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P2P Population Growing Again
An anonymous reader writes "Slyck news is reporting that the file-sharing population has recovered from its mid-year plateau and is once again growing. At 9.45 million users, it is only slightly below its greatest height of 9.6 million users in August. Keep in mind however; these numbers do not represent the population of the BitTorrent community, which would surely add many millions more."
The numbers are down. No one is using P2P. P2P is dead.
Got it? If we keep that message up, the *AA will go away.
Uh, Half Life 2 came out in November 2004.
Isn't that like doing a survey of search engines and not including Google?
And Narnia. If they actually released some good movies this summer, we might have seen higher P2P usage then, too.
--LWM
Here's a link to the actual survey. It's not too informative, but it shows the cyclic nature of the p2p userbase mentioned in the article.
Keep in mind however; these numbers do not represent the population of the BitTorrent community, which would surely add many millions more."
Damn right they don't. MPAA and RIAA don't quite know how to tackle that one. Kazaa et al are small potatoes compared to the really good, private, Bittorrent trackers.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
This is already accepted to some extent by anti-SPAM policies that forbid access to external SMTP servers, and has been used to great effect by university administrators.
It would be far better than the legal approach, which is inefficient and expensive for all parties involved, and would prevent many viruses along with piracy.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Ah, crap, I can't keep typing this with a straight face...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
TFA mentions that the survey was done by Big Champagne, and if i remember correctly, apps such as Peer Guardian, etc, typically block Big Champagne's IP ranges. So this could potentially misrepresent numbers of real-world P2P users. Not sure if that has been factored in, but if not, the reported numbers will definitely be on the conservative side.
You're so silly! This is obviously a side effect of letting part of the PATRIOT act lapse. Everyone knows that P2P pirates are really aiding and abetting terrorism!
Thats because a lot of users are students, and most went home for the summer break.
Should see a similar reducing around the Xmas holidays and spring break.
Nothing magical here.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article says, "Various reasons, such as returning or departing college students, broadband penetration...
Since a lot of what is shared on p2p is porn, I agree that penetration is one of the driving influences.
Let's not forget what happens when you go "bigtime" with P2P.
2 6228 shows.
As this related Slashdot story http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/25/2
There is a case to be made, I think, that if certain ports were disabled for home users a serious dent could be made in this P2P population -- not to mention the great deal of bandwidth freed up for more serious Internet activity.
O RLY?
"In fact, some Bittorrent clients are pick alternate ports at random during startup to help avoid ISP filtering.
I would recommend a high port range, like 59052-59059, and also be sure you have those ports forwarded if you own a router. I've done this with Azureus, ABC, and Bitcomet and could leech and seed fine."
link
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Because there are a LOT of legal uses for them. Just because something can be used improperly does not mean you should just automatically penalize those that are not.
The 'pirates' would just go father underground and as long as you allow any connections then the data will flow. You *cant* stop all flow of data, or you wouldnt be providing a service anylonger.
The only way to stop it is to make bandwidth so expensive its cheaper to go buy the item. ( but of course lose all your customers in the process )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The only way ISPs could block P2P is if they blocked every single goddam port excluding 21, 80 and a few others for AIM. Then someone would make filesharing that used those ports. So no worries, P2P isn't going anyway. Besides, it's part of the constitution. Remember prohibition? I don't, but I heard that shit was crazy.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
No it was Duke Nukem, it took forever to download though
...because removing anonymity is the Holy Grail of the RIAA/MPAA strategy. They've been flogging their legal team to produce results now, and after Trusted Computing takes hold, expect the lawsuits and 'cease and desist' orders to increase (although I have great faith some smart person on the side of good will have TC broken before it goes mainstream). Lawsuits don't work now and they're not going to work in the future.
NeverEndingBillboard.com
NeverEndingBillboard.com
Good news - P2P is the thorn in the backs of music publishers that will force them to embrace legal digital distribution schemes like iTunes.
