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BitComet Banned From Private Trackers
An anonymous reader writes "Slyck news is reporting that because BitComet does not recognize the 'private flag' on torrents originating from pirate BitTorrent trackers, this client is being banned from these communities. Private trackers are finding their torrents spread via the private DHT layer, allowing leechers to bypass ratios and download content freely."
...that misread this as a story about "pirate trackers". What a silly mistake that would have been.
Is there a way to change the 'user-agent' of bitcomet to make trackers think it's another client?
And that means what in English?
Actually, it becomes a bit clearer when you read TFA. Apparently there are private torrent sharing communities that don't want to broadly distribute files, just share amongst themselves. This one BitTorrent client, BitComet, does not respect the keep-out signs, so such communities are having to be more proactive about keeping BitComet users from trespassing.
Or at least that's what I think it means.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
If I want to share my torrent with other users, regardless of their affiliation with the tracker, thats my business.
Does this strike anyone else as an ironic, considering that all the people that are downloading *aren't* the owners of the content to begin with?
First slashdot article I've seen for a while that has read like total gibberish. Anyone got a link to what half those terms mean?
Does anyone with a slashdot id under 5000 understand it?
for KDE users ktorrent is better :^)
But since azureus is open-source, what if someone decides to make an build without this private flag recognizing feature? Shouldn't azureus be banned as well, having this "potential security hole"?
I'm not fat, just big boned...
...but it isn't. I'm part of a private tracker group that banned Bitcomet 3 days ago... I've been using BitComet since, and nothing at all has changed. I'll change clients when things actually change.
The title says "private trackers", but the text says "Pirate trackers" once... Is this a typo, or fruedian?? :)
Every living creature on earth dies alone.
Private torrent communities are the lifeblood of the BitTorrent scene. They are the only thing standing between BT and the sort of vast, content-less wasteland of Kazaa/Edonkey type systems. Yes, that means individual users need to be held accountable and poor quality clients that enable cheaters and leechers will unfortunately have to be banned. Such is life.
BitComet does not recognize the 'private flag' on torrents originating from pirate BitTorrent trackers
Ye means 'pirate flag', ye rumpity old skalliwag! Th'old skull and cross bones! Yarr!
By taking and giving nothing back, leechers make these file sharing communities more robust, vibrant, and diverse. You should be thanking us.
People who think they're a good idea really oughta read up on Pareto Efficiency.
I call bullshit. The tracker itself can be privatized simply by doing authentication based on IP address (several bittorrent communities do this). Even if you get the torrent file that uses the tracker, it will deny you access.
Isn't DHT advantageous for the network as a whole, distributing the tracking traffic to peers and saving on the bandwidth costs. Why ban a client for being nice to you!
The problem with DHT is that there is no single _unique_ implementation of this. Every client behaves in a different way (I'm talking to you azureus!).
Where am I gonna get my porn from now???
People who have no sig are cool
Bittorrent private trackers are sites that depend on a healthy share ratio for success. If you download something, it's tracked, and you must then upload a comparable number in order to stay a member of that site or receive certain benefits of membership. This creates a healthy environment of seeders--not like many public trackers, which have an inordinate amount of leechers. Bitcomet doesn't recognize or follow the conventions that enable such private trackers to exist. It can bypass that, and enable anyone to download from a private tracker site without worrying about a ratio. This is extremely detrimental to the private tracker. I'm in favor of this move by the private trackers; Bitcomet is misrepresenting itself as a fully-functional BT client.
Gosh someone accessing their trackers for pirated movies and software WITHOUT their permission. I guess circumventing the adwords on their registration pages is a big no-no. Oh the horror...
Azureus is the best!
Azureus is a resource hog - slow, bloated, and imposes a vast footprint. If your platform is Windows, then smaller C++ clients like BitComet and uTorrent blow it away.
Da Blog
Does this strike anyone else as an ironic, considering that all the people that are downloading *aren't* the owners of the content to begin with?
That's a very bold generalization to make. It is almost RIAA-esqe.
There could very well be a family wishing to share a large collection of digital family videos that they have taken at holidays and birthdays, for instance. They want them to remain fairly private while sharing the content that they own.
BitTorrent has many, many legitimate uses. It is completely incorrect to claim that all users who wish to limit the sharing of their data are pirates.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Everyone knows BitTorrent is only used to trade the collected works of Shakespeare, important historical documents, and other works in the public domain.
uTorrent says otherwise. Azureusish interface + features, signifigantly smaller footprint. Of course it is Windows only and not open sores, but one can't have everything.
When a friend of yours asks to borrow a DVD of yours, do you answer "I'm sorry, I'm not authorized to loan, only to watch this myself?"
there are also0 tricks with unique tokens a ummm err.. place i go to uses this to prevent sharing of torrents
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Go to www.slyck.com
And no it is private not 'pirate' as one user says.
The jist of the change is since Bitcomet can spread downloaded files through its DHT layer, it bypasses the IP logging that private trackers have. Anyone thus can then download the file without having to bow under sharing ratios.
In better terms, Bitcomet is a leeching client. Even though I don't subscribe to any private torrent websites, I'd avoid Bitcomet for now, and switch to a nearly equal client, utorrent.
utorrent and Azureus also have DHT layers built in them, but they do it a somewhat better way.
I've always hated BitComet anyway. I always have to ban BitComet people when I'm superseeding or nothing gets done. Although I've been told BitComet UDP plays well with superseeding, but AFAIK it still has the same behavior that the original post is talking about.
Azureus is the best for multi-platform.
But for Windows, uTorrent is the best. It's small (115KB), uses not alot of RAM (~5mb) and has most of the features that Azureus has! It even has a bandwidth scheduling function.
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
FunSharing Community(FSC) @ funsharing.net, didn't ban it yet. It's a solid BT community. They are slower than other sites, but very quality and they allow the use of BitComet.
Anyone who is new to BitTorrent should check it out as well, it's very user-friendly.
No. Apparently you mean "Why does this matter to Blakey Rat (99501". When did hjournalism 101 preach that only shit you care about is worth reporting?
The protocol is open, most of the clients are open... yeah, good luck on this one lol. Not that open is bad, open is good. They just want to do something that BitTorrent was not designed for; secure private distribution...
authentication based on IP address
In so doing, they block anyone with a dynamic IP. Anyone with AOL or someplace like that is totally dynamic. That would tick off a lot of people, which may or may not matter to the community. But if they are a relatively small community, and they have some of the their better seeders on dynamic IPs, they would be hesitant.
They'll ban it next. Azureus uses the same style of distributed trackerless system that BitComet uses.
BitComet was also found to ignore the "evil bit."
No we're talking about MIRRORing the list of IPs. BitTorrent peers have no authentication control and will talk to anyone who talks to them. So if I modify the torrent with my tracker's address and log into your tracker, take your peer IPs and IDs I can mirror your network onto mine.
Obviously you don't understand how DHT works.
DHT is designed to allow a torrent to work even when you are not connected to a tracker. Tracking information is distributed to the peers, eliminating the need for a centralized tracker.
If you do not want your torrent to have tracking information distributed by DHT you set the private flag.
The article is about bitcomet being banned from private communities for ignoring the private flag and distributing tracking information over DHT when it shouldn't be doing so.
In so doing, they block anyone with a dynamic IP.
Don't you have to log in to a web site to use private trackers? So when you log in it updates your IP address on the seeder's list, or however it works. I wouldn't think dynamic IP addresses would be a problem.
How so? You go to their website and log in. It then associates that IP address with you. If there are no connections to their tracker from that IP for a set period of time (say 10 minutes), it releases that association. So long as you fire up a client after logging in, there will be allowed activity from your IP address.
