Deluge Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent

markybob writes "An open-source bittorrent client, Deluge, now provides an internal, anonymizing browser to protect its users from overzealous ISPs. The client runs on Windows, Linux and OS X. From the site: "Everyone knows that it is common practice for ISPs to do their best to either block or throttle bittorrent users. We believe that this is wrong and unethical, as there are many legal uses for bittorrent. If an ISP is throttling or blocking bittorrent traffic, you can pretty much bet that they're tracking which users visit bittorrent-related sites so that they can better block or throttle those users." Their forum has more info"

Comments

Any problems with verizon dsl?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got it and am curious. I encrypt everything but I still worry so I'm looking into this.

They are the only broadband option in my area.

Re:Any problems with verizon dsl?

[dosius]

Not that I know of. Get the $60 or $80 business full package and they don't care what you do with it.

-uso.

Re:Any problems with verizon dsl?

[Redlazer]

Doesnt that go against the whole "Net neutrality" argument? -Red

Re:Any problems with verizon dsl?

[dosius]

Maybe, but just about every ISP blocks port 80 inbound these days, and I *need* static IP, so I'd rather pony up more for the $79.95 business account, instead of the $37.95 residential.

-uso.

Re:Any problems with verizon dsl?

[mrsteveman1]

Net neutrality is not one size fits all network service, if anything the current consumer pricing models are subsidized and not representative of the true cost each user puts on the system. It's statistical multiplexing mixed with a bit of bad advertising.

People should have no problem paying reasonable rates for things like the ability to run an HTTP server, a static IP (with RDNS record for a domain of your choice), SSL certificates, etc. People should also have no problem paying reasonable rates for the transfer they actually use (As opposed to paying for the transfer someone else is using while you aren't), the ISPs walked into this situation with the "pool of money" model and now it is biting everyone in the ass.

Comcast logs

[Anonymous Coward]

I have logged comcast throttling my bandwith and posted it on my site I am now pursing legal action

Re:Comcast logs

[the_g_cat]

Don't click: Minicity link. This is getting so boring...

Re:Comcast logs

[Anonymous Coward]

these minicity links have to be the lamest trolling slashdot has had in a while.

most are funny, these just suck.

Re:Comcast logs

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I had to take a piss. As I entered the john a big beautiful all-American football hero type, about twenty-five, came out of one of the booths. I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was "straight" and married - and in any case I was sure I wouldn't have a chance with him. As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated, hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still warm from his sturdy young ass. I found not only the smell but the shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat, stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd - a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as a man's wrist. I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd always been a heavy rimmer and had lapped up more than one little clump of shit, but that had been just an inevitable part of eating ass and not an end in itself. Of course I'd had jerk-off fantasies of devouring great loads of it (what rimmer hasn't), but I had never done it. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of the world's handsomest young stud. Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit without the benefit of a digestive tract? I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it smelled. I've found since then that shit nearly almost does. I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big brown cock, beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily, sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My only regret was the donor of this feast wasn't there to wash it down with his piss. I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with the rich bitterness of shit. Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom. I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid shit trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six orgasms in the process. I often think of that lovely young guy dropping solid gold out of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could, and at least once did, bring to a grateful shiteater.

Re:Comcast logs

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice. An unreadable wall of text. If you want to troll, learn2

Re:Comcast logs

[Slashdot Parent]

Perhaps I am behind the times. What is a minicity link? I found myminicity using google, but what, does he get a referral bonus for people clicking or something? Or is it a shock site?

Just curious.

Legal uses for Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah right

har de fucking har

buncha thieves, no respect for copyrights, intellectual property, and blood sweat and tears to produce the bits that you love to steal. Ironically, you only steal it because it has value to you, value that your worthless ass refuses to pay for. Rationalize all you want, scumbag.

Re:Legal uses for Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no such thing as intellectual property. They're intellectual property rights - property rights that work on intellectual goods. A "property right" (as opposed to a "liability right") is the right to exclude, rather than just receive damages. When we talk about intellectual property rights, we're talking, literally and only, about the right to exclude - not about something that you "own."

Re:Legal uses for Bittorrent

[PopeRatzo]

no respect for copyrights, intellectual property,

You've got this much right. Copyright and the concept of "intellectual property" is doing nothing to encourage innovation and creativity or to enhance the circumstances of innovators and creative makers. It only serves to enrich people who can afford to buy the abstract "intellectual property" of others and then bring lawsuits to create a money stream for themselves and for their lawyers.

Most important, copyright and "intellectual property" is no longer necessary for those who are doing the making. I have first-hand experience with the transformation from the creative equivalent of an indentured servant into an artist that has control over my own product and income. Step one was examining just how corrupt and useless the current system has become. Step two was learning about Creative Commons, direct to public domain and other innovative approaches to distributing work and getting paid for it. Step three, at least in my case, was "profit!!" (of course).

The experience has also radicalized me in terms of how I see not only the way artists support themselves, but also how I view the entirety of economic life in these United States (and beyond). Reading Adam Smith and Milton Friedman and comparing their words with the actuality of 21st century life, has convinced me that the entire system of "free markets" "supply and demand" and "the unseen hand" are all so much baloney. It's all been a dodge to keep those of us who work for a living from noticing that we're getting less for working more while our bosses are gaining wealth and producing less.

Notice how the the bosses (executive vice-presidents) at Circuit City have been forced to accept mere 1 million dollar bonuses (called "retention awards") this year because their company has performed so poorly. If any of us were to perform so poorly, we'd get pink slips instead of six-figure Christmas presents. To complete the picture, notice how Circuit City has unceremoniously fired their most experience sales staff, who were earning as much as $14.00 per hour, and then offered them their jobs back a $9 per hour and no benefits! The French Revolution was not so long ago that these "executive vice-presidents" can't learn a few lessons regarding what happens to people who oppress a working class. Hell, some of them must have seen V for Vendetta.

Re:Legal uses for Bittorrent

[Arctic Dragon]

This is my favourite software to pirate.
You can steal a lot of stuff here, too.

Re:Legal uses for Bittorrent

[cr_nucleus]

The French Revolution was not so long ago that these "executive vice-presidents" can't learn a few lessons regarding what happens to people who oppress a working class. Hell, some of them must have seen V for Vendetta.

Reading this, i can't help but think about all the rage about terrorists and the ensuing surveiliance & control paranoia. As much as i'd like things to get better in a peaceful way, i sometimes wonder if it is possible.

Here in France, it really seems that the government is commited to go down this road. I feel powerless, i really have no idea about what i could do to push things in a better direction.

*scurries off to steal Linux*

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha! You'll never catch me, SCO weenies!

More Accurate Headline...

[Symbolis]

"Deluge BitTorrent Client Now Includes Anonymizing Browser"

And to be exact, this is Deluge 0.5.8RC1

Re:More Accurate Headline...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a list of browsers capable of doing this and more long before this...

Re:More Accurate Headline...

[budgenator]

all I get is

Error in download_count on line 262.
./ubuntu/gutsy/0.5.7.95/deluge-torrent_0.5.7.95-1_i386.gutsy.deb is already defined.

and I'm trying to download the sources!

Re:More Accurate Headline...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually when I downloaded the .deb file (running Mint, Ubuntu spinoff) the package manager told me that the same package (albeit an older version) was in my repos so I installed that and it seems to be working fine as I type this...

broken

[FudRucker]

the links to both the source code and the debian package is broken...

Great News

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great, because it makes it easier for me to be a leech and take other peoples hard work for free. Fuck the content producers! what have they ever done for us?

Re:Great News

[Anonymous Coward]

well they sucked your dick for one, of you course you had to pay them being that fatty fag that you are.

Re:Great News

[andymadigan]

I'm sure all developers at Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org are so angry that I am taking their hard work for free.

Re:Great News

[Anonymous Coward]

you speak for the 0.001% of torrent users that are not abusing others copyright...

Re:Great News

[iminplaya]

In Capitalist America, Copyright abuse you! HAHAHA HOHOHO

Merrry Christmas!

