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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.'"
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.
Forgive the crudeness, but this is bull. Bit Torrent has survived a major tracker shutdown before (Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprnova.org). Traffic will redirect, other trackers will open in their place, and things will return to normal within a week.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
As I recall, one of the guys running the site said they had made arrangements such that the actual hardware is no longer under their direct control, 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.
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.
Whenever Pirate Bay goes down, let's everyone agree that bittorrent is dead. Say it very loudly when around RIAA types and look morose, say it looks like we're going to have to pay top dollar for entertainment, pantomime getting out your wallets. And for xod's sake, don't mention any of the other torrent sites. *wink*
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
the best option is a web of trust plus p2p application. This p2p would be used only to distribute tracker locations and or edonkey links, not the actual content. This way you would need no centralized web servers. Webservers are too easy a target for the MAFIAA.
With this an something like the kad protocol we would have truly distributed content distribution. Not only the files, but the urls for the files.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
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!
Will seed to 1:1
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!
in my defense I would like to point out that:
1. I am wardriving this through a poorly encrypted WiFi connection that some guy or girl put up in their apartment.
I wonder if it's like my open wifi connection. I'm quite happy for people to come onto mine so I can have a damned good look through their computers. Depending on how bad I'm feeling, they might go away with an unexpected present...
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
If there is truth to this, then the IP trade groups will go after TPB harder and faster now.
Go to Preferences > Index and disable Beta Index (should be the first checkbox). I've had mine disabled for a long time and I never see any significant changes to the UI I know and love.
Idle is still green though :P
Learn to use RSS already.
Shut it down. It won't make any difference.
It will force coders to create a better system.
It will promote the use of another protocol/network that is immune to particular traits of law/jurisdiction that The Pirate Bay may fall foul of.
In the meantime, hundreds of pretenders will show up to take the flak and the sheer volume means that all that can be done is trying to shut them down one at a time with legal threats.
Just look at the history of ANY P2P system and it's pretty much identical.
Give it a few more years, the Internet will be nothing but the basis of a global, anonymous, reliable, authenticatable P2P system that everybody uses to do everything. We have the technology (Tor, CloudVPN, Bittorrent, DHT, etc.), it's just a matter of fine-tuning and prevelance. As an additional bonus, it then won't matter that some people are using IPv6 and some IPv4 - everything will be in this cloud of dark smoke that you can only see what enters and leaves and nothing inbetween. You'll be able to tell that User X shared an MP3 if you are able to see all of User X's traffic. You'll be able to see that User Y downloaded an MP3 if you are able to see all of User Y's traffic. But even compromising User X completely won't reveal to you who User Y is or was. Trying to masquerade as User X without their private key would be useless, so the best you could do (even with the key) would be to propogate false content to... who? Nobody would know - everything is just an anonymous connection from a dozen random peers.
The media companies and governments are, by a process of digital evolution, driving anonymous communications into necessities and they become more prevelant with each generation. Hardly anybody warezed back in the 90's as a percentage of Internet users - now most ordinary people know how to find and download illegal content in a few clicks. Each time the problem of "piracy" is "fixed", it crops up yet again, somewhere else, in a new form that's more convenient, faster, harder to prove and more ubiquitous.
Even in terms of general users - the only things that people ever ask me about when the subject comes up are "something like Napster or something". They've never used Napster but the fame of being shut down was enough to make them into a household name for free/illegal content. Do it to The Pirate Bay (whose name I'm already getting mentioned in conversations from people who I thought couldn't work a mouse) and the same will happen.
It doesn't mean that they *shouldn't* be shutting down The Pirate Bay, or that The Pirate Bay are somehow "right" or "heroes". They have taken advantage of an interesting legal technicality. It just means that you're not going to win with the sorts of tactics where you just try and shut the sites down. Maybe the opportunity for the media companies EVER winning has now passed and they'll never be able to anymore - who knows? But they are trying to catch fog in a net... this isn't a problem they can solve by shutting down a server - they need something else. I don't know what. They certainly don't. But until it exists, they are playing a losing game.
You're missing a zero in that ratio, I hope? That ratio is an order of magnitude off from BitTorrent sainthood.
There is no such thing as "the BitTorrent network". That's like talking about "the HTTP network". It's a distributed download protocol. It doesn't do search and different trackers and torrents are not interconnected in any way. Thus, it is not a network. The ability to use BitTorrent will not be harmed in any way by any one site going down.
Remember when everyone used suprnova and then it went away? The world of BitTorrent will be fine.
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.
Never mind that the Napster name survived and came back as another DRM'ed monstrosity. We still have the Gnutella protocol, free and unencumbered (poisoned, but we tech types can deal with that, eh?).
If TPB goes under (like SuperNova - can you say "mininova"?), there'll be plenty of other site operators ready to take advantage of their country's laws to make money from the opportunity this would represent. Trust me - even if TPB is forced to shut down (a questionable liklihood), there'll be plenty of others coming behind to pick up the profitable pieces left behind.
Data occupies space, has mass, exerts gravity. Even physically turning off TPB's servers won't make that data go away. Even if you nuke the servers holding the data and wipe all the hard drives, the data still exists (scattered about on the internet in some form or another). It'll be found (rediscovered) and used.
This is just another example of the existing media cartels (MPAA, RIAA, et. al.) trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle. They obviously haven't learned from their past experience with Gnutella just how difficult rebottling the jinn can be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network A computer network is a group of interconnected computers. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general overview of some types and categories and also presents the basic components of a network. ...
Functional relationship (network architecture)
Computer networks may be classified according to the functional relationships which exist among the elements of the network, e.g., Active Networking, Client-server and Peer-to-peer (workgroup) architecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer
Nothing wrong with the protocol. That's like saying there was something 'wrong' with IP if all the DNS servers were nuked...
>>>How long did it take to recover from mininova? Not long...
Or Demonoid? Or niteshdw.com? When those went down, my torrent program immediately switched to dht: and was able to build a database of ~500,000 users. I continued downloading and seeding demonoid/niteshdw torrents for MONTHS.
There were only two demonoid torrents which failed to complete with dht:, so I used isohunt to find a backup tracker, and switched to that. The second torrent had no backup tracker, so I uploaded the file to torrentstorm and within days it was alive again.
Eventually I was able to complete downloading everything, despite RIAA's shutting down the trackers.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Where will the bittorrent community ever find EIGHT servers... this is insurmountable.
I still get a narrow story column and a ton of wasted whitespace.
Well if they used it, it wouldn't be whitespace, now would it?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The ones who wants to shut it down do not have the power to do so. The only ones with that power is the people who runs it, and they are not going to shut it down, especially not as they've been continiously harassed by the ones who want it shut down.
They have redundant servers spread all over the world, some of them in server halls at ISPs that will not allow the police to just enter and shut them down. They also have several servers that are not active now, but which could be activated if need be.
Add to this that the last time they tried to shut them down, they recieved donations of new servers, money, server hall space and fast internet connections from both ordinary people and companies, emerging stronger than before and was running within three days. Now, they are prepared, and the same pattern will happen again. If attempts are made to shut them down, they will get more support and emerge stronger.
I can even tell you how the trial will go:
* They will be found guilty in the first trial, as the judge and "nÃmndemÃn" (not a jury, but an advisory group of "trustworthy people") are politically appointed, and will get orders from their parties to convict.
* They will appeal. The next court is not politically appointed, so it will instead look at the law. Swedish law allows linking to possibly illegal content, and there are precendents showing that such an interpretation holds up in court. In other words, they will be found not guilty. This is also in line with tradition, as everyone accused of file sharing who have appealed to this court has been found not guilty.
* The public attourney may appeal, and once again get his butt spanked. It's not entirely sure that he will do this, though, as this court has the power to set precedents. Another file sharer have been paid large sums of money by the media industry to not appeal, as they do not want to lose here.
* The case will go to the European court, which, at least on paper, should test if the Swedish courts have followed Swedish law. If it does it's job, they will once again be found not guilty.
Also, don't forget that these guys are activists, they will not back away from a fight. I wouldn't be surprised if they were to appeal even if they won in the first trial, just to make sure that they won in a court high enough to set a precedent.
Worth noting is that there are strong evidence of taking bribes against Jim Keyzer, the corrupt police who headed the investigation. Roswall, the public attourney, similarly is also suspected of various kinds of corruption and breaches of protocol. BodstrÃm, the minister of justice who initiated this spectacle broke three out of our four constitutions in order to make this happen, and this will also taint the case.