First off, if the trackers are so shit that the "private flag" is the only thing standing between the client and a download, the torrent site needs to update. Second, I use BitComet, and tbh, it rocks. Simple, fast, non-leechy. Lots of great features, memory efficient, yadda yadda. And every single torrent I've tried to download that had a private tracker URL errored with the "IP not recognised" error (or something similar). Ergo, someone is using shitty tracker software somewhere.
Goten Xiao
Oh, right! That is a laugh. A family sharing their home videos over bit torrent. Can you name ONE family doing that? Can you name ONE family even CAPABLE of doing that?
Well, since I have absolutely no clue what the article's talking about, it's a little hard for me to judge whether it matters to me or not, huh?
Comment of the year
maybe if you read the one page article this story is about...
... so you're totally wrong.
it doesn't use the same style DHT, and it does obey the private flag
RTFA
utorrent ftw
Azureus does have the best seed priority/queuing system, I'll give it that much. 'Course, that's enough for me. I seed a bunch of torrents from various sources, most of which are permanent seeds on my box. Prioritization is a must.
If I didn have so many seeds running, I'd be using uTorrent or something else.
Slashdot - where to disagree, is to be a troll
This is inefficient for a number of reasons. What if my IP address changes? What if I use multiple computers from multiple locations with multiple IP addresses? What if I want to seed in two places at once to get a better ratio? What if I share an IP with hundreds of others (e.g., on a college campus) and some jerk does something to get the IP banned? The passkey system takes care of this, and is pretty efficient at what it does. The only problem is that if someone's passkey gets out, anyone can leech with that account because it is not bound to an IP address. Simply resetting the passkey takes care of that if it happens, but if someone has the torrent already and it wasn't created with the privacy flag on then any client with DHT (mainline or Azureus's implementation) can grab the torrent without being registered with the tracker and thus reporting no stats. This is also used if you ARE registered with the tracker and only want to leech without having your stats reported to the tracker. Though most trackers are getting wise enough to recognise this, the methods of doing so are tenuous (for example, banning someone who has downloaded 100 .torrent files and has 34MB transferred in his stats--like I said, tenuous).
What is the DHT Layer? I would consider myself as being torrent savvy, but I have no clue what this means.
... DHT is a networking protocol that enhances the scalability and efficiency of decentralized networks by creating a virtual index rather than broadcasting search queries. Decentralized networks that utilized DHT technology are able to search and locate files significantly faster than networks that do not use it.
? t=10991
A little bit of research later...
DHT stands for Distributed Hash Table
source (non-authoritative): http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=772
DHT is a layer added on top of the BitTorrent network to assist in Azureus' performance. BitTorrent is a distinct networking protocol, of which is specified by creator Bram Cohen. Anything existing outside of those specifications is not BitTorrent.
source (non-authoritative): http://www.unitethecows.com/forums/showthread.php
(So DHT is not part of the bittorrent specification; At least, it wasn't in May 2005, but who knows now...)
So basically, my understanding now is that the DHT Layer is what allows for the decentralization of torrents. Thus, by not respecting the "private" flag, the clients can leech all day without it affecting their ratio. Slap me if I am wrong or missing something, but aren't most (re:99.999%) of these "communities" that care about leechers, ratios, and keeping their torrents to themselves going to be trading/torrenting copyrighted content/material? Call me crazy, but I just have this hunch that this isn't exactly the latest Knoppix torrent. And then you can call me crazy again, but I must ask why we care what these "communities" ban or don't ban?
But then again, this is slashdot where anything that approaches conservative or rational gets modded down by the mob.
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
Azureus is slow as hell. Bitcomet is written in c++ by somebody who know show to program.
http://www.ring4freedom.com/
It's the only client that has the 'Protocol Header Encrypt' option which is very useful for those of us who's ISP's use services like P-Cube software. The P-Cube service engines are VERY capable of doing IP selective throttling and BitComet is the only solution I've found that can has an option that can get around it.
This is the message from one of the private trackers I frequent:
# Show 2005-12-10 - BitComet
We are following the example led by other private bittorrent trackers and we have banned all BitComet clients. Perhaps having so many sites banning it will encourage their developers to do something about it.
The reason why: BitComet, like Azureus, allows the sharing of peers via a DHT system. Azureus implemented SecureTorrents into their client, which we coded into our tracker. BitComet followed and implemented a similar private flag. Unfortunately, the BitComet authors decided not to code what they said ("BitComet will not add DHT Network as Backup Tracker even all the trackers can not be connected later, and will also disable Peer Exchange between peers") and instead ignore this flag after a period of time.
If the BitComet developers create a new version which behaves as it should, we will happily change our stance on this. But at the moment, BitComet is not welcome here.
If you want a replacement client, we recommend Torrent and Azureus.
Uh, so thieves are angry that other thieves are stealing their lot? how funny..
Here are the bittorrent stats seem by my mldonkey bittorrent client for the last month(non-stop)
According to this they are banning 60% of bittorrent traffic... not a intelligent move IMHO.
BitTorrent Total Uptime: 29 days, 20h:10m 2578216 seconds
Brand Seen
Total 88212 (100%)
BitComet 52601 (60%)
BitLord 30318 (34%)
Azureus 2392 (3%)
Mainline 839 (1%)
BitTornado 466 (1%)
MLdonkey 433 (0%)
ABC 345 (0%)
uTorrent 334 (0%)
Shareaza 206 (0%)
Actually it's a damn good clue that it's discussing things that don't matter to you. Things you have no knowlege of. This, however, in no way implies that it doesn't matter to anyone else. I doubt that good jounalisitic practices involve checking with you to see if the subject is important to you.
That still won't work for people behind transparent web proxies on ISPs such as AOL. Behind those proxies, one's IP would change between page loads.
"There could very well be a family wishing to share a large collection of digital family videos that they have taken at holidays and birthdays, for instance. They want them to remain fairly private while sharing the content that they own."(1)
The whole nitpick hinges on permission.* Your mother may "own" some feminine hygiene products. Does the fact that you're a member of "the family" mean that you "own" them as well? What happens if she says it's OK? Do you now own them?
*People who engage in "illegal copyright infringement" obviously don't have permission. All other things being ignored.
(1) HTTPS or E-Mail will do this as well.
That doesn't mean that it will be banned. As long as Azureus follows the private flag, all will be well. Azureus can use the trackerless system all it wants as long as the tracker isn't marked as private.
At least give downloading Linux distributions as an example. The one you gave was tortured so effectively I have to wonder if you work for the White House.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Oops, I wrote:
And then you can call me crazy again, but I must ask why we care what these "communities" ban or don't ban?
-
Sorry about that, what I meant to say was:
And then you can call me crazy again, but I must ask why we care which clients these "communities" allow or not (since they are underground/illegal, and not really helping the linux/open-source movement, but rather cast a negative light bittorrent).
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
Maybe the video-trading family example is weak. I'll offer you a real example instead: Mandrake Club. Mandrake Club members pay an annual fee for access to expanded versions of the Mandrake distribution. This depends on the level (read: cost) of your membership. In all cases, the content that members can download is different from the freely-available Mandrake content. Now, why would Mandrake or its club members want non-members using their private bittorrent distrubution method? In this case, they certainly own the content.
"Grandma, we love you, but it's about time you seed some vids of your own!"
If this "private" flag relies on cooperation from clients, then it is broken.
Pirates get pissy over people taking advantage of their generosity. Fuck off. Jackasses like these give the entertainment industry ammunition which they use to fuck up honest people who just want to enjoy the multitude of neat things technology allows us do with music and movies legally. Repeat: Fuck off. In addition: Tough luck. And in conclusion: suck my balls. Thank you.
