Slashdot Mirror
New Auto-Seeding Torrent Server Released
ludwigvan968 writes "The University of
Texas New Media Initiative in association with Google's Summer of Code program have been working on a project to make sharing files over the internet easier than ever before. Summer of Code
intern Evan Wilson just released Project Snakebite, the first fully automatic BitTorrent server. Just as with a normal webserver, you drop files in a folder to share them. Snakebite takes care of generating
torrent files and running a tracker and a seeder for each file. Additionally, it builds a user-customizable link page with all of your files. It will even register your Snakebite server with an easy to remember URL for people that can't remember their IP. Snakebite is free and open software and is currently released for Debian. It's fully portable to both Windows and OS X and the developers just need some help packaging it."
With an unattended, fully automatic, open torrent server, how are you going to stop it from being filled with trash (ie. pr0n, infected files, illegal material) etc?
For those wondering where the source code is (the website isnt really your typical open source project breed), this app is written in Python. Something quite interesting the article failed to mention.
How long until people start seeding "Inbox.dbx" or "Outlook.pst" and other fun files we all remember from p2p days?
liqbase
Next case: Google versus the United Kingdom; Google is accused of funding the manufacture of items useful to terrorism (as the Federation Against Copyright Theft tells us, piracy funds terrorism)
Next case: RIAA versus Canonical; Canonical is accused of supplying Azureus, a piracy tool, to people
Next case: RIAA versus GNOME Foundation; the GNOME Foundation is accused of supplying a GUI library to piracy tools
WHEN DOES IT END?
BitTorrent as a basic client will never be truely anonymous by virtue of the technology involved. Only by using private VPNs (like The pirate party one or by using additional software higher up the network stack like Tor can basic anonymity be enabled.
Warhammer forums
Actually, enabling people to easily share their own torrents could help promote legitimate use of BT.
I've been personally involved in several situations where large, legal files needed to be distributed among a small group of people--unfortunately several didn't have the know-how to set up a tracker, and others simply didn't have the time to figure it out. A tool like this could enable every one of us to start it up on our own.
The one thing that I think it needs to also have is at least minimal security against discoverability--a password on the torrent listing page, for example. Would also be cool if you could control who was using the server, but I gather BT isn't too well-adapted to that requirement? Not sure.
You can have my warez when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.
The person who owns the original media is the one whose generating the copy. The downloader is receiving it. An analagous situation: a guy is selling ripped-off copies of DVDs from a market store. Someone buys a copy. It's the seller (the distributor, the one who reproduced it) that gets busted, not the buyer.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Who are you? Me?
Piracy is a tough enemy for companies who make money off there software,
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Incorrect. Piracy is irrelevant for the majority of companies that make money from software. (Most software written is single use, business logic type custom apps).
and seeing how Google does not fall into this category,
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Incorrect again. Google makes a hell of a lot of money off their software - just not by selling it.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
So the MPAA/RIAA are only going after file sharing people? Not leeches.
Yep
So you would be totally safe if you only download stuff and never upload?
I think you have to assume they could know everything you do online.
It's easy to find the distributors - their IP has to be advertised in order for them to distribute stuff. It's harder to find just the leechers. Of course, in a swarming application like BitTorrent, everyone is an uploader as well as a downloader, so it's easy to get peer IPs once you connect to the swarm.
However, I believe it's currently only illegal to upload - after all, you can hardly be charged distributing X-Men 3 if you never actually had a copy of X-Men 3. Copyright is a prohibition against distributing, not copying - it was originally setup for the protection of publishing houses, so that if they bought the rights to a novel, a rival publishing house couldn't just run off it's own copies without the expense of buying the rights. In those days, publishing was a large and expensive business, and it wasn't really conceivable that the laws be used against individuals; individuals had no way practical ways to publish. In the mdoern era, however, individual publishing has become dead easy.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Despite the posts trying to paint this into the next Napster/Limewire/P2P, I think it would be great for distributing large files that might get slashdotted/dug/whatever. I think it's a good way to have a sudden rush of trafic pay for it's own bandwidth. Sure, not everyone is at risk of a slashdotting, but it makes a good precaution. Since it's just some Python, I bet there wouldn't be too much trouble getting it up in a hury as the server starts to get hit (if you're lucky enough to notice). A bonus of planning ahead is that there's always at least one seed (the server) transferring at about the same rate a normal download would have for a single user in the first place. Scalable content rather than scalable servers. Interesting...
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Yeah, it breaks down like this: okay, it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it and, if you're the proprietor of a music or video store, it's legal to sell it. It's illegal to seed it, but, but - but that doesn't matter 'cause -- get a load of this, alright -- if you get stopped by a lawsuit, you can just claim it was someone else using your IP address.
In the US, copyright is a limited monopoly over reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, and the preparation of derivative works (17 USC 106). Reproduction is controlled for the same reason you claim it isn't: when it was inefficient and expensive, personal copying was virtually unthinkable.
I've been thinking about setting up my own tracker to allow my family to download home videos from me...
;-) That way I could go around to all of my families computers and set them up with the software and then just leave it alone. Every once in a while they can look in the "Home Videos" folder for new videos....
I know that sites like YouTube are popular right now... but I really don't like the quality restrictions... and would rather family members could just download a nice sized full copy themselves so they could burn it to DVD if they like or whatever.
Bittorrent would be ideal for doing this... and this software sounds like just the ticket. All I would have to do is point my family at the page it generates... and when I finish editing a home movie drop it in the "upload" folder and wham... it goes out to everyone.
All it needs now is an "auto client" that you just give it the URL of the automatically created website and it will automatically download anything new that arrives (that's a lot of "auto" going on
I think it's funny that people around here always cry "Bittorrent doesn't have to be for illegal purposes" and then any time a bittorrent story comes up all they can do is argue the finer points of what would/wouldn't be illegal/enforceable if you use the new tech... sigh.
Friedmud
Actually, since VPNs are in the Network layer (packet-level) and Tor falls somewhere between the Session and Presentation layers (stream-level), Tor is higher in the stack than VPNs:
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat