Anonymous, Decentralized and Uncensored File-Sharing Is Booming

PatPending writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "The RetroShare network allows people to create a private and encrypted file-sharing network. Users add friends by exchanging PGP certificates with people they trust. All the communication is encrypted using OpenSSL and files that are downloaded from strangers always go through a trusted friend. In other words, it's a true Darknet and virtually impossible to monitor by outsiders. RetroShare founder DrBob told us that while the software has been around since 2006, all of a sudden there's been a surge in downloads. 'The interest in RetroShare has massively shot up over the last two months,' he said."

Comments

Whackamole!

[MaskedSlacker]

Let the games...continue.

Re:Whackamole!

[The Master Control P]

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more systems will slip through your fingers."

Re:Whackamole!

[DanielRavenNest]

25,000 downloads a day is utterly trivial in comparison to the hundreds of millions of downloads of file sharing software from CNET alone, let alone other sites:

http://download.cnet.com/windows/p2p-file-sharing-software/?tag=mncol%3Bsort&rpp=10&sort=downloadCount+asc

The amusing part of the CNET downloads, is that CNET is owned by CBS, a major media company. So any attempt by CBS to sue file sharers can be countered by the fact that they encouraged it by distributing the software on a massive scale. The same story, on not as massive scale, is true for Fileplanet, owned by IGN, which is a division of News Corp, owners of Fox:

http://www.fileplanet.com/73/0/1/2/1/section/File_Sharing

Re:Whackamole!

[Runaway1956]

Actually, we haven't stopped SOPA. SOPA is being recycled under different names, with different advertising soundbytes. Lamar Smith is authoring another SOPA already. http://www.itworld.com/security/251584/sopa-replacement-uses-child-porn-excuse-spy-997-percent-americans

http://www.gamermc.com/2012/03/02/tired-of-internet-censorship-bills-join-the-black-march/

Our friends in Europe are waging a war against ACTA that we Americans were to stupid and/or to lazy to wage for ourselves. TPP is being negotiated in the same secrecy with which ACTA was.

What a surprise

[Nursie]

Clamp down on torrents, clamp down on file sharing sites, what do you expect? People to meekly give up sharing files?

It only takes one person to write a darknet program like this and the game is back on.

It sounds a lot like a program I'd considered writing before and if done right it's basically impossible to shut down, or compromise effectively, without severely screwing up the internet. Which is probably the next step.

Re:What a surprise

[wvmarle]

One possible strength is also an obvious weakness: everything hinges on trusted friends - i.e. if you do not have any trusted friends that use this RetroShare then you can not join the network, unless you are willing to join through a non-trusted friend. A side effect is that the amount of content available on this network is highly limited.

This works until critical mass is reached, which very well may just have happened. Enough people in the network that most of the rest of the world has a friend that is connected already, and increased word-of-mouth advertising, and more content which in turn attracts more users. Closure of megaupload and some other legal wins against torrent sites will surely have helped them too. But without critical mass it's still not a viable option for many bittorrent/megaupload refugees.

Re:What a surprise

[EdZ]

It basically sounds like Perfect Dark, but with manual initial per-finding and weaker security (if you always have the same web of friends, you can likely be tracked by this web).

Re:What a surprise

[bobbocanfly]

"You have loaded an HTTPS site. Your internet connection will be suspended to the end of the month". It would never work.

Re:What a surprise

[sortius_nod]

Exactly. Most of my traffic is HTTPS these days - mail, search, twitter, work, the list goes on. Any ISP trying to bar encrypted traffic will lose customers quicker than they can ban them.

Re:What a surprise

[biodata]

No this is backwards. The internet is a mechanism for exchanging data and messages between computers. It has been hijacked by advertising agencies for commercial purposes. Darknets will strip out the cancer.

Re:What a surprise

[Runaway1956]

"in fact they lose money for the extra data transferred as adverts over and over again for no reason other than to push up a metric that says the advertisement was viewed,"

I should send a letter to my ISP, asking for a discount, since I don't see adverts. My router doesn't even pass requests to advertising sites. Multiply the savings by four computers, I'm saving them a LOT of money!