To be fair to the poster, these trackers are private for a reason. Well, more than one actually, but it's not so a bunch of people get together to share pictures of the trip to NYC. More like, they want to restrict how many leechers are trying to get access to all the free copyrighted material.
/. induced bias screen.
If you've surfed private trackers, you'll know there are VERY few legitimate files on these sites. Of course, the occasional demo or freeware is posted, so everyone can get them quickly, but a large percentage of the files on these trackers are not legal files. Anyone who denies this has their eyes covered in some sort of awesome
"Private torrent communities are the lifeblood of the BitTorrent scene. They are the only thing standing between BT and the sort of vast, content-less wasteland of Kazaa/Edonkey type systems. Yes, that means individual users need to be held accountable and poor quality clients that enable cheaters and leechers will unfortunately have to be banned. Such is life."
<sarcasm>
Oh poor babies. I grieve for you.
</sarcasm>
Maybe if they run a green marker around their P2P client, the ban will be foiled?
Oh, right! That is a laugh. A family sharing their home videos over bit torrent. Can you name ONE family doing that? Can you name ONE family even CAPABLE of doing that?
The Jenkins from Idaho, for instance. Then there are the Maxwells and the Crenshaws in Leeds. Don't forget the Ogdens in Oslo, and the Buzzonis in Turin.
I'm sorry, that's more than one family!
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
You did not acquire the right to "lend" anything to a friend unless it is your creation or the original license does not forbid it (most do).
Lending a single copy is wrong -- distributing a thousand copies is wrong. You may not be the first person tagged but you are still wrong.
Except for the Linux distributions, and other GPL stuff, as someone else pointed out, the majority of downloads are pirate stuff.
You know that.
If you actually think it doesn't, then you're either lying, or an idiot. I have an idea which one everyone else that's reading this thinks....
It's up to you to decide that for yourself.
Pirate scenes (and similar) are run by a bunch of 12-year olds (if they aren't 12, they act like it). They have absolutely no ability to tell anyone what to do in real life, so they boss around people online. They'll ban anyone and anything at the drop of a hat just as an excercise of the only power they have. Anyone who has been on an IRC channel can tell you this.
And the thing is, it's not "kids nowadays" either. It's always been like this.
I used to use g3torrent back before it was banned for supposedly lying to trackers (it didn't) to beat ratios (not like I even used any ratio servers anyway).
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"illegal" does not mean "wrong", though. Only fascists support copyright.
The issue is not DHT, it's that the trackers can use flag to pass messages to the DHT layer including the "do not share this tracker" flag, and BitComet clients don't obey the latter. As long as a client obeys the flags/instructions defined in the protocol, there is no reason to ban them.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Ya, and I can't imagine how horrified they must be at the thought of losing all those AOL users and their huge upload speeds.
BitTorrent has many, many legitimate uses. Yeah! Also, it's great for downloading music and warez!
I guess you've never heard of torrent distribution for Linux distros or OSS games (TA Spring's installer & patches)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
There could very well be a family wishing to share a large collection of digital family videos that they have taken at holidays and birthdays, for instance. They want them to remain fairly private while sharing the content that they own.
Then they shouldn't use a public p2p network then...
BitTorrent has many, many legitimate uses. It is completely incorrect to claim that all users who wish to limit the sharing of their data are pirates.
Other than the above example, tell me WHY someone would not want to share amongst everyone.
These people don't realize that they are hurting themselves. When I download files on Slashdot's articles using a torrent, I max out my connection (400 KByte/s). This is because everyone "pitches in" to help me get the file. Guess what. I leave sharing of the file until it gets 100% ratio. It is only fair to give exactly what I got. If everyone did this we wouldn't be complaining about ratios and stuff...
What I don't understand is this...if a "closed community" only has 30 people and they try to share something and their collective potential bandwith is 30 KByte/s compared to an "open torrent" where it can go all the way to the max...what is the advantage of "privatizing the torrents"?
Greed, that is all...
bittorrent is more a protocol than a particular client, ,why bitcomet connect to nat.bitcomet.org ?The official answer... to allow better transfer?
if the protocol shift and don't allow equitable share
it 's surely disapear.(bringing anti p2p ideas?)
By the way
Anyway bitcomet is more gentle with system recurses than other similar clients.
If someone uses BitComet and some of their upload winds up going to DHT, who cares? It just means that user will have to upload more to maintain their share ratio to the main network, which is a Good Thing for everyone but that user.
It also means that if the tracker craps out, it might take less than 24 hours for the torrent to recover, which is a Good Thing. Getting to 99.8% on a torrent and having the tracker crap out on you Really Sucks, especially when it takes nearly 24 hours of not being able to connect to the tracker before the client decides to fall back to DHT. It will have zero effect on the non-BitComet users, since they won't be connected to the DHT network.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The right of first sale allows lending of copyrighted works without permission of the copyright holder (at least in the USA). Maybe EULAs can take this away, but books, CDs, and DVDs don't have EULAs.
Personally I am an anime fan wich means fansubs wich are in a grey area because the japanese companies that own the copyrights in general don't give a toss about smelly gajins. I do however find it ironic(?) that most of the fansub groups put stuff like "XXX is proud to present". I mean WTF? Professional subbers don't claim they produced the program, just the subs and since making translations is a grey area of the law itself (it is not proper law that forbids it, real law has to be judged by a court (wich explains why so many introduced laws are tossed out again by real judges who control the real law not the one made up by politicians) and so far this has not happened to my knowledge).
Private trackers on pirated games is funny. Especially the ones who justify it because else people steal their content without giving back. Hilarious.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
" 'private flag' on torrents originating from pirate BitTorrent trackers, "
Is this the new editorial policy on Slashdot? fascinating
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I feel like throwing up..
Substitute any family member, and stop being so thickheaded.
And props go to the Slashdot guy who recommended it to me a while back. I had no idea just how slow Azureus is until I started using uTorrent.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
You're an idiot. I've been invited to a few of these ratio-based tracker sites... they're all about trading 0day movies and warez. Nothing legal at all going on. The GP is exactly right -- this is exactly like the pot calling the kettle black.
Personally, I think it's hilarious. "You're only allowed to steal this content if you're a member, dammit!"
(Cue debate on sharing vs. stealing, etc. I know it's not really stealing, blah blah blah. I do it myself, so don't accuse me of being anti-P2P. However, I'm not going to be naive and say that 100% (or even 10%) of P2P is legit. That's just not the case... not in this Universe, anyway.)
My other car is first.
Azureus does DHT too. FYI also for you leecherous monkeys out there, there is a thing called "G3 Torrent". It allows you to spoof what type of client you run (from anything from the original BitTorrent client to Azureus).
Why those bitcommet users, they just cheat to get content they didn't pay for. HOW DARE THEY, I should call the MPAA/RIAA depending on what you are sharing. The number of private trackers that share legal content can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I mean why would say a linux distro give a fuck who gets their content and at what share ratio? There are probably enough die hard fans to keep the seeds populated without enforcing it with ratios.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How long before mods come out for Azureus and all the other clients that honor private flags? The tracker sites need to grow up. The only way you'll lock out unauthorized people is to not publish the information on the Internet.
Actually, the main reason the sites are private is to enforce a higher standard of sharing. By limiting registration and banning people who don't share you get a community where everyone shares.
The fact that there is mostly illegal files on these sites are mostly coincidental. It is just that most peer to peer sharing on the internet is illegal and private trackers aren't any different.
At least give downloading Linux distributions as an example.
