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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."
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?
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.
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...
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.
Uh, so thieves are angry that other thieves are stealing their lot? how funny..
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.
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.
If this "private" flag relies on cooperation from clients, then it is broken.
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
Even though I do have 2Gb of RAM and appreciate using it fully, the footprint of most big java applications is far from negligeable (or it's negligeable in the Firefox "hogging 200Mb of RAM and holding on to it is negligeable" meaning (*)) and given the choice I do and will use an alternate software to a Java bloatware.
(*): I do use Firefox though, mainly because I'm addicted to the extensions and sheer flexibility of that bastard (which are more important to me than the issue of seeing it tear through 10% of my RAM), sorry Operaists but even though I do like Opera the lack of many (mostly useless) features I get through firefox' extensions prevents me from using it as my main browser
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
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
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.
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.
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.
You can never stop someone technically knowledgeable enough to mod the code themselves... if they are determined enough to be a dick, that is. The thing is, most people don't know how to do it, and most of those who do don't want to be dicks. What you have left is a small numbers of sociopathic fucks who aren't worth worrying about. If a client comes pre-modded for joe-numbnuts to ignore ratios... ban it.
This method seems to work pretty well in keeping assholes to a minimum.
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.
Kind of defeats the purpose of being "private" tracker once you post it on slashdot doesn it?
Huh? That doesn't make sense. DHT just allows you to share with other people not on the tracker. A private tracker can refuse to track anyone they dont want to, for example if you're not logged in. No one is talking about getting anyones passkey, you should keep that safe. However, if you have DHT enabled, you can share with other people not on the tracker, using your own bandwith. It doesn't hurt the tracker in any way and its not stealing anyone else's bandwith, so it shouldn't be any concern of the tracker who you share with.
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Where does that message mention anything about the type of content being downloaded. Go lecture somewhere else, halfwit.
Grab a seat yourself...
A large number of people on the internet who use stuff like BT to download legit software really don't give a rat's ass about dickhead movie/software pirates.
I use BT to get ISOs for Linux distros and other legal free data. I don't like the fact BT gets whatever negative publicity the *AA like to throw out to the public due to people using it for illegal acts, and I'm sure there are others who feel the same.
Get a job, buy the movie/CD/software. Don't like the prices? Buy second-hand. Don't like that? Complain to the *AA/developer and/or don't buy it. Stop acting like a 12-year old with a cable modem.
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.)
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.