Re:What a surprise

[pla]

Darknet is the opposite of the main commercial function of Internet - advertisement.

I will presume you don't mean that as a troll, and simply don't remember the internet back before "marketing" turned into a four-letter word.

The internet arose and thrived before the corporate world learned how to make money with it. Primarily universities, but also a steadily growing number of people who realized they couldn't live without it after graduation from uni, paid for a network connection so they could participate in this wonderful global sharing of ideas. And before that, people paid for access to very very crude (by comparison) dialup BBSs that gave them just the smallest taste of what an online global network had to offer.

The problem we have with the internet today, and I would say broadcast-vs-cable TV has the same problem - Companies simply got greedy. Once, they sold us cable as a great new way to get static-free TV with no ads. Now people pay over a hundred bucks a month for the same thing they used to get over the air (admittedly with more channels), and have to pay even more for premium channels that really don't have ads - Except, even those have started pushing the definition of "no ads". The internet did just fine back when it functioned as nothing but a pipe to your door, and everyone could attach whatever services to their end of the pipe they wanted.

Personally, I think the big shift really happened when ISPs started to ban "servers", basically reducing the network back to nothing more than one more way to reach consumers. As long as everyone and their brother could host whatever the hell they wanted, advertisers really had to bust their balls to reach more than a handful of people online; once people started accepting the internet as a set of places you go to get content, rather than a (albeit "Wild-West"-like) community in which you participate, the internet became nothing more than another 50k TV channels, complete with ads.

So I, for one, welcome the growth of darknets. It means We The People, rather than our corporate overlords, can once again decide what we allow on our network. If Hollywood and Madison Avenue, and even the government, doesn't like that - No problem, they can consider themselves not invited to my party.

Re:What a surprise

[thereitis]

The only way the governments are going to monitor this is if they crack every possible key, and/or get that quantum computer thing going.

The spammers will be all over this in due time: install a trojan onto people's computers that looks for darknets and start automatically sharing malware and/or adding the spammer's account to the list of trusted friends. If the spammers can do it, the government/big business can do it.

Re:What a surprise

[pla]

Compared to how much content there is now it can hardly be said to have thrived during that time except by the most disingenuous of arguers.

"Fatter" does not mean "healthier".

Even a decade ago, I could find just about anything I wanted online - Key word there, "wanted". Source code snippets? Porn? Music? Movies (albeit of lower quality due to bandwidth constraints)? Slashdot? Magazine scans? How-Tos on anything from home repair to bomb making? Game guides and reviews by players rather than publisher shills? Check, check, checkitty-check.

Today, I can find terabytes worth of narcissists finding ever more bandwidth-hungry ways to tell me about their awesomeness. I can find all the Major Media talking heads doing the exact same thing that led a generation to completely ignore them in the first place, back when they did their thing for free over-the-air. I can find a million people who want to either sell me something, or just plain sell me. And the stuff I actually want? Well, technically still there, but the signal-to-noise ratio goes down with every passing year.

So yes, call me disingenuous if you must, but the internet today does not strike me as "thriving", despite its girth; quite the opposite, we have to constantly fight both corporations and governments to keep it in a form at least vaguely useful to us and prevent it from degenerating into just one more old-school push-media advertising/propaganda vehicle. The internet has degenerated into a 300Lbs middle-aged white guy huffing and puffing after climbing a flight of stairs.

But hey, I could always start a vlog to complain about it, right?

Re:What a surprise

[Opportunist]

Don't you worry too much. The reason why this isn't going to be the end of the internet is the same that NoScript, AdBlocker and whatnot weren't: Too many people who won't use it.

I don't know about you, but I use adblocker, NoScript and a few tools that disable tracker cookies and whatnot. What would change if I didn't use them? Not that much, actually. I'd just have to wipe my history clean manually and endure longer loading times for banners to load that I don't click at. The change for the ad industry? Generally, zero.

But I'm a minority, and this is why this model works. For every non-cooperative asshat like me that thwarts the attempts of the ad and profiling companies, there's at least a thousand who cooperate, who have a facebook profile filled with all kinds of personal info, who not only have banners displayed but also click them.