Not necessarily. Recall, we're talking about the restricted distribution of copyrighted material. Most Linux distributions and open source software do not really fall under that classification, even if copyrighted.
You should specify commercial Linux distributions, if you're going to use that as an example.
But even then, that is not necessarily a very good example to use. A typical Linux distributions includes the work of hundreds, if not thousands, of different people. They want their work to be shared, and thus release it under a license that permits and encourages widespread distribution.
Thus a commercial Linux distribution may apply, but even then the only copyright that is really being used in a restrictive manner may be that of the CD layout, or that of a specific, value-adding piece of software (ie. a distribution-supplied package manager, for instance).
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
why would a pirate site want to stop people from using a client that allows people to share freely and doesn't hurt the site itself?
If the hashes cause clients not to check the tracker, that would mean *less* bandwidth cost to the pirate site - but also less revenue from banner ads.
For sites that require privacy, I understand Azureus is unwelcome, but for the pirates, I'd say:
It means BitComet has been banned from some private BT trackers. Are you fucking retarded or have some sort of reading dysfunction?
Don't, they'll get infected!
Then they shouldn't use a public p2p network then...
They aren't. By including the private flag in their torrent file they expect it to be a private p2p network. BitComet however doesn't acknowledge the flag. It is much the same as a search engines that doesn't acknowledge robot.txt.
WHY someone would not want to share amongst everyone.
Because some people don't like sharing with people that doesn't share back and the best way to make sure that everyone is sharing back is by making it a private community.
Peer-to-peer sharers thwarted in their ability to control who participates in sharing by a peer-to-peer protocol.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
lol, best.modding.ever
You see, the thing is, the "outsiders" trying to get in on this information still need that .torrent file! Any self-respecting private distribution won't just spread this to any/everyone, and keeping torrents private is as easy as getting people not to spread that file. Alot of people on here just don't get it
Does this make the client only capable of exchanging pieces with other BitComet users? Otherwise, wouldn't it have to transmit the headers in the clear, triggering the ISP's throttling mechanism?
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
"BitComet however doesn't acknowledge the flag. "
Which equates to: Anyone can hack their client to bypass the "security" of an inherently poorly-designed "security" feature that was bolted onto a protocol that was never designed to be secure. AKA, its a flaw in the *protocol* that this one client happens to hit (but now that everyone knows about it, anyone can hack any other client - especially open source ones - to do the same).
If they are saying what I think they are saying is that the people using particular bittorrent clients are being banned from trackers that provide pirated files because they are leeching. he he he he No, really, I think that is what they are complaining about. The pirates don't want people STEALING files from their systems. He he he he hah hah hah No really, the pirates don't want people stealing from them.... I really think that is what they are saying.
OW! My sides are hurting! he he he stop it! Pirates complaining about STEALING! OUCH! please stop!
Mod parent up! Hear, hear!
It's pretty obvious why these sites want you to "create an account." They can sell your download info to the highest bidder. All I can say is thank you BitComet for not putting me in prison!
Please don't misuse the word "owner". The owner of a piece of media is the person holding the DVD or whatever. I think what you meant to say was copyright holder. Copyright holders only own the media before they sell it. Copyright isn't property, however much the MPAA and RIAA imply that it is.
Oh, and you meant "hypocritical", not ironic.
Did you read the article? Do you truly understand whats going on?
Many clients support the "style of distributed trackerless system". However, BitComent does not recognize the private flag in the torrent. When the private flag is on, it means that the client must turn off the "style of distributed trackerless system" feature of that torrent; thus only users conencted to that tracker can download.
Its not about supporting the DHT feature, its about supporting the ability to turn it off.
These "private" sties IMO exist basically to screw over the BT community in one way or another. I mean, WHY take registration, require ratios, limit users, etc? Do these people not grok the essence of BT? If there are enough seeds then the leechers don't matter. No, it seems to me that what these people are doing is trying to enforce unnecessary and ridiculously anal rules, ripping people off for their saleable demographics, and then getting huffy when (get this) an uncooperative program pirates their pirated content. Well boo effing hoo. Cry me a frickin' river.
Only facists support registration and fencing people out.
Yup, it can sound pretty hilarious when you look at it that way. There are lots of different ways to look at the p2p-issue.
These are just a few different attitudes that are common in the p2p debate. They are by no means exlusive so you can belong in several of them.
Anti-p2p: They are stealing content.
p2p Skeptic: I pay higher prices because I have to pay for those that copy also.
Poor: I couldn't afford it anyway.
Greedy: I can download and spend my money on something else instead.
Tester: I download first and buy what I like.
Consumer: I can only afford to buy that much. The rest I download.
Leecher: Why should I share?
Psuedo-Leecher: My connection is to slow so I can't share.
Fooled-Leecher: I have a bandwidth cap so I can't share.
Sharer: If I share, someone else will have it also.
Trader: I give as much as I take.
Collector: I want to have it all. I don't really use it, but I like collecting.
A fairly common p2p personality is a sharer/trader. They will find it completly moral to share and the trader part of their personality will find it immoral not to share back the same amount as they recieved.
Other than the above example, tell me WHY someone would not want to share amongst everyone.
A small commercial linux distributor wants to release a free bonus version.
In prevision of high ftp load he wants to distribute the iso images to several community mirrors, and to save additional money he wants to use bittorrent.
Furthermore he doesn't want the iso's to spread in the wild before the release date, so he wants to use a private tracker.
Unlickily some people bitched on slashdot several weeks before and nobody was able to provide a good example of a legitimate use of the "private" label for torrents.
As a direct consequense the "private" label has been banned from all bittorrent clients avaiable, the small commercial linux distributor bankrupts and microsoft dominates the desktop market.
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
In most of the non-DMCA part of the world, lot of country only state in their legislation that "making copyrighted content available without license" is piracy. This and only this is considered piracy.
The only stuff that's illegal is putting content available for every one.
In most of these countries (including here in Switzerland, or in France), it's not litteraly forbiden (althought there's no law that declares it legal either) to go to a friend's house, borrow a couple of CDs, bring them home, make copies for your self, and give them back.
That's why, for exemple, it's isn't illegal with swedish law to make websites like PirateBay. Only making the files available is forbiden. Making available informations like links, url, or - in PB's case - hashes about a file isn't.
Recent cases in France have reached the same conclusion : someone who only downloads (and removes from his incomming folder once downloading finished and doesn't distribute widely the file) isn't guilty of piracy (specially because they have a tax on empty CD-R).
So, maybe that's why some of the communities are banning clients that don't honnor the private flag : they must show that they try to keep the distribution inside a private circle (inside their community of registered users) and are not making files available to everyone. (and thus, staying on the safe side of the law).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What the..That only proves my point. Anything remotely conservative gets beat to death on this site. Fuck you assholes.
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
So they are using a distribution method that in effect can not be controlled and for their purpose is not secure. Sounds like they need to find a different distribution method. Or modify the protocol so they can restrict access. Probably not something that can/will happen.
It amuses me to read all the slashdotters that have no concept that just because these people may be pirating software, there are standards for behavior. It's this same lack of understanding that drives some "ne'er-do-well" to come up with a Bitcomet. These people who claim there is no honor among pirates are the very people who would use this as a rationale for using this client.
Just because you're pirating doesn't mean that there aren't any community standards, kids. You CAN and WILL be excluded if you break the social contract.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The thing with BT is: if you have say 10 seeds, then your torrent is fine. If you have even 1 seed, it won't die. It doesn't matter that some folks leech and then run. So, the core premise of these private sites is bunk. Worse, it's immensely counterproductive. DHT can keep a torrent alive and supplied with seeds. Barriers to access mean fewer downloaders, hence slower torrents and fewer seeds. I wouldn't be surprised if torrents on these sites died at least as often as on fully public sites.
