Slashdot Mirror
Is BitTorrent Search Harmful?
protee writes "p2pnet published a report arguing that the robustness of BitTorrent to free-riding might have been more related to the lack of meta-data search rather than to its tit-for-tat-like strategy. The question now is: how the release of such search engines is going to impact the BitTorrent network?"
Such networks thrive because individuals can find the content they want. Searches will help improve that much as has happened with the World Wide Web. Remember, it didn't become explosively popular until the early search engines like Yahoo!, Altavista and Magellan came about.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
That Braham Cohen is so dumb, he probably never considered anything like this when he put together his own official bit torrent search engine. What does he know, sitting there coding in his mommy's basement when all the real geniuses are on Slashdot and p2pnet!
I mean, c'mon... *eyeroll*
...when they can't be traced. Up the encryption and IPsec and you'll find that people will start to share.
and keep re-inventing the wheel, except we are going to start off with a triangle and use a hammer to make it round this time
the more.. the merrier?
The question now is: how the release of such search engines is going to impact the BitTorrent network?
The answer: not at all. There isn't a BitTorrent network, just an application that has caused many thousands of disjoint, single purpose networks to come into existance.
And that disjointness will help protect them, I feel.
If the number free loaders gets too great, nobody will be able to get fast downloads off of BT due to lack of seeds (or whatever they're called). Once that happens, popularity amongst freeloaders declines, service returns to normal. A file sharing system without anybody seeding any files is a waste of time.
It really seem that bittorrent search the next big thing, just look at the worlds biggest tracker. It even has theme days just like google.
Difference: The early Web flourished in .edu circles, where there are likely to be a lot of people dedicated to providing educational works of authorship on fat pipes. BitTorrent, on the other hand, is often blocked by .edu ISPs, and residential customers of commercial ISPs don't have nearly the fat pipes to supply everyone who wants to download a given file.
The main strength of BitTorrent is that it works on individual files. It is not a network, rather a protocol like ftp or http. Ftp sites that offer copyrighted content can be taken down, but the ftp protocol is alive and well.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
The thesis is basically that by causing your client to change identity frequently, you can take advantage of the leniency that BT allows newcomers to the network, and thus "leech" without punishment. This isn't done because you'll get kicked out of the communities that publish BT metadata if you do it.
I don't see it. If you're going to leech, that's the way to do it, but cooperating overall results in even better upload rates; you're not fighting for the few slots afforded newcomers, you will be given as many packets as you can eat as fast as you can eat them so long as you reciprocate. And I'm sure those communities will survive - I suspect that Bram will have thought of how to integrate search with community.
Xenu loves you!
Seeing as how the **IA and its international counterparts have been successful in shutting down the tracker sites and this will help them locate these sites, don't you think the impact will be a move to only legal files being indexed for the search. This could actually lead to a vindication of p2p as a useful piece of software and a decline in the number of sites specializing in illegal copyrighted downloads.
It could be compared to bootlegs being move from inside the music/video/etc. store to the street merchants that have to pick up and move everytime the cop walks near them.
I've never seen a P2P network without leechers. Even those which include an economics system like edonkey still have their share. I don't think there's anything fundamentally different about bittorrent. Now it's pretty much an ordinary P2P net leechers will appear. The economics will help limit their impact though.
I am trolling
<MPAA_Exec> Does a bear shit in the forest?!?!
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
RTFA... they are talking about what will happen when clients are released that allow someone to download without uploading, getting around the TFT system. When the individual torrent swarms become saturated with leeches that use these hypothetical modified clients, what happens to the over-all BitTorrent network/protocol in the long-run?
The internalization of meta-data search (those torrent files you grab from those tracker sites) within the client will hypothetically remove the community aspect built around tracker websites, thus lowering altruism levels to that of other file sharing networks.
Ummm...the difference is that bittorrent works. Leechers who are not uploading will by definition in the bittorrent protocol get NOTHING if there is no unused spare bandwidth not being taken by people who upload.
Bram designed the protocol on the assumption that every client is out for it's own best interest. Once a leecher attaches to a network, sets his/her upload bandwidth to zero and sees no downloading why would they stay part of the torrent?
... that Slashdot is a large auditorium where the entire community sits in the audience and listens to those within the community that have something to say and then give there responses... would you still stand up on stage and say that in front of all the uber-nerds?
file sharing
Search = More leechers = More seeders = More health. That means less dead torrents. It's that simple.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
Bittorrent Search could be slower than normal bittorrent usage, if these techniques are used (though I personally find that my download speeds are abysmally slow until I have enough segments to upload too, this "new user window" the report talks about could be a figment of the author's imagination) .torrents for from a website that's trying to provide files for people.
But this will not effect Bittorrent Itself. Bittorrent remains useful for legitimate downloads- of the type that people will be downloading the
Bittorrent may not become more useful because of searching, but it wont become less useful.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The TV people are mounting a better attack on torrents for the most recent episode of six feet under right now. Those swarms are unusable from a practical point of view.
They seem to have an app that has a big block of IP addresses at its disposal. It gives "real" users bad pieces of the file over and over again, from different IP addresses each time.
Because the app uses different IP addresses each time, the feature in most clients that automatically bans IP addresses that provide bad blocks repeatedly doesn't kick in, and it doesn't do any good.
The attacking app is also very aggressive about offering these bad pieces -- it tends to get there first, before another legitimate user will offer you a clean copy of the piece.
The result of this is a huge number of bad pieces, and downloads that slow down toward the end, and which never finish properly.
I think the article overlooks the painfully obvious fact that people are lazy. It's well known and I'm pretty sure even documented at the BT site itself that you can recompile the code to leech. The reason most people don't is simple laziness.
Besides which, the benefit is minimal. If you have low upstream the client automatically throttles upstream to next to nothing in my experience.
And the bit about people wanting chat in their P2P clients and how the tracker web pages fullfill this presumed need was laughable. I want chat in my P2P like I want shit in my shoes. It doesn't seem to occur to the authors that if this were a major factor then IRC, which they conveniently don't mention in their report, would be far, far more popular.
I'm surprised that companies haven't taken advantage of this and similar ideas. They are wasting millions of dollars trying to shut down trackers and p2p sites instead of turning them into a source of profit.
Would it not be a better idea to sign a new set of commercial contracts with various comanies for the rights to the commercial break(s) in an encoded version of the show specifically made to be freely distrubted, probably with a form of DRM or copy protection to deter the ease of making versions without commercials, over the bit torrent protocols?
Am I the only one who has thought that this would make a lot of sense, and provide a new source of income? Think of what companies would be will to be pay for such rights? These releases could potentially reach more people than television can and the episode would be available on demand, instead of requiring the end recipent to wait for their television providors to get around to airing the episode. It would also attract more users to the bit torrent network and allowing them legal access to the files they want.
easier access + legal downloads = more clients sharing the files
As you may know, eXeem was a proprietary protocol "extending" (well, at least it was slightly different) BitTorrent to be trackerless with a built-in search engine in the client for ultimate ease of searching and ease of sharing.
Everything should then be great on the paper (besides being a proprietary protocol + client that was adware), but what I saw was immediate signs of Kazaaification with tons of people spread out over lots and lots of versions of the same files. And you got absolutely horrible speed too.
So if the number of BT trackers would increase along with wide-spread usage of non-tracker specific search engines (like the one at BitTorrent.com), I think the BT community could see some negative effects from this, as people start trying to download (and hence upload) the same file from unrelated trackers, instead of giving one or few trackers a very large number of seeders and leechers, i.e. when the BT protocol truly shines.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Bittorrent network?! I thought it was decentalized...
Do you know what will be awesome... is when anyone with a half-decent upload speed (~1 mbit) can start up their own high-quality video stream, or tv station, so that independent media can be distributed through p2p networks like bit torrent - but just by clicking tune in on your favorite channel! This sort of system will significantly reduce the amount of bandwith that a streaming host server has to push through the first few pipes. Then, users utilize each other's bandwith. "Leechers" will be an antiquated term when you can stream anything you want any time!! Get ready.... ACTLab TV. We have some big plans for internet television with student work through Allvium. Our next big plan is laying it out for everyone, with details so that everyone else can do it too!! I am the Enchilada Man.
A completed download can still be achieved if the swarm has all the pieces of a torrent... eventually they will all get reassembled for a leecher.... who will then hopefully seed.
a network, people. Trackers do not talk to eachother, but merely facilitate the communication between several (tens, hundred, thousand) users.
At best, BitTorrent can be described as many networks, not one. Now, IF trackers were given the ability to communicate with eachother, that would bring about some interesting things like:
1) global searching possibilities
2) efficient routing to fastest/nearest tracker
3) devilishly difficult to stamp out content (if a tracker goes offline, the others could activate their cached copy of the torrents that the offline tracker hosted)
Interesting things, to be sure. But please stop referring to it as a network.
The .ISO image of Mac OS X 10.4.1 for the Intel platform.
Everything else is OK.
Your Average Joe
Not all trackers are in the US...
The thesis of the research appears to be that, (1) if they can get away with it, some programmers will write implementations of the bittorrent protocal that are designed to "cheat" in such a way that they can have a higher ratio of downloading to uploading than they can currently get away with, and (2) it is the multiple swarms created by a lack of a central search engine that stops this.
The research is very unsatisfying to me for several reasons. First, its not even necessary to "cheat". On every bittorrent I've ever downloaded, my download has completed *way* before my ratio has reached 1:1, and it is only because I choose not to end the session that I continue seeding (or, more often than not, because I'm asleep, so the choice to continue seeding is made for me).
Second, the example they give of a strategy that beats tit-for-tat is one in which several cooperating strategies are used at the same time, with some taking on a "master" roll and some taking on a "slave" roll. This may make their point on some academic level, but as a realistic example is fails utterly. Who in their right mind would start ten different bittorrent sessions, with some acting as slaves and some acting as masters? The overall download speed would be awful from having multiple sessiosn running over the same wire. Its just stupid. At least come up with a better example of a strategy that can best tit-for-tat.
