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The Centralization of BitTorrent Networks
Writes writes writes writes "A group of graduate students from the University of Washington have posted a a new independent report about the extent of centralization in regards to BitTorrent communities. The report indicates that irrespective of the recent damage dealt to global torrent sites, the communities are still very active, even despite their large degree of centralization (and perhaps exposure/liability). Furthermore, the report attempts to determine if the torrent communities follow the 80/20 rule, by measuring the Long Tail of torrent distribution."
I had thought that the more recent statistics showed something more like a 5/90 rule...
Their search engine was actually pretty good (it's down right now due to excessive traffic). It shows details about the torrent like what files are inside, the speed of the tracker etc. Quite useful.
Underholdning.info
Safer for warez that is.
I used to get a few warnings from peerguardian when downloading files. Since Suprnova disappeared, I haven't got one. Not that I actually download a lot of stuff, so this could be explained by statistical error.
as has been stated on previous threads, google is one of the best torrent search tools available. Use filetype:torrent.
File Rush is always good for movie trailers, demos, patches, etc...
...to a few a Torrent "communities" and feel pretty safe.
First thing is that the communities don't share warez and big mpaa releases, just stuff you can't find elsewhere. Sure we are centralized but no one is going after people who share documentaries and obscure stand-up.
Are they?
Beware however... some torrent sites are selling out to scam artists. Take this site for example - they hosted DVD's to "Appz" and sold out. I assume it's now a MPAA dragnet.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I very recently used BitTorrent to retrieve a couple of popular Linux ISOs. The performance was horrendous. Yes, my client was properly configured and the firewall was configured correctly. While over 200 peers and 60 seeds existed in the swarm, my download rate was an abysmal 20-30KBps. My upload speed, on the other hand, was a nifty 110KBps. (You're welcome.)
This may seem like an isolated situation, but, I find it to be the case more often than not. Occasionally, I will experience a fast download but, only rarely. I realize that BitTorrent may be a good/only source for illegal downloads but, it was supposedly designed to distribute load and increase performance. For me, BitTorrent rarely meets its design purpose. In most cases a reliable FTP server offers better performance.
So, I question BitTorrent's usefulness and whether it will last for its originally intended purpose.
We (Distributed Systems group at the University of St. Andrews) presented a paper at PGNet 2004, available at:
http://distsyst.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/btpaper.pdf
which shows (Figure 10) that 75% of BitTorrent users don't upload as much as they download, or put another way, the majority of the uploaded data comes from 25% of the users. I don't have time to work out just how much of the data each section is responsible for, but the numbers are interestingly close to the 80/20 rule.
I don't have time to run the numbers right now, but I wouldn't be too suprised to find that 20% of users uploaded 80% of the data...
Legaltorrents.com (RSS) has a few things -- it's small but growing...
---
Free, quality mixing software for MP3 DJs
it seemed to me like those guys had placed emphasis on domains, but is it not possible that multiple domains may point to a single site?
for example, with suprnova.org's multitude of mirrors, it's really a single site that uses many domains, so it doesnt seem fair to me to say that 10% of the domains having over 90% of the files is a big deal, and is very skewed towards centralized locations.
Enjoy an e-piphany
From TFA:
First of all, it should be noted that the dataset was from early December, and thus preserves the distribution of torrents before the recent site shutdowns.
So, you may want to try reading a little more closely next time. In no way does this article indicate "that irrespective of the recent damage dealt to global torrent sites, the communities are still very active".
Slashdot moderators, mind RTFAing before publishing submissions?
The problems are that
1) If it's a C&D and not a 512 Takedown Notice, then there's nothing that guarantees you'll get one. A plaintiff sends C&D's in the hope that it'll cost less for them than immediately preparing a lawsuit. But these days, it's hardly unusual to get sued right out of the gate. That you can't ignore.
2) You have to do what the C&D says to avoid the risk of a lawsuit by the sender (though there is also the chance that you can ignore it and still not get sued). Likewise with 512 Takedown Notices. This costs you effort at least, and may significantly impair what you were doing.
3) 512 Takedown Notices are probably the best, since you can't be sued if you're eligible to receive them, until you have received it and have not complied with it in accordance with the statute. But you have to do some advance work to be eligible to receive them, and virtually no one outside of businesses bothers, even though it's pretty easy and protects against some, but not all, liability.
-- 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.
Watching a poor-quality .avi of a movie is a completely different experience than seeing a much better version - even a rented VHS. The same is true with music uploaded at 128 kbs as compared to straight off the CD.
Torrents allow you to say "this movie sucked, I'm damn glad I didn't pay for this shlock" just as you can sample a CD and say "no way I'm paying $16 for 2 good songs and 10 shitty ones". So yeah, I'm bloody well glad I didn't pay for flops like "Alien vs. Predator" or "The Aviator", but "Van Helsing" was *much* better in the theater and well worth the money.
And do you honestly think, having eagerly watched all the BG episodes via torrent, that I'm not going to watch them *again* when they start airing here in the U.S. in a few days? Really now, anyone who did that should have their geek license revoked.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
There's an easy-to-use wrapper for bit torrent available here. It allows grandma to simply click once on a link and download the torrent... even if she didn't have bit torrent installed.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.