...The fire is slowly dying,
And, my dear, we're still good-bying,
But as long as you love me so,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Re:Great News

[Dr. Hellno]

It just occurred to me that... are you... the RIAA? I mean it seems ridiculous, you're clearly not going to change anyone's mind, but who the fuck thinks like that? Are there actual human beings who don't realize bittorrent has legal uses? Or is this some kind of RIAA campaign to shame people into obedience? The latter is so absurd it just seems possible.

Re:Great News

[aussie_a]

Sure bittorrent has legal purposes. Just as marijuana has therapeutic uses. Now who do you think the majority of the marijuana uses are? Cancer patients or potheads? Same thing with bittorrent. While people do download Linux ISOs and other legitimate things, they're in the minority (quite likely are an even greater minority then the cancer patients in my above example).

Mac OS X

[christurkel]

Small correction: The Mac OS X version uses X11, not Cocoa.

Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent?

[stsp]

In related news, semantically reversed article headlines now include slashdot!

Also, the summary is highly misleading. This is not a bittorrent-based replacement for TOR as one might conclude from the summary. The browser is merely designed to conceal the IPs of people surfing websites hosting torrents by going through a proxy. You also see ads while using the service. I wonder how long it will take ISPs with an anti-bittorrent agenda to block their proxies... Quoting TFA's FAQ:

Can we use the internal browser to surf any site?

No. This is a very touchy subject, so I want to be very clear. Our proxy servers have a whitelist of bittorrent-related sites (trackers, index sites, etc), which it allows you to visit.

Why are there ads? Are you turning evil? This is free software!

This is free software, however, our proxy servers (which anonymizies the browsing) costs us very real dollars.

I can't download any files. What is that about?

To prevent abuse, Deluge's internal browser only allows you to download bittorrent files..

Re:Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent?

[Threni]

> To prevent abuse, Deluge's internal browser only allows you to download bittorrent files..

To guarantee we only catch pirates, we're only letting you download illegal content.

Re:Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent?

[timeOday]

I wonder how long it will take ISPs with an anti-bittorrent agenda to block their proxies...

Why would they? And for that matter, why would they care who visits bittorrent sites in the first place (which is the premise of this service)? Visiting a bittorrent website doesn't use any special amount of bandwidth. And if the users do go on to actually use bittorrent, it's easier just to detect and throttle that when it happens.

Re:Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent?

[Windom Earle]

Oh come on! Somebody, somewhere, once downloaded a Debian .iso image with bittorrent. So it's completely legitimate.

Re:Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the bittorrent traffic is being encrypted to avoid throttling by the ISP, then the ISP might throttle the traffic of the users who visit bittorrent sites. From the Deluge FAQ

Why does Deluge have an internal, anonimizing browser?

It is common practice for ISPs to do their best to either block or throttle bittorrent users. We believe that this is wrong and unethical, as there are many legal uses for bittorrent. If an ISP is throttling or blocking bittorrent traffic, you can pretty much bet that they're tracking which users visit bittorrent-related sites so that they can better block or throttle those users. Are we just paranoid? Maybe, but I've worked for an ISP in the past, and I can assure you that there is a need for this service. Though if the anonymous proxies their browser uses only allow you to surf torrent sites, I don't see the benefit if you are only downloading legal torrents as they can still tell you are visiting torrent sites.

Re:Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent?

[Slashdot Parent]

Well, hopefully you aren't doing too much downloading of Debian .isos after the initial download because you should be upgrading using apt.

Anyhow, I've downloaded many legitimate files via bittorrent. Openoffice.org, knoppmyth, and eclipse come to mind. And yes, even Debian once. It just happens to be a very efficient way to download large files. Kind of, like, you know, what it was designed to be.

I'm not going to put my hand over my eyes and pretend that most bittorrent traffic is legit, obviously. I'm just saying that whenever I want to download a large file, I'm thankful to have the option of using bittorrent.

Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[SirLurksAlot]

From their FAQ:

Why are there ads? Are you turning evil? This is free software! This is free software, however, our proxy servers (which anonymizies the browsing) costs us very real dollars. Also, if you don't use our internal browser, you'll never see an ad. In the spirit of freedom, I openly disclose that it costs around US$800 per month (with a two-month contract) for us to cover the hosting expenses, which we need to make up for somehow, or else it comes out of my personal pocket. Deluge does not have any corporate sponsorship, and I've actually put up my own money, without knowing if the ad revenue will make up for it or not. Why did I do this? Because I really believe that users need an anonymous method of getting their torrents...and I'm hoping very much that our users agree with me and that the ads make up the cost. If we don't make enough from ads, we'll begin requesting donations. If we still don't make enough, then we'll take down the proxy servers and remove Deluge's internal browser (not to mention cry for being in the hole $1600). The future of this service is in your hands.

Yeah, sorry, I tend not to tolerate ads in my browsing experience, why should I put up with them for torrent downloads? Also, I thought ad-supported p2p programs went away with KaZaa?

and...

Can we use the internal browser to surf any site? No. This is a very touchy subject, so I want to be very clear. Our proxy servers have a whitelist of bittorrent-related sites (trackers, index sites, etc), which it allows you to visit. If you try to go to a bittorrent site that's not on our whitelist, please feel free to submit that site to us and we'll add it within 24hrs. We do not discriminate against *any* bittorrent site and will add them on request. However, we want absolutely nothing to do with anonymizing the traffic of pedophiles, sick people who are trying to google on how to get away murder, or whatever else. We want to protect bittorrent and nothing more.

I think this falls under the categories of "Why should we trust your servers?" and "Whitelists suck."

I say this every time the subject of p2p apps comes up: solutions such as these simply add to the arms race between ISP and file-sharers. In the end this will solve nothing. Instead of attempting to out-tech Big Content there should be a focus on improving consumer rights.

Then again this could be an attempt to to show that ads and donations may be a way to support the distribution of content via BT.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[Tom9729]

Sorry, but did you even read the paragraph you cited? The guy is funding the service out of his own pocket. He needs to have some way to make back at least most of the money he's spending.

This on top of the fact that he's already dedicating his time to writing the software... Geez.

It's worth pointing out that the ads aren't showing up in the actual program. If you don't want to see them, don't use the anonymous browsing service.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[SirLurksAlot]

It's worth pointing out that the ads aren't showing up in the actual program. If you don't want to see them, don't use the anonymous browsing service.

Well considering that the main point of using his software is to be able to download torrents anonymously, it's rather self-defeating to say if you don't want the ads don't use the anonymizer. I don't begrudge the guy for wanting to make some money back on this, and obviously he's not twisting anyone's arm here, but come on.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[Tom9729]

Not sure where you got the idea that "the main point" of using his software is to be able to download anonymously.

I've used Deluge for a long time before the announcement of this feature. It's a bittorrent client, just like Azureus or Ktorrent. The new anonymous browsing feature is nothing more than a built in web browser that uses their proxy.

I haven't been able to run the new release yet (download links are broken), so I might be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure the anonymous part is only referring to finding the torrents. Downloading them works just like always. In fact, if you wanted to, you could probably use their proxy in a normal web browser to look for torrents.

It's also worth pointing out that he's not "making a buck". He's paying for the proxy out of his own pocket, he'll be lucky if he even breaks even.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[earthforce_1]

> Instead of attempting to out-tech Big Content there should be a focus on improving consumer rights.

In the long run, yes - this is the primary objective. But if this tool is just one more head of a hydra that overzealous ISPs or the **AA have to fight then it is a good thing, even if you or I never use it and it only works for a limited time. If they have to fight this war on 100 fronts then they will soon find that even their pockets have a limited depth and decide the fight is not worth it. Yeah, ads suck but if I was to use it, I could see starting this up on a separate screen of my desktop cube and not looking at the screen (and ads)until the download is complete.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[Blakey Rat]

Wait, so let me get this straight.

This "service" allows you to get away with pirating movies and music. (Otherwise, if it were legal downloads, why would you need to be anonymous?) And to receive this protection, you have to pay this guy to use it?