Third, I don't see evidence that people would use a bittorrent program that was designed to cheat. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't... the article assumes people would. My bet is that not enough people would use such a program that it would make a difference. Its not like this is evolution, where the successful cheaters "pass on their genes" to create more cheaters.
Overall, I think the research is a lot of academic mumbo-jumbo that may sound good on paper, but has very little, if any, connection to reality.
My own simpler thesis would be this: bittorrent works so well because a lot of the downloaders fall asleep and end up seeding longer than they otherwise might.
1) P2p of copyrighted materials is about cheating the system to get free material you would other wise have to pay for. 2) So why should they suddenly be moral and not cheat the P2p system if they can find a way to?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How exactly do we cheat BitTorrent?
*Inquiring minds* with a bandwidth cap (which I.. er.. they want to use for downloads only) want to know..
The thesis is that hacked nonreciprocating bittorrent clients are discouraged due to group selection among swarms, because of people manually abandoning poorly performing swarms poisoned with too many nonreciprocating clients. I don't buy it. First, they don't provide evidence that parasitic clients exist "in the wild" in substantial numbers sufficient to be significantly contribute to differences in download speed among swarms. Second, nonreciprocating clients could shift swarms as well. Third, they don't establish that there is sufficient incentive to motivate users to hack or acquire parasitic clients. Given that there is a "cost" to obtaining a hacked client, if only the time of searching it out, then there needs to be an offsetting benefit or people are not going to bother to do it.
*duh*
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Can't, and why aren't, major companies setting up arrays of computers to leach on new and popular downloads. It seems if they totally screwed the bandwith few new users would stick around. Also, couldn't they seed huge BS files whose filanames identify them as something popular? This would steal bandwith from the involved computers.
In theory, the most efficient capitalist in a capitalist system is the one who reaps the most rewards ("profit", not speaking in monetary terms) for minimum cost, in this case the cost is absolutely nothing. Therefore demand will be high *because* it is free. Just imagine demand at your local supermarket if they announced they were having an "everything is free" day. The store would be cleared out in a single day. People could "afford" months or years worth of food at zero cost.
The thing about piracy is that most of the losses are fictional. If I pirate 100 movies and I can only afford 2-3 out of my real budget and put the rest toward bills, loans, etc.
a problem fixed by the very behaviour of each serious user who downloads then lets the file on his disk (seeding it) 'till it reaches at last a few days there or a good (> 1) share ratio.
True, but as a file transfer system becomes easier for novices to use, it is likely to draw users who aren't "serious", who cancel the upload as soon as the download completes. And if you try to enforce share ratios on a registered tracker, remember that the mean share ratio across all users is exactly 1.0; therefore not everybody can have a cumulative ratio >= 1.0. What happens when demand falls off for a file, and though you leave the upload going, nobody downloads more than a couple megabytes for days?
If it matters, my personal rule when downloading something on BitTorrent or eMule is to let the upload go 24 hours after the download completes, then let it get up to at least ratio>=1.5 or one week, whichever comes first.
First some responses to your argument:
.torrent files have a community. A source that offers bullshit files to them would manage to upload one fake file before it was noticed and they would be perpetually ignored for wasting everyone's time.
(1) The BitTorrent algorithm is tit-for-tat. You give me a piece and I give you a piece back.
(2) Clients that are transmitting bad data to other clients (that doesn't match the checksum) are marked as "bad" and will eventually be dropped from the swarm.
(3) Clients that transmit very slowly (eg: honeynet style) aren't counted as regular peers, so the network can't be messed with that way.
(4) Sites that offer
Anyway, I would consider BitTorrent search harmful in that it's now going to be a lot easier for trackers to be found and shut down. That is, as soon as they go live and before a search engine like Google made a sweep of the page that lists all the torrents they are hosting. It's going to be easier to find all content - both legal and illegal.
So I this is good for legal content (eg: filerush.com), and may be the missing link that truly takes BitTorrent mainstream. But it will probably push most illegal content a little deeper underground. I have a hunch that someone will make a "private bittorrent" branch that will not allow distributed searches - which will then be made incompatible with the regular BitTorrent. Besides, of course, the continued existence of the old P2P networks (Gnutella / eDonkey, etc).
I made a BT search engine before /. post news about it (see sig), and mine is not the only one. And just as others have said, there is no BitTorrent network, only swarms. Tit for tat works because that's what it is: the faster you upload (give) and faster you download (get).
Again, an uninformed news fluff.
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
I'm not sure I see your point. If there's no longer any demand for the file, then there's no bandwidth problem to speak of.
Trackers that require users to register generally require each user to maintain a high share ratio in order to not be banned. If one gets in on the tail end of too many torrents, where demand falls off, the precipitous drop in demand can bring a user's share ratio reputation down. Point is that though people who just jump off when the download completes are a problem, strict enforcement of share ratios is not always the answer.
I'm getting so tired of all these "is X harmful?" the answer always is "yes if" or "no, but" come on, anything CAN be harmful, but its the probability, not the possibility that matters!
witty sig goes here
There are going to be more freeloaders but ther eare still such sites like oink me that only offer downloads to selected crowed which share as well as download not just close window right after they've downloaded
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com