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P2P BitTorrent Tool Could Replace Pirate Bay
With the US and other G8 countries trying to outlaw The Pirate Bay and its ilk, an anonymous reader suggests that a solution may have emerged out of Cornell University. A new open-source project called Cubit is an Azureus plugin that provides decentralized approximate keyword search of torrents in the network.
As I contemplated when AT&T started saying they want to fight piracy on the wire, the most effective way is for the ISP to cooperate with the MPAA, where the MPAA gives a graph of "These people are exchaning a large copyrighted file, block it".
If ISPs move in that direction, this defense won't help, and thats probably the bigger threat for blocking P2P piracy, as there are always countries of convienece to set up piratebay like operations.
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And when can we expect *that* to get shut down?
Just a couple months after everyone has stopped using it and is using something else.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Where in the constitution is the right to file share? Constitutional law isn't my field, but saying file sharing is a subset of freedom of speech seems like a stretch. I do agree though: this is closing the barn door after the horse gets out.
Use of this will significantly increase the number of fake files uploaded.
At least TPB allows file comments which allows fakes to be spotted pretty fast.
Also, do not forget about the amount of traffic private torrent sites get - which this is not a real alternative to.
à_à
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -Joe Gilmore
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
I think there is already a mostly-unused torrent-tella-like system. It's really a very good solution, since Gnutella provides very powerful searching and BitTorrent provides high-bandwidth data transfer. This is actually more like using eMule's Kad to share .torrents.
As I mentioned somewhere else, though, people won't move from the index site + centralized trackers + a BitTorrent client until enough indexes and trackers get shut down that they need a new solution.
It seems to work the other way. It'll get shut down about a year after a better solution is developed and about a month before everyone starts using that better solution.
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Tip: The Constitution is a list of what powers and responsibilities the three branches of government have. The way you phrased your question (where is the right to xxxx) means you're giving them unlimited powers unless they're explicitely prevented. The correct question: Where in the constitution is Congress/the President given the authority to xxx.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Congress can create whatever laws they want. Sure, the supreme court can strike down those laws, but they can also let them stick, at their discretion. It's not like the supremes are any more accountable than congress is.
I agree that free sharing of information (in all its various forms) is beneficial in a utilitarian sense. However, I think it's more important to point out that we do have the individual right to freely share information. The constitution and the law can infringe upon that, but they can't revoke it.
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I think that the hardest part of adding search to any p2p system is that it is too easy for malicious users (*IAA thugs) to poison search results, and I don't see anything on their page that deals with that.
To design a reliable search system, you need to have a good rating system, and a solid trust model. At the same time, you need to avoid making the trust model so tight that new users cannot get any search results (freenet).
Also, I think it should be noted that a lot of bittorrent usage is moving towards the subscription model, so people should be able to search for channels as well, not just single files.
I am interested in seeing where this project leads, but I don't think people will be completely abandoning the well organized, well moderated torrent sites any time soon, but it will be nice to be able to search quickly for files without needing to open a browser.
Companies spend literally millions of dollars lobying the lawmakers. They give them various gifts, incentives, and outright bribes. Pretty much anyone elected to office, beyond the very local level, is in somebody else's pocket. Which means that the laws that get passed are not the ones that the nation as a whole wants, but rather what the people with lots of money to spend want.
The only thing that we the people can do about it is oppose those laws at every possible opportunity, and oppose them loudly. Protest peacefully but loudly. Civil disobedience. Circumvent whatever technical hurdles are placed in our way.
Perhaps this law is not actually "unconstitutional" in the literal sense of the word... I sincerely doubt if there's any text in there about a right to P2P... But I garontee that the founding fathers did NOT want us ruled by a government that doesn't listen to its citizens.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
And guess who has the power to amend the constitution.
The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
The sharing of information IS freedom of speech, not a subset, despite fraudulent claims of ownership. The fraud may be protected by law, but it's still fraud. The law is supposed to protect everybody, not just specific commercial interests, as this one does.
What?
I completely agree with Thomas Jefferson, but the few of us (relative comparison) are the only ones who care, the masses are too busy watching American Idol, Survivor, sensational news to pay attention to any of this anymore. So recently I have really taken to an excerpt from Fahrenheit 451:
Granger: "....When the war's over perhaps we can be of some use in the world."
Montag: "Do you really think they'll listen then?"
Granger: "If not, we'll just have to wait.....But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them."
So even though we check slashdot everyday and post these stories and our replies. The masses will not listen until they want to. They would rather be tuned out to reality and no one can force them to tune in.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
>it's the first ten amendments that give you any kind of rights.
No.
Something higher than government of men gives you rights.
