Pirate Bay Shuts Down Tracker, Switches To Distributed Hash Table

think_nix writes "The Pirate Bay has shut down their BitTorrent tracker. Instead TPB is now using Distributed Hash Table to distribute the torrents. The Pirate Bay Blog states that DHT along with PEX (Peer Exchange) Technology is just as effective if not better for finding peers than a centralized service. The Local reports that shutting down the tracker and implementing DHT & PEX could be due to the latest court rulings in Sweden against 2 of TPB's owners, and may decide the outcome of the case."

Comments

Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[Kirin Fenrir]

Proving that technology is always one step ahead of copyright law.

Re:Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[sakdoctor]

Sure you can.
The decentralized service doesn't have that central server weakness, so the best you can do is blast sacrificial individual users with law suits.

After that, it's a case of mass disobedience vs prohibition laws, because people are not going to stop sharing any time soon.

Re:Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[Anonymous Coward]

And before anyone jumps on the "but then Google should be sued and shutdown too" bullshit, everyone can see the difference between TPB and Google.

I like this idea when it comes to due process in a court. "Who killed the victim, the dishevelled black guy or the neat & prim white guy"? Has to be the black guy, I mean everyone can see the difference.

Re:Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[SethJohnson]

Whereas the tobacco companies have lost several huge lawsuits, I don't recall any magazines getting sued for running ads for cancer-causing products.

Seth

Re:Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[AlamedaStone]

It's more like setting up a site called drugdealers.com where people post advertisements on where to buy drugs. You can defend your "but the site is only giving address where to buy drugs, I'm not selling any!" all you want, but it wont hold up in court.

Terrible metaphor. It's more like setting up a site called streetaddresses.com where people post addresses of many places. You can defend your "but the site is only giving user-posted addresses, I'm not responsible if some of those addresses contain illegal materials - nor can it reasonably be my responsibility to check every address that's listed on my site to determine what, if any, illegal activities are taking place" all you want, and it might hold up in court. Or it might not, but it sure as hell seems like a reasonable defense to me.

In before "copyright infringement is theft", moral majority outrage, "if you have nothing to hide", etc

Re:Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[Mathinker]

> where people post advertisements on where to buy drugs.

X% of which are for legal OTC drugs sold in drugstores and 100-X% of which are for illegal drugs. You're probably right that if X is small enough, the legal system will rule against the site. But if X is large enough, probably not.

All this is academic in the case of TPB, because of the "in your face" way they reacted to takedown requests. Nothing will save them.

However, a site which is polite, officially bars illegal torrents, but errs in favor of accuracy vs. efficiency about reacting to takedown requests could very well replace TPB in functionality while making it a lot harder for the courts to effectively deal with them.

Re:Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[Voyager529]

There are several. First and most realistically, Google has a whole lot more money to spend in court than TPB does. Second, also from a completely practical standpoint, I'm sure that the number of judges/juries who have use Google are orders of magnitude above the number that have used Pirate Bay, so familiarity is on Google's side. Third, Google has complied with legal takedown notices, whereas Pirate Bay has basically said "go walk the plank". Google has shown good faith when asked to, while Pirate Bay has not. Fourth is a little common sense: Google indexes a huge amount of stuff online, and if there are pirated materials available online, then by nature, some will end up on Google. While Pirate Bay might also host game patches, linux distros, Creative Commons licensed artwork, and other legal materials, when their search cloud shows people searching for theatrical releases, Top 100 music, and Adobe Photoshop (i.e. stuff that's obviously copyrighted), it's going to be a rough day for the lawyer who's defending Pirate Bay. Finally, there was/is a community on TPB that helped "cleanse" "bad releases" and/or help highlight "good releases", while Google has no such community in place specifically for pirated material.

