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BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of Traffic

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-a-lot-of-bits dept.

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.

16 of 788 comments (clear)

  1. Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by mordors9 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As I recall when they were suing the other P2P users, they were using a formula that took the number of songs being shared by some dollar amount. That was why people with huge libraries that were being shared, were being sued for astronomical amounts. With torrent users, there is only the one song that the user is currently downloading that is easily discoverable. So for the average user, how will they generate the large damage figures.... oops I forgot, they can just make up a figure for damages.

    2. Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway by nkh · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For the first time in my life I wrote a useful program: a BT client! The protocol is very easy to understand and the client easy to write. I would hate to be sued for just writing some stupid code on a keyboard and I know now what is the real difference between creating tools and using them to infringe on copyrights. Unix is a tool, someone could use it to wreak havoc across the earth but it's still a great tool. BT works great for big files which can be either Linux ISOs or DivX. Of course I don't expect the justice of my country to understand between a Linux and a DivX...

  2. Re:so little HTTP bandwidth? by Tyler+Eaves · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...
  3. Has Major ISP started to throttle BT? by A5un · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm experiencing this and I'm not alone as evidenced here and 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.

  4. Television Shows by DavidLeblond · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Television Shows by ars · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But that's (showtime) a pay access cable channel.

      The situation is quite different for over the air free broadcasts.

      In fact it's far from clear to me that's it's illegal to download those in the first place.

      And don't tell me the it's because commercials are edited out of the downloads: if I want to I have the right to ask someone to edit commercials out of a tv show I recorded, and then watch the show (for example someone who's time is quite valuable could hire someone to do this).

      I can see arguments both ways for this, but it's not a clear one in any direction, so lawsuits are quite unlikely.

      --
      -Ariel
  5. Darn those furriners! by rueger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  6. Who here runs bittorrent 24/7/365? by herrvinny · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:so little HTTP bandwidth? by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. Sue BitTorrent application authors like Blizzard? by hkmwbz · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If they are going to start suing BitTorrent application authors, then one of the most prominent ones would be Blizzard, of Warcraft/Diablo/Starcraft fame... :)

    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.

    "Isn't it clear that BitTorrent wasn't designed with copyright infringement in mind?"
    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.
  9. BitTorrent isn't "just" for illegal distribution by hacker · · Score: 4, Interesting
    We've been happily using BitTorrent to distribute all of our releases for almost two years now. We've served up over 97GiB in the last 5 months for our current release. Pretty funny, considering its really just a tiny little Palm application. On release weeks, we generally serve up 8-10GiB/night over http, and quite a bit less over BitTorrent. I'm hoping to flip those values, so BitTorrent becomes the main distribution medium.

    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.

  10. using torrent == more probes? by Xtifr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

  11. Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? by Feztaa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It depends entirely on what country you're in.

    Up here in Canada, if I buy a CD and lend it to my friend, and he then burns a copy for himself, and gives me my CD back, that's legal. But if I burn a copy of my CD and give him the copy, that's illegal.

    I shit you not.

  12. I got nailed by mikeg22 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  13. Warning to Cox/Cable customers by humankind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.