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The Internet Software

P2P Meets Push 269

Posted by michael from the push-meets-shove,-shove-meets-lawyers... dept.
meonkeys writes "What if you could securely subscribe to a trusted P2P file broadcaster? Check out konspire! An interesting concept; implemented in C++ and controllable via a cool Web interface ala Mutella."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

P2P Meets Push More

P2P Meets Push

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  • Five seconds for the lawsuits to hit (Score:5, Funny)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @12:58PM (#6008342) Journal
    Pushing files, huh? It's as bad as pushing drugs. Into jail, my little hacker-bee.

  • Yes! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hipster_doofus ( 670671 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @12:59PM (#6008355) Homepage
    Now I don't have to manually download crappy rips of my favorite songs, I can have them forced upon me! :-)

    Actually, this looks like a cool idea. The fact that it's a sourceforge project only makes it better!

    • Re:Yes! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3@@@phroggy...com> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:03PM (#6008401) Homepage
      Now I don't have to manually download crappy rips of my favorite songs, I can have them forced upon me! :-)

      No, crappy rips of somebody else's favorite songs will be forced upon you.

    • Re:Yes! (Score:5, Funny)

      by nemski ( 587833 ) <davidATnemskiDOTcom> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:23PM (#6008574) Homepage
      Now I don't have to manually download crappy rips of my favorite songs, I can have them forced upon me!

      It's called radio.

      • Re:Yes! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by bathmatt ( 638217 )
        With one major difference, clearchannel will not own all the push points :)

        • what??? (Score:2, Funny)

          by zogger ( 617870 )
          what, you are against CAPITALISM??? You would dare "block business" in some cyber PROTEST?? You DARE to be exposed to anything but CLEARCHANNEL, the one true official approved source for audio entertainment and your security level approved news??????

          TERRORIST!

          You WILL be assimilated! Now go buy something, from one of our advertisers! That is your ONLY redemption at this point, and be aware, you just racked up several points in the list, you are now a "person of interest" in the database!

          ---the proceedi

    • Re:Yes! (Score:4, Informative)

      by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbenderNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:26PM (#6008594)
      In fact, this already has been done in exactly that context - music distribution. (Hardly surprising since music distribution was the root of P2P filesharing after all.) The late AudioGalaxy - one of the P2P filesharing pioneers - had a system where you could set other users as friends, and join music clubs.
      Users marked up that way could put songs on your queue, and so you could get up in the morning to find your hard driver more or less full with new music you didn't actually request yourself, but which was "pushed" onto your computer by other users sharing your taste in music. It was a neat concept. Obviously, it had room for abuse - someone you prematurely gave permission could spam your hard driver with junk, but generally systems like this work fairly well since the community gets rid of such idiots pretty fast.
  • This might just work. My intravenous connection to alt.b.e.p.b has had to be shut down due to the weight of spam.
  • It's called "Automatic Windows Update". And boy it hasn't caused any problems at all, right guys?

  • I liked it better... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spazholio ( 314843 ) <[slashdot] [at] [lexal.net]> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:02PM (#6008384) Homepage
    ...when it was called IRC. Seriously, this sounds like a traditional IRC channel with XDCC bots. Decentralized (many servers on the same net comprising a single channel) and varied (you can have many varied channels). I mean, it sounds like a cool idea, and a neat proof-of-concept, but is it really needed or useful?

    • Well, I think the idea might be (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nijika ( 525558 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:06PM (#6008424) Homepage Journal
      in this case that the files are distributed via P2P rather than from "bots". So content would assumably make it's way to you the same way you might download something from KaZaA, but you can verify the contents with a "trusted" signature. So you can download the file from multiple independant sources, but it's still valid at the end of the DL.

      I'm gonna try it now!

    • Re:I liked it better... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Divide By Zero ( 70303 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:36PM (#6008690)
      Seriously, this sounds like a traditional IRC channel with XDCC bots.

      The difference between this and IRC fserv bots is important: kast/konspire (I dont' know which - seems the two are related) are server push.

      On fservs, you still have to go out, look for what you want, try to figure out who has it, download it, and then see if it's what you want.

      The new tool in question delivers content to your computer without your interaction. The analogy to broadcasting was right on: Somebody else decides what you want to / get to see, then you tune in to the appropriate channel and the content is delivered without you having to do anything.

      It has a few inherent problems, absolute trust of the sender being the biggest that I can see. I have to trust whoever's running the channel not to send me kiddie pr0n and then call the FBI on me. Disk quotas (don't send me more than m megs per n hours, or perhaps don't let my incoming directory grow to larger than x megs) would be a good thing to have, and I don't know if it's been implemented here or not.

      It has potential, though. News services, shareware-of-the-day services, new-song-of-the-day services (generate buzz about new bands), etc etc. I'll look at it, but I'll be wary about it.
      • I have to trust whoever's running the channel not to send me kiddie pr0n and then call the FBI on me.

        If you were flipping channels and HBO showed a naked child that was later ruled to be kiddie porn, who would be legally responsible?
    • Where have you been? IRC is still teeming with xdcc's and fserves that are serving releases that haven't hit the stores yet. Group releases are the best mp3s out there, ripped with pride into 192 bitrate full stereo, without any glitches. They are neatly packed into tar files with .sfv checksum files, named in a standard format and properly ID3 tagged.

      There are plenty of channels that serve specialty genres, punk, soul, hiphop, etc... The catch is that most of the xdccs are on r00ted boxes, and there is no

  • New Thinking (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mattygfunk1 ( 596840 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:03PM (#6008389)
    runs on all modern computer platforms, requires no additional software to be downloaded or installed, has a graphical user interface, and was not written using java.

    I think that web based interfaces are severly underrated in their potential because of the reason mentioned. I love the new thinking being employed throughout this project.

    Cheap $3 hosting plans [cheap-web-...ing.com.au]

    • Re:New Thinking (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:33PM (#6008671) Homepage
      Heck, this is even more true if you leverage Mozilla and XUL. Yes, you are limiting yourself to a certain "platform" (the Mozilla platform), but you end up with something which is supremely portable (as much as Mozilla is portable) and incredibly powerful.

  • My long time dream (Score:5, Funny)

    by SpanishInquisition ( 127269 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:03PM (#6008392) Homepage Journal
    now I don't have to search for porn, porn comes to me.

  • Screw multimedia; how about software? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) * on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:03PM (#6008397) Homepage Journal
    I am not interested in "pushed" multimedia, but imagine having your Gentoo packages already pre-fetched for you, whenever there's an update? Emerge and it just starts compiling w/out the download step. Mmmm...

  • What? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BHearsum ( 325814 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:03PM (#6008400) Homepage
    Am I to understand you start it up, go to bed, and wakeup to having a buncha unknown files on your computer? And this is a good thing?

    • unknown files.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      But from a "trusted" channel. A little better than MS's version of trusted (trust it or it won't work), and you can always unsubscribe from a channel that starts broadcasting content you don't like.

      I was thinking in terms of sharing common music interests (great for indie stuff), but I suppose you could start little clans for those who have certain fetishes in pr0n or gamez as well.
      • I was thinking in terms of sharing common music interests (great for indie stuff), but I suppose you could start little clans for those who have certain fetishes in pr0n or gamez as well.

        So, it's just like alt.binaries on usenet?

  • Great, so now the RIAA doesn't need to hunt people down, they can just subscribe for listings of all the evil pirates.
  • I've often wished that the "genre" search in the various filesharing apps would work better (or in some cases, exist). Personally, I've had a lot better luck finding music I like by searching by genre on mp3.com etc than downloading mainstream crap from Kazaa, etc.
    This sounds like a great tool to cut down on mouseclicks and leave me with a nice shiney playlist to listen to in the morning.

  • The displacement of responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)

    by _Sambo ( 153114 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:05PM (#6008414)
    It looks like they're providing the interface but are trying to avoid any legal repercussions by placing all legal responsibility for those items transmitted on the owner of the "channel".

    Step 6 of their P2P path to success is: build trust for a channel owner's tastes over time (owners are completely responsible for what goes out on their channels)

    I wonder how effective this will be when the RIAA and the other big dogs come after them.
    • This is really getting old, that any new method of transferring DATA has to killed by the RIAA/MPAA/etc...

      I started using bittorent for grabbing ISO's, when a new ISO comes out, I can get it within minutes now. This has to be one of the best uses, saves the hosting companies, and everyone wins. (And thanks to peeps on Slashdot for posting when new ISO's come out, mod them up..)