How is this any different from Kazaa charging for pirating media? Except that with this service you're slightly less likely to get caught.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[Sancho]

The service allows you to visit the web portion of BitTorrent trackers without revealing your IP. I'm not even sure there's much value in that, but nevertheless, he's running a server and showing ads on it. If you don't want to deal with the ads, find another anonymizer (and use a different browser.)

How is this any different from Kazaa charging for pirating media? Except that with this service you're slightly less likely to get caught. I don't know much about KaZaA's business model. Were they charging for the use of the network? Charging for the software? Displaying ads in the software? Does it even matter in this context (for that matter, what context do you care about? Legal? Moral? Other?)

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[NoMaster]

He needs to have some way to make back at least most of the money he's spending.

No he doesn't, but it's a common mistake to make. He wants (or hopes, or chooses, or expects) to make back at least most of the money he's spending. And that's fine, but don't confuse the two. His desire to offset the cost != a "need" to see ads.

Apart from that, it's pointless. If ISPs are watching/throttling users who visit trackers, then they'll just start watching/throttling users who visit his proxy. I mean, it's not as if they can use his proxy for non-bittorrent purposes, is it?

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[Nullav]

Why would ads bother you if you'll only see them for about three pages (provided you know what you're looking for)? As long as they're non-animated banner ads or text ads, why is it a problem?
He's also paying for this completely out of pocket. I see three options here: use the service and ignore the ads, hope the service starts relying on donations and pay like that (or freeload while others donate), or use TOR/nothing instead. It's not like the client has flashing 'catch the Pope, win an iPod' ads at the top and bottom, regardless of whether or not you're using the browser.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[aussie_a]

Kazaa got screwed over when they advertised that they're product was great for pirates. Until deluge does this, they're actually safe (at least safe from getting screwed over the way Kazaa was). If for example, the deluge creator says on his website "Deluge is great for downloading movies without getting caught!" this would be equivalent to what Kazaa said and would result in him being liable to get screwed over. If however he says "Great to download torrents for the security conscious" he hasn't made the same mistake as Kazaa.

Its a thin line, but such is life when you're trying to make money off illegal activities.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[aussie_a]

If his aim was to provide users a secure way to pirate copyrighted content, then it would be rather pointless. If, however, his aim was to place his own advertisements on other people's torrent sites in order to make money, he has succeeded. While he needed to claim it was for the "poor pirates with bad ISPs" in order to quell the anger, it was little more then an excuse.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[SirLurksAlot]

If for example, the deluge creator says on his website "Deluge is great for downloading movies without getting caught!" this would be equivalent to what Kazaa said and would result in him being liable to get screwed over.

I don't know, this sounds pretty close (from the FAQ again):

You're totally anonymous. We keep absolutely no logs...which means that even if we're served with a court order to hand over our records, there are no records to hand over. Simple enough :)

I'm all for privacy and security, but it's statements like these that the AA's love to hear.

Re:Ad-supported and whitelisted sites

[SirLurksAlot]

You make good points. I guess I reject most advertising on principle, and the idea of an ad-supported torrent app (even if it is used to pay for the proxy service) rubbed me the wrong way. I haven't tried the client myself (I use Azureus myself), but I suppose that if it could be minimized to tray it wouldn't be that bad.

Legitimate use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've rarely seen Bittorrent used for legitimate uses. The one glaring exception has been the annoying tendency for Linux distributions and mirrors to no longer put DVD ISOs on their FTP or web sites and instead point to a damn torrent. That's fine for people at home, but if you're trying to download it through a corporate firewall it's damn near impossible. Hopefully this doesn't catch on because I'm sorry to have to break it to you guys, but BitTorrent isn't exactly a firewall-friendly protocol and makes a horrible method of distribution.

Re:Legitimate use?

[burris]

BitTorrent works just fine behind a typical "firewall." It is not necessary to accept incoming connections, especially with a well seeded legitimate torrent. If you can't download with BitTorrent at all then you have a problem with your firewalls policy not the firewall per se.

It's not a horrible method of distribution. Its an excellent method of distribution, especially for free software. Thats why it is being used for such distribution.

Re:Legitimate use?

[DFJA]

Not sure what makes you think it's fine at home - my ISP (eclipse.net.uk) throttles bittorrent traffic, and every time I try to leave a download going overnight I find my connection totally dead in the morning, with no traffic at all. Seems like they are trying very hard to stop it. Not I desperately *want* to be a responsible internet user and use P2P to download linux distros (especially the smaller ones who can least afford to provide bandwidth) but it's very hard. One day I'll switch to a different ISP. But who? Where is there reliable information about who does and doesn't throttle bittorrent, which doesn't get out of date?

Re:Legitimate use?

[Anonymous Coward]

my professor has a video camera tape every lecture and then the students distribute it through bittorrent, use your head, quit giving anonymous cowards bad names!

Re:Legitimate use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just download the iso's at home.

Re:Legitimate use?

[CastrTroy]

I use Mandriva, and although I have seen a push to try to get people to use torrents, I still find that there is quite a large number of FTP mirrors available, and thanks to more people using bittorrent, they are a lot faster than they used to me. I use FTP to download my Linux ISOs, because I only have a 1 mbit/125 kbit connection. That low upload speed means that I have a very hard time getting really good torrent speeds. Meanwhile, with FTP, I can usually max out my connection. Even when I do max out my connection with bittorrent, it means that the my internet is unusable while it downloads, because my upload is being saturated, and I can't send ACK packets fast enough. At least that'S what I think is going on. I have noticed that it's a teeny bit harder to find the FTP links, but every distro I've downloaded in the past year has FTP mirrors. And that includes Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE, and probably a couple others. What distros do you know of that don't have FTP mirrors?

Re:Legitimate use?

[the_B0fh]

Why the hell are comments like this marked insightful?

*waaa* I can't download via p2p, all the free stuff I want, at work

Either go home and do it, or work with your IT. If you have a business need to download linux distros, it's up to your ork IT to provide that to you. If you don't, well, go suck at Microsoft's teat.

I used to run a firewall, and I allow out what is business appropriate. If that includes bit-torrent, so be it.

Re:Legitimate use?

[ScrewMaster]

Sounds like you need some QOS handling on your local router.

Re:Legitimate use?

[rasjani]

AFAIK, WOW (World Of Warcraft) uses BitTorrent to spread their patches to the customers -- and afaik #2, there are loads of them (wow customers) ...

Re:Legitimate use?

[CastrTroy]

Oh, possibly, but I don't have the energy to set one up. I just download my Linux distros via FTP, and throttle those to 3/4 of my max speed with the FTP program, and everything works fine. I just checked my ISPs home page (Rogers Ottawa) and they are now offering 18mbit/1mbit connections for $99.99 a month. If my cable/internet/cellphone bill wasn't already through the roof, I might consider upgrading. Funny how they can put out such a fast service, and not even have their customers know about it.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Tony Hoyle]

That's not a good use of bittorrent... their torrent seeds suck the big one, because they're totally saturated and get about 1kbps peak rate. Everyone just waits until the mirrors are available.

Re:Legitimate use?

[pringlis]

Yup, you're correct. WoW does use it for patches and updates. Given that the patches are at least 100megs in size and there are 9.5million subscribers I'd say it's one of the better examples of a problem for which BitTorrent is the ideal solution.

Re:Legitimate use?

[CastrTroy]

Is there a good solution for filtering out unwanted torrents, like pirated movies, software and games, while still allowing wanted torrents like Linux distros and other open source programs? Something that didn't work on a whitelist/blacklist would be pretty nice. Although I guess such a solution doesn't exist. The problem with bittorrent, is that the illegitimate uses far outweigh the legitimate ones, which is why most places of work will block bittorrent.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Tony Hoyle]

Sorry, I call bullshit.

Bittorrent is designed to only give the fastest rates to those that also share. That means those behind no firewall or a very permissive one (since it can use just about any port depending on the tracker). Many trackers won't even let you connect at all unless you have the right upload ration, and those that do will throttle you to hell and back.

If you want to download something large use FTP. It's designed for downloads, it works well, and doesn't have all this throttling bullshit.

Re:Legitimate use?

[rasjani]

Everyone ?