To further the GP's example, no one is going to press charges on you because you have a phone book which happens to include a few drug dealers in it (it's a statistical inevitability). Any jury would laugh that out of court. On the other hand, if you've got a little black book which is largely filled with drug dealers, even if you also have some of your friends' numbers in there, if half the people in your black book get arrested, you're going to have a pretty lousy day in court if your only defense is "it's just a list of phone numbers, who doesn't have one of those?" - the DA's response will be "yes, I do. To get into MY phone book, you have to be a family member, close friend, or business contact. 96% of the people in your Rolodex are known drug dealers, Mister Anderson, and I've got a dozen witnesses saying that they got the numbers of everyone else we've arrested from you. How do you explain that?"

I'm no fan of the RIAA by ANY means, nor am I entirely convinced that TPB deserves to be sued out of existence from a legal standpoint. I am saying that they are among the biggest public torrent trackers, made it no secret that they had warez/music/movies for download, and not only did they refuse to comply with the copyright holders, but they were very well known for replying to takedown notices with public replies that usually amounted to "go shove it". Outside of Google being the biggest search engine, they have very little in common.

Re:Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[shutdown -p now]

The other point is that TPB was notified about specific people in their "little black book" being criminals, responded to that (indicating that they have received the notification, and understood it), and continued to aid them in their activities.

Still guilty

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

So they go from hosting a tracker to hosting a bootstrap node that gives clients access to the DHT swarm? In short, in the eyes of the law (and probably of the general public), they're still facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. At the very least, they look guilty as hell, because they seem to do try their hardest to stick it up to da man.

Re:Still guilty

[hitnrunrambler]

Still guilty (Score:2)

by Rosco P. Coltrane (209368) on Tuesday November 17, @09:01AM (#30128264)

So they go from hosting a tracker to hosting a bootstrap node that gives clients access to the DHT swarm? In short, in the eyes of the law (and probably of the general public), they're still facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. At the very least, they look guilty as hell, because they seem to do try their hardest to stick it up to da man.

Don't you mean:
"Boss, I know them Duke Boy Pirates is guilty! They've gone from bootlegging trackers to bootlegging bootstraps. In the eyes of the law (and flash) they are facily-tatin' the illegal distribution of moonshine. At the very least, they look guilty as hell, with them outlaw haircuts and that fancy car."

Re:Still guilty

[purpledinoz]

Then aren't ALL ISPs also facilitating copyright infringement? Isn't Cisco providing the network technology for copyright infringement? Isn't Intel providing the ability for consumers to download illegal material from the Internet? Isn't AMAT, a semiconductor tool manufacturer, guilty of providing Intel with the tools to make microchips for copyright infringement?

Re:Still guilty

[Cyner]

Didn't the US Government directly fund the development of the global file sharing network?

Re:Still guilty

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's unfortunate that the quote I want to make right now ("The tree of Liberty...") comes from a founder of the very country which put such pressure on the Swedish government.

I suppose the great always have further to fall.

Re:Still guilty

[AlamedaStone]

It's not a matter of legality, it's a matter of public perception. TPB is looking like they're slapped on the wrist for doing something, and their response is "okay, we'll do that instead. Catch us now!". There's no better posture to adopt to attract the ire of the law, which, incidentally, does seem to operate on black and white more often than not...

It sounds like you may be confusing a court of law with the court of public opinion. If TPB is told they're doing something illegal, and their response is, "okay, we'll do that instead. Is it illegal now?", they may well attract the ire of individuals - but if they're obeying the letter of the law they won't be (legally) penalized.

In fact, if they are following the law and they get guilty verdicts anyway, it is a huge win for them - they are illustrating inherent injustice and justifying their value to the public.

(IMO, YMMV, IANAL, WWBBD, etc)

Re:Still guilty

[AlamedaStone]

In the eyes of the law (and flash) they are facily-tatin' the illegal distribution of moonshine. At the very least, they look guilty as hell, with them outlaw haircuts and that fancy car."

I agree with this. I think that if they look guilty, and have a name that makes them sound guilty, they should be treated as though they were guilty of breaking the law.

Details like, "are they actually guilty" then become totally irrelevant! They are being treated as though they were guilty, so they must be!

