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The Pirate Bay to Become a Distributed Storage Cloud?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the volunteer-to-make-your-computer-run-slower dept.

eldavojohn writes "After announcing the sale of The Pirate Bay to Global Gaming Factory X, it was unknown what would become of TPB. Details of the future plans have been released. 'According to Rosso, GGF plans to build a massive "storage cloud" on top of TPB that would use individual users as storage system's nodes. Apparently users can opt out for being part of the decentralized storage system, but then they'd have to pay a monthly fee for the service. More resources the user is willing to commit for the service, the cheaper the monthly subscription fee will be ... GGF's plan is to harness the resources users are willing to allocate to the cloud service and sell that computing power and bandwidth to 3rd party companies, essentially creating a service that could be used as a content delivery network (system that most large sites — including ours — use to deliver static content, such as images, software downloads and stylesheets, faster to the end user) or even as a web hosting cloud. As the service would use P2P technology, it could bring massive savings to ISPs, as the delivery of content to an end user would be provided from the closest possible "node," most likely from an user within the same ISP network.'"

23 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. No. by Rix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Running a tracker is hardly special or unique. If you put up a paywall, we will simply go elsewhere.

    We're happy to share bandwidth with each other, but we're not going to let you resell it.

    1. Re:No. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Which would be useful for researchers, but not home users...By the time you'd exported the process to the "cloud" (I fucking hate the word "cloud" now, my god what an overhyped buzzword) you'd probably already be done with it locally. The biggest problem with distributing processing is exporting the right kind of processes...You don't want to lock up your whole cluster because it's waiting for input from some single machine.

      And researchers already have a variety of free seti/folding/etc applications that take advantage of free cycles, so what real benefit can TPB offer?

      Hell, Sony already went down that road with a vengeance when they put Folding@Home on the ps3.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    2. Re:No. by CarpetShark · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Running a tracker is hardly special or unique. If you put up a paywall, we will simply go elsewhere.

      Yep. Also, I'm not aware of any part of the bittorrent protocol that provides the facilities for payments etc. that they're fantasising about. No one is going to give up their myriad bittorrent clients for some unproven and proprietary p2p system by the people who destroyed their favourite site, even if its free. And if it's not proprietary, it'll be forked to remove the paytard stuff.

  2. SO for nothing by geekoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    you will store other peoples data on my machine?

    OK, sign me up.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  3. I for one welcome by 4D6963 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I for one welcome the first alternative that would pay me to use my storage.

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    You just got troll'd!
    1. Re:I for one welcome by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Would they pay you what it's worth? That's the real question. I mean, you'll have to keep your gear on, and be okay with them maxing your bandwidth, you'll have to buy new drives when they thrash yours to bits, and chances are, they'll pay you pennies.

      It's one thing to do something like Folding@Home where all they're doing is swiping cycles and some ram space...That's just a bit of electricity, little extra heat in your house. Actual magnetic storage is a whole different world.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  4. huh. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I thought that the news was that they had stopped being one...Now that they're legit, they're just another torrent tracker for free/unencumbered IP that isn't hard to find a torrent for anyway.

    Is their slow descent into irrelevance really deserving of multiple articles a day? They just posted the first satellite images of the Apollo sites, isn't that a bit more worthwhile?

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  5. Hosting someone else's illegal content by seifried · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, I really want to be part of something where I am hosting other people's content and have no real control over it, for free! Especially when some of that content may be illegal (in the criminal sense) in the jurisdiction that I live (child pornography, etc.) or violate civil acts (such as health data, copyrighted material, etc.).

  6. Re:privacy nd data security?? by Ricken · · Score: 2, Informative

    what happens if someone formats their pc nd the cloud data on it as well??

    As I understand it, there will always be a few copies somewhere else of the same stuff that's on your pc, so if the cloud can't reach your stuff, it'll just go another way.

  7. Wow, talk about a metric ton of FAIL by Em+Emalb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    this is megafail. Ultrafail. Failure to the 3rd degree.

    So it's either let us use your computer to store other people's crap on it, or opt out and pay us?

    You hear that noise? It's the sound of a company becoming irrelevant at the speed of the internet.

    (sounds kinda like a drunk Mel Gibson screaming about Jews, doesn't it?)

