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Trackerless BitTorrent Beta Posted
jgarzik writes "BitTorrent development is occuring at a furious pace. At the beginning of May, an Azureus update added distributed tracker and database features. Yesterday, Bram updated BitTorrent to include support for trackerless torrents in the new BitTorrent 4.10 beta."
All i have to say is I cant wait!
Will this eventually leave the BSA and others with no BT tracker sites to shut down, so that their only option will be to go after end users or to DOS the P2P networks themselves?
What, exactly, does this mean for the state of legal and illegal torrents? How long would this take to fully implement?
Can someone explain the gist of how this works?
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
How long till the ABC guys implement this? They already got the "download Y file first" done.
See you in Guantanamo, "Bram".
Towards the Singularity.
I hate it when I squeeze harder and things start to slip through my fingers.
Is it just a coincidence that this enhancement has come the day before the new Star Wars movie?
If you lower the cost of entry to producing a BT release, won't that mean more .torrent file swimming around? With the increase of different torrents everywhere, won't that dilute the power of BT?
Is it legal to post only in questions?
I wonder what's going to stop **AA from shutting down the login servers. Sure, there might not be trackers to shut down, but a network is no good if nobody can join it. How do you expect to find out who your "peers" are otherwise?
How does this work... how do you find peers to download from? Are they included in the .torrent file? IF so ain't that a big risk... if MPAA start collection peers informations? I guess it's encrypted but it can always be broken.. anyways if anyone have more info on how it actually works please inform me :P
I'm really glad to see this coming in the mainstream BitTorrent client. At the moment it can be hard to use the distributed tracking system because of its dependence on Azureus as a client. A lot of people have been making noise about this, and hopefully now that its in the main client, the developers of the other BitTorrent clients will make implementing support for this more of a priority.
Business Voyeur
...what happened to btefnet et al? I mean the MPAA could still shut the site down b/c they were hosting the torrent file right?
I think we'll see two things:
1) **AA will squirm for a while
2) **AA will work harder than before to moniyor and restrict user rights on the internet, via congressional purchasesing, er, I mean lobbying.
I think #2 will ultimately be futile in that it will not slow their loss of control over media content distribution (and copyright violation) but it will make life unpleasant for many...
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Go Ahead, mod me redundunt.
"This distributed tracker is an Azureus only feature."
So if other clients are working on other ways of distributed tracking, wouldn't this mean bittorrent would be different for every client and there would not be one "bittorrent" that worked with everything?
"While it is called trackerless, in practice it makes every client a lightweight tracker. A clever protocol, based on a Kademlia distributed hash table or "DHT", allows clients to efficiently store and retrieve contact information for peers in a torrent."
The only thing I'm interested in is: what performance increase or benefit will this bring for the average legitimate user of BT (ie. Linux distro's etc)?
Linux Resources
yay. Now we can get our linux isos without trackers! Everyone knows that legitimate bt needs to be trackerless. Current tracker-based bt doesn't work at all for legitimate file sharing. (The preceding was sarcasm). The only good reason for trackerless torrents is to prevent the **AA from shutting down infringing filesharing. I am a fair-use advocate, but I don't see the legitimate purpose to trackerless torrents that cannot be fulfilled by trackered torrents.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Bittorrent is now another step closer to becoming just another eMule clone.
I see this failing. I don't think it's going to work very well. Though, if it does, it won't likely be any better than previous BT usage.
Plenty of geeks with big pipes to host trackers for linux releases...
But lets say your band releases an album online, or your movie club makes a film... You've only got a geocities website and the desktops of your members.. With tracker-based BT you had to talk someone into running a tracker for you... With tracker-less that limitation has been removed.
This is realy the cat and mouse game at it's best. BitTorrent is getting better each day. While the RIAA and MPAA is closing the hosting website, Attacking ISP from around the globe, etc.
Is this a combat to the death ?
I guess nothing will beat private exchange ? (DRM)
Instead of posting to a tracker, you post your .torrent to a forum via free webspace.
It's the same basic method, just now the actually torrent mechanicans are now on the peer instead of the server.
Went to download an upgrade bittorrent.
I was a bit surprised that the download for the upgrade didn't have a bittorrent option. Isn't that ironic? or did I miss the link on bittorrent.com?
So does this mean that existing torrents would now be distributed, or does this feature require people to create new .torrents?
See you in Guantanamo, "Bram".
Didn't you get the joke, mods?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
What's needed is some kind of distributed HTTP overnet that works; that can handle dynamic content semi-intelligently, and MUCH faster than freenet/frost sites.
Power to the Peaceful
is the publisher traceable? like is the ip address in the .torrent, cause that might be a bit of a giveaway.
not sure how it'd work otherwise, but this gives each torrent a single responsible party for its uploading. on the plus side they could limit who has access to the download client tables to people who need it and upload valid.
curious, and no im not just using it for legitimate torrents, but i pay for my cable and id rather keep stuff on my file server than a tivo with a crappy interface.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
I appologize in advance. /.-ians, and ask for their wisdom.
Before this gets modded down into oblivion for being offtopic, can anyone tell me what the differences are between BitTorrent and BitTornado?
I keep seeing that BitTornado and offshot clients like ABC are an improvement on BitTorrent. Is this true, and if so, are the benifits worth it (such as is there an increased performance)? Also, does this new implimentation of the 'trackerless' BitTorrent obsolete BitTornado anyway?