Your sky-is-falling prophecy of doom is akin to the cry heard when VCRs were labeled the doom of private TV because (teh horrorz!) people could not only skip ads with them but actually cut them out of shows!

Guess what? 30+ years of VCRs (and now even other, more sophisticated means of time shifting and recording that take a lot of work out of de-ading movies) and private TV is stronger than ever.

Re:What a surprise

[drinkypoo]

we have to constantly fight both corporations and governments to keep it in a form at least vaguely useful to us and prevent it from degenerating into just one more old-school push-media advertising/propaganda vehicle.

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, and the venue is irrelevant.

Re:What a surprise

[icebike]

The only way the governments are going to monitor this is if they crack every possible key, and/or get that quantum computer thing going.

They don't have to crack every possible key. Google openssl compromise. There is every likelyhood that they already have a backdoor to most encryption standards. Why else would the NSA publish its own blueprint for smartphones and lay out the proposed encryption standards if they didn't already have access to those encrypted streams?

Besides, you assume they would use cracking.
Why would they. There are easier ways.

With a darknet, you have a circle of friends that you trust. Every friend in your trusted network has other trusted friends. By the time the darknet grows enough to be useful there will be some friends of friend of friends that are not so careful and not so trustworthy, and not so cluefull. They will click a link somewhere. Their kids will install some internet game. They will get a piece of malware installed. They will get compromised, then the movies sitting on their computers will be discovered as well as their list of darknet friends, and the jig is up.

In some ways, a darknet is more dangerous to the participants than bittorrents. The level of trust between the participants can serve as a avenue for detection and tracking.

Does it depend on DNS?

[jdogalt]

A true darknet would not depend on traditiona DNS (root servers). I can't immediately tell from their FAQ if their methods are entirely independent of DNS.

Not very anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Verifiability via PGP vs Anonymity: of course you can't have it both ways -- that's how PGP works. From the project FAQ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Is_RetroShare_anonymous.3F

        Is RetroShare anonymous?

        RetroShare is partly anonymous. There are anonymous forums and channels where no one can tell who posted something and you can download files from people your are not connected to anonymously, using anonymous tunnels. However the people you are connected to, know who you are and know your IP address. They can also see which files you are sharing, unless you mark them as not browsable. No one else on the network can see this information.

        The friends of your peers also know of your existence, and can attempt to connect to you through the Auto-Discovery system, but they can't connect to you unless you add them as friends.

Re:Not very anonymous

[Jane Q. Public]

OneSwarm, from the University of Washington, addresses this issue. You can join any number of private networks or set up an arbitrary number of your own. And in that sense it is not completely anonymous, in the same way that RetroShare is not fully anonymous. But with OneSwarm, it is impossible to tell where the [pieces of] files reside on the network, or what nodes the files go through when you download. So while joining the network might not be completely anonymous, sharing files is.

"Goes through a trusted friend"?

[sirwired]

"...files that are downloaded from strangers always go through a trusted friend."

Doesn't that just make the "friend" instantly liable for contributory infringement? It's going to be hard (impossible)? for the "friend" to qualify for "common carrier" status, which could provide a safe harbor against an infringement suit.

It's true that this setup appears to be resistant to monitoring by outsiders, but keeping the people you don't want as members out of your online network is difficult, to say the least. It's certainly more work than busting up torrenters, but it's not exactly a difficult barrier either.

And, if I'm providing files, I want files downloaded TO strangers to go through one of my trusted friends (of course, that friend is going to have the contributory infringement problems I suggested earlier.) I don't give a *bleep!* about the downloader covering his tracks, (And when has the xxAA gone after downloaders? Don't they always go after uploaders?) I'm more worried about mine.

Re:"Goes through a trusted friend"?

[Jane Q. Public]

Repeat of what I replied to someone else above: OneSwarm is a darknet-capable file sharing client (it is also compatible with regular P2P networks), that addresses this issue. OneSwarm is designed such that once a file is put on the network, it is impossible to tell exactly where the file (or pieces of the file) are hosted, and it is equally impossible to tell what nodes they go through to get to you.

So actual transfer of files is indeed anonymous.