    --
    Sent from your iPad.
  8. Liability by swm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does participation in the cloud make me civilly or criminally liable for infringing or illegal material that is stored on my hard drive? Distributed from my hard drive?

    1. Re:Liability by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 2, Informative

      They could probably get you for contributory infringement - after all, you just became a node on a network called 'the pirate bay'. Also you're getting paid (albeit paid in kind rather than cash)... and as this is a 'legit' company they'll have to keep accurate records of all this - just waiting for the subpoena.

  9. Re:What's the Difference? by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oooo! Oooo! I got this one!

    Q: What makes this different from a Russian botnet?
    A: It's in Sweden.

    Q: What makes this different from a Russian botnet?
    A: In Soviet Russia, botnet installs you! In Sweden, you have to install it yourself.

    Q: What makes this different from a Russian botnet?
    A: When your machine is a part of a Russian botnet, it's taking money from the RIAA. When it's part of the new "pirate" bay botnet, it's making money for the RIAA.

    Does anyone still care? Seriously? It was a good torrent tracker, now it's gone. End of story. They have no reasonable path to legitimacy, the trial judgment will sap the vast majority of their assets, and their userbase will vanish when they stop carrying illegal stuff.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  10. 'Bout time by COMON$ · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I have wanted someone to translate a torrent network into a storage cloud for quite some time. I am a network administrator and I have an immense amount of storage wasted by PCs and servers. 80GB local hard drive only using 5GB, translate that to distributed storage across hundreds of nodes...I could have a large storage cloud consisting of terabytes on my network if some creative programmer would create a storage cloud like this closed to just my network.

    Does anyone know why this hasn't been done?

    --
    CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
    1. Re:'Bout time by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 2, Informative

      It'd been done for a while, by dozens of people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_systems#Distributed_file_systems/

      --
      "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
  11. The RIAA couldn't kill TBP by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But greed has, almost overnight.

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    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  12. For Free, sure. by nurb432 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't mind running FreeNet, where I'm helping host others content for free to help out 'the cause'. But a pay service on top of this? No thanks.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    1. Re:For Free, sure. by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 2, Informative

      Freenet also has the advantage that you don't know what your node stores.

      --
      Not a sentence!
    2. Re:For Free, sure. by seifried · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't care if legally or not I'm in the clear, I don't want police getting a warrant and stomping through my house, seizing my computers and generally making my life a pain in the a** if there's no benefit to me (no upside) and just a whole lot of potential risk (i.e. a huge downside). Now if I knew I was hosting content similar to what wikileaks hosts that would be a different story (doing something that has social benefit), but providing storage for free to a commercial company where I take on an unknown set of risks would be insane.

  13. Ridiculous by grumpyhacker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What did the owners of The Pirate Bay actually sell? Did they sell only the domain?

    They (or anyone else really) can start a new piratebay and start all over again. This is ridiculous.

  14. Because it has. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Coda, and before that, AFS. Oh, and Lustre.

    It's not a new idea. The only real difference here is that it's associated with BitTorrent and The Pirate Bay, and is designed to handle a whole set of problems you won't have, like untrusted machines communicating over the Internet, and how to compensate people for using their hard drive to store your stuff.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  15. Article about the TPB buyer by BuR4N · · Score: 2, Informative

    Below is an article about the buyer of TPB (orginal in Swedish). Judge for yourself, but I do not think this is going anywhere, this is more or less the end for TPB http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=http://www.realtid.se/ArticlePages/200906/30/20090630101501_Realtid980/20090630101501_Realtid980.dbp.asp&sl=sv&tl=en&history_state0=

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    http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
  16. Re:Torrent-like file storage seems bad by TomRK1089 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's what I'm thinking. I thought the whole point of the cloud was that it was still controlled servers, but a big ol' chunk of them, with Google style redundancy, so that it's not "My powerpoint is on Server A-436-Z," it's "My powerpoint is hosted with $DOMAIN." This sounds like you're gonna trust some 13-year old kid to never turn his PC off (or slow down the bandwidth when he plays WoW for 7 hours just when I need my files.) What happens when one of your users has an AOL style dynamic IP that changes every time they log in? What happens when there's a brownout in CA and that takes out 200 of your users? Can someone explain how they avoid what appears to be technical and reliability hurdles here?