You actually believe that you don't have rights except for those specified in the Constitution?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There was. 1776 to 1783.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The proposed treaty (it's not a law, though new laws would need to be enacted to adhere to the treaty) does a lot of nasty things. It allows seizure and destruction of equipment used in copyright infringement. It allows for criminal charges in the case of infringement where there was no monetary incentive. It requires ISPs to give up personal information on alleged users without a subpoena (something that was tried before, and was struck down.)
The first issue above could easily be violations of the fourth amendment (though there's precedent for seizing property used in the commission of a crime--slippery slope isn't always a fallacy.) The first and second examples above could easily be a violation of the eighth amendment. Criminal damages for copyright violation? Seriously? For centuries, it's been a civil violation.
The third example has other impacts. It violates various presumed rights of corporations and individuals (the general right to withhold information from the government in absence of a subpoena), and the assumed rights of privacy which some people believe is inherent in the Constitution due to the first, third, fourth, ninth, and fourteenth amendments, taken collectively.
The law also allows for ex parte searches of computer equipment, which has 4th amendment implications, too, though it's not as strong a violation.
No, the laws required to adhere to the terms of this treaty are unconstitutional. It's only a shame that we've been sliding away from constitutionality of laws over the past few decades.
Tell that to Freenet. Or the old Gnutella network. Or any number of other completely decentralized networks.
The only thing you need to participate in those networks is a seed peer. Yeah, that requires a central server to get to, initially (though once you're there your host cache will start to populate, and you're set). But once you're on the network, it's completely decentralized.
It just doesn't make a lot of sense to speak of "owning" something which is an attribute of something else. A haircut is an arrangement of hairs on your head. A poem is an arrangement of words on a page. A painting is an arrangement of color on a canvas. You can't own an arrangement any more than you can own a length or a weight; the idea is ridiculous on its face. Just because you say it out loud once (or sing it at a concert) does not mean it instantly belongs in the public domain. Likewise, just because you say something out loud once (or sing it at a concert) doesn't mean you instantly "own" that utterance and, from there on out, should be granted veto power over whether anyone else can say it or sing it.
How about you say or sing whatever you want, and they say or sing whatever they want, and neither of you tries to get in the other's way? That's freedom of speech.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Whoever modded parent up is an idiot. Of course there is true P2P. If that's suitable for the distribution of movies is another question, but parent obviously has no idea what he's talking about. Yeah, at some point you need to "contact servers to get data", big news. P2P doesn't stand for "all clients, no servers" - in a P2P network, everyone is server and client. So "contacting servers to get data" is, you know, a little bit on the obvious and boring side.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The problem isn't *IAA putting up fake websites on freenet, the problem is *IAA creating thousands of fake users that can all vouch for each other, and claim all of the real media is fake.
Mediadefender has done this many times in the past (as proven by the email leak), and it is a common tactic that is most likely used by other companies in the business as well. This is a pervasive problem on even the most heavily moderated boards, and it is extremely difficult to deal with in an automated way.
Tough luck. Time for a career change.
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The constitution explicitly granted Congress the right to issue patents and copyrights.
The rigorous "strict constructionist" - if there ever was such a beast - would argue that the rights retained by the people were the rights they held before 1789.
Interference with rights in real and intangible property met with a mighty cold reception in those days. It was what distinguished you from a slave, a tenant or a bonded laborer.
The Geek remembers Jefferson. He forgets Hamilton.
He forgets as well the Civil War Amendments and those which came after. Consider them a gloss on the then still resonant Biblical notion that every man was entitled to the fruits of his own labor.
Even after the teets have run dry, and there's no more profit to "milk" from a work, they will still hang onto the copyright to prevent anyone else from possibly themselves gaining any benefit from it. Sometimes there is no effort even made to profit from a work -- there are quite a few older TV shows and movies and such that are locked up in vaults, sitting there making zero profit for their rights holders, usually because the remaining appeal of the work is considered too narrow to be profitable. (Too small of a customer base for a corporation's lofty financial desires.) If they are no longer making money off it, whether through market forces or by calculated choice, the work should pass into the public domain instead of being held hostage.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Digital files can be copied without depriving the original owner of theirs, be it software or music. Your money was taken from you leaving you with less (I hope your insurance covered it).
Eh... duh? The issue isn't that "copying" a work deprives the original author of his or her copy. See the definition of "copy". You'll find that it's a very old word.
The issue is that in so doing, you destroy the merchantability of the work in question. Since economics require a balance of supply and demand, and since copying can be done infinitely (killing any such balance) then economic restrictions are in place so that economic activity can continue.
This is a *good thing*. If you want to do anything, push to have the copyright terms brought back the reasonable timeframe they initially were...
Now just imagine once 3d printers become cheap enough for the common household... Manufacturers of small cheap trinkets had better be worried because their time is next.
Hopefully, copyrights will apply then.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.