I was subscriber from day 1 of eu release till last june or so and i personally *never* downloaded a patch from a mirror. And i always got download speeds of 300-900kb/sec .. roughly i'd say it was about 450kb/sec on average whenever i was downloading a patch.

Re:Legitimate use?

[lordofwhee]

If your firewall won't even allow a program to listen on a port, you're not going to be using the internet. At all.

And most trackers couldn't care less how much you upload, only private trackers care, and even then, some don't.

FTP is horrible for large downloads. You're downloading from one server, which is also serving other users, and so must split up bandwidth, etc., while torrents allow you to download from many sources. Plus, if the FTP server goes down, you're either stuck using a mirror that gives you 10 Kb/S, or not downloading, while a torrent won't go down as long as there are people downloading/seeding.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, there are still millions of people out there who have only dial-up at home. If downloading a Linux distro at work doesn't interfere with work, then why not download it while on the job using your only access to broadband? You don't have to sit there with your thumb up your ass watching the thing the whole time.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Tony Hoyle]

Blizzard have only one seed that means that *Everyone* downloads from the same source. It can take literally days to download the patches - that's why Wow attempts to download in the background rather than do it all at once. The last patch was downloading for *two weeks* before they made it live and I still had 40% of it to do.

900kbps is >100mpbs. Unless you're actually *inside* the blizzard data centre I call bullshit.. that's faster than most people get on the LAN.

Re:Legitimate use?

[xenocide2]

Using those same complaints, FTP should be discouraged:
1. "Most uses are illegitimate". At this point in the game we call the Internet, every new file transfer mechanism is likely to be adopted by pirates first. Yarr. But we both know they still use FTP where needed, and I'd wager there's more illegal FTP servs than legal.

2. "isn't exactly firewall friendly". That's right, FTP isn't firewall friendly. It has crazy rules for control connections vs data connections. The saving grace here is that FTP is not encrypted, so snoops can determine which port needs to be opened to which NAT'd device. Many people claim that Deluge is able to break through most any firewall, as it uses random ports and full stream encryption. If your corporation can firewall that, hats off; maybe ask your helpful IT staff what they can do to help you get your job done faster. That's what they're there for right?

3. "Makes a horrible method of distribution" I dare say this more sense for FTP than BT. FTP places a huge demand on the provider. Many popular but free download projects use BT to reduce the amount of bandwidth and pure CPU load from serving crowds of thousands or more. RedVSBlue used BT, Blizzard uses BT (a much larger use case than Linux ISOs), Valve's Steam updates use it, the SubPop music label (made famous after contracting Soundgarden and Nirvana) uses BT to distribute videos and promo music for their artists. If this is a terrible method, it's a terribly popular one.

If you need a legitimate use of this feature, consider Miro aka "Democracy player". As the original name suggests, it's supposed to allow unfettered access to information that might be suppressed in a authoritarian regime. A proxy is one more way to protect its users from oppression. Not a perfect one, but still an arrow in the quiver of resistance.

Of course, you are right that this really helps people who might live on say a campus, where they've given up on throttling BT itself and instead blacklist trackers. I happen to live right next to one, but I haven't lived on campus in years.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Tony Hoyle]

A good firewall doesn't allow any incoming connections. There's simply no need to. You need to learn how firewalls work.

I actually have a server based in a datacentre I can test on. With the firewall up bittorrent maxes out at about 5kbps and frequently stalls and dies. Open up ports for it and it goes up to about 400kbps max.

FTP can saturate the link at 10mbps+ download. Every time. It's *much* more efficient.

Re:Legitimate use?

[burris]

It isn't necessary to accept incoming connections to "share." You can do that just fine with only outgoing connections to peers. The tracker can't "throttle you to hell and back" as it plays no part in the choking done by peers. The tracker merely introduces peers to each other.

Also, "ratios" enforced by trackers is only done by pirate sites. The purpose being to ensure there are seeds for infringing torrents because nobody wants to be left "holding the bag." Legitimate torrents have dedicated seeds, so there is no danger of the torrent becoming unseeded if downloaders aren't forced to stick around long after they are done downloading.

BitTorrent was created specifically because of the problems with FTP: the number of simultaneous downloaders with FTP is limited by the publishers network connection. With BitTorrent you can have about three orders of magnitude more simultaneous downloaders for the same amount of bandwidth, when you include the tracker traffic. That is revolutionary.

Re:Legitimate use?

[pringlis]

It's true that there's only usually one seed (unless you leave it on and don't install the patch) but it's not true that you're the only downloading from one source. You download from your peers as you go, not only the seed. That's one of the main advantages of bit torrent..

Re:Legitimate use?

[burris]

Blizzard have only one seed that means that *Everyone* downloads from the same source.

Huh? Do you have any idea how BitTorrent works?

Re:Legitimate use?

[rasjani]

Sir, Chuck norris calls you bullshit. 10 Megabit cable connection (pretty standard here) gives ruffly 990kb/sec transfer depending on the sender's connection and protocol used. (For example, 990kb/sec is the top speed i can get from ftp.funet.fi which is few hops away)

Personally i never used background downloading in wow and at the time of the patch going live, there where so many seeds already available that having only 1 official seed from Blizzard didnt really matter. Comparing the "patch" downloading to x amount of Sony mmorpgs, ultima, Anarchy online and few others that i've played, i do consider WOW's to be done best and sir, you can call bullshit on that too.

Re:Legitimate use?

[burris]

I call bullshit, Tony Hoyle has no idea what he is talking about or he is just trolling.

Do you think FTP can saturate your 10 mbit link when its downloading from my FTP server sitting on a 384 kbit up DSL line?

Re:Legitimate use?

[old and new again]

ever heard of Upnp? and maybe they jsut don't want to have to PAY for you to download the distro (as in bandwidth fees)

Re:Legitimate use?

[marcello_dl]

Which linux distros offer bittorrent only?
How does the firewall policy in your workplace make one protocol better or worse?
How does the ratio of legal vs illegal content make one protocol better or worse?
Do you realize bittorrent has catched on already?
Do you realize there is one terribly common scenario (PC with enough cycles but not enough outgoing bandwidth) where scatter gather p2p beats ftp hands down?

Re:Legitimate use?

[Urza9814]

I've seen it used legitimately plenty of times, but that's not the problem I have with it. My problem is, why should I spend a week downloading a Linux ISO from Bittorrent, when I can download it off the official mirror in an hour? Currently downloading one now that I couldn't find elsewhere, 80 peers, 72 of those seeds, no firewall, no NAT, but I still can't get more than 4KB/s down...when I'm uploading at 43KB/s.

Re:Legitimate use?

[multisync]

if you're trying to download it through a corporate firewall it's damn near impossible

Okay, so you're downloading Linux distributions at work? If this is something you are doing for your company, you should be able to have some influence on the firewall, perhaps have a machine in the DMZ to facilitate these types of downloads. If you are just leaching the company's bandwidth to download distros for you own use, I can't work up much sympathy.

In either case, another alternative is to run an ssh server on you machine at home, assuming you have broadband. Connect to it from work, run the torrent client on your machine at home, then transfer the image file to work through the ssh tunnel. Again, if your company needs these torrents, you should be able to get compensated for your bandwidth. Who knows, you might be able to get work to pay for your ISP's bill.

the annoying tendency for Linux distributions and mirrors to no longer put DVD ISOs on their FTP or web sites and instead point to a damn torrent.

Yeah, I'm getting pretty annoyed with these distros making all this software available to me for free in every sense of the word and then choosing to distribute it to me - for free - in a manner that reduces their bandwidth costs, which aren't free.

Why don't you try ordering a boxed set of the distro you are trying to download from behind your corporate firewall and pay for it with your company credit card. They could use the money to pay for some bandwidth and maybe get those ftp servers back up.

Re:Legitimate use?

[dbcad7]

Your numbers sure don't sound right.. but maybe it will gradually kick in a higher download rate. Perhaps you are one of those who needs the program the article was talking about ?.. I have usually found that with new releases of popular distros, bittorrent to be faster than FTP

Re:Legitimate use?