      Now this push channel comes out, (hopefully splits data, but I didn't read the specs yet.) so we can push new software out regular

  • Oh great, now the RIAA... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now the RIAA can just push files to other peers and start suing for billions!

  • C++? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by timeOday ( 582209 )
    First off, let me state that I am a rather devout C++ developer with about 8 years experience developing in the language.

    But for server apps, I think it's the wrong choice. Let's face it, languages with security features are more suitable for servers. Bittorrent is in python. mldonkey is in objective-caml. And I'm sure there's something in java out there somewhere. No, I haven't seen any really professonal looking GUIs written in any of these languages, but I'd rather have the added security any day w

    • Re:C++? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:20PM (#6008549)
      First off, let me state that I am a rather devout C++ developer with about 8 years experience developing in the language.

      But for server apps, I think it's the wrong choice.

      Maybe, but my personal opinion is that in the end it's better to write an application in a language you know really well (but might not be the best thing) than write some hacky fudge job (which will no doubt be really flakey and possibly even more insecure) in a language you don't know just because it's the best one to use.

      • Maybe, but my personal opinion is that in the end it's better to write an application in a language you know really well (but might not be the best thing) than write some hacky fudge job (which will no doubt be really flakey and possibly even more insecure) in a language you don't know just because it's the best one to use.

        Of course you should not write an application in a language you don't know. But if something is a better tool for what you plan to do, why not learn that tool first, rather than using

        • Re:C++? (Score:2)

          by cras ( 91254 )
          If you are already used to programming, learning a new language is not that difficult.

          That depends on what languages you knew before and what you're going to learn. You can quickly learn a syntax of new language, but it takes time before you know how to use it well.

    • Re:C++? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:48PM (#6008806) Homepage
      Let's face it, languages with security features are more suitable for servers.

      Uh, exactly what security features are you looking for?

      I'm assuming you're going to be using the STL... if you're not, well then I hope you're not planning on using any Perl modules or Python libraries either, because otherwise you're really comparing apples and oranges (not that you aren't already, but that's another discussion).

      std::string and std::vector take care of most of the security concerns you might have -- presuming you use them properly of course. If you need to deal with pointers and std::auto_ptr isn't useful (which, in general, it's not) then use a smart pointer library -- I highly recommend Boost [boost.org] - I've used it's shared_ptr class and like it. In over a year of serious C++ development we've had exactly one memory related problem -- and that was from me misusing boost (and suspecting I was doing so during development but forgetting about it during testing).

      The general concerns with C/C++ are buffer overruns and other memory stomps. If you use the right libraries it's not an issue in either (go look at vsftpd's string functions for an example of what I'm talking about in C). If you're writing insecure C++ code then it's most likely because you're ignoring significant language features (like the STL). It's not a language issue.

      • Re:C++? (Score:5, Informative)

        by cras ( 91254 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @02:15PM (#6009072) Homepage
        The general concerns with C/C++ are buffer overruns and other memory stomps. If you use the right libraries it's not an issue in either (go look at vsftpd's string functions for an example of what I'm talking about in C). If you're writing insecure C++ code then it's most likely because you're ignoring significant language features (like the STL). It's not a language issue.

        Yes, I fully agree. vsftpd is one of the best examples of how to write secure C. As for Kast .. I briefly checked the sources, it's using a lot of code such as:

        foo = new[ strlen(bar) + 100 ]; sprintf(foo, "stuff %s", bar);

        Which is safe only as long as you're careful. And was the author careful enough? No. I'm not touching this thing until the sprintf()s are gone.

    • Security features in a language? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chazman ( 6089 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @02:57PM (#6009506) Homepage
      Security features in a language attempt (poorly in most cases) to substitute for the programmer having an adequate security mindset. If you rely on the security features of a language, then you're screwed if they're broken. You're relying on the security auditing that has been performed on that language's features, and committing yourself to live or die by it. Have you personally verified that that language's seecurity features are designed well, and strong enough to meet your security requirements? Has someone you trust done so and published the results? If not, why are you relying on it?