1. Downloading music with crappy bit rates, clicks, pops, and incomplete songs.
2. Downloading "fake" songs that are only garbled nonsense.
3. Downloading songs in zip or rar format that require a password to unzip.
4. Ominous feelings that the RIAA will slap my neighbor with a cease and desist letter because he lets me use his wireless connection.
Perhaps the record companies could take a look at #1 and release some decent quality songs with caveats. Something like reduced quality, incomplete, or with a small advert at the end of the recording that says: Purchase this song, video, and other exclusive features at www.youmustpayforyourtoppings.com. Maybe if they flood the networks with new releases with these annoyances, people will pay for legitamate full-featured, full-versioned copies.
Namaste
http://hymn-project.org/jhymndoc/
If you can't buy downloadable music online without DRM, piracy begins to look pretty appealing. Pay and be restricted, or pirate and play anywhere?
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I was listening to Hard Attack and Sirius Radio and really started to like Between The Buried and me. Never heard of the band but liked it. I looked it up on the internet and bought two tickets to a show in town. Tickets were $13.50 each, but with the fees a set of TWO tickets cost me $47. That's almost double the price! That's a lot of money to spend on a band I've only heard on the radio a few times.
So I tried to buy the CD on the bands website, and the store keeps fucking up. Won't let me buy it. Page acts like it's about to load up and then stops. Maybe it's because I'm using a mac, maybe it's just messed up.
I'd like to copy the CD onto my iPod so I can listen to the whole thing first. I don't even want the CD, I'd like to listen to it tonight, don't want to wait for the mail.
Can somebody upload a Bitorrent of the the Alaska CD please? I tried to buy it really.
Of course - not everyone can use torrents. Here in Santa Barbara, Cox Cable filters out bittorrent traffic by examining the packet headers. You can't get around it by changing the port for example. Really sucks - I can't even patch WoW without it taking 2 hours unless I find a direct download.
Legit download sales have fallen, CD sales have fallen and P2P users have increased. Hmmmm let me see If I actually want to pay for music I can choose to have either a file which may or may not work with my mp3 player or A DRM'd malware infested CD that may or may not play on my CD player. /me bashes Carrey Sherman over the head with a clue!
DRM and financial persecutions encourage music piracy.
I wonder if we are now seeing the beginning of the end of the music cartels as tech savy teens begin to question the moral ethics of buying music and supporting such corrupt entities.
An industry which treats both the content creators and the fans with contempt should not survive. I'm surprised they've lasted this long.
I feel really sorry for you. Switch ISPs now. Seriously. And while you're at it, publicize the fact that Cox Cable is censoring their traffic, and therefore no longer deserves the title of common carrier, and therefore is liable for the actions of their users.
Ironically, if you think about it, they're putting themselves in danger of getting a lawsuit from the RIAA.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
last i heard, bittorrent made up more than 1/3 of all internet traffic (not just P2P). i'm not sure what proportion of traffic is p2p in general, but bittorrent is almost certainly the biggest piece of the pie.
I hate being the one asking, but, I gotta wonder...
How many trillions of megabytes is that, in porn?
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Obviously, most people don't think it's unethical to download music. And when the majority of society disagrees with one of its laws, that law will change. At least it should.
"Obviously, most people don't think it's unethical to download music. And when the majority of society disagrees with one of its laws, that law will change. At least it should."
At one time the majority of people believed that slavery was acceptable. Ethics shouldn't be dictated by the whims of the majority, but instead on rational thought. So, if you believe there is nothing wrong with violating copyright in downloading music, justify your opinion with a reasonable explanation. Don't just say it's ok because everyone is doing it.
Vote for Pedro
Try switching to port 1720, the standard VoIP port. It works with Rogers Cable in Canada. They don't run packet shapers on any traffic on that port, for fear of lagging VoIP calls.
Call them every other day about it. Say you can't play WoW correctly. Encourage all the other WoW players in the area with Cox to do the same. It's impacting a very important usage (WoW being very popular, still).
Or you can switch to a client that encrypts the header. I know that in the world of private tracker BitComet is hated, but it really is a great client once you disable DHT tracking and enable header encryption, although Azureus may support it, too. My university also filters bittorent headers, but once those headers were encrypted, I was back in business.