[ScrewMaster]

Probably means that they want to appear progressive when it comes your regulating authorities, but don't really want to provide that service on a significant scale. Then they can say, "See? We offered it and nobody bought it." I don't know about Canada, but down here they pull that kind of crap all the time.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Goldberg's Pants]

I call bullshit too. I played WOW for 18 months and my wife still plays now, and the torrent patch downloading has always been an absolute joke.

You'd think for a game that pulls in roughly 6,000,000 * $15 a month (that's $90 million dollars a month to save you the math), the cheap bastards would have a decent server to download from rather than have the audacity to use other peoples bandwidth on a game people are paying a monthly fee for.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Anonymous Coward]

you're wrong.

kbps = kb/s = kilobits per second

mbps = mb/s = megabits per second

Kb/s = kilobytes per second
Mb/s = megabytes per second

900 kilobits (informal notation: kilobyte = 1024 bytes)
bits 921600
bytes 115200
kilobits 900
kilobytes 112.5
megabits 0.87890625
megabytes 0.10986328125
gigabits 0.000858306884765625
gigabytes 0.000107288360595703
terabytes 1.04773789644241e-07
petabytes 1.02318153949454e-10

Re:Legitimate use?

[mattyrobinson69]

I use Be (bethere.co.uk). Its ADSL2+, so you can get up to 24mb, unlimited for £18 a month. Im pretty sure they dont throttle torrents, but I dont download many. I get up to 2mbps down from a good ftp mirror (eg: heanet)

Re:Legitimate use?

[lazy_playboy]

How can FTP be '*much* more efficient'? Every single client is connecting to the one and the same server, ffs! No, FTP can be as quick if the server has a decent upload pipe. But for anyone that pays for upload, bittorrent is much more efficient use of bandwidth.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Gandalf_the_Beardy]

Demon Internet. I can suck down a complete distro from a .torrent at apparantly full speed, and probably do so at least twice a month with no problems whatsoever.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Danny_Freak]

Zen. Usage is capped (unlimited for the business accounts) but until you hit the cap the bandwidth is totally unthrottled. But it aint the cheapest...

Re:Legitimate use?

[garbletext]

The problem is you're defining 'efficiency' in a very limited and incorrect way. True, FTP is good at transferring a large chunk of data from exactly one host to exactly one more. But that is a trivial problem these days; Any network programmer could easily write a protocol/application that sends data from a server to a client as fast as the bottlenecks will allow. And yeah, that's "efficient," in a way because it maximizes your resources. But efficient peer-to-peer downloading is much harder. I suppose a 100% efficient p2p download ecosystem would be one where each and every downloading peer is saturating his download speed. FTP has *no chance* of ever achieving this for popular files, and could never near the level of data transferred on popular trackers without absolutely massive investment in geographically disparate clusters and bandwidth (e.g. akamai). BT accomplishes for free what could otherwise cost thousands of dollars for a content distributor. It sounds to me like you don't understand how BT works, or you're upset that it's the wrong tool for what you use it for. Anyways, if both your bittorrent clients are configured correctly, and the downloading one is the only one receiving from the other, you should achieve very similar speeds compared with FTP, as it just uses HTTP for sending data. Given your clear ignorance on firewall issues ( A good firewall doesn't allow any incoming connections. Really? How does such a host serve requests or recieve replies to sent packets? ), the disparity you report is probably best explained by PEBKAC issues.

Re:Legitimate use?

[jmcnaught]

Don't go with Rogers if you're hoping for fast Bittorrent speeds. I have their most expensive package available here in London. We get 30 kB/s down as our average peak (it will occasionally shoot up to 300-400 kB/s for about a minute) even on torrents with loads of peers and seeders. A lot of the time they come in at dial up speeds. It takes forever to get the share ratio over 1 on large torrents. I'm planning on switching to DSL even though it's slower over all as far as I know Bell doesn't throttle speeds.

For the record, I wouldn't care if Rogers throttled my torrent traffic simply to protect other traffic. I use VoIP for my home phone, so I understand that. But there's no reason my torrents should be coming in this slow. They're ripping me off as far as I'm concerned.

As for the article.. I don't really get the point of anonymizing the browser traffic. Aren't the MAFIAA figuring out who to sue by simply joining the torrents and making a list of the IP addresses in the swarm?

And why not just use Tor?

Re:Legitimate use?

[Antique Geekmeister]

You can do a fair job of filtering by simply watching volumes of traffic. It's like office supplies: most workplaces don't mind if you print out a few things on the work printer, or nab a few paper chips. But if you're sucking up 30% of the company's external network traffic for a week, well, you deserve a talking to and possibly a reprimand, unless it's for something very clearly work based and justifying the load.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Antique Geekmeister]

I agree with your FTP gripes. Given HTTP, and WebDAV over HTTP for uploads, there is simply no excuse to run a modern FTP site. The only things such HTTP sites don't support well are links, either symlinks or hardlinks, and if you need that go to using rsync.

Re:Legitimate use?

[aussie_a]

Does anyone cry when a thief steals from a thief? But you say that jmcnaught isn't stealing? Well neither is his ISP, they're simply providing a bad service to pirates.

Re:Legitimate use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm IT and I resent being called an ork! We're much more trollish

Re:Legitimate use?

[jmcnaught]

I didn't say I was pirating, did I?

Re:Legitimate use?

[CastrTroy]

That's weird, because even on my 1mbit/125kbit Rogers connection, I get faster speeds than that. Might be something wrong with your configuration. Or something wrong with your local service. Up here in Ottawa, I don't know anybody who's ever had a problem using bittorrent. I often max out my connection to 120 KB/s when downloading torrents.

Everyone knows: I don't know

[rubycodez]

Almost a year ago I switched from Comcast Cable Modem to AT&T ADSL just to save money. My BT traffic wasn't throttled then (though I see stories that now Comcast is throttling it at least in some areas), and it isn't throttled now. So I don't know that it is a common practice, would like to hear of all ISP that do so, please post your experiences. I'm 30 miles north of Chicago.

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[Tony Hoyle]

I've heard a lot of complaints of 'throttling' even on the ISP I'm on who don't throttle anything at all. I'm not convinced anyone is doing it.

Basically bittorrent is slow because you always end up downloading from people on dialup etc. instead of downloading from a fast mirror as you do with FTP. Plus unless your firewall is wide open you aren't uploading.. which means the trackers will throttle you because your upload ratios are too low.

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[budgenator]

From what I'm seeing Comcast isn't throttling BT traffic specifically, downloads are just fine, and uploads work as long as your downloading, but when you cross that line from peering to serving the gig is up. Now I've tried to be nice and severely limit connections and upload bandwidth during prime-time and even, during off-peak, but no dice almost nothing goes upstream. Anything they identify or misidentify as as a server gets forged resets; If I was a java coder I'd be hacking Azureus to use UDP instead of TCP, let them try and reset that!

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[jo42]

Where I is, Sympatico throttles BitTorrent down to 60 Kbp/s around 4:30 PM EST. Around 6:00 PM EST it goes down even more to 30 Kbp/s until sometime after midnight where it goes back up to full speed. They also charge up to $30 for going over your monthly GB download cap. So much for the "unlimited" connection that was advertised several years ago. During these periods, HTTP and FTP transfers still go full speed. Cork smoking bastages.

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[Poppler]

If I was a java coder I'd be hacking Azureus to use UDP instead of TCP I would think that using UDP to actually download chunks would be horribly inefficient; the client wouldn't know if it received the data intact until it does a checksum on the chunk, and then you'd have to re-download the whole chunk if you missed even a single packet.

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[oggiejnr]

According to a quick search (so may not be accurate) current "semi-official" block size is 16KB which easily fits into a single datagram packet (allowing for IP Fragmentation). Or if you are determined to keep your datagrams under the Ethernet MTU then you could employ some form of erasure coding to the data (at the expense of CPU cycles) and then if a few packets get lost then not to worry or you could advertise a 1k block transfer size at the expense of great application level overhead. Any system would rely on the client knowing the available bandwidth and only scheduling to receive a volume of packets it could.