Again, sorry about being offtopic, but I just can't seem to find a decent answer to my question anywhere else. So I grovel before my fellow
Vol~
"I hate it when I squeeze harder and things start to slip through my fingers."
Let's leave your sex life out of this.
I believe I'm hearing Jack Valenti crying.
To paraphrase a Star Trek Movie: What does a Linux ISO need with a 'trackerless torrent'?
That would be much more useful... if each socket connection does a key exchange. Much harder for your ISP to snoop.
What did poor people ever do for me? Nothing! That's what.
This work will hopefully cause anonymous p2p filesharing to become widespread. This will, in turn, render music companies obsolete.
Less lobbying, less facist laws and less greed notwithstanding, this also helps in the big picture by promoting and strengthing open source software development in general. This has many benefits, some we've seen, and some we have yet to realize.
These people may not be working in the front lines, they're still contributing.
A lot of coders I know never had a college education, nor any friends with similiar mindsets. Projects like this help adolecents chose a path for the first part of their lives. It can be argued that potential coders who _don't_ find projects like these never get into programming. Some of these people may work themselves back into blue collar status, where some can start the cycle of not being able to read/eat/work all over again.
Someone should write an extention for Firefox that gives the download manager bit torrent support. Combined with trackerless torrents, it's likely a lot more sites will start using torrents.
Here. Let me invoke another "Think of the children" excuse. "Think of the dissidents."
Bittorrent.com? Sounds pretty official to me.
I just learned about Distributed Hash Tables this past semester and thought they were really cool. On the page it mentions the use of aDHT in order to do the join/lookup required for locating peers.
l e/ for more info on them and links to example DHT implementations (such as CAN, Chord, and Kademlia).
If you are interested in how it works, you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_tab
It's the classic question. How do you make "make"? How do you untar "tar"? How do you decompress "gzip"? How do you compile "gcc"?
.Z and non-compressed forms, as well as a shar file. tar is distributed as a shar file. etc. etc. etc.
...
The answer in all cases is to work around the problem by not storing the code in the format it supports. eg: make comes with a shell script to build the binary. gzip is distributed in
BitTorrent isn't all that large, so there isn't much to be gained by distributing it that way. It's best at file packages in the multi-hundred megabyte and larger range. The largest BT download is only around 1 MB
I just learned about Distributed Hash Tables this past semester and thought they were really cool. On the bittorrent page linked in the blurb, it mentions the use of a DHT in order to do the join/lookup required for locating peers.
l e for more info on them and links to example DHT implementations (such as CAN, Chord, and Kademlia).
If you are interested in how it works, you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_tab
Simply because the torrent websites no longer have to host the .torrent files, or run the tracker,
Someone still has to host the .torrents.
This does, however, reenforce your point.
I forget what 8 was for.
Getting sick of your own?
Support the software you use, if you like BitTorrent, consider donating to the project.
http://www.bittorrent.com/donate.html
Bram's site is bitconjuror.org
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
All this work for a less than honorable cause. Just think what could be if all this human effort had been channeled through a charity, say Habitat for Humanity, your local food bank, or teaching someone to read.
Inefficient network use also leads to waste of money - which could be used for charity. And you're forgetting of a fundamental right that all humans must have: Freedom of speech.
Now wouldn't it be better to do the right thing. Rather than spending the rest of your natural lives trying to solve near impossible goals.
There are a lot of people--I can't say whether this is true of the BT developers or not, as I don't know them--who are interested and drawn to projects that have a hint of subversion as well as technical challenge to them. Given the popularity and rate of development of such projects, this seems rather obvious.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
A much more interesting but similar system is the dijjer project at dijjer.org.
Like this it's a distributed publishing system without any sort of tracker, but without torrent files either. In dijjer you make requests from your web browser through a proxy server that's your interface to the rest of the system.
It's different in that all of the data being distributed exists in a single system, not in grouped systems of people interested in the same file. Therefore there's a lot less concern about there being too few peers signed on to make the system work.
People have lives OTHER than charity, as your presence here proves. As for this being less than honorable, that's the eye of the beholder. It's like the VCR, guns, or deep fryers. They can all be used for good or for evil. Just because they can be used for evil doesn't obviate they're good potential, nor should we ban them because of their potential for abuse.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Except for the fact that if you go to bitconjuror.org and click on the bittorrent project link it takes you to bittorrent.com.
You would need a bittorrent client to be able to use a torrent so it will be ironic that there would be a torrent.
My hacked site
You're joking, right?
Domain name: BITTORRENT.COM
Administrative Contact:
Cohen, Bram bram@bitconjurer.org
Before it took time, patence and know-how to get a release up and going. Now it's suddenly going to become so easy to distribute stuff with BitTorrent that people will start putting up fake virus/spyware/corrupt files because it won't take any time or knowledge to do so. Releases distributed with BitTorrent has always excelled in their quality when comparred to their P2P (think Kazaa) counterparts. Now BitTorrent will suddenly become as bad as Kazaa, bogus files, destorted music... it was good while it lasted, BitTorrent.
Except that with the new bittorrent feature, you can turn your computer off when someone is done. Hosting your tracker yourself means leaving your computer on 24/7.
