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I2hub Shutdown Due to Legal Pressure
djabbour writes "I2hub, the only p2p client that catered to internet2 users has shutdown today due to legal concerns. A few hours ago, any user on i2hub got a message which read 'RIP 11/14/2005. It was a good run. Forced to shut down by the industry.' The i2hub site has been shutdown, and new clients can no longer login to the i2hub server."
Does this mean I get a refund on my VIP membership? ;) Seriously though, I2hub was an awesome project while it lasted. The whole point of this network was to bring together college students using highspeed networks. While some students chose to share copyrighted files, a lot of others uses I2hub for legitimate and semi-scholarly purposes. I can't tell you how many times I've helped kids with their C++ and Java questions, found good game competitors, and reconnected with old friends. The whole point of the I2 network is to see what researchers and academics can do with large amounts of bandwidth. I2hub certainly explored that question. So... what's next?
I was one of the ops on i2hub, and it was used for many legal purposes as well as the file-sharing. It will be missed, but RIAA can't get us all, no matter how hard they try.
It's only a matter of time before some college student starts hosting another Internet2-only DC++ server out of his/her dorm room. I personally have one restricted to the University of Kentucky IP block. The music industry doesn't seem to realize especially after napster that for every P2P network it shuts down, three more spring up.
But another concern is about the future of P2P. Grokster shut down last week, now i2hub has been forced out... what's next? BitTorrent? Kazaa? Ares?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
A P2P protocol that requires a centralized organizing entity, such as a hub, tracker or server, isn't really a P2P protocol. Decentralizing the bandwidth and the storage isn't enough to ensure unimpeded file sharing... the indexing needs to be decentralized as well. This way, there is no single point of attack to take down the P2P network.
This just isn't to protect music pirates from the record companies, but to protect legitimate distribution systems from malicious attack, either governmental or criminal.
SoupIsGood Food
Why not put the index on more attack proof networks like freenet, and use a faster p2p app for the actual downloading.
Yes, it is impossible to shut down true P2P. It's also impossible to control it. That means the RIAA/MPAA can easily infiltrate your network and setup honeypots and/or actively poison it.
What happens when the first "working" address is an RIIA machine that lies to you and gives you a list of hundreds of other RIIA machines. Everything looks normal, but you've just been pwned.
I was a rep for i2hub on the UMass campus (UMass is where the founder Wayne Chang went to school and i2hub was based out of Amherst). Working with Wayne was quite an experience. He was constantly thinking of new ideas and strategies. I have no doubt he'll be successful in the future. However, Wayne needed money to take the RIAA to court, and even with a solid defense he wouldn't have a chance without the resources.
The students I collaborated with on i2hub were some of the more motivated and intelligent students I know. I'm sure that their support and campus networking will help foster bigger and better projects in the future. Over 500 of the more active i2hub users still chat every day on IRC, which is a testament to the strength of the i2hub community. I hate to say this, but i2hub marketed itself as a "student collaborative network" but the closure of the hub by the RIAA might just prove to force i2hub into the true collaborative network we had envisioned.
"Man, I am so unbelievably stupid."
The Direct Connect network at my small liberal arts college may only have 142 users logged and 6.08 TB of data being shared (small stuff compared to I2hub, I'm sure) but at download speeds of over 1MB/s it's worth it. (Sadly, we were never connected to internet two.)
All decisions like this force is networks to go further underground and localize tighter. Clearly 5000 users logged at once on dozens of campuses were far too many to keep their mouths shut. But smaller campus networks work nearly as well and are easy to setup. You don't need official websites or other big targets, just an no-ip.com server address shared through word of mouth.
I'm sure my school is not unique (I've heard another network like this exists for all the UC schools). It's pretty much impossible to stop students from utilizing nearly infinite network bandwidth. Commendable, perhaps, but hopeless.
err, no. Everything over 1024 is blocked by default by damn near every firewall I've ever seen. I think even the Windows XP firewall have it all blocked by default (if you turn on the firewall).
Better just to run it over port 80, so long as you aren't running a web server. But should you really be downloading pron and warez on your production web box? And port 80 is open for web traffic.
The problem with distributed lists though is distributed points of security breaches. Think if someone from the RIAA or Sony joined the party, all they would have to do is search for 1 song they hold the rights to and blamo, they have a list of IPs of every person who has that song. And I don't really mean every person, because the list effects would be huge.
Your best bet would be to use some sort of 6degrees of seperation and social architexture to get file lists. ie: Bob is "friends" with Jim and Jon. Bob invites Saley. Saley searches for a file, her search hit's Bob's (1 degree), Jim's and Jon's (2 degrees) shares, but not their friends. If Saley adds Jon to her "Friends" list, she would be able to search Jon's friends too.
Someone could (read: RIAA would pay someone to) exploit the system to make a huge listing. A bit of recursion and friend adding and you could rapidly dig up a pretty comprehensive list. And since the client is in the enemy's hand it would be imposible to prevent. The only bright side is that you could likely backtrack who the person was who sent out the invite to them.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I've known two people who made money off of pirated money. Now, one of them the RIAA isn't going to go after since all he did was trade pirated cd's for weed, but the other one is the type of person that the RIAA should be going after instead of all this p2p bullshit.
I had a co-worker who used to burn couple hundred cd's a week of pirated music and sell them online. He'd sell though amazon or whomever, would list them under mixed cd's. Now wouldn't it make more sense to go after the people selling pirated cd's rather than those who download stuff? After all there are people buying music, money exchangeing hands, without the artist getting anything out of it.
Strangely my co-worker quit doing this cause he got tired of burning cd's, not because he had any problem selling them or had any legal threats, he just got tired of trying to keep up with demand.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
As much as I agree with you that banning open P2P is little different from banning any recording device, I believe it's wishfull thinking to believe that the majority of P2P users are not pirating. While there is a wealth of uncopyrighted content (from hillarious amature videos made purely to entertain the masses to no-name bands who want exposure), it has always seemed to me that almost all the content I've seen on the various networks I've perused, and the contents of the shared directories I've seen, are almost exclusively copyrighted music and movies. There are many exceptions, but I believe that is a minority. The main legal usage is most likely from peer-distributed software (such as WOW updates, etc), and given time legal usage WILL exceed any other use as use of these networks for efficient content distribution continues to spread into the mainstream.
I have no figures to back that up, and find most of the figures I've seen from both sides highly suspect. But from everything I've seen on p2p, everything I've heard from people using p2p networks, and all my personal experience in general, anyone would be hard pressed to convince me that the majority of p2p users are obedient law-abiding responsible citizens who's intentions (and hard drives) are wholly pure. It's human nature to take what you can get, when there's little guilt involved (and let's face it - who feels THAT guilty about downloading, especially those of us with a large collection of legally-purchased cd's and dvd's?).
That said, legislation and judgements aimed at restricting and even banning p2p are no different from big radio's attempts to block tape recorders throughout the 70's, or the even more brute-force attempts by Disney and others to block the sale of VCRs to the public in the early 80's... or attempts to "tax" all cd and dvd blank sales to compensate for piracy. It's misguided, it's shortsighted, and it's almost certainly going to be shortlived as far as laws go - judging by recent history.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".