There was once talk of using the Vivaldi round trip estimation which has been in Azureus for no particular reason to select peers closer to the client, and some research was done into using it for estimating the bandwidth of a pipe to allow for UDP data connections not needing feedback.

In BitTorrent the sending side never needs to know that a block arrived at the client so in some circumstance UDP could be better due to less connection overhead. Also most home NATs have better support for UDP hole punching than for TCP allowing for greater possibility that two incorrectly set up peers could talk to each other.

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[Sancho]

I've heard a lot of complaints of 'throttling' even on the ISP I'm on who don't throttle anything at all. I'm not convinced anyone is doing it. There are companies that specialize in traffic shaping devices which do just this. It's possible that no one actually uses the devices, but if that's true, it's odd that these companies are still in business.

Then there's the Comcast thing, which isn't throttling in the strictest sense (instead of dropping packets, they send a RST after a few seconds.)

Basically BitTorrent is slow because you always end up downloading from people on dialup etc. instead of downloading from a fast mirror as you do with FTP. Plus unless your firewall is wide open you aren't uploading.. which means the trackers will throttle you because your upload ratios are too low. BitTorrent is a boon to content distributors, since it takes some of the weight off of their servers. It can be faster overall than just FTP for popular releases, because the sum total upload rate of a thousand cable users may well exceed the upload rate of the torrent/FTP host. However that just means that it will be faster to distribute those thousand copies to all of the users--it doesn't mean that one individual user wouldn't have gotten it faster by downloading it directly.

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[budgenator]

Right now with comcast my BT is probably sending more handshanking back and forth than actualy data anyways.

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

i originally installed the "utilities" that came with the modem when i got yahoo/sbc dsl. my computer started rebooting when i was downloading torrents. i uninstalled the software and never had another issue. of course, the people on the help line denied this was possible, but what do they know anyway?

location is near ann arbor, mi, if you're curious.

Re:Everyone knows: I don't know

[rubycodez]

those "utilities" of course won't run on my non-windows boxes, I just got a great help-desk person to run me through an alternative activation procedure which included hitting a weird port with http on a server somewhere.

working link?

[fuziwuzi]

i am not able to download the windows version. anyone else having the same issue? cheers

Re:working link?

[pazZz]

same issue here!

Re:working link?

[realperseus]

>i am not able to download the windows version. anyone else having the same issue? cheers

Links are OK. Just look at the right side of page after you select your OS and pick one of the packages.

Re:working link?

[Anonymous Coward]

same here:

Error in download_count on line 262. ./ubuntu/gutsy/0.5.7.95/deluge-torrent_0.5.7.95-1_i386.gutsy.deb is already defined. :(

elision

Re:working link?

[fuziwuzi]

i keep getting an error when clicking on the two windows links, can u try for me i get this error --- Error in download_count on line 262. ./ubuntu/gutsy/0.5.7.95/deluge-torrent_0.5.7.95-1_i386.gutsy.deb is already defined. --- cheers

They make the case for ISPs

[ClubStew]

If an ISP is throttling or blocking bittorrent traffic, you can pretty much bet that they're tracking which users visit bittorrent-related sites so that they can better block or throttle those users.

Doesn't that imply that those ISPs to which they refer are actually trying to block or throttle those users who are using BitTorrent to download copyrighted works? Most "BitTorrent sites" I've heard of are for copyrighted works. Seems the ISPs are trying to be selective.

Don't get me wrong: I think blocking shouldn't be their concern, but the post does seem to imply that some ISPs are at least trying not to blindly block or throttle everyone.

Re:They make the case for ISPs

[RAMMS EIN]

Note that, although I'd say it's a fair guess that almost any work you'll download is copyrighted, that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to download it. Think open source software, for example.

Torrents are an anti-slashdotting tool

[mangu]

BitTorrent isn't exactly a firewall-friendly protocol and makes a horrible method of distribution

Let's put it another way: there are some firewall administrators who aren't BitTorrent friendly. If you work in a company that has such a firewall and you have a problem with BitTorrent, you should take it to the IT administration. Oh, wait, perhaps your problem is that the IT people in your company aren't Linux-friendly? Then download at home and bring a CD or DVD to work.

The one big advantage BitTorrent has is that it avoids slashdotting the server. Traffic doesn't concentrate, it has a much gentler effect both on the servers themselves and on the internet backbone as a whole, because you end downloading more from those peers that have more bandwidth.

Picture if you will...

[thegnu]

Well considering that the main point of using his software is to be able to download torrents anonymously, it's rather self-defeating to say if you don't want the ads don't use the anonymizer. I don't begrudge the guy for wanting to make some money back on this, and obviously he's not twisting anyone's arm here, but come on.

Picture if you will a pasty-white geek who has written some software. "The service my software provides puts people who use it at risk," he muses, "How might I protect those who may not know how to protect themselves?"
Suddenly, a light goes off. Or on. I think it goes on. Anyway, he thinks, "I could integrate a browser that accesses a limited number of related services in such a way as to provide a safety net for the non-nerds whom I appreciate so well!"
Time passes. "Oh, fuck. This is going to cost me money," the nerd thinks, "How can I provide this service when it costs me money, and I need to buy Ramen?"
Another lightbulb does its thing. "Advertisement!"

There you have it. If you don't like it, cut pasty-dude a check.

Relakks, an anonymous VPN

[wdebruij]

The best solution, ofcourse, is to switch to a less zealous ISP. But that is not always possible: I, for example, find myself subletting an
apartment that comes with horrible, horrible Comcast DSL (who actively reset with your TCP connections).

In these cases say Aye, matey and hook up to the swedish Pirate Party's Relakks VPN service (as seen on Slashdot)
to get past your pesky ISPs rules. It's also be very useful if you use coffeeshop wireless a lot and your email provider still requires plain-text passwords.

Arrr, we be lootin' again!

Re:Relakks, an anonymous VPN

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my good man....
If you are serious about paying 50 Euros a year for THAT you got to be a wanted whatever,need a shrink to work on that psyche or own that service.

Re:Relakks, an anonymous VPN

[frinkacheese]

We believe that this is wrong and unethical, as there are many legal uses for bittorrent. If an ISP is throttling or blocking bittorrent traffic, you can pretty much bet that they're tracking which users visit bittorrent-related sites so that they can better block or throttle those users."

This is really utter rubbish. It is perfectly ethical for an ISP to throttle this traffic that sits and leaches more bandwidth than is your fair share. DSL services, unless very premium, are shared services.

Also this tracking users visiting bittorrent sites is just daft. Why would tracking user's visits to such sites aid blocking or throttling at all when there are plenty of boxes that are quite easily able to detect torrent traffic and throttle it without having to go to the trouble of tracking peoples WWW activity.

ISPs throttle torrent traffic because their businesses are built on over-booking bandwidth. If you don't like that, then you'll be paying $70 per Mb/s per month at wholesale prices and not $50 for your 8Mb/s service.

Re:Relakks, an anonymous VPN

[wdebruij]

> Arrr, we be lootin' again!

Oh wait, I'm in RIAA country now. Did I say looting? I meant to say "sending holiday greetings to our loved ones".

5GB/day? Why yes, officer, I do write long emails.

Re:Relakks, an anonymous VPN

[Joe U]

This is really utter rubbish. It is perfectly ethical for an ISP to throttle this traffic that sits and leaches more bandwidth than is your fair share. DSL services, unless very premium, are shared services.

Well written. Now, could you tell me what my fair share is? I don't want to go over my bandwidth limit on my "unlimited" connection. Just let me know what the exact amount is, and I'll keep under it.

Re:Relakks, an anonymous VPN

[Antique Geekmeister]

Read your user agreement: there's often a big clause now that lets them decide arbitrarily what that fair share is.

Like a sexual harassment policy, it's written in deliberately vague fashion so that the ISP can claim to have a policy, and fall back on it when they wish to, but doesn't actually have a clear definition. This is so that they can avoid actually doing anything about it if they don't want to.

Privacy concerns..