The new distributed tracker pretty much makes it almost as useful as eMule.
But lets say your band releases an album online, or your movie club makes a film
Who wrote the songs on the album or in the film? And is the songwriter certain that he or she didn't subconsciously copy from a copyrighted song?
With tracker-based BT you had to talk someone into running a tracker for you
This changes little. Mininova.org has a public tracker.
There is already free trackers out there that will host your torrents, as long as they are legal.
If I write a song, how can I prove that it is "legal"?
As taking down napster spawned development and the explosion of P2P programs like WinMX, and the Gnutella variants, the taking down of bteftnet etc will lead to faster and more anonymous bittorrent and other programs. If anything, you'd think the MPAA would have learned something from watching the RIAA.
If they would smart, the would watch the BBC download service and develop their own.
Then again, if they were smart they would have realized they were just going to make things harder for themselves by taking down the sites prematurely.
I work at Habitat 40 hours a week, it's my job. I'm also a geek, and love the advance of new tech like this, enabling my friends in small bands and record labels to distribute their stuff without spending tons of cash on webservers and hosting.
Not everybody is good at charity; sometimes, someone's better at advancing science (in this case, computer science) than at helping the poor through traditional means.
Bittorrent is a brilliant system, and the fact that it's not saving any starving children's lives at this very moment does not mean that it's not a worthwhile thing. If we all concentrated, as you suggest, on charity all of the time, science would become stagnant, and we'd be in a far worse condition than we are now.
I don't know why I'm responding to this; the parent is obviously a troll, but just in case it's at all serious, I may as well reply anyway now that I've gotten this typed up.
The new Bittorrent protocol was designed by the same developers who designed the original TCP/IP protocol in the 70s. But this new protocol has a decidedly "edgy" feel to it. Below is the "handshaking" procedure. There are a few similarities between it and SMTP:
client1: gimme the warez
client2: who's askin'?
client1: me, mutherfucka
client2: well, your story checks out - here's da shit.
I know what you're thinking - how will they handle flow control? The trackerless developers also thought of that:
client1: the shit's comin' slow - speed it up
client2: get off my back, bitch
client1: don't make me bust a cap in yo' ass!
client2: all aight, all aight... sheee-it.
Anyone who has read up on DHTs will know that there a solid, theoretically proven, distributed storage system. However, they also have two flaws: neither fuzzy searches nor load-balancing can easily be done. For bit-torrent only the latter matters, but Id still like to know how the nodes (A constant n number of nodes, according to the linked article) that are assigned the torrent for Star Wars Ep III are supposed to survive the onslaught of downloaders.
make comes with a shell script ... tar is distributed as a shar file.
So if make and tar rely on a Bourne-conforming shell (as opposed to the MS-DOS style shell that comes with the 90% desktop operating system), then how is Bash or any of the other free Bourne-conforming shells distributed? And if gzip is distributed as an uncompressed C file, then how is GCC itself distributed? And how is Wget distributed? Eventually, you have to bootstrap any electronic system with some sort of distribution of machine-readable physical media.
Except that you like, totally blew it. One of the packages you mention is a counterexample. Witness: gzip downloads. Especially the part about "tar.gz (if you already have an old version of gzip)"
In other words, you seed the torrent from the ftp server (or similar) and everyone is happy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You would need a bittorrent client to be able to use a torrent so it will be ironic that there would be a torrent.
You're talking about the issue of a first-time installation, while grandparent is talking about an updater. For instance, Azureus and eMule installers are both available through HTTP download for first time users, but Azureus's built-in updater uses BT protocol to distribute the updated jar files, and you can get eMule updates through ed2k protocol as well.
Someone still has to host the .torrents.
Unless a group's .torrent files come out in a weekly zipfile. Then somebody has to host the .torrent of that zipfile (or put it on eMule), but it's likely much smaller and further removed from copyright liability.
Now, there are a lot of uses for bittorrent, and it's no more "less than honorable" than something like Firefox, which can help deliver porn to your desktop. Personally, I've used it to download ISO DVD images of Linux distributions (Fedora core 3, Ubuntu 5.04, Knoppix 3.x, and Xandros OC3.0 to be exact), a few applications like World Wind, a few publicly available video clips and some TV shows. Of that list, the first few are all completely legal, and sometimes the preferred (or only) method of distribution. The last item on the list is probably not legal.
It's rarely the technology that's the problem but the use of it. In this case, bittorrent has proven to be quite good at transporting data efficiently. So much so, that it's been adopted for both pirate usage and legitimate usage. Hosting a large file for a hundred thousand people to download isn't as easy or cheap.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Bittorrent's beta release is not really trackerless. Instead it implements a distributed tracker very similar to the one used in Azureus. In fact, both make use of the Kademlia distributed hash table routing algorithm, but both implementations are different just enough to make them incompatible with each other.
This begs the question, why wasn't this beta postponed until its implementation could be made compatible with the already existing distributed tracker implementation in Azureus? Both projects are open source and both are written in high-level programming languages: Python and Java respectively.
I tried resuming a torrent started with BitTornado but all BT did was eat up about 20MB of RAM. I suppose it could have been checking the file but with 0 CPU load on it, I said screw it and uninstalled it.
Don't you just hate folks that can't tell the difference between an Icon and a Link?
