Bridging Torrent and RSS

lerhaupt writes "PEP, the Prodigem Enclosure Puller, is a small php script which find all the enclosures in an RSS 2.0 feed URL, and utilizing Prodigem's new bittorrent API will have a torrent created and seeded for each. As an example of just what this exactly means, Prodigem is now using PEP to automatically torrent the top items found in the del.icio.us popular video feed. In general this now means distribution via bittorrent can be had with almost zero work or duplication of effort."

Comments

PEP source code

[NoInfo]

PEP is less than 400 lines of PHP. Here's the source code for the curious:
http://prodigem.com/code/pep/pep.txt

(from the PEP home page)

Re:PEP source code

[pmjordan]

Sorry to be pedantic, but the comment syntax for HTML is actually , as it is in XML, and also SGML, since that is the 'big daddy' of both markup languages. SGML and HTML actually have more than just that, but:

The Wikipedia Article on comments gives you a list of the comment syntax of quite a few programming (and markup) languages, so I won't make an inferior attempt at doing so here.

~phil

anybody...

[Anonymous Coward]

have a torrent for this?

seeds please.

So, for us who can't code

[RealisticCanadian]

Am I correct in believing we will soon have an even greater wealth of torrents readily available to the users of the World?

If so, three words for the *AA's: Yer Fucked. Cope.

:^D

Hmm...

[FlyByPC]

Automatically-downloaded RSS, distributed over the Net;

Automatically-initiated Bittorrent downloads;

...Is it just me, or with the addition of a few local scripts, does this sound like a virus-writer's favorite fantasy? They need to make sure there are some very good safeguards on this!

Then again, with Genetic Algorithms, perhaps this is the next missing ingredient for cybersentient life...

Re:Hmm...

[glesga_kiss]

This was done like a year ago and there have been no issues so far. Remember, most folk will be downloading non-execuatable media, and any binaries will not be automatically executed on download. Downloading pirate binaries has always been "at your own risk". Really, this is no more dangerous than the same number of users manually clicking the link. Neither way is less vunerable WRT viruses.

Azureus and other BT clients already have RSS readers, using Regex's to match media in the RSS xml. This rules for TV series that are currently airing, it's great to return home to two or three new episodes each day. Many BT sites have RSS feeds, however the only one that got it right was btefnet, who had the inteligence not to post the same media twice. Most other sites have moron users who will post a 200 meg version of the file, followed by a 50 real media rip that no one wants but wastes our bandwidth because we get it anyway!! Throw in ratio sites, users dropping in 4 gig "season 1 dvd rips" and you can see why I stopped using it in the end. We just need a BT site that "gets it". Answers on a postcard please...

Just another pollutant

[rahlquist]

Much like breathing outside, having scripted automatic downloads of 'anything' in a feed isnt a great idea IMNSHO. Sounds like walking out the front door and having the exhaust from a diesel blown in my fact just because I said I liked trucks.....

Re:Just another pollutant

[Bogtha]

having scripted automatic downloads of 'anything' in a feed isnt a great idea IMNSHO.

Did it ever occur to you that feeds themselves are scripted automatic downloads?

Terrible writeup

[Bogtha]

Okay, to clarify a few things:

Enclosures are basically the RSS way of providing a link to an external resource instead of having a normal entry. Think podcasting - basically an RSS file with links to MP3s instead of textual entries.

What this tool seems to be intended to do is take an RSS feed, download all the external resources from it, then generate and seed torrents for each external resource.

For those of you thinking that this is a way of distributing RSS feeds via BitTorrent, think again - the feeds are distributed normally, and this doesn't let existing feed readers do anything new with BitTorrent, they'll still be downloading both the feeds and the external resources though HTTP.

So basically, this would take a podcast, download the MP3s, and generate/seed torrents for each of the MP3s. The torrents would then appear on this PHP page for people to download, but feed readers wouldn't know anything about it and carry on operating exactly the same as normal.

EPIC 2014

[USSJoin]

This, IMHO, totally rocks. Seriously: the computer now handles its own slashdot effect, intelligently. Truly, this allows for media-centric societies (like EPIC 2014) to be propogated; when we don't get that "Too many connections, MySQL fails miserably" message with popular content (even on normally-unpopular webpages), we are able to much more quickly diseminate information of interest to all of us.

Kudos to the developers; I, for one, am impressed.

So it nearly happened...

[samjam]

Someones job has been replaced by a small PHP script.

Shell script to follow :-)

Sam

Re:Video?

[Thuktun]

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Would it be asking too much for you to keep your sig to your sig?

Oh, How The Litigators Are Gonna Love THIS

[ausoleil]

Automation of Bittorrent was inevitable. More or less, torrents become the functional equivilant of the automated podcast gathering programs.

Things is, most podcasts are original content. Much of the 'torrents, and let's be honest, are not, and they are not exactly sanctioned (meaning they're pirated works.)

Gee, do you think that the MPAA legal goons will be among the early adopters? Think that they will have the RIAA folks for company?

Bet the farm on it.

Come to think of it, one must wonder when or if the adult industry will resort to infringement lawsuits to protect their unique content...sure there has been a scant amount of it, but eventually, someone is going to pay big for those Jenna Jameson clips. (LOL.)

SwarmStream?

[Doc Ruby]

Does anyone know how to make a swarm network like Torrent deliver chunks in a more sequential order? Even if locally they're unpredicted, maybe a "superchunk" order, where, say, each megabyte arrives in order, but the kilobytes within it fill in in an arbitrary order. That's what's necessary for Torrents to stream media like video on demand. If there are enough servers in the swarm (say millions), enough will likely be online at any time (say thousands) with the chunks that enough sources can respond (say hundreds) to ensure that every superchunk can be delivered "on cue" (pun intended), delivering a stream with minimum accumulation latency that can be compensated by a few-megabyte (milliseconds) buffer.

Re:SwarmStream?

[SlayerofGods]

You can do this in bittorent, you'd just need to tell your client to grab the pieces in order (I don't know if there are any that do this... but it would be possible to program it to do so)
Problem is however it will seriously degrade the ability of the network to provide the last pieces if everyone does this since that's when it's most likely someone will D/C.
Using random pieces ensures that the network will have a good amount of all the pieces and not a lopsided amount of the pieces towards the start.

Steaming over a swarm is problematic anyway because of varying connections speeds. You'd need to buffer so much ahead in case you hit someone with a slow DL speed or someone D/Cs in the middle of you downloading that chunk that it would basicly be just like downloading it anyway ;)