Really, it seems to me that these folks want some sort of private domain to boss around and feel elite. The rest is just their rationalization.
OH common.... Insightful? There are so many other ways to share media, especially using your example, that can involve only your family or friends. The movie from that last wedding? The pictures of the new baby? Who in their right mind would think: "Yeah, the best way for my to share this private media that no one else would care about anyway would be to start a Bittorrent.
The premise of your arguement "Plenty of reasons why someone would want to restrict content" is foolish at best.
Get a life, you use it. Even if just the occasional legitimate iso. The problem they are describing is called LEECHING. Its not unique to the world of torrents so I'm sure some of you can understand the problem easily enough.
If you leech off of something thats supposed to benefit others if they share you defeating the system. And you deserve whatever you get. Plain.Simple.
Can't hang with that? Hang somewhere else.
Quack, quack.
It doesn't allow them to totally skirt the ratio system at all. It allows them to start downloading the file without the wait time restrictions due to low ratio...and BECAUSE they technically aren't supposed to be getting the file, no record of the status of the ratio is kept UNTIL the tracker sees that the wait time is up.
This actually results in their ratio being inflated as they are not tracked for the download and then are usually already seeding when the tracker finally starts recording their ratio thus allowing them to always seem as if they only seed and never leech..it's a great way to eliminate the ratio wait time quickly by getting a high one that effectively removes the wait time for future torrents.
Okay, Admittedly, I'm taking a logical leap here, let's hope that I land on safe ground.
Doesn't this Private Flag seem a lot like the Broadcast Flag? It prevents people from getting content. So, in a way, you've just legitimized DRM for the movie industry. Haven't you?
I know it sounds like an odd argument, but you're essentially wanting the same abilities that the RIAA/MPAA want -- to control the distribution of content. And when a client doesn't respect those rules, you ban it. How silly is that? You want to pilfer xbox games and mp3's, yet, you don't want to give others the same rights that you claim for yourself.
Didn't you get the memo? There's no honor among thieves.
Besides what's to stop BitComet from doing something like this:
#define USE_PRIVACY_FLAG 1
Since all you need is one client it might be possible to modify the original BitTorrent client to achieve the same ends. All it takes is one misbehaving client to publish the torrent to the DHT and then many people can leach.
Good going losers. You've just started an arms race in the BT community. There's no way to prevent the forking of clients now into incompatible clients.
I did get kicked a few times. But anyway that doesn't change a thing about how these things are run though.
As to breaking the rules, well, my post just got modded offtopic (which makes no sense). But did I get banned from slashdot? No. Because slashdot isn't like that. Pirate boards/channels are.
Those rules there are just there for the purpose of banning. I can't say how many times I got into a channel, the channel bot read me the riot act (normal thing upon entering), and I see a group of people gleefully ignoring the rules on the channel. But they all have admin priveliges. They don't have to follow no stinkin' rules.
And I also can't count how many times I saw someone banned just for saying something the admins didn't like. Even if it wasn't against the rules. They got it simply for disagreeing with someone who had admin.
To be even more direct to the topic, look at my example of g3torrent. It was rumored that g3torrent would spoof trackers (it didn't), and it was banned. It was even banned on sites that don't use ratios!
It's just so dumb. It's lively, but dumb.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The point of BT: leechers who are in process of downloading can act as virtual seeds (in aggregate). So those 400 leechers actually add up to another 35 seeds, say. And that's only for whole seeds - some pieces will be much more available than that.
I've met slow torrents from slow seeds and from what appeared to be overly rulebound trackers, but never from an excess of leechers.
In BT, once you have a handful of seeds, more is always better.
register here= http://www.demonoid.com/account-signup-inv.php codes = jZn0VR1P95 meXM83sOf6 get them while they're hot!
I support copyright since it's the only thing that makes the GPL legally enforceable.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"Ok listen up people, I have had 40 pm's today regarding Bit Comet Ver 0.60 being banned, hear are the answers to all your questions, (a miniature FAQ)
1. Yes it is banned.
2. No, only VER 0.60, all other versions are fine at the moment.
3. If We decide to ban other version we will let you know.
4. No only Bit comet Ver 0.60 is being banned today, so continue to use what you are already using, unless its Bit comet Ver 0.06"
but whatever, i just use http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ anyways (curses yay!)
Azereus is a bloated memory hog based in Java. Anyone who knows their clients either go with bittornado or the "new" uTorrent client. uTorent has similar look/options to Azereus but not based in Java.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Yeah, but Blizzard for instance, distribute their World of Warcraft patches via Bittorrent.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The 'private' flag was introduced probably by Azureus when they made their own DHT. People should have banned it (it = Azureus) right then and there because adding the 'private' flag broke every torrent in existance that wanted to keep private.
Mainline/official supports their own DHT, but only uses it if a torrent is explicitly marked as trackerless. This is probably best for sites that want to stay private, but people have been bitching that "if the tracker goes down, I can't download. Therefore DHT rules."
So personally they can all go to hell for breaking our stuff. (Well, except for mainline).
"There's nothing to explain. You're trying to kidnap what I've rightfully stolen."
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
It means that 60% of the connections *to you* are probable leechers!
(Visiting any number of popular file sharing sites which share such stats would lead you to speculate that Azureus is the most widely adopted bittorrent client. By far.)
Linux is copyrighted material. I assume you meant infringing copyright.
I'm not going to slap you, I'll simply ask: Who are you to come in here and try to shout down numerous copyright holders? Infringing copyright without profit motive only became a criminal action after the 1997 NET act. NET was followed by DMCA, CTEA, and a whole host of oppressive, idiotic copyright legislation like SSSCA and INDUCE that was too rotten to even make it through our bought and paid for congress. I'd wager most copyright holders here do not agree with the intent or effects of the NET Act or any of the copyright legislation that followed, because that legislation goes against the spirit of the GPL and the free software movement. Trading files is the new Prohibition, and I, for one, disagree with current copyright law.
But then again, this is slashdot where anything that approaches conservative or rational gets modded down by the mob.
If you are modded down, it will not be because your stated opinion is either conservative or rational. This 'mob' happens to disagree with 1) you, 2) the current state of copyright law, 3) the majority of congress, 4) the RIAA, and 5) the MPAA to name a few. Additionally, this 'mob' only grows larger as regular people who were otherwise disinterested in the topic become aware of such facts as:
Thanks to the 1997 NET Act, children are being hauled into court by the music industry. That displeases me and more than a few other members of this website. I do not consider bringing lawsuits against children who download music to be "conservative or rational."
Hey, that gives me an idea. Let create a new P2P app and call it "Grandma". Just imagine a few years later of kids using this software. Eventually, one of them gets busted in court and goes before the judge...
;)
"Your honor, Eric is being prosecuted for supporting Grandma!
Ya, right, that will go over well with the court.
Life is not for the lazy.
I guess the 500TB of illigal movies and such I got from private trackers is wrong. Kindly report my IP to the MPAA, or better yet, use one of your script kiddie tools to wipe my hard drive of all illigal content.
For reference, my IP is 127.0.0.1
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
I personally don't care what they are and aren't sharing, and the nature of what they are and aren't sharing. Is it relevant to the discussion? No, it is not. Does it unfairly characterise people because you have no idea what they're doing and you have no grounds for your baseless accusation? Yes, it does.
Oh, and by the way, EVERYTHING is copyrighted unless it's specifically disclaimed as not being under copyright, so not even that statement of yours is a fair one to make.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Who in their right mind would think: "Yeah, the best way for my to share this private media that no one else would care about anyway would be to start a Bittorrent.