[Anonymous Coward]

So these guys let/suggest you use their proxy, essentially creating a central database of torrent sites, account information and statistics on what torrents were downloaded from where (and importantly when).

I really hope this does not catch on.

Re:Privacy concerns..

[Brother Dysk]

They claim to log nothing. So there'd be no logs to hand over, even if they were subpoenaed.

Re:Privacy concerns..

[Lennie]

Does it use ssl to their proxy ?

Then it would actually be kind of usefull.

Definition please?

[jbn-o]

How are you defining "legitimate"?

The announcement suggests a similar inversion of ethical and legal when it says "Everyone knows that it is common practice for ISPs to do their best to either block or throttle bittorrent users. We believe that this is wrong and unethical, as there are many legal uses for bittorrent."; does this mean that if there were no legal uses BitTorrent would be "wrong and unethical"?

The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down.

Soviet Russia

[poopdeville]

The headline was obviously written in Soviet Russia.

hmm

[GregNorc]

Link to the OSX version on their site is broken. Anyone know of a mirror? (email is gregnorc@gmail.com)

not this ISP

[not_anne]

"...you can pretty much bet that they're tracking which users visit bittorrent-related sites so that they can better block or throttle those users." My employer, a large cable ISP, does not track or monitor what sites customers visit. However, we do track the types of traffic on our network and shape traffic as needed to keep the network reasonably healthy.

We don't single out users, we monitor nodes, which many customers are attached to. If a node is exceeding healthy levels (different nodes have different max levels, there's no one set "healthy" level) then that node is shaped until the traffic goes down.

Re:not this ISP

[AdmiralDouglas]

Shaped? What does shaping a node entail?

Re:not this ISP

[not_anne]

Traffic shaping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_shaping

Re:not this ISP

[rtechie]

"Shaped" in this context means sending TCP rsts to any connections above an arbitrary threshold from a particular IP on a particular node. The boxes they use are deployed be node. This is VERY crude "traffic shaping". And it won't work. You guys are just begging the Bittorrent developers to switch to UDP and flood your network. Keep pushing, and they'll just have it spoof DNS requests. Going to block that?

It's very simple, Bittorent is here to stay. The solution to Bittorent traffic on your network is to HELP it, not to hinder it. Set up Bittorent reflection servers on port 6881 that prioritize traffic within your network and throttle traffic outside your network. For most torrents users will see a net gain in download speeds so must users will use your reflection servers rather than going around them. Users get faster downloads, you get less traffic on your upstream pipes. Win-win.

As for the content providers, DON'T TELL THEM. This is all "proprietary company information".

The Windows version browser uses IE7

[Anonymous Coward]

From the fine FAQ http://deluge-torrent.org/faq.php#4n07

Why does Deluge show a site differently on Linux/Unix than it does on Windows?

On Linux/Unix, Deluge's internal browser uses Gecko, which is Mozilla Firefox's engine. On Windows, Deluge uses IE 7. Why? Although it would've been far easier for us to have the same browser backend, the Mozilla people have chosen to not care about GTK+ applications on Windows and have made it almost impossible to support outside of C#. Bug them, not us. For various reasons I haven't moved to Linux.
For various other reasons I refuse to use MS non-OS apps when possible.
IE7 is one of my 'when possible' items.
I'll take my chances with my ISP tracking me.

NOT Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

At least not in the way they want it to be (preventing an ISP from knowing you are visiting a BitTorrent site). From the FAQ:

Can we use the internal browser to surf any site? ... Our proxy servers have a whitelist of bittorrent-related sites (trackers, index sites, etc), which it allows you to visit. ... In other words, if one uses this proxy, the ISP knows that one is using a BitTorrent site, just not which site in particular. If the ISP is in the habit of blocking BitTorrent sites, they simply block the proxy since it obviously has no use other than the circumvention of the ISP's restrictions.

People should use a regular browser with an open proxy if they wish to be (more) anonymous.

Pay for the things you value

[EmbeddedJanitor]

One of the problems with "Free Software" are the take, take, take folk. Ultimately if you value something you should support it, either financially by direct payment or by recognising that it needs money (eg putting up with ads).

To give you those "free roads" you drive on, the government charges you taxes. To give out free services, charities accept contributions.

I doubt many of the gimme,gimme, free software takers actually develop anything substantial or contribute anything, apart from annoyance.

Perhaps with time people will mature in their outlook and freely contribute better than they do now: "Hey I like service x or software y. Here's $20 to say thanks!". This is not yet happening but perhaps it will one day.

Re:Pay for the things you value

[Blakey Rat]

This software is intended only for "take, take, take" movie and music pirates. Why would you expect any different response?

Re:Pay for the things you value

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You make a good point. The typical pirate-types (OK, a generalization: oly 90% of bt traffic is pirating) have a notion of internet==free. If you make a service available to these people then don't expect any support.

Re:Pay for the things you value

[wrook]

Actually, the take, take, take, gimme, gimme, gimme users provide invaluable benefit to Free software producers. But to understand this, you must understand the economics of Free software development (I will assert that most people, even Free software producers have a difficult time understanding this). With Free software, you *can* make money off of distribution, but really it won't last for long. Eventually, since the cost of distribution is nearly free, someone will undercut you. Instead, you must make money (or better stated, value) out of the software itself.

This can be done in a few ways. First, you can get value from using the software you wrote. Often the value you receive more than offsets the cost of development. If the software is popular and useful, then you can also benefit from forming a consortium with other parties to do development. You each share the costs and share the benefits. People who fund development get a greater say in what gets written (i.e., they write it ;-) ). Examples of this are the Apache software and the Linux kernel.

Second, you can get value from future work on the software. If it is a popular, useful work, then often someone else will be able to receive value from funding you to do some new development. Probably the best example of this is the GCC tool set as it was developed by Cygnus software (google around for Michael Tiemann's description of how to make this work -- it's brilliant.)

Finally, you can gain value (either directly or indirectly) through advertising. Usually (as is the case with this software), the software allows you to connect with a service that gains value from advertising. The best example of this is Mozilla who make nearly $100 million a year from the google search bar in Firefox.

Now, I hope you'll excuse my tangent, I'm finally coming to the point. What all these methods of creating value have in common is that they work best (return the most value) when the software is *popular* and *useful*. Take, take, take, gimme, gimme, gimme people are essential to creating popular and useful software. First, they are often the absolute best sources for ideas. They are so internally focussed (i.e., selfish) that they have a really highly developed sense of what they want. Yes, they are annoying, but if you cut through the annoyance, you find gold. Second, these people are like rats. When one finds a good source of food *all their buddies join in*. This is indispensable for a Free software project.

Now, what I read from the posts above is that these selfish users are not happy with direct advertising on the associated service. This is incredibly useful feedback! It means that there is significant risk involved in the venture. People are not against advertising per se. Take the google search bar in Firefox. I've never heard anyone complain about it. The connection between the google advertising and the search bar is removed enough to appease the user. But I would worry, in this case, that users will not accept the advertising on the associated service.

In the end, cherish your selfish users. They are a PITA, but they are honest and they will spare no expense to tell you what they think. For software projects that don't have budgets for things like user studies, these people will pave the road to success.

Re:Pay for the things you value

[Alioth]

The author probably has enough brain cells to realise that since he's producing software for leechers, there's no chance he's going to get paid for his software. Let's face it, this software will mainly be used to download unauthorized copies of songs/movies - if the users are happy to violate copyright law and risk prosecution to avoid paying, they aren't going to pay someone who makes the software that enables them to violate copyright law.

So really, advertising is the only way he's going to get payment for his servers. The users certainly won't pay.

Re:Pay for the things you value

[Alsee]

You're post was 2 long.
Shorten and gimme in email.
kthxbai

-

Re:Pay for the things you value

[Slashdot Parent]

In the end, cherish your selfish users. They are a PITA, but they are honest and they will spare no expense to tell you what they think. Great idea! I'll see if they accept my selfish users' opinions at the grocery store checkout counter. Maybe my ISP will accept them, too!

Very insightful!!!11oneone

Re:Pay for the things you value

[andrewd18]

Probably the best example of this is the GCC tool set as it was developed by Cygnus software (google around for Michael Tiemann's description of how to make this work -- it's brilliant.)

Would that happen to be this essay?

Re:Pay for the things you value

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post was so grammatically incorrect, it pained me to read it. Please repair your syntax and try again. Thank you, and goodbye.

Re:Pay for the things you value

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!
The grammar errors and pain were deliberate.

A Better Solution

[internic]

While the anonymization may be useful for other reasons, if your problem is filtering by your ISP then a better solution is, if possible, to get a different ISP. If you keep giving them your money, then not only do you seem to be implicitly consenting to their behavior, you're actually financially supporting it.

Now I realize that in some places people may really have no reasonable choice, but it's been my experience that many people who live in an area where there is a choice still go with providers (e.g. Comcast) who do this sort of stuff because they have the best nominal price to bandwidth ratio. When those people complain about filtering, unstated caps, etc., I have very little sympathy. Don't like it? Vote with your wallet. I hate the behavior of these ISPs and pay extra for an ISP that is much better behaved. I really burns me that others who have a choice and should know better keep giving money to these jerks.

Poor download speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling many of you people complaining about poor download speeds just don't know how to configure your bittorrent client or router. With my upload capped to around 8-10kb/s (384kb dsl connection), I ALWAYS get max transfer rates on popular torrents like Linux distributions. Sure, each individual peer/seed I'm connected to only uploads around 3-5kb/s but when there are so many of them its easy to get good speeds. I also have the peace of mind that comes from knowing I'm lowering bandwidth costs for free software developers.

do their best

[epine]

For what definition of "best"? This is terrible writing. I would subtract a full letter grade from any undergraduate paper with that phrase by the second semester of first year.

It's a pretty simple matter if you control the hardware to set up an ISP's network so that no peer-to-peer packets are exchanged whatsoever.

I guess the implication is that "best" has something to do with not being quite so blatant. Another step or two down this path, we could just as easily s/do their best/strike a balance/ "between bandwidth hogging torrents and other network usage".

But oh no, that might change the hat colour of the venal packet packers that be, and apparently hat colour was the core sentiment for posting this story in the first place. Juvenile. Not their best, not even close.

Re:do their best

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody with writing about as gnomish and Byzantine as any I've ever seen ought not to be grading elementary schoolers, much less undergrads.

Deluge is great.

[lattyware]

The best client out there for Linux users with Gnome (KDE users can look to kTorrent). Been using it for some time.

Re:Deluge is great.

[tokul]

The best client out there...

I've seen one 'Deluge' pear downloading data seeded by me. This program does not provide information about available torrent data and can be used only for leeching. It does not share downloaded files with others.

Re:Deluge is great.

[lattyware]

Uh, that is rubbish. Deluge uploads fine. Probably just a peer that used some leeching only client that sent a different program's name so it didn't get banned.

Why don't they make peers into proxies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted, you'd have to have other, uncensored peers, but it might be nice if compatible clients were willing to proxy for each other.

Of course, it'd have to be a well-written and optional feature. Such code would probably introduce security risks if it were not properly implemented.

Comcast in SF no longer throttling BT

[lohphat]

I had given up on using BT for Linux ISO transfers as they would take me down to 33KB/s no matter my encryption settings. After trying Deluge, I saw full-pipe transfers at 500 KB/s. Succes! (Or so I thought.)

I retryind Azureus and it too was showing full speeds -- even with crypto disabled.

Methinks Comcrap has learned a lesson. I was about to leave them for an ADSL provider or until AT&T gets their fiber to my door (it's underway in my alley).

Download the things you value

[Anonymous Coward]

"One of the problems with "Free Software" are the take, take, take folk. Ultimately if you value something you should support it, either financially by direct payment or by recognising that it needs money (eg putting up with ads)."

And if you value free movies, music, games, software, and books? then you should...oh wait! Isn't that how this mess started in the first place?

Sigh... this is a move worthy of Azureus

[QCompson]

Sometimes (opensource?) software projects get ahead of themselves. Stick to what you're good at. Improve the code, make the program faster, leaner, smaller, but there's no need to add in completely unrelated and extemporaneous features.

An anonymous browser built in to a bittorent program? Ugh. With ad-support?!? I just puked into my mouth a little. Make a separate program for that crap, or at the very least make it an optional plugin (with no signs of it or adding resource usage otherwise).

Please Deluge creators and maintainers... you've created a fantastic open-source bittorrent program. Don't ruin it and turn it into another bloated slow Azureus.

Re:Sigh... this is a move worthy of Azureus

[Ash-Fox]

Please Deluge creators and maintainers... you've created a fantastic open-source bittorrent program. Don't ruin it and turn it into another bloated slow Azureus.

Azureus isn't slow at all for me, nor does it feel bloated. Maybe you should try the GCJ build that doesn't require Sun's Java runtime.

What's your correction?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Small correction: The Mac OS X version uses X11, not Cocoa.

I don't see where Cocoa is mentioned in the summary, or linked articles. Was the summary/article silently updated - or were you correcting your own assumption that an OS X binary must be cocoa?

Re:working link - possible solution

[Mister Transistor]

I am running FireFox with NoScript and I had to turn off the script block for the root site to allow the windows link to work. Hope that helps.

Mincity warning.

[Anonymous Coward]

minicity url. gack

macport

[Anonymous Coward]

Unknown-00-0d-94-ed-6b-11:~ apple$ sudo port install deluge
---> Fetching boost-jam
---> Attempting to fetch boost-jam-3.1.15.tgz from http://downloads.sourceforge.net/boost
---> Verifying checksum(s) for boost-jam
---> Extracting boost-jam
---> Configuring boost-jam
---> Building boost-jam
Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_devel_boost-jam/work/boost-jam-3.1.15" && ./build.sh " returned error 1
Command output: ###
### Using 'darwin' toolset.
###
rm -rf bootstrap
mkdir bootstrap
cc -o bootstrap/jam0 command.c compile.c debug.c expand.c glob.c hash.c hdrmacro.c headers.c jam.c jambase.c jamgram.c lists.c make.c make1.c newstr.c option.c output.c parse.c pathunix.c pathvms.c regexp.c rules.c scan.c search.c subst.c timestamp.c variable.c modules.c strings.c filesys.c builtins.c pwd.c class.c native.c w32_getreg.c modules/set.c modules/path.c modules/regex.c modules/property-set.c modules/sequence.c modules/order.c execunix.c fileunix.c /usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/powerpc-apple-darwin8/4.0.0/../../../libSystem.dylib unknown flags (type) of section 9 (__TEXT,__dof_plockstat) in load command 0 /usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib unknown flags (type) of section 9 (__TEXT,__dof_plockstat) in load command 0
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Error: The following dependencies failed to build: boost boost-jam gmake gettext expat libiconv dbus-python25 dbus docbook-xml-4.1.2 xmlcatmgr libxml2 zlib pkgconfig xmlto docbook-xml-4.2 docbook-xsl getopt libxslt dbus-glib glib2 py25-gobject python25 py25-numeric py25-gtk gtk2 atk cairo fontconfig freetype libpng render xrender XFree86 gtk-doc perl5.8 scrollkeeper docbook-xml docbook-xml-4.3 docbook-xml-4.4 docbook-xml-4.5 p5-xml-parser jpeg pango Xft2 xorg-xproto xorg-util-macros tiff xorg libglade2 py25-cairo py25-xdg py25-zlib
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

It's not even that anonymous

[dandaman32]

I did a tad bit of reverse engineering on their proxy. It's a spare server from some consulting company (147932-web1.dipconsultants.com) running a Squid configured to check for the string "Deluge BitTorrent" in the user agent. Not only that, but it sends the X-Forwarded-For header, as can be seen with a simple script: http://germantown.enanocms.org/headers.php. False sense of anonymity if you ask me.

Also, their URL filter doesn't seem to whitelist sites at all, or if it is a whitelist, it's a pretty wide one. I posted this message through the proxy. Target.com, fark.com, and christmas-cookies.com all worked fine through the proxy.

--Dan