There is an upcoming new use of the P2P distribution model: P2P TV.
Instead of downloading videos off eDonkey and then watch them afterwards, I watch video streams "live" with PPLive.
Stay tuned, I'm guessing that P2P TV is the next big thing after Napster/KaZaA/eDonkey!
w00t
It is one of those things that most people don't feel like it is a crime and there is nothing MPAA and RIAA can do. No amount of lawsuits, no amount of sappy ads before every movie in the theatres showing poor set designers that are now starving because those pirates stole the bread from their kid's table, is going to change that. Because people don't think it is such a big crime to share and download mp3 files and movies.
I am not saying whether it is good or bad, or that it is right to download music from P2P without paying for it - all I am saying is that most people don't see it as such a bad thing. As it turns out the order and peace and quiet in a most societies is not kept by police or any forceful tactics, but by the fact that the majority of the citizens like it that way. For example if tomorrow morning everyone got it into their heads that pillaging, vandalism, looting and killing each other is perfectly "ok" there will not be enough police or lawyers or soldiers to stop everyone acting in that manner.
I think the same goes for illegal file sharing, the majority of people don't see it as a particularly bad thing and they will continue to do it. In fact what people finally see is how Sony/BMG, Universal, EMI and friends have been screwing everyone all these years by selling crappy music for $15-$20 a disk. The artists weren't getting the money - it was all going into building vacation homes and buying Ferrari's for the executives of those production companies.
Now someone might say that the laws in our supposedly democratic society clearly reflect the attitudes and the will of the majority of people, so how come downloading is still illegal. I think it is because the laws today are created by those who have large amounts of accumulated wealth and can sponsor and lobby the Congress to make it pass whatever they want. Also, when is the last time any of us contacted our local Congressman and petitioned him for anything?
I think the best the recording companies can do is to bite the bullet and re-structure their business accepting that the old days when they could make billions by selling overpriced crap are coming to an end.
That really isn't the way to word an email on such a topic to a corporation, you need to be more formal...
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To Whom it may concern,
I have noticed that you are shaping packets (*are they shaping, or are they blocking the traffic?*) which you identify as being BitTorrent traffic (http://www.bittorrent.com/). I assume your reasoning behind this is that BitTorrent traffic accounts for a very high percentage of overall bandwidth usage on your network and your assumption that all BitTorrent traffic is of an illegal nature.
However your actions are affecting many completely legitimate uses of the internet and are making your service severely crippled for many of us. For instance, the most popular online game in the world at present is World of Warcraft (WoW). This game, as most do, supply occasionaly patches and updates which require downloading of sometimes quite substantial volumes of data. BitTorrent makes this method faster for the end users (myself included), and reduces the load on the company's servers also, allowing more people to download the content in a far shorter time. Apart from this use, which is impacting me the most, there are many other items transfered using BitTorrent which are just as legal and useful to your paid subscribers.
I ask you to reconcider your blocking of this traffic, else I would like to be released from my contract to you with no penalty as you are no longer providing the service which I initially signed up for.
Sincerly,
Yournamehere!
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Something along those lines anyway... (spell checked of course)... and I would lay off the legal crap... nothing will turn off a tech support or customer support officer more than some little kid (whether you are or not, that's what they'll see you as, trust me... I have run an internet provider's customer support centre) claiming that they know something about the law when really they don't... it just makes them instantly go "We've got another RIAA nut here...." "Really? Send them the pre-canned response".
Threatening to end your contract with them and demanding to be released without penalty will get you far more action than vague mentionings of cans of worms and lawsuits.
"And Narnia. If they actually released some good movies this summer, we might have seen higher P2P usage then, too."
Heh. Kinda reminds me of the old joke about N-Sync having the best anti-piracy protection ever.
"Derp de derp."
That's also how I work (albeit mostly for music), P2P gives me "free tries", if i'm not interrested I delete the file and don't buy the disc period, if I like the group album I buy the CD.
And most of my friends do the same, it's a convenient way to build a collection you *really* like without having to blow your money on 90% of crap.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler