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Researchers Warn of Possible BitTorrent Meltdown
secmartin writes "Researchers at Delft University warn that large parts of the BitTorrent network might collapse if The Pirate Bay is forced to shut down. A large part of the available torrents use The Pirate Bay as tracker, and other available trackers will probably be overloaded if all traffic is shifted there. TPB is currently using eight servers for their trackers. According to the researchers, even trackerless torrents using the DHT protocol will face problems: 'One bug in a DHT sorting routine ensures that it can only "stumble upon success", meaning torrent downloads will not start in seconds or minutes if Pirate Bay goes down in flames.'"
Might force more people to 'member-only' or subscription sites, for a short time, is all.
Meanwhile, isohunt (among others) is going strong.
Finally, could also push more people into IRC, which I'm sure the MAAFIA would just adore.
The internet is resilient, and someone somewhere will pick up the slack that could be left by TPB going down. There's enough trackers out there to lend a hand.
Solution? Support The Pirate Bay. Don't download? Support them anyway for the things they do to battle the MAFIAA and other evils.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
With Pirate Bay shut down that means that uploaders will move on to better trackers - PRIAVTE trackers - which have higher quality control, fewer trojans, and ratio requirements.
so even if they are all found guilty, it would be outside their ability to shut it down, even if ordered to do so by a court.
You can damned well guarantee that a jail term for failure to comply will suddenly make it possible. I doubt there's many torrent tracker site owners and admins willing to serve jailtime for it.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
It is extremely annoying because I can't read articles at-a-glance anymore. I only click on articles for the comments and I only read comments and write comments if I'm heavily interested in this story.
I am logged in, I still see that firehose crap. They're not just alienating new users, I'm getting sick of this crap too. I don't even let slashdot.org run scripts anymore. It stalls firefox, and doesn't provide any desirable functionality. Once upon a time Slashdot had the best forum software around. Now, it's the worst.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
1. Tribler designs P2P client that pushes decentralized tracking. 2. Tribler publishes research which predicts doom and gloom for the future of centralized bittorrent trackers. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
If there is truth to this, then the IP trade groups will go after TPB harder and faster now.
Uncheck the box, and you can return to non-beta bliss!
Learn to use RSS already.
Thank you! /. is now usable for the first time in months!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
That'll show em.
Slashdot has really made me learn to hate CSS. (or bad CSS programmers)
Simple Design + Low Bandwidth + No Icons + No Boxes + Large Browser Font
and I still
get a narrow
story column
and a ton of
wasted
whitespace.
I think this shows exactly how good bittorent is. Organising 30% of worldwide data communications, using all of 8 servers. That would even make Google jealous.
If I was a policy maker and knew of a communications network that was this easy to setup and this hard to disrupt and shutdown, I'd want to ensure it stayed around, especially when times are less stable.
You're making the unfounded assumption that policy makers WANT communications networks that are hard easy to set up and hard to disrupt (control) or shutdown.
They want to control what you see and hear while preserving the appearance of freedom and choice. Will it be profitable for the elite if we invade a helpless country? Our "free press" will ensure that while flipping channels you'll get both sides of the story. 1: "they are a major and immediate threat and we need to invade immediately with massive force and occupy them permanently," or 2. "they aren't quite that big of a threat, we need to invade more cautiously with a smaller force and only occupy them for a few years."
This space available.
This arrangement was made precisely to make sure that they couldn't shut Pirate Bay down even when forced or coerced by the judicial system.
Yes, the police and such can make your life hell, even if you're in the right. The people behind Pirate Bay know this, they are not stupid. They also know how easy it would be for the authorities to say 'we can make your life hell unless you shut it down'. Illegal yes, but easy, and fighting it in court takes a long time and loads of money. So they said, we have a long term commitment to keeping the Pirate Bay up, so we must make sure that even we ourselves simply cannot shut it down, not even if we wanted to.