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Hurricane Electric Offers Bit Torrent Service
heypete writes "Hurricane Electric is now offering BitTorrent tracker/seeder services on behalf of paying customers. One need only upload the file desired to a specified directory by FTP, and their system will automatically generate a torrent file, add it to a tracker for that customer, and act as a "seed" to ensure that the file is available to downloaders. This could prove to be extremely useful for distributors of large files (such as Linux distributions), as bandwidth for the tracker and seeding services does not count against the bandwidth quota for the account."
You've got to love that everytime a new p2p program/service comes out, it is always explained as having legitimate uses.
Everyone know that, sure, BT is great to share Linux distros, but in actuality, it will be used to share mp3s, divx rips, and pr0n.
Paying customers. So, name, address, phone number, credit card info. They would be stupid to upload illegal stuff.
"Piter, too, is dead."
BitTorrent does very well for legitimate content, and so long as they kick out clients who set up torrents for illegal content, there won't be any cause for lawsuits.
why would it be a trap? You do know that there are files other than warez and tv shows that you want to distribute using bit torrent don't you?
Just like people who buy commercial webhosting accidentally upload warez to their websites to distribute using p2p?
a) encrypt/password-protect it, then
b) upload it
If you limit sharing to your friends, you're completely safe.
You better have a lot of "friends". The whole idea behind Bittorrent was the more people using it, the faster it is.
If you're just going to share encrypted warez with a dozen people, there isn't any benefit to doing it via BT than via FTP.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I'm curious what you really mean by "in actuality"--isn't BitTorrent actually used to distribute copies of all sorts of data, illicitly and legally? Or are you focusing on the kind of data (MP3s, DiVX movie files, and pornographic movies in a encoded with a variety of codecs) and trying to get us to read something into that? Maybe I have a license to share that MP3 file (like the Creative Commons-licensed song files first distributed in Wired magazine late last year); maybe that DiVX file is a home movie I made (therefore making me the copyright holder); maybe I'm a licensed distributor of that pornographic DivX file (trying to get people to buy a copy of the movie by giving them a free sample)?
Usually when people place an emphasis on illicit distribution in this context, they are trying to impune the distribution mechanism, as if it is somehow BitTorrent's job to stop the user from doing something illegal.
As a result of my questions, I fail to see how your post is fairly moderated up as insightful.
Digital Citizen
yeah only when the RIAA goes after the person that uploaded the torrent they will also go after the company because they are hosting the torrent and that is just as illegal as sharing the file. So the company is begging for some dumb user to get sued and drag them with him/her. Where the heck is the CEO's brain at?
How about this, from kernel.org as I type this: Current bandwidth utilization 146.96 Mbit/s
There are tons of legitimate sites with that level of traffic. The ibiblio archives come to mind, along with much stuff from archive.org. Don't pretend that there's not overwhelming legitimate usages for BT. That may be true for Napster, but I think you have a hard case to prove, if you're looking at BT.
Other replies have flamed you for this, but I'll try to explain nicely.
Dial-up connections are typically measured in kilobits per second (kb/s). A v.92 dial-up modem has a theoretical maximum speed of about 56 kb/s, but typically its connection speeds are in the 40s.
According to Azureus's screenshots page, Azureus typically displays its speeds in kilobytes per second (kB/s). So multiply your 28-40 kB/s by 8 (8 bits per byte) and you're getting speeds of 224-320 kb/s. That's pretty fuckin' fast.
So should you be excited? BitTorrent, Fuck Yeah!
I know this probably isn't what you want to hear, but you should do nothing. Every major open source project already has a torrent, and having two separate torrents for a given file is worse than one.
BitTorrent tracker hosting is not an exotic service, and the people who need it already have it. It's good for HE's customers that they're offering tracker hosting, but it's hardly a new thing.
Why are there so many mis-informed people on the internet that think P2P == a breeding ground for copyright infringement or illegal files? Bittorrent survives (currently) on a CENTRAL located server to act as a tracker. These people are just adding a central located seed to the mix to guarantee file availability (most tracker sites only keep a tracker and no seed).
What are they going to do with someone uploads illegal files? By golly, they will do the same thing as if someone uploaded an illegal file to their web host of FTP server for download. Ignore it until someone complains and then remove it in the event of notification (and possible prosecution). Just like the hosting business has ALWAYS been run.
Uploading illegal content to this service is NO DIFFERENT than uploading illegal content to your every day pay service hosting provider. Trying to make it out to be different is just plain silly. BTW: FTP as a pay service has existed for several years now.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
no it wasn't designed for large files. It was designed purely to reduce server load, be it a large quantity of small files or a quantity of large files. In my example using the traditional server output, the Firefox servers crashed, and the only way to get it for a few hours was through bit torrent, so obviously servers can crash from only serving small files.
Bit torrent was designed only to reduce server load, nothing else.
it was for *large amounts of data*
.torrents themselfs, of course.
large being bigger than the
several mb is big anyways, but with ff the torrent acted likely as a secondary server of sorts.. that only very few of the total people hammering the firefox's site would actually use.
anyways.. service like this could be great for sharing *anything* between a group of(trusted) friends(just pgp whatever you're wishing to share..).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.