      My advice is go the opposite direction. Learn about security from a programmer perspective. Accept only libraries and components that have been extensively audited by knowledgeable, trusted sources. Then build your server on top of them in a lower level language that affords you the ability to take direct charge of everything else. Make your server secure by thinking about security in every line you code.

      I use C, but the exact choice of language isn't important; the mindset and approach is. This advice applies equally to any other language: Check the return value from EVERY system call, EVERY resource allocation, and EVERY library call. Verify ALL inputs before using them, both for length and for sanity of contents. Before EACH time you write something to any kind of buffer, check that you won't write past the end FIRST. Do all of these things in every function of every module of every application. And if you rely on a language or library feature instead of doing it yourself, you'd better be damn sure that the language or library feature is doing it correctly and completely -- VERIFY this before you deploy your program.

      Some may call writing in C a security risk. Inherently, it isn't. C just gives the programmer more rope to either make a better knot or make a better noose, as they see fit. The first ten to twenty lines of nearly every C function I write go like this: return failure if this parameter isn't sane; return failure if that parameter isn't sane; return failure if any persistent context isn't consistent with how we were called; try to allocate all resources required for the function and return failure if any of those allocations failed. Some other languages may automate some of that. But as a security auditor, I'm going to want to see all that. If I can't see it, I'm going to want to examine in detail the implementation of the language features that do it implicitly. If I can't do that, then I can't consider the program secure. Using C helps me audit my code because it forces all security measures to be explicit and spelled out in detail. Yes, that's more work for the programmer. But it's less work and more certainty for the security auditor. That's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

      • Check the return value from EVERY system call, EVERY resource allocation, and EVERY library call. Verify ALL inputs before using them, both for length and for sanity of contents. Before EACH time you write something to any kind of buffer, check that you won't write past the end FIRST. Do all of these things in every function of every module of every application.

        Even better: write wrappers to commonly used functions so you don't have to do that all the time. For example checking malloc() failures is use

  • "potential for anonymity" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbenderNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:10PM (#6008466)
    The background page [sourceforge.net] notes on the topic of anonymity:
    anonymity of channel owners is possible even at a technical level, since it is difficult for a receiver in the network to tell which node originated a broadcast. Nodes cannot easily tell the difference between a node that originates a broadcast and a node that is simply passing on the broadcast originated by another node.
    So to any given node it is unknown whether the node it's receiving a transmission is the original distributor. But still, the node it is receiving from is a distributor - that's just as illegal, at least in the context of copyright protected works.
    Especially since in this network, whoever distributes a given file also requested it (at least that's what I am reading out of the documentation), in contrast to other networks, eg. freenet where the fact that you have data on your HD and distribute it to other people does not imply that you requested that data to be there yourself.

    (Note: I still think this is a pretty neat concept, though!)

    • Not especially... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @02:24PM (#6009174) Homepage
      So to any given node it is unknown whether the node it's receiving a transmission is the original distributor. But still, the node it is receiving from is a distributor - that's just as illegal, at least in the context of copyright protected works. Especially since in this network, whoever distributes a given file also requested it (at least that's what I am reading out of the documentation), in contrast to other networks, eg. freenet where the fact that you have data on your HD and distribute it to other people does not imply that you requested that data to be there yourself.

      ...but as a direct consequence of knowing what is in your share, or at least the ability to know that (that is, only the things you're subscribing to). Open relays don't get sued for fraud, 0 day hacked warez servers don't get sued for piracy (arr!) and your DDoS host doesn't get sued for launching DoS attacks because they did not know what was being routed through them.

      Freenet is basicly trying to make everyone (except the inserter and the requester, which are difficult to find) be a common carrier (ISPs do caching, so the fact that Freenet caches stuff does not prevent this). Whether that argument will stand up in court is questionable, but this system certainly won't hold up to this defense.

      Kjella

  • Y'all don't seem to understand. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:11PM (#6008467) Journal
    This means that we firewalled users can give you pr0n. Now you will have more sources for pr0n. This is good, no?

    I'd love to share my stuff, but port forwarding is annoying, and I've only got one IP. This would allow me to share back.

    What I don't understand is... why doesn't gnutella support this sort of thing? How come I can't check with my ultrapeer to see if someone wants one of my songs? Would that require maintaining a heavier connection to my ultrapeer?

