fortunately, my only open port (ssh) is configured with libwrap to block access from any but a few specific IPs, and I keep an eye on my logs just in case. But I definitely think this is something people should be aware of. Using BT does make you a more visible target for attacks, and not just legal ones!
I'm on the board of directors at a Buddhist center, and we have discussed distributing audio and video recordings of our teachings. The major barrier to doing something like this (especially for free to the community) is cost. I haven't brought up BT yet, but I probably will soon.
My biggest concern of course is the inevitable take-down notice we'll 'accidentally' get. We're a non-profit with no money for legal folks, and slightly techophobic directors, so the possibility of legal threats could prevent this.
_______
2B1ASK1
With the obvious success of BitTorrent I wonder why Firefox doesn't support it nativly as a transfer protocol. BitTorrent is a much simpler then SVG and navive support (not via an extension) for it is currently being worked on.
According to British Web analysis firm CacheLogic, BitTorrent accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet
http://www.cachelogic.com/ - Advanced Solutions for P2P Networks.
Next Topic.
I downloaded a popular recent movie off of a suprnova bittorrent link, and the next day my internet connection was down. I called up the Cox customer support and they gave me another number to call but wouldn't tell me who I was calling. I called the other number and the guy on the other end knew the exact movie I had downloaded, explained politely that I was not supposed to be "uploading" that movie (which bittorrent automatically does), and then turned my internet connection back on.
I asked the guy if Cox was monitoring my usage, and he said no, that "someone else" had called them to complain. I assume this someone else was the MPAA or somebody working for them.
The author of this article should inclue http://www.thepiratebay.org
This site is based in Sweden and the operator has a colorful way of telling the senders of C&D letters where to shove it.
In Sweden it is not illegal to store the torrent tracker files. Check 'em out the letters are very entertaining.
A friend of mine who is a lawyer in the music industry told me the other day that Cox is one of the ISPs that coughs up subscriber information without adequate legal due dilligence. I also believe that the RIAA and other organizations are primarily targeting users of specific ISPs that are more cooperative.
If you're doing any P2P activity, you should shop around for a more responsible ISP that fights to protect their customers' privacy. Generally speaking, the cable Internet providers are much less respectful of customer privacy than the telco companies. This is why I will not use Cox or Comcast.