Hmm. How does one use a deep fryer for evil? Open a KFC?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Now it appears it's really possible to slashdot the entire internet...
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Well yes, it all looks very official. But what happens when you click on 'News'?
Especially the part about "tar.gz (if you already have an old version of gzip)"
.gz format actually only strengthens the argument. The advantage to using BT as a downloader is faster downloads, but that only really kicks in for large file sets -- as the grandparent says, hundreds of MB or more. Below that threshold, downloads are slower: it takes time for you to gather the pieces for sharing so you can get the faster transfers via other members of the swarm, and once you have them, your download is so close to complete it's not worth the effort.
And? gzip being provided in
With gzip, because it compresses better than the other formats it's distributed in, there's a definite benefit to being able to download it in that format as well as other, non self-referential formats. As I just said: from the downloading point of view, that's not the case for BitTorrent.
I, for one, welcome our new pirate overlords.
G-Force music visualization
Yes, but remember, bit torrent isn't used for worthy purposes. It's only used for piracy! And piracy is teh eeeeeeeeeeevil! Poor people don't deserve entertainment!
The original author of that post should be forced to give up his internet access. Just think of all the money he spent on his computer and connection (not to mention the hours wasted away at it) that could go to a better cause.
"I, for one, welcome our new pirate overlords. "
Not if they cause you to lose not only your fair use rights, but a bunch of others. But then that's "collateral damage" as far as pirates are concerned.
How does one use a deep fryer for evil? Open a KFC?
either that, or drop an iPod into it.
Maybe they'll torture him with the workprint of the new Starwars/Sith movie. I think that'd qualify as ironic.
The *AA can still nail you for being a distributor of unauthorized Copyrighted material if you use Bittorrent. You are of course giving out copies to other users; so all the *AA needs is a list of IP addresses that are in the swarm. Granted, the *AA hasn't really done this. But if there's one thing that they have shown is that they are extremely motivated to find people who are involved, and hit them with a bill for a $2-3K settlement.
With an economic bounty like that, the only thing the Lawyers of the *AA are lacking is a way to automate the technology. From what I hear, that technology is coming. Supposedly some of it is in beta test now.
The only defense one might hope for in the U.S. is a scheme which added plausible deniability. That's not here yet with BT; and even if implemented, would undoubtedly result in a slowdown of downloads.
Personally, I think your best bet if you are concerned is to use an offshore ISP.
anything you make in a deep fryer tastes so good it MUST be evil
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Does this mean if I fall asleep part way through the download, when I wake-up I'll have no idea what to do with the file?
Ugh, see a movie about a couple geeks, doze off for a few minutes, and they're killing their time-displaced duplicates... what else is new.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Now, I just wish I had something to distribute. Maybe I could create a torrent of my "Security Cam" data. For the record my "Security Cam" is my crappy webcam pointed at my empty apartment while I'm at work, is something people would be interested in?
Spoofed IP address payload delivery. ...and before you ask: no, it doesn't matter that your ISP filters bogus source addresses at their choke point. Just spoof laterally and you'll be fine.
...stupid fsckers; some people just don't know when they're beating a dead horse.
That's right, let the RIAA take grandma', that guy who just died up the block and the local library to court.
How does one use a gun for good?
Obviously by shooting you!
STFU... moron
(not entierly serious ) think of all the money we save with copyright infringment , who knows how much of that is then rediverted to charity(/not entierly serious)
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Well, I've done habitat for humanity too.
A week in 96 degree sun building houses for the homeless.
AND I also like BT.
I agree the artists need some money to keep working. I disagree that they won't write or create new art unless they get millions of dollars. I really disagree that the middlemen who do nothing that can't be replaced by BT should get rich. I donate money to artists (via magnatune among others) where I know the artists are actually going to see a majority of the money and I've established that I like the art.
I also try some stuff, don't pay for it, don't bother to delete it but never listen to it again.
There is now more quality songs/art/tv shows/movies than I could watch/listen to if I spent every day from waking to sleeping consuming it. Only monopolies are holding up the prices- but the glut is coming and prices will drop.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Considering 99.9% of guns are never used in the commission of a crime, all you have to do is open the blinders on your eyes.
Let's start with hunting, varmit removal, and self-protection. We won't even have to get into just plain fun.
Guns are used for legitimate purposes hundreds, probably even thousands, of times for every time they are used in the commission of a crime. BitTorrent is much closer to the reverse. Probably 5%/95%. Also, plenty of legitimate alternatives for BitTorrent exist. This is not true for guns. In other words, eliminating BT barely affects the ability of legitimate BT users to exercise any rights, while eliminating guns severely restricts the rights of legitimate gun owners.
"People have lives OTHER than charity, as your presence here proves." Somebody's presence on Slashdot proves they have a live?!?
The tool is what you make of it. Say a charity or human rights group wants to distribute a video but doesn't have the money to pay for bandwidth. Would you call it a waste of money then?
So that means that it's the other thousandth that kills 11,000 Americans each year. Try as you may, I really don't think that BitTorrent is responsible for that much damage. It's not like BitTorrent goes around and rapes your pets or anything if you use it.
Do you not still have a knife for self-defense? You can go hunting with a bow. Poisons, traps and pheromones work well for varmit removal and are overwhelmingly the preferred method. I have fun playing with Jacks. You don't need to punch holes in something to have fun. Well you might, and if that's the case I have a pneumatic drill you can borrow. But only if you ask nicely.
