Slashdot Mirror
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.
That's a LOT of content right there. Can anyone think of items I'm missing?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
And spam uses another 60% I'm sure
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
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?
...we'll all have to change p2p apps again soon, right?
I'm confused. Are they saying that mainstream web traffic accounts for far less than 35% of the bandwidth the internet consumes? By saying that BT is "dwarfing" the web traffic, that would make me think that something like 5-10% of traffic is HTTP. Am I wrong in finding that hard to believe?
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
What the FUCK does this have to do with my rights?
... that I live in Canada where this is still legal.
And you guys though that America was the home of the free.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
35% of internet traffic is BitTorrent
50% is pr0n
10% is SPAM
4% is actual content
And the remaining 1% is slashdot talking about the 4% of legit websites
"We're studying our options, as we do with all new technologies which are abused by people to engage in theft."
Phew, good thing I only use it to engage in copyright infringement.
My medium:
35% bittorrent
64% web
1% other
By content:
99% p0rn
1% Slashdot
They are suing copyright infringers and only copyright infringers. Get it into your head if you wish to be taken seriously.
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.
Anybody got a torrent?
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?
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.
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
IANAL but I would assume that even though you're not providing the entire work (even if you are seeding a torrent), you could be in trouble.
You have the following situations:
You're a seeder of a torrent, so you posses the whole file - at which point you're obviously busted, because you possess copyrighted material obtained illegally.
You're a peer on the network (or a leech as most are) and you're downloading a given torrent, and uploading to others as well. You're intent is obviously to get the entire file or collection of files. I would have to imagine you're busted here as well, a copyrighted piece of material is just that, and unless you're using it for education purposes - copyright law treats one second the same as a minute or an hour of material. Since your intent is to obtain the whole file, and aid others in the same, I think they have you.
Again IANAL, but it seems logical...
--J
Cynical, aren't we?
Doesn't it make more sense to get these from "the source"?
In case you haven't been paying attention, the "source" is usually providing the torrent. (Go to any major Linux distribution to check. I dare you.)
The gutenburg mirrors seem like the best place for this.
But God-aweful slow. Distributing the bandwidth allows for a larger number of files to be moved faster.
Might as well add that with BT there is a chance that your GTA demo is really a mis-labelled Halo demo.
Again, many of these torrents are now provided by "the source". Since they seed the torrent, you can be sure that it's properly labeled. Improper labeling is usually a side-effect of getting it from "questionable" channels.
Google would be better for most of this.
Poppycock. Google only caches HTML. It's difficult to say if even they have the bandwidth to cache multimedia files.
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.
Again, this is poppycock. PDF files can be *huge* for freely available information. "The BeFS FileSystem" and "Mozilla Platform Developers Guide" are just two examples off the top of my head. And only a few months ago, I mirrored creative commons PDFs for Slashdot, although I don't remember what they were.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
Can someone tell me how many percentage points there are in all the internets? I'm pretty certain that about 70% is pron, 50% is spam mail and at least 85% of all internet traffic was in the form of mysterious, partisan, hard to prove or disprove, statistics about internet traffic.
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
... 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.
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.
The study comes from CacheLogic (http://www.cachelogic.com), which sells bandwidth throttling appliances to ISPs, schools, companies, etc. Considering that their business is to scare large-scale internet users into throttling the bandwidth use of your typical BT user, I don't find it at all surprising that they are claiming somewhat inflated numbers for P2P use on the internet at large.
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.
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
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.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
double secret bankrupt him!
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
They *could*, but they won't, because it deprives them the means to control distribution.
This is an industry whose MO has been to resist *every* new technology, whether it's beneficial to them or not - look at the lawsuit launched by Disney/Universal against the VCR - they wanted it banned, caput, illegal... even though today home video sales make up a huge percentage of their profits, they still hate it, because they no longer control the distribution (once they sell a video, they can't stop you from selling it to someone else.)
Look at the music industry, who fought tooth-and-nail against *radio*, claiming it would end music (after all, who would pay to go to a concert when you can get the music for free in your own home, and if nobody will pay for live music, how will musicians earn money?) It wasn't until they discovered they could control the airwaves that they finally (and begrudgingly) gave in - until the advent of the home tape recorder gave them new reason to fear.
The entertainment industries don't *care* about any potential benefits new technology will bring them, they're stuck in their old business model ways, and fear anything that might possibly provide competition for their cartels.
>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...
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.
"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).
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....
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.
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!
No no no. He said it was clear that BitTorrent wasn't designed with copyright infringement in mind. And that's why copyright infringers should use something else. Because it is sub-optimal for stealing. The distributors (supernova or whatever) will be wide open targets.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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.
"Wow," I thought. "It must be nice to have a net worth up there at $0. Thanks to credit cards I'm still paying off a sandwich I ate 5 years ago!"
You can download without uploading with BitTorrent, but uploading makes the download four times faster.
The shareholder is always right.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You are correct sir.
In fact... google searches torrent files.
Actually... thats a nifty feature...