Makes sense to me. In fact, it'll probably happen in my family when my younger siblings have children. Given, say 500MB of video of a new baby, a dozen households that want to see it NOW and have high-speed but asymmetric Internet connections, can you think of a quicker way to distribute it than bittorrent? Do the math: assuming all of the connections have a 40KBps upload rate, doing it without bittorrent would take at least 42 hours. With Bittorrent, it could take as little as four hours. The larger your circle of friends and family, the more sense bittorrent makes.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Bit Comet - nice and small and fast but will get you kicked from private trackers. Bit Tornado - the former champion, too bad the guy who develops it doesn't pay any attention to the requests of his users. Hasn't seen any significant enhancements in years. Azureus - Pure garbage. BT client for the same people who use large and ostentatious WinAmp skins. Slow downloads. Resource hog. Just plain ugly. Bit Lord - Not bad, but not great either. uTorrent - Perfect BT client. Tiny, fast, uses little resources, great UI. The recommended BT client of many admins who run trackers.
As the saying goes, "there's no honor amoung thieves."
They've implemented some content-inspection filtering (privacy issues?) and in the last week or so, my bittorrents stopped working completely. Most of my friends are affected, some are just severely throttled to 3kB/s while some are fine.
.torrent files from websites unless the .torrent file itself is small enough to get through in the first couple of packets before the block takes place.
I'm completely blocked and can't even download
The only way around it so far has been to use BitComet or Azureus with encrypted BT headers enabled.
I had called and got them to admit it although the people I talked with where morons...one guy was like, "well I noticed my own WinMX stopped working but it works on my friend's computer so I figured it's my own fault". That was his story to initially blame me for the problem.
Btw, I wasn't an abuser. I was trying to download an Ubuntu AMD-64 ISO for the past week before running tcpdump and seeing the traffic look like it had some delayed blocking. Then I googled...
The fact that there is mostly illegal files on these sites are mostly coincidental.
It's more than coincidence. For files which are legal to distribute, there is almost always someone with a vested intrest in seeing that distribution increase. Those people are willing to serve leechers, in exchange for getting the data out there. The feeling of sharing and having helped others is all the reward they need.
BitTorrent, in most cases of authorized file distribution, should be pictured as just an accelerator for HTTP-type fileserving, which protects against "Slashdot effect" when there are more than 1 downloader at a time.
BitComet started being banned for this a while ago until the author eventually added an option to disable DHT on certain downloads. Kinda silly to ban it though, because it's one of the best clients, and several of its features are next to essential for firewalled users (but it requires that other people run BitComet). For these two reasons (especially out of consideration for firewalled users), I don't object to people circumventing such a ban. In fact, it can be done by telling BitComet to use a proxy server for tracker connections. Install something like the Proxomitron and add a filter that changed the BitComet user agent line to Azureus's or another client's. Then set BitComet to use that proxy and that's it. I don't really see why private trackers try banning BitComet since such a ban is easily bypassed and if people want to leech then they can used a hacked client anyway (and banning a popular client provides them incentive to).
nobody was able to provide a good example of a legitimate use of the "private" label for torrents.
Not you either. If you are sending the data to someone, you are trusting him not to redistribute it further. Whether he mails it out on CD-R, or just publishes the tracker address, the action is the same: someone to whom you gave the data has given it to others.
If you don't trust your approved recipients, your situation is hopeless (and self-contradictory)
That's not a bold generalization, when the article summary itself says, "...because BitComet does not recognize the 'private flag' on torrents originating from pirate BitTorrent trackers..."
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Where does that message mention anything about the type of content being downloaded.
Almost all private trackers that I've seen require all uploaded files to be "genuine scene releases", that is, to have an entry on NFOrce.nl, a site that tracks release notices (.nfo) published by several secretive warez groups. Google lists them. Given that I couldn't find any way to get a Free work's release notice onto NFOrce, I don't see any substantial non-infringing use of most private trackers.
It makes things interesting for users of larger trackers who try to access them from public internet behind a NAT router
Most home PC owners behind a NAT that they do not administer are either behind dial-up, which is not very useful for BitTorrent, or behind a university Internet connection, which too often packet-shapes BitTorrent to hell.
Quickly re-writes code to get by block. Oh look I can pirate your stuff again!
I always check vcdquality.com too.
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
It's not just about the ratios, I'm a member of a private tracker where we only allow people who are peered at a network level.
Many ISPs in this area share some common pipes, and are not charged for the volume of data transmitted through those pipes, unlike international couriers and the large domestic carriers (i'm looking at YOU Telstra), so using these trackers means we can download freely, while international sites count towards our monthly usage. There is a big need to keep DHT users out as we start paying for bandwidth we are trying to avoid.
</2c>
... and then there were none
Private.
:)
Simple: I don't want my nanna leeching my private porn and I don't want my sex-buddies watching my family videos.
Besides, i'll sell granma some ratio credit for $50/gig
... and then there were none
Or I can simply use some webspace (amazingly people usually can afford to spend $3 for webhosting and save themselves hours of work, who would have guessed) which doesn't require me setting up a tracker and telling dozens of people how to get BT working with their routers.
You can open a so-called 'private' torrent file in Notepad, change one character near the end, and suddenly it's a public torrent in any DHT-capable client. I don't see how banning BC will stop that.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I always questioned the validity of private trackers. They're all over the place and they're all minuscule blips in Mininova's shadow, and the other big free sites. Why the hell would someone want to restrict themselves to a small group of file sharers ? It's fine to create a user group with common interests, but the very spirit of P2P is to get as many people in on the fun. Post your torrents on the public trackers, and link to them in your private forums for your friends to enjoy, as well as anyone else on the net who might happen to like what you're doing.
:P It's not the vehicle (client) that matters, it's the money (bandwidth).
Banning clients is like kicking good customers out of a store because they choose to drive a GM instead of your favorite Nissan
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Completely incorrect? Maybe 1% incorrect. Face reality, honeybunch. The vast majority of users of P2P file sharing are using it to get stuff they're not licensed to have for free. Period!
Why not use stuff you don't have to pirate in the first place?
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
Dude, for fuck sake, the set of all things traded over bittorrent include objects that are both not linux distros and not associated with the *AA's. It could be the stuff of an artist that decides to release her stuff freely, or the thousands of recordings in the public domain or bloody home movies! Free use is free use, don't bash the tech behind it.
Your personal misgivings aside, the point to this story is that BitComet's devs aren't following more or less agreed upon specs. There's a convention to how these things work and they're making a non functional client that messes the way such transfers are done. If you're hosting a private tracker, you want to keep it private for a reason, whatever that may be.
"I mean why would say a linux distro give a fuck who gets their content and at what share ratio? There are probably enough die hard fans to keep the seeds populated without enforcing it with ratios."
Hardly, which is part of the reason people have set up private trackers: there is simply zero incentive to keep hosting the files after they've downloaded. The number of zealots compared to the number of casual users is a few orders of magnitude different -- and bandwidth is expensive. While using a distro for an example is a bit off, you could consider a system for distributing patches or new packages, or anything else done by something unsupported by a company or ulterior motives.
But apparently not how to type.
The problem with using DHT on a private torrent is that the data in the torrent file you download that identifies who you are (for your account ratio) gets passed to other users. That screws up your ratio because others are downloading with your account info. You can very quickly find yourself below the enforced limit if you don't disable DHT.
This part is wrong. The tracker identifies you based on the IP that is connecting to the tracker. When you enter your Username/password on the website, they log your IP and keep that IP on file until you log in again from another IP.