I'd also would like to know where that %5/95% statistic came from. Because it sounds like a rectal figure. You are forgetting all of the several hundred megabyte Linux ISOs BitTorrent serves. What about Windows SP2? It was available via BitTorrent after the release. Sites with large videos, such as AMV sites, offer torrents. Video Game Speedruns offer torrents more often than not. How about Project Gutenberg?
I think that you should open the blinders from your eyes, stop petting your goddamn gun and lauding the wonders of a fast moving hunk of metal, and rejoin civil society.
I'm not saying you shouldn't own a gun. Just for chrissakes realize that it isn't the be all and end all for the entire world.
And to all the BitTorrent users out there. If you find Fifi behind your computer with a ruptured anus two weeks from now... we never talked.
"Build a man a fire warm him for a day, set a man on fire and warm him for the rest of his life."
Go home dad, you're drunk again.
I think, therefore I am. I think?
Apparently BitTorrent, Azureus and Mainline all use the same protocol.
BitTorrent: Azureus: Mainline/khashmir: Emphasis mine.There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Tepples only has 98 more posts to hit the big 6.3k total comments. Cheer him on!
:-)
Just kidding Damian.
True anonymous p2p filesharing will never be possible - it is ALWAYS possible to find out who you are downloading from. Accept it.
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
This drives me fucking nuts.
Y is an activity that saves lives, such as buying vaccines. X is a frivolous activity such as buying a DVD. People don't live their lives choosing Y instead of X every time because you end up with no life of your own.
And you only whine about it when X happens to be something that reminds you of the need for Y, or when Y suddenly occurs to you and you want to make a point. But every single time you buy a goddamn DVD, you're choosing X over Y. That's how life works. Every cheap novel you buy is a child who dies because you didn't spend the time to go out, find her, and help her. Come to terms with this before you start tossing it out as a random argument against a given X.
And why does Bittorrent even remind you about the need for charities? I mean, you've got a strange set of connectiosn going. I mean, pointless artwork in Central Park, sure, but why on Earth do you jump on a random technical project like this?
(Score:-1, Flamebait)
Oh, right. Some people. So there's a 50/50 chance you're flamebaiting or that you've just got a weird set of things that trigger thoughts of Y for you. Either way, spend some time thinking about these issues; it'll do you good. Maybe think about the kids dying as you sit there. Think about that each time you speak with righteous indignation about what people should be spending their time on. I'm not even telling you not to say what you're saying. I'm just saying give it some thought.
$10 can buy vaccines to absolutely save someone's life. With what rationale are you buying a DVD with that $10? I know why I do it. Do you?
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Using that argument one can say that since bittorrent is used a lot for warez - people need to buy less DVD:s and CD:s and can instead donate that money to charity! :)
As for the post about about how the time could have been spent for charity instead, consider the following... it was.
Bittorrent is a charity. It was made by people who put in countless hours for free, is supported by users giving their bandwidth for free, and serves as a way for people to download for free. I'll admit there are many ways to look at it since it's mainly used for sharing copyrighted material, but it's still a charity at heart, and has created many wonderful communities.
Speaking of looking at the act of downloading copyrighted material, I would like to address that as well. It may be stealing in a sense, but the way I see it is although you aren't adding the the greedy corporate companies massive piggy bank, you aren't taking from it either. I argue that in the sense that I never intended to purchase the overpriced product to begin with, therefore I aquire it at no loss to the copyright holder. I'm not going to say downloading copyrighted material is right, for I believe most know it's dishonest deep down, but in some cases it feels very justifiable considering the amount some of these companies are making regarldless (and the outrageous price they charge), but I don't want to go there. And there is always the case of the poor man who may never be able to afford the product, why should he go without? Should he simply give up his dreams simply because he doesn't have enough money, or because he was born in a poor country? I feel that some of these companies are getting just what they derserve. Although I do feel bad for any independant companies trying to take off, or hard working indviduals who are being cheated by the P2P sharing that takes place. But I think we all know that's very rare.
Also, on the charity subject, I would like to know how many hours people have saved because they have used bittorrent? I mean, not only considering the time it would take to go and aquire the materials, but also the time it would take to work and make the sum of money needed to purchise them. In my opinion, the amount of man hours saved has to be enormous, leaving much more time left over for other activities (such as charity). So in a sense it's charity providing more time for your so called charity efforts. Much more time than it took to create the program is being freed by the people who use it.
PS: The last paragraph was mainly meant as a sarcastic remark.
Yes
I don't know why a trackerless mode was chosen, I thought that the efficiency of BT is due to the centralized tracker. I think it would be better to provide redundancy to the tracker function by adding a super tracker functionality.
.torrent file is the real problem in hosting files. Its not as easy as just providing one directory and every file in that directory gets shared. Ofcourse there are benefits also to the .torrent file when we want to serve a whole directory as a single torrent. An approach where both kinds of things can be done will be better than a single method.
Actually the centrallized tracker is a very important thing. It decides who downloads what. Without the central tracker the effort will not be that synchronized.
I was expecting the development to be towards making the tracker redundant, with creating a super tracker, that would track the tracker.
Also the
Also the Emule has it better that it can determine that multiple names of a file are actually the same file, based on the same Hash.