Besides, they have "pirate" right in their name! Just like those IP thieves over at Puzzle Pirates, or those hired goons in Pittsburg.

Re:Still guilty

[shutdown -p now]

The real problem is that under standard interpretation of Swedish law they weren't in breach of the law in the first place.

How do you know? Because they've told you so? Are you a Swedish lawyer qualified to judge that they were in the right, and the judge in their case ruled wrongly? (personally, I do not consider myself qualified for that; any arguments that I may advance on this are purely my own views)

Re:Still guilty

[cfalcon]

Jefferson WAS a lawbreaker. He participated in a revolution. And the copyright in the constitution was designed to expire- unlike the one we have today, which is unconstitutional.

Peer ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirates are like ants and always find a way around obstacles and tend to attract more pirates to use the same path.
Removing a single tracker, no matter how widely used it was won't deal much harm. This may lead to the removal of other trackers in the future, but peer exhange and DHT are pretty much a good subsitute in my opinion.

Re:Peer ants

[dkleinsc]

In other words, the Internet is seeing copyright enforcement as damage and automatically routing around it.

"Just as effective"?

[RabidJackal]

I wouldn't go as far as saying that DHT&PEX is "just as effective" as using a tracker. I've found that with DHT enabled, a typical home router can get swamped extremely quickly and cause it to either crash or stop accepting new connections. With DHT disabled, I don't seem to have this problem.

This isn't just specific to me and my router; my friends have also experienced similar problems that were solved by disabling DHT.

It still doesn't solve everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Using DHTs instead of a tracker is real nice and all, but you're still stuck with the same problem: you have to host some information on a server, namely node information that allows you to bootstrap into the DHT, and information that allows you to get the resource you want.

Both of these are taken care of in the torrent file and hosting the torrent files for illegal content is still the same, tracker or no tracker. The bootstrapping problem is basically unavoidable, but you could have, say, a single machine or set of machines at TPB that would bootstrap you to the DHT they're on, without explicitly holding any information about illegal content.

The second problem, well, it's harder to solve that way. From my understanding, the bittorrent DHT (http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0005.html) uses the torrent's infohash to locate the node containing the information on the peers currently serving that given torrent. Since you don't know the infohash without the torrent file itself, searching for a given torrent isn't trivial, although there have been some advances in that area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_%28protocol%29#Decentralized_keyword_search).

Magnet links are nice, since they remove the need to host torrent files and work as direct links to the necessary peer information, but I'm not entirely sure having a link labeled after obviously illegal content is that much different from hosting a file containing a few hashes. :)

And the hydra...

[Taibhsear]

grows yet another head. Good luck trying to keep up, MAFIAA.

Re:And the hydra...

[L4t3r4lu5]

Poor analogy. In this instance, the hydra has no head. Each cell in its body relays information between adjoining cells, as requested from cells further down the chain. Destroying one cell, or a bunch of cells, does not kill the hydra or stop the messages.

From now on, nuking the hydra from orbit really is the only way to be sure...

If DHT and PEX are

[mehrotra.akash]

" just as effective if not better for finding peers", then why did they wait for the ruling to change over?
why not just switch over a long time back??
especially if they are better..

Re:If DHT and PEX are

[grazzy]

Because you cannot authenticate a user to the tracker. It makes ratios and private sites much harder to operate. DHT is more like gnutella in that sense, if you share it everyone can access it without having a good trackratio of seeding.

However, the private sites will just continue to run their own trackers I suppose, there's no problem for them todo that, however for the public large ones this could very well be the holy grail.

TPBs core problem is that they are more or less being punished for "helping" people make copyright infrigments. I dont think their charges will go away over this during the current political climate in sweden (more privacy laws, more company friendly politicans and less civil liberty). It is their intent that is the problem, and that intent is just as much now as before to help people infrige on copyright.

However I wonder just how the swedish juridicial system are going to prove that the people currently being prosecuted really are the ones behind The Pirate bay since they seem to have moved all systems and IP assets overseas. I guess we'll just stick them in jail for being pains in the ass and go back to being good pawns in the much larger conspiracy to turn the entire EU area into a padded and walled commercial zone where money rules all aspects of life.

Re:If DHT and PEX are

[gravis777]

Because it just recently started being build into the majority of trackers. Also, you cannot do authentication, so sites that require registration and control upload / download rations no longer work. In fact, DHT will probably make registration sites obsolete, unless you want to be sure to release something to a very select group of individuals. I think the main reason for sites taht required registration is to prevent overload on their trackers.

Napster et al court cases...

[nweaver]

One of the reasons why BitTorrent didn't suffer the legal fate of Napster, Kazaa, etc is that BitTorrent only handles data transfer, not search, and has significant noninfringing uses.

Having trackerless torrents however doesn't help the noninfringing uses, only infringing uses. (If its non-infringing, just host a tracker damnit!), thus trackerless client features start to get very dangerous from a legal perspective for the developers.

Re:Napster et al court cases...

[Seahawk]

Doesn't trackerless torrents cut down significantly on the traffic in the tracker/bootnode end of things? So it gets even cheaper to distribute big amounts of non-infringing data?

So what is the downside for someone like Canonical to start using trackerless torrents for ubuntu? As far as I can see they would save on tracker traffic.

Re:Napster et al court cases...

[Anonymous Coward]

Having trackerless torrents however doesn't help the noninfringing uses, only infringing uses. (If its non-infringing, just host a tracker damnit!)

Why?

If there's a way to make legal distribution more robust and able to tolerate problems (e.g. slashdotting) on your node, why wouldn't you want to use it?

If the advantages of decentralization are irrelevant, then you don't need bittorrent (tracker or not) for non-infringing use. Just host a ftpd dammit!

The MAFIAA is supposedly out to fight piracy, but it's not like the MAFIAA is the only entity in the universe that has ever tried to interfere with information distribution. Nor are people who try to interfere with information distribution, the only thing that ever causes failures. People are going to want reliable data transfer regardless of whether or not some people happen to want reliability for copyright-infringing purposes.

TPB is going down for piracy, but the fact that it can be shut down at all, overshadows the relatively minor piracy issue. If force can be used against trackers, then everyone (pirates, other governments, Falun Gong, Operation Clambake, Voice of America, you, and me) benefits from trackerless torrents. The pirates-vs-MAFIAA battle is unimportant and uninteresting, except perhaps as a technology driver and microcosm-scale stage. However that turns out, people are always going to need freedom from governments, other bullies, and even "natural" phenomena ("oops the server's down, because a court ordered it / because the admin fucked up and installed some malware / because apparently I tripped over an ethernet cable as I was leaving the building and can't drive back there until tomorrow / because the power went out / because an asteroid hit that city").

Look at any historical record of computer problems, and "shutdown by the MAFIAA for piracy" is a relatively rare explanation. Question: What do you do about the other 99.99999% of cases? Answer #1: learn from your mistakes and don't let the problem happen again. Answer #2: learn from your mistake and make a single node failure not matter. I guess I know which basket you put all your eggs in.

Re:Are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

no need to get into technical jargon.

The whole point of /. is to get into technical jargon

Re:In a related question

[sopssa]

Is it illegal to download a list of instructions on which chunks to use ( and in what order ) to create a copyrighted work from your family photos? :)

That's just the same old "but it's just random 0 and 1 on my hdd, it's not the movie, it just happens to have the same order in bytes!". No matter how you try to circumvent laws with stupid technical jargon, if it's clear you are or your intention is to violate copyright laws, you wont get far with such jargon.

Re:In a related question

[commodore64_love]

Especially since megaorp lobbyists can just bribe the lawmakers to make torrent files illegal, regardless of content.

BTW let's stop calling it "copyright". It's not a right. It's a government-granted privilege of monopoly... same as what they granted Comcast and Amtrak. Nothing more