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The Uncertain Future of BitTorrent
javipas writes "The people behind the popular BitTorrent tracker are working on a new version of the BitTorrent protocol that could become the successor to the current one, maintained by BitTorrent Inc. The company founded by Bram Cohen — original author of this protocol — now has decided to close the source for several new features in the BitTorrent protocol, and this "gives them too much power and influence". The new file format would be called .p2p, and would maintain backwards compatibility with current .torrent files."
You can give OSS to the people, but you can't take it back!!
Perhaps that's one of the biggest reasons people should think long and hard about attempting leverage open source to gain popularity and a user base. There's that possibility of the user base forking your work and taking it over if they don't like the direction you're going... and that's exactly what I predict will happen with BitTorrent. And while they're at it, they'll probably go ahead and build into it some anonymity protection.
And because of those closed features, the new tracking system will probably not be as popular because no one likes to use the original bittorrent client. That is until they reverse engineer it. Anyone who torrents anything (legal or otherwise) will notice there are like no original bt clients showing up. Why is that? Could it be it sucks? Unless these new features are like gold, no one will care and will continue to use the old one.
Anyway, all p2p is based on innovation. Just look at history: Kazaa, napster, eDonkey and thousands of others. Protocols tend to disappear and being replaced by better and more sophisticated ones. Or they just get extensions like eMules Kademlia.
I think we should be happy that somebody's thinking about something new instead just relaying on something that's good but not optimal. Especially now with current climate of litigations and general problems (traffic shaping, etc) with BitTorrent it's time for something more resilient and anonymous.
Just my 2p.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
There are some very interesting technologies that can be applied to a new .p2p format while remaining backward-compatible with .torrent files. Such as auto-regeneration of almost-complete torrents via in-file redundancy (small size increase, massive benefit), the possibility of onion routing and obfuscation, new uploading algorithms, that sort of thing.
.torrent specifications -- the old, open one and the new, partially-closed one -- why not go whole hog and fork the thing all to hell? An application should be able to easily handle both.
And honestly, if Bittorrent closes some of the protocol, the features either going to be ignored or reverse engineered. In which case there's already 2 different
[ think ]
DRM? Adware? I don't see why it needs to be closed unless it's stuff people don't want.
After MPAA got Bram Cohen and the UTorrent guy on their pockets, it was a matter of time until they tried to pull such stunts. My bet is that they will try to close a "hole" in the protocol, the impossibility to create a truly private swarm, one where only authorized peers could connect, regardless of the desire of the peers themselves to share the information about the other peers (DHT style). That's the wet dream of people selling content, they could sell access to their content using the bittorrent protocol and nobody would be able to join the swarm without paying.
But there is nothing there people should be afraid., as everybody knows, real innovation on the P2P scene occurs when the interested parts (the filesharers, not necessarily illegal ones) are the real force behind the development, as PEX (protocol encryption) came to prove, now that the cat is out of the sack, there is not a lot of things that Mr. Cohen can do.
By keeping the source closed, he is in fact assuming all responsibility for the actions of his code. If his code allows something bad to happen, we can say with certainty that it's all his fault.
Well done. And remember, newer nanotech is coming which will give us solid-state storage with terabyte capacities. Eventually it'll be petabytes. As you say, all we have to do is sneakernet the drives to each other, snowballing the number of tunes and videos on each individual drive.
Imagine the day when you could carry the Library of Congress (which probably will be copyrighted as a work itself) around in your pocket.
Also imagine two more things, sadly. "IP" corporations will make the manufacturers of such superstorage encrypt their devices and register the keys with the corporations/government, and no doubt will make the devices snitch you out by making them periodically check in with a registrar with a list of naughty things you may have; and possession of such devices, most certainly possession of unregistered/unlicensed content will bear the penalty of years in prison, or even the death penalty. George Hearst's men shot his miners who pocketed gold nuggets during the first Guilded Age. We are entering another. This time the evil men can track our movements and actions minutely. This age will be a police state beyond even my sad imagination. Actually it will be a death sentence to resist the new lords of IP: if you resist arrest, they will stun you, possibly killing you. If you try to flee the country, they may shoot you dead. If you are imprisoned and try to escape, they will shoot you and kill you. Death is the penalty for ultimately refusing to bend the knee and take it in the ass. And your friends will sadly shake their heads at your obdurate refusal to accede to the law, and Youtubers will guffaw as the taser darts stop your heart, cheering on the thugs who are shutting your fool mouth up.
Here's a little line for all of you. When people ask you why you should care if the guvmint/Comcast/shadow creatures of the corporate world/ monitors your location, communications, downloads, reading material, mail, and traveling accessories if you've done nothing wrong, ask them the simple question:
Why do you have shades on your windows if you've nothing to hide?
If the protection of our precious kids/selves/intellectual property is more important than the right to not be monitored, then build all houses out of glass and let everyone see what we do. It's the same damned thing. If you've nothing to hide, put cameras in every corner of your house and let the government record.
You all won't do it, because you know damned well you all do something illegal somewhere. Corporations break the law every minute of their existence. A lot of you smoke leaves. A lot of you sleep with people you know you shouldn't. You read things that would affect people's opinion of you. You listen to music and watch video without license of the copyright holder.
Anyway, keep the bugs off your glasses and the smokies off your asses. I'd say "Peace", but we're not ever going to get that with greedy bastards convincing us to roll our pants down on command.
If his code allows something bad to happen, we can say with certainty that it's all his fault.
Manufacturers do not assume liability if their product is used to perform illegal activities. How long would Heckler and Koch, Gerber, and Ronson remain in business if they were held liable for every knife fight, gun duel, and arson?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You can't take the sky from me...
It's been called piracy for as long as I've owned a computer, and that's goin' on 30 years... Folks should be proud of their heritage, instead of trying to edit historical use of a term like you do.
Wait a minute, that link has a search string at the end! Someone call Amazon!
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