Traffic is still tracable

[Alain Williams]

If you are being monitored the police/... can still see who you are talking to even if they can't understand what you are saying. OK: if messages are routed through a friend to some other ''accomplice'' it makes things a bit harder for them, but most private networks like this will not have huge numbers of people on them. Also you can learn a lot just by studying the timings of packets (eg: a packet from A to B is often followed by a similarly sized packet from B to C, it looks as if A is talking to C).

Re:Traffic is still tracable

[Kjella]

Yes, there are much stronger anonymous designs but the downsides are equally high. I'd call several of these recent designs "anonymous light", good enough that the MAFIAA can't just hook up and collect IPs but not good enough if you have the FBI, NSA or anything like that after you. Personally I don't like this design exactly because what if one of those I trust download something nasty? They'll come to me. I'd much rather see a design that affords some plausible deniability, that no it wasn't me it must have been one of the other nodes in the network, downloading through me.

Re:disadvange.

[jamesh]

It's the first time I've ever seen any attempt at copyright protection that didn't resulted in worse outcome for their customers! For example...

. Funny sectors on floppy disks. Legitimate users can't make backup copies, pirates (with the copy protection removed) can make all the copies they want.
. "Find the nth word in the nth paragraph on the nth page of the manual". Legitimate users have to dig up the manual every time they want to play a game, while pirates (with the copy protection removed) can play any time they want without such annoyances
. Parallel port dongles. Legitimate users have to muck around with parallel port dongles that interfere with their printer. Pirates don't.
. Funny sectors on CDROM's. As per floppy disks, but it turns out that some CDROM drives couldn't play the games at all (RA2? or was it C&C2?). Pirates have no such problems
. Phone home via internet every time you want to play?... you see where this is going

It seems like every time the software industry introduces a new copy protection scheme, it really only annoys their paying customers. It doesn't hinder the pirates one little bit.

But it is still way faster than going to a real store, buying it and playing it. Especially if you are on a budget.

But on the other hand now it seems that the software industry has put enough pressure on the illegal file sharers that doing it that way is harder, or at least slower than it was. If the software industry allowed you to download the game direct from them for a reasonable price, they might be in with a chance. We all know they'll still continue to screw it up though.

Web of trust can't work for something like this

[DarkOx]

Web of trust models will only work where there is an incentive to keep people out of the network. In the P2P world its just exactly the opposite. Users want as many other users on the network as possible because it speeds up their transfers and increases the amount of available content. You could use web of trust for something like e-mail where users generally want to prevent spoofs, scams, and spam.

I realize that users of P2P networks want to keep *some* people (FBI,Secret Service,DOJ,Interpol,[M,R]P?IAA employees ) off but for the most part they want users on. The next problem is you have the lowest common denominator issues. Again you want it to be simple enough that everyone and anyone can use it so you have content selection but that also means you get the same idiots who are still providing the account and routing numbers to 419 spammers. All mister federal agent needs to is promise to upload tons of free porn and John HighSchool is going to cross sign his PGP key.

Never heard of it......

[BLKMGK]

Having never heard of this software before and hearing about it now I'm betting that usage is again about to shoot up! :-)

The "content providers" really need to get a clue. this comic says it all IMO -> http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

They make it ever harder to get content and then wonder why people are sharing more and more. I have pretty much ceased downloading MP3 because I can easily and cheaply get them from Amazon. I have pretty much ceased BUYING E-books because publishers jacked prices through the roof and I can download them in SECONDS. I download and save TV shows for later viewing often even though I have a couple of TiVO and record many of the same shows. That saves me the EFFORT of pulling them off my TiVO, editing them, compressing them, and copying them. If the transaction is easy ala Amazon's MP3 (which even copy to cloud storage!) then the sales will come. Perhaps it won't be at the astronomical prices these idiots dream of but it sure beats a lost sale doesn't it? Their idea is to bottle things up such that everyone is FORCED into their business model - I'm sorry but that's not going to ever happen. Make the transaction friction-less, have an extensive easy to use catalog, and make it cheap enough I'll buy it like some throwaway app in an app store and "content" will sell like hotcakes.

Now then, I'm off to download and check out this new program. It will sure beat having folks over with portable drives for swap parties or participating in huge Torrent clouds!