Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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."
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.
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.
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...
-------------
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!
--------------
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."