If you have DHT turned on, the people that aren't logged in and thus aren't connecting to the tracker (they'll see "Connection refused! Track is down") will still be able to get file parts from you and others with DHT turned on. You guys can share completely free from the tracker.
The problem this can cause is that from a private community stand point, you've just allowed people to leech files without having an upload limit enforced. The problem from a user point of view is that if you upload to people through DHT this won't nessicarily count towards your upload that the tracker keeps track of (although, since I'm pretty sure the tracker just asks your client for a number when you disconnect, it actually does...)
You don't have to worry about people using your "account info" (IP Address) unless you installed NAT on your computer and allowed them to access the web through your connection.
Nobody, not even AOL, does proxies like that anymore. Users have found too many uses for directly connecting to each others computers including:
online gaming, remote desktop applications, voice and video chat, file sharing, and spreading viruses.
None of the above would work correctly in your situation. AOL USED to use proxies pretty heavily, but even then it only cached websites and didn't disrupt other connections.
All anyone has to do is hex edit the exe to change user agent to whatever the private guys prefered client is... and I'm the sort of person who would start using exactly what was "banned" in this manner just to piss off those who want to exert control like that. Not that anyone care what you masturbate to behind your closed doors, but maybe it'll be a wake up call... share it with everyone or go away.
They aren't. By including the private flag in their torrent file they expect it to be a private p2p network.
And that's the problem. A flag cannot be - and should not be - responsible for the privacy of a network.
I'm all for private networks! It is extremely frustrating that everyone wants to download stuff but no one wants to share their bandwidth. If private networks or groups can limit leechers and improve service to people who are also willing to share, that has value to me, and I would actually be willing to pay a subscription.
If you limit your concurrent uploads to 3 connections and 10k, you should be banned period! That defeats the whole purpose and is just greedy and childish.
Well, if you had the server that's running the mirror also be authenticated on the private tracker, and downloading some or all of the torrents and seeding them on the mirror, you'd have duplicated the private tracker in part or whole. After all who cares about whether torrents can be shared or not they're just meta-information, the scarce commodity is the files themselves.
Presentation helps people understand your content easily. For instance, considerthissentencewhichhasnopsaces or ThIsSeNTeNsWIChhaSMIxTCaPZaNDmiSpeLynGSAnDnOSpAcEz . Understandable but harder to read, so I wind up having to spend a bit more time to consume its content. Some of the net grammar/spelling out there is bad enough that I won't bother to take the time to decipher and read it, which means that your content has lost a potential consumer. Of course, some people take this principle to an extreme and become grammar nazis, which is the sort of person I think you're complaining about.
I support copyright provided it's not abused. Sharing something twenty years after it has been made may be justifiable but renting a movie once and sharing it with half the internet is not.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
In that case you'd add a "TESTING" or "UNSTABLE" label to the file and people would know that it's not a finished distro. If it's truly vital to your business that the data is not passed on to unauthorized machines your only bet is DRM.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
or similar copyrighted content. I share copyrighted material all the time. I don't want other people to use my tracker, because I don't necessarily want somebody leeching all my bandwidth.
It's *my* copyrighted material though. I wrote it, I recorded it, and I say who can and can't have it. In fact, anyone can have it, just not from my cable modem.
You fallaciously assume that, simply because one takes another's property, they lack, either by choice or nature, a fundamental understanding of the concept of ownership. If I robbed a convenience store and immediately proceeded to be mugged, my profits lost, would I not feel wronged?
For the purposes of succinctness I refrained from including the age-old "stealing vs. sharing" argument that inevitably arises in any file-sharing discussion, especially on Slashdot.
I find it hard to imagine that anyone can find the article genuinely humorous. If anything, it's an interesting piece about the technological capabilities of a peer-to-peer data transfer protocol and the ramifications of its functions.
In short: you're trying too hard.
-- arstchnca
--
Why would that need the private flag?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
People are talking about inordinate amounts of leechers.
Guess what there is precisely the same amount of info going up and coming down.
Yes people with awsome connections are doing more of the sharing and people on their mommies DSL are doing a lot of leeching but that's been the same since dialup speeds became uneven.
Bittorrent has built in protections against people leeching without uploading as well as ratio aspects so this really isn't that big of a problem.
There are a couple aspects of this which are problematic, firstly with information being more peer driven people are increasingly needing more upstream, ISPs aren't listening and they're basically dumping all that upstream into their web hosting services.
Which is a bummer, and there hasn't been an outcry for more speed because so much of that upstream is used for Warez.
Also a "friend of mine" is a member of a gated bittorrent community and he has a hard time keeping his ratio anywhere near even, when you try and download you go straight to your isp cap in "his" case 450k and "he" can rarely upload because all the torrents are saturated with leechers.
As far as I can tell this situation is similar on all the gated networks, these things simply aren't making the web a better place to download stuff, the truth is you probably can't consume more than 100KBps (daily including while you sleep), be it video, text, music, games or anything else. Considering most upstream connections are only 15 or 40 KBps there is a bit of an overlap but not really much of one.
The ISPs knew what they were doing when they set these limits and the P2P community is a bit strung out.
If web TV shows start releasing at 1080i or whatever this ratio might switch enough that we'll see an increase in upstream but I wouldn't count on it, plan ahead, download early and leave your box uploading all the time and it'll even out.
I heard that Bitcomet also priortizing bitcomet peers before other clients, and report incorrect data to tracker.
Anyway, for some private community, it is necessary to maintain some control (typically seed/leech ratio) and limit the expose of community.
No, it isn't. It's Java, and there's machines that can run Python, but do not have a JVM, therefore the official Python client is the most cross-platform.
I don't know which Java fanboy flagged this as flamebait, but it's entirely correct.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It would need to be really large for bittorrent to work adequately well. Or you'll need to coordinate such that everybody downloads at the same time...
Understandable but harder to read, so I wind up having to spend a bit more time to consume its content ... Of course, some people take this principle to an extreme and become grammar nazis,
9r4MM4r N4212 R 7rU3 3V1L, 4ND R 1N N0 w4y l33t!
That's a very bold generalization to make. It is almost RIAA-esqe.
It's just the dumb summary that said client banned from pirate trackers.
Keep counts of the downloads?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I have a total transfer limit each month. It's fairly high. But if I put up a big torrent, I simply can't upload it to all the hit-and-run kids by myself. This isn't a huge problem for me because when I've put a few copies up I'll simply stop seeding or put on some absurd limit (have fun uploading at 512b/sec).
However on the big public sites this almost always means the torrent dies because nobody else has any incentive to seed. I might as well have uploaded the thing to my own webserver. The idea of private sites which track ratios are to prevent this very thing and it works very well.
What I don't understand is this...if a "closed community" only has 30 people and they try to share something and their collective potential bandwith is 30 KByte/s compared to an "open torrent" where it can go all the way to the max...what is the advantage of "privatizing the torrents"?
Think closer to 10,000 to and you're on the mark.
Damn straight. It's still the only BT client I'm aware of to have a proper implementation of partial downloading - which, by the way, is the exact reason I use it for my torrenting needs. Here's how it goes:
As opposed to, say, Azureus:
In other words, it takes four steps to do something BitComet manages in one.
Why on earth make it so hard? I'm looking at you, the majority of BT clients. A proper implementation was promised for uTorrent (an otherwise fine client), but got dropped off the list for some reason. Would someone care to offer me an explanation as to why such a trend exists? Does no-one else believe like me that this is an important aspect in a client?
I was recently forced to download a number of files using Azureus instead of BitComet, resulting in acute frustration because of the user interface. The prospect of having to do the same with all my future downloads because of tracker owners deciding BitComet to be bad for them is not delightful, to say the least.
Okay,
so if I use bitcomet to download legit material (ie linux iso's), what does this mean for me?
If I use bitcomet to download copyrighted material (ie "Space 1999" episodes), what does this mean for me?
Like a thief getting ripped off by a thief! There's harmony involved. GO with IT!
Wouldn't us hardcore leechers benefit by giving back our bandwidth? This isn't IRC or P2P. This is bittorrent! If you have a website known for it's "super fast torrents" among other regular torrents, then you'd be getting more people to join because of these crazy speeds. So in theory, by uploading yourself, you're telling other people "Hey I'm getting awesome speeds! I'm going to stick around here for a while longer".
you miss the point, with dht if you are downloading Mission Impossible 3.avi from a private tracker, and we are both downloading legal linux.iso from a public tracker, it is possible for my client to query your dht table and get a list of all not just all the IPs and torrent hashes you are connected to, but a copy of all the dht tables of those ips (and so on and so on) so conceivably if i picked up a copy of the Mission Impossible 3.avi.torrent you are on, even though I cant connect to your tracker as my IP isn't registered, our clients will happily talk to each other as you gave me your DHT table that says you're seeding the shit out of that torrent. it will also give me/mpaa a list of all the other private fucks seeding the shit out of that torrent so then its just a fun game in court of proving that being associated with a torrent hash from a DHT = being on a specific .torrent file = downloading and sharing copyrite material
I agree, any system that requires clients to be trustworthy is fundamentally broken.
There's an ancient quote from the Mudding world that talks about this:
(From The Laws of Online World Design)
"Never trust the client.
Never put anything on the client. The client is in the hands of the enemy. Never ever ever forget this."
It's amazing to see how often we software developers forget the lessons of the past.
such family should use something which is NOT BT. WASTE is one altrenative. among others are DC++, Rodi etc.
It's not a flaw, bittorrent was simply not designed to do it in the first place. A flaw in a car would be that it can't go over 20MPH, but not that it can't float.
The flaw really seems to be that people are depending on a little bit flag for privacy.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
There could very well be a family wishing to share a large collection of digital family videos that they have taken at holidays and birthdays, for instance.
What the hell are you talking about? Do you even know what a private tracker is? If you want to upload to certain people you give the torrent to certain people.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
That still won't work for people behind transparent web proxies on ISPs such as AOL.
AOL's broadband customers have largely moved to the Bring Your Own Access business model. True, AOL's dial-up customers may be behind a proxy cloud, but dial-up generally does not provide enough throughput for an enjoyable BitTorrent experience.
Behind those proxies, one's IP would change between page loads.
Only on port 80.
Buy better hardware.
Find me a decent job in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I will. It's hard to buy better hardware when all I can find is volunteer work.
Get a better platform.
I've tried Linux distributions, but a lot of my paid-for hardware is still officially listed as unsupported.
This is actually an advantage of dynamic compilation, the compiler can get information about what code is most used and optimize for that case. There are some compiler optimizations that only increase speed if they can be amortized over a large number of calls.
Problem is that this large number of calls may not be realized over the lifetime of a process. A lot of the perceived speed of a GUI application is based on the first impression, how long it takes for the application to go from zero to responsive.
[Garbage collection] certainly does increase the memory footprint, but as other posters have mentioned, who cares? My G5 has 4GB and I could put another 4GB in if I felt like I needed it.
Find me a job in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I'll put more memory in my 5-year-old paid-for PC. But do they even make PC133 SDRAM anymore? And what will you do about public K-12 school systems, charities, and other recipients of donated PC hardware?
Slow, well-designed programs can be fixed by better hardware.
So how is the developer going to buy this "better hardware" for all users? Given a choice between a $500 program that runs on $1000 hardware and a $100 program that runs on $2000 hardware, many users will choose the $500 program.
Therefore I'll always take the "bloated" language that helps me write better code over the "streamlined" one (i.e. C++) that encourages people to write obfuscated crap.
It's called "limiting your market". I'll use an example from the handheld video game industry: If you can write a game in C++, it'll run on a GBA SP ($80). But if you write it in the Java programming language, it may need a PSP ($250) or a cellphone ($960 [1]), which is much more expensive hardware.
[1] This is $40 per month over a 24-month service contract, as individual end users can't easily buy new SIM-free phones in the United States.
...wants to be leeched? :)
Personally I think the concept of ratios is stupid. It is contrary to the entire POINT of BitTorrent. I try to keep my client set to seed double the amount I download. But constantly having to register temporary accounts on private sites is very annoying, and private trackers with ratios are so annoying I avoid them entirely. I just want to click a link on a website and download a file, not fill out a million forms and content with buggy complicated web interfaces.
Therefore I'll always take the "bloated" language that helps me write better code over the "streamlined" one (i.e. C++) that encourages people to write obfuscated crap.
Oy! I was going to forgive you for your idea that the end-user should suffer your incompetence for a faster rig, but C++ does NOT encourage people to write "obfuscated crap." In fact, with .NET and MFC, C++ programs are more object-oriented than Java and I'll argue that point with anyone who draws breath in its opposition. For those who wish it, C++ simply gives greater power. Bad code and bad coders exist in both languages; C++ simply gives more tools to those who wish to use them.
The language that ACTUALLY encourages "obfuscated code" is Java with its garbage collection. Although the effectiveness of garbage collection depends on the program and the collection scheme, etc., etc., it allows programmers to get away with HORRIBLE management of memory, nay, ENCOURAGES it. It's breeding an entire generation of bad programmers who view their sloppy code as not their fault, but the user's for both not sharing their ideology and not having the proper hardware to use their bloatware.
I suffer and learn languages other than C++ because they, too, are useful. But C++ is my favorite for a reason - it's gives both ultra-low level (you can whip out __asm{} blocks in the middle of your source, even in .NET) and ultra-high-level (multiple inheritences, pure virtual classes, and templates) support - all in one fast, easy to use box.
Right here is about where I'd take my second breath, but I'll yield my soapbox. :D There's a reason why my name is "Zealot" and my sig is a Visual C++ 2005 compiler error.
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If you can write a game in C++, it'll run on a GBA SP ($80).
If you can write a game in C++, it'll work on ANYTHING. :D In fact, I've written games for my IBM Personal System 2 in C++ when I was messing around with learning a little bit of machine language (finding a real-mode compiler for an 80286 was hard, tho) and the operating system for the TI-83/84+ line of graphing calcualtors is written in C. On the other hand, programs can be written very quickly and tidily with MFC or .NET in C++, with nice OO features, too.
As you said, Java programs can only be run on platforms for which a Virtual Machine is written; and there are few of those. For example, I challenge you to write a VM for the graphing calculator.
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Yes, but since like 60% of BitTorrent users are running BitComet, it doesn't seem to make a difference. I was using Azureus until my ISP started throttling, when all my d/ls dropped to about 2kbps. I switched to BitComet and turned on header encryption and my speeds instantly jumped up to 190kbps!
:(
So even restricted to only other BitComet users, my speeds are ten times faster.
Only problem is now I have to do my filesharing from Windows
So I reboot to windows before going to bed and turn on BitComet. In the morning, I shutdown BitComet and boot back to Linux...
It'd be pretty convoluted, I know, but you could use the VMware player (brilliant of them to release that when QEMU and similar projects were starting to pose a threat, but I digress) to run Windows under Linux and samba to share your homne directory with the running Windows installation. Free, and wouldn't require a reboot.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
What's interesting is that the pir8s are wanting to restrict the downloads of content they don't even own lol. Now isn't THAT ironic! I think the pir8s have to get their heads out of their asses and realize that this is a hipocritical position they are taking