I would think it would be better to have super trackers track the trackers, with multiple super-trackers tracking the same tracker. And each super tracker would be tracking multiple trackers. Super trackers would provide the search capabilities, and would share tracker information among themselves. They would also provide tracker redundancy. They would also be able to determine if the different file names are in fact the same file, and merge several trackers into one.
I think the peers with good bandwidth and with maximum completed parts would become the tracker. The benefit of being the tracker would be that you get the file faster, because the tracker would obviously give itself the benefit. Then when the tracker has completed its own file. A new tracker would be selected.
What do people here think?
It's the classic question. [ ... ] How do you compile "gcc"?
Traditonally one "bootstraps" a compiler with minimal reliance on other tools:
- implement compiler A, providing 1% of language features, in hand-made machine code
- write compiler B, providing 10% of langauge features, using the features provided by compiler B
- use compiler B to compile compiler C, which supports a greater subset of the language
- until finished
OTOH, the GCC install docs do list a C compiler as a prerequisite...
True anonymous p2p filesharing will never be possible - it is ALWAYS possible to find out who you are downloading from. Accept it.
I would have thought that is what your zombie window intermediary is for.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Hmm. How does one use a deep fryer for evil? Open a KFC?
Oh what? Like YOU'VE never heard of a deep fried a baby. Sure, sure. All of those KFC and and french-fry lovers like to stand up and say that a ban would be against their best interests, but even they know the primary reason people get deep fryers is for cooking babies.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
... BT is not only used for illegal purposes. search for eg linux + torrent on Google, and you won't find warez... it's very good for sites hosting stuff, but can't afford the bandwidth
How is it possible to find out who you are downloading from (not who is proxying), using Freenet ?
Anyway, to defeat copyright enforcers, it is not required to be 100% anonymous - it just has to be sufficiently expensive for them to remove reasonable doubt about the source.
Just think what could be if all this human effort had been channeled through a charity
Just think of what a difference Mother Teresa could have made if she had gotten an MBA, passed the Series 7 exam, and went to work at a high-powered Wall Street firm.
If she dedicated her life to that job, working tirelessly around the clock at the expense of her personal life and giving up on the opportunity to start a family, she could have made hundreds of millions of dollars, and used some of that money to have a real effect on making the world a better place.
Oh wait, i forgot, it only counts as charity if it's sentimental and photogenic.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Keep trying this link, you never know! http://search.ebay.com/sense-of-irony_W0QQfkrZ1QQf romZR8/
Together with Azureus' anonymous I2P plugin, this new decentralised tracker-system will be perfect for sharing child pornography!
If you lower the cost of entry to producing a book release, won't that mean more books swimming around? With the increase of different books everywhere, won't that dilute the power of books?
Making content distribution easier and cheaper has always been a good thing. I understand your concern about nearly-identical content being broken up into multiple smaller swarms, I just think it's insignificant compared to the power of being able to publish a torrent with a blog and a torrent client.
You have just given yourself the answer you were looking for. Freenet makes it *very* difficult to track down the sources of files. If you're downloading music or videos, it is sufficiently anonymous for what you're doing.
But as is pointed out on several sites discussing Freenet, if you're a dissident trying to release information, you could still be in for a whole lot of trouble...
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
More info on the I2P (anonymous internet) at www.i2p.net
- no sig here
"Only monopolies are holding up the prices- but the glut is coming and prices will drop." And the government is holding up the monopolies and the people are too stupid to stop holding up the government.....
- no sig here
TROLL!
Will it work for clients that are behind a NAT (Network Address Translation) firewall?
It's impossible for 2 clients who are both behind different NAT firewalls to initiate connections to each other...
Is there anything on your side besides a single Google ad box? Are you offering anything of your own?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
$10 can buy vaccines to absolutely save someone's life. With what rationale are you buying a DVD with that $10? I know why I do it. Do you?
That's why I download my DVDs instead, so I can give the $10 to charity. If the MPAA shuts down the torrents, I have to buy the DVD, have $10 less to donate to charity, and somewhere in the world a child starves. See? Proof the MPAA is evil.
I think that Bittorrent could be used to replace pretty much the whole internet, especially FTP. Torrents ought to be set up to use an FTP server as a seed automatically, so at the very least you'll get FTP speeds (with a little overhead of course)
Recipe for evil:
Insert one human/family pet into deep frier.
Bingo. This is beneficial to legitimate users, but not to the point of origin for otherwise illegal content.
No. Not "bingo". There are many legitimate uses for anonymity and sharing of information without the author or publisher being traceable.
Pull your head out of your relatively safe U.S.A. lives and gluttonous M*AA interests and consider life in other countries where being an advocate for social or political change can get you and your family in a whole heap of trouble. Freedom of speech? Freedom of the press? Freedom of religion? Bah. Freedom to share your thoughts, manifestos, speeches, philosophies, with others? Bah.
The ability to author -and- publish -and- republish anonymously is essential. Let's say you film some police or military brutality. And you want to broadcast it to the world. Do you really think the person's IP address should be available? Puhleeeze.
Is this a tool for gluttonous music/video file sharers and will there be USAian copyright law casualties? Yes. Is this also a tool for good? Yes. Enough said.
"almost near-broadcast economics"
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
du bist ein european, nicht? here, in Soviet America, Speech is free with YOU!
Your argument would have been a bit stronger if you would have said knives instead of guns. Guns are designed to kill - period. Now they might be used for hunting, but guns have evolved so far away from being hunting tools that they barely resemble their origins. I am not against guns, I grew up around them (hunting and non-hunting purposes). But if I HAD to choose sides, I would choose the anti-gun side. Simply because I know how dangerous they are and think that their danger outweighs their benefit. Not to mention that people are idiots and idiots and guns don't mix well. But in all honesty I know it is just a pontification, because there is no way to put Pandora back in the box.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Spoken like a true Catholic.
The charity would do just fine with the old version of BitTorrent. I think his point was the time wasted with recent development work.
Does anybody know if there is another bittorrent client that alows you to download only some files of the torrent, instead of all of them, like Azureus does? I wish the official client had implemented it.
This feature is really nice for people with small HDs, or that simply want to download and burn things in order, but Azureus is a java program you know, very bloat software that isn't nice to let running in background.
Dude, everyone knows that guns aren't at all dangerous. I mean, even swimming pools are more dangerous than guns.
Charities are a lousy way to get things done and are often less than honorable causes. Most of them never solve the problem they are setup to help. If they did they'd go away and everyone working there would lose their job and whoever is running it would lose their power. Instead, they thrive on the perpetuation of the issue and do just enough to maintain the appearance of helping. They're just a black pit where people can throw their money to make themselves feel like they are doing some good.
You want your money to help needy people? Increase education spending. Smarter workers are more employable and start more businesses and create more jobs. Don't give the man a fish, teach him! Better yet, fix the system so everyone like him gets taught.
That said.. support the EFF! Defending freedom is honorable.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Funny, I can't remember the last time I heard about a homocidal maniac running around with a swimming pool killing people.
/. where even logical conclusions are inflammatory. If you disagree with me be decent enough to argue. If you find you can't, then maybe you are the one who's wrong.
But this is beside the topic. My point was BitTorrent does have it's legit uses. And I would personally rather hear, "Motherfucka, I gonna bust a torrent in yo' ass," than "Motherfucka, I gonna bust a cap in yo' ass," while walking down an abandoned alleyway.
The MPAA and RIAA can take care of their own damn selves. They're large, hulking, entrenched plutocracies, I'm sure that they can make it on their own. But I, for one, don't want to go back to getting my Linux ISOs, or my video game remixes, or anything the slow FTP/HTTP way. It's retarded, when I could be using BitTorrent, but for the sake of the poor record companies who's afraid that suburban teenagers won't want to pay for the overpriced shit they call music nowadays, will instead sign up for spam and search unnavigable websites for hours on end to locate that one pitiful torrent that isn't even seeded anymore and spend 1 week trying to download it before giving up in disgust.
If you want to find music, there are better alternatives out there. Ones that don't require a webmaster to risk a subpeona by putting it on his website.
And I'll bet that the 3 people who modded me Flamebait are all NRA members. I love
"Build a man a fire warm him for a day, set a man on fire and warm him for the rest of his life."
Red herring fallacy. Completely obvious too, pretty sad.
"This will be fixed in the coming months, but for now, leave it alone lest you disrupt its development. TOR can do the same things, and works now."
The problem with Tor is that it breaks some websites.
So you could post the actual .torrent to NNTP, which cannot be shutdown, and your good to go?
Too bad Google Groups doesn't store attachments. Think of the search capabilities.
All this work for a less than honorable cause. Just think what could be if all this human effort had been channeled through a charity . . .
The same thing could be said about the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act or the DMCA, the purchase price of either of which would have bought one heck of a lot of soup.
Recipe for evil:
Insert one human/family pet into deep frier.
Where do I get a human pet?
^_^
(a) "You first. If you eliminate all your activities of which I disapprove, I'll reciprocate."
(b) No one is obligated to give. That's one of the things that freedom means.
(c) I give already in other ways. I have given enough.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
1) Publish your torrent somewhere on the web.
:-D
2) Open BT and start "Seeding".
Here'e the icing on the cake:
While you are seeding, the local torrent file is updated with peer info.
If the torrent becomes well-seeded, you could update your published torrent and wouldn't need to seed anymore.
Ever seen someone's hand deep fried? Sure, it's not pleasant if it's *your* hand. But it's finger licking good . .
Nathan's blog
Begin Nitpick
I forget the numbers but yes each receiver draws a certain amount of power from the propagated signal. Crystal radio kits demonstrate this principal. So you would have to up your power if your viewership tripled and you wanted your signal strength to remain the same.
If an American downloads music and movies not produced in America,
but say in europe or china, what does the riaa/mpaa care?
I mean, those organizations arent the world police.
Do they control the distribution of any piece of media within the 50 states?
These days, American made movies and music arent what they used to be anyway. Maybee its best to just say no to content made in america.
True anonymous p2p filesharing will never be possible - it is ALWAYS possible to find out who you are downloading from.
...
Suppose, using some new hypothetical p2p program, my client uses one network, say, Gnutella, to search for a title. Using Gnutella, my client downloads a file of instructions that describes how to reassemble what I want using various numbered blocks. (For example, a block's number might be its SHA-256 hash) Next, my client searches the network, maybe using a completely different network or protocol, for each of the block numbers. The downloaded blocks are labeled with a B, as in B58273838922837389. The reassembled content file, the file I originally searched for, is made up of blocks labeled with a C, as in C1, C2, C3, etc.
So the file I want is reassembled, according to the list of instructions, like this....
C1 = B166 xor B224
C2 = B338 xor B426
C3 = B872 xor B998
C4 =...
C5 =
etc.
(Drawback, I used double, or triple or more, of the bandwidth necessary to download the file.)
So which IP did I get the infringing content from?
Remember, each block could be found using a different mechanism, Gnutella, OpenNap, Http, etc. Each block is just a bunch of random bits, indisginguishable from noise.
Well, the beginning of the file, C1, was created from blocks B166 and B224. (Of course, they would have much longer block numbers.) But block B166 combined with some other block on the network results in part of The Declaration of Indepencance. And block B224 combined with yet another block, results in part of The Bible. So was B166 or B224 infringing?
And which IP address gave me the infringing content?
The gnutella node that gave me the reassembly list didn't give me any actual infringing content, just a bunch of numbers. I suppose that the reassembly list could also have been a file that was recursively shared using the Blocks scheme I describe here. Thus I might have to reassemble something, only to find out that I have reassembled a new reassembly list (as long as I knew up front that this would be the case).
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
True authenticated p2p filesharing will never be possible - you can NEVER be completely sure of who you are downloading from.
Don't be an idiot. Europeans aren't any better off than the Americans are. Here is just one example.
You're new to the internet, aren't you?
Furry, ponygirl/boy, gorean slave, take your pick. There are local and global, commercial and community supported forums dedicated just to finding human pets.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
But the people dont care.
They want to be hidden as well. Doesnt matter what the 'products' goals is, the 'consumers' want this feature.
Until BT provides this, expect the 'consumers' to continue to complain.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Also, don't forget the beginning of the appearance of Creative Commons content. The Empire won't fall with a bang but with a whimper; in 10 years we may see the giants being much smaller (hopefully).
Kademlia isn't a protocol per-se. If you read the Kademlia paper, you'll see that they do outline the system very well, but as for specifying the way bits/bytes are packaged up into messages, etc., there's no information. So if two different authors implement a kademlia-like DHT, you can be pretty confident that they won't talk to each other unless they've both agreed on the low-level details of the messages.
I just shut down my freenet node because it wasn't able to reliably retrieve anything in under an evening so does it really matter if freenet is anonymous if little to nothing actually flows on it?
Maybe I just haven't given it a lot of effort in trying to get it working right, but with the standard references it couldn't do jack (very well) and all those instances of java damn near killed performance on my system.
The world according to SComps
You are my hero, mod parent way up...
it's like a fat joke, and a dead baby joke...all rolled into one...
The gnutella node that gave me the reassembly list didn't give me any actual infringing content, just a bunch of numbers.
At some point, this is no defense because once the tracker-file becomes sufficiently complex, we could consider it to simply be an encoding. Why is it illegal to distribute copyrighted material which have been ZIPed? After all, a ZIP file does not contain any actual infringing content, just a bunch of numbers.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I don't think that particular expression came about until the 80's.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
"aight" = alright
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
"So that means that it's the other thousandth that kills 11,000 Americans each year."
No it means that out of 80 million REGISTERED gun owners (not guns mind you but gun owners) that are law abiding you advacate forceably striping them of their rights because of your fears.
Face it doctors accidently kill more people each year then gun owners. By about 9000 times according to the Department of human services.
put the scum from the BSA, MPAA, RIAA in it??
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Dude, who do you think works on the farms that produce the food you eat, or work in the factories that pump out the clothes you wear? Sure, they have jobs, but they're just as sure poor...
So if you get sued by RIAA/MPAA/BSA, and they claim to have downloaded from you, wouldn't the reverse also be very likely true?
And since they are probably actively hunting for these torrents, they're most likely to be the ones serving the files for a long time as well.
And since they're the legal rights holders or representing them, shouldn't it be legal to download from them, since they are serving the files as well, apparently with the rights' holders consent?
If memory serves me right, gcc requires a basic C compiler (minimal features assumed) to bootstrap itself. This basic C compiler is used to build an intermediate version of gcc that is used to compile the final gcc binary.
So it is a hybrid approach of sorts - using another tool for minimal bootstrapping and doing the rest for itself so that gcc is used to build gcc.
And if only people had paid attention in school they might know the difference between "there" and "their."
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I guess Bram finally had to accept that what I and many others had been telling him for years was true - that the use of a centralized tracker was a huge and unnecessary wart. I guess the threat of lost revenue (to Azureus) mattered more than all of those hours of patient explanation about how to do the right thing.
Charities are a lousy way to get things done and are often less than honorable causes. Most of them never solve the problem they are setup to help.
s/charities/government agencies/
Of course, with charities, you have the option of contributing or not, hmm?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why is it illegal to distribute copyrighted material which have been ZIPed?
Too easy. It's the same reason most things are illegal: The monopolies don't like it.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Ahh so that's what all thos 26 lbs 'turkey' deep friers are selling like hotcakes for... because you can no longer get by with just an 8-10 lbs capacity... you need to fit even a honking big child of an overeating mom baby into the deep frier...
Dude, I was fishing for a +1 Funny mod, not making a political statement...