    I've got all this pr0n, and all this bandwidth... but no IPs to share it with.

  • What I would like to see.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by JeffSh ( 71237 ) <jeffslashdot@[ ]0.org ['m0m' in gap]> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:12PM (#6008476)
    a combination of this and torrent.

    this system seems limited by linear pushing 1:1 host:client ratio, and this increases the output logarithmically.

    the problem they are going to run into is that 90% of users on the internet (atleast) have 256 kbps or lower broadband caps, and therefore the network will not efficiently use bandwidth if its 1:1 sends. .torrent makes use of a full upstream of a user to send data. this program does that too, but it does not distribute that users upload-ability accross any more than the one user.

    so anyway, this with .torrent mesh features would be really nice.
    • Some problems with Konspire's prebroadcast/broadcast method [sourceforge.net] would be solved by your idea. They currently use a source which sends to one client. Then the source and the client each send to one more new client. Propogation time could be exponential but, like you said, there could be problems getting files transferred in a minimum of time. If the initial client is on a 56k and the file is 400 mb, then the whole grid will be paused for hours. Also, each phase in synchronized, so any one very slow transfer can
  • peercast is a gnutella-based network that pushes radio broadcasts to end users. konspire is similar except a broadcast pushes files which are kept on your machine, whereas peercast streams the file to your speakers. both are cool ideas and should only become more effective as the technology evolves.
  • P2P you can trust? you CANT do that with software.

    the only P2P i trust is the gnutella group I belong to that you are required to join by being invited. and yes we boot people on a regualr basis for simple things like bitrates below 196 document files that are infected, etc...

    THAT is the only way to have atrusted P2P... I dont care what they try via software, all it takes is 1 bad apple to poison the whole orchard.
  • mov p2p,files
    push p2p
    pop lawsuits

  • Cool legit use (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pigscanfly.ca ( 664381 )
    This sounds really cool . I my self write quite a few programs (all small time) if I could offload some of the bandwith requirements for updates amoung my users I could "push" an update every time that it is need rather than having them poll a central server and grab the file or bit torren (as it is currently) . It still remains to see just how stable this network is going to be but if it works it sounds fairly cool . The fact that it allready has signing built in for the chanel controller this saves me a b

  • maybe I've been surfing the web too long (Score:5, Funny)

    by bensej ( 79049 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:18PM (#6008538)
    But I refuse to download anything from a website with a black background.

  • Moderation and subscription. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:24PM (#6008580)
    This sounds like a very cool system... You subscribe to "channels" that match your interest and receive signed files. Since the channel owner is responsible for everything that goes out on his channel, you can "build trust over time" with channel owners.

    Only two things are missing from this cool idea to make it really awesome: Moderation and subscription.

    With a channel moderation system, users can award positive or negative karma to a channel. This could be implemented as a separate "phone directory" service, where channels are listed by categories and users can post comments about a channel and give a few moderation points once in a while, a la Slashdot and/or eBay. You could award points for quality, speed, relevancy, etc., and provide an explanation of why you awarded that score.

    Channel owners who have high moderation can then capitalize on their channel by charging others to distribute their files.

    Which brings me to my next point: Subscribing to channels. If your channel is really good (has high karma), you could even charge a subscription fee to subscribe to your channel. So instead of paying X amount of money to download a single MP3 file, you would pay, say, $10.00 a month to subscribe to some channel and receive all the MP3 files distributed on that channel. A channel that distributes old, "yesterday's news" music could charge a small subscription fee whereas one that distributes the latest smash hits could charge a lot more. I know that while I would not pay for an individual MP3 file (or even an entire album worth of MP3s), I would certainly pay for really good, relevant channels.

    Why paying can SCREW the RIAA:If the proceeds from the subscribers went to "the artists" and not some money hungry RIAA, a good channel could provide artists a mechanism by which to "self-publish" their music without signing over their copyright and paying most of the proceeds to the RIAA.

    These practices would result in a very nice balance between money-hungry channel owners (like huge businesses that "jump on the bandwagon" to ruin it for the rest of us) and free community channel owners, because the users get to control who has the most visibility, and that would depend on how good the service really is.

    • That's how I read the write-up on the site as well. They're goal isn't to legalize mp3, divx rip, and all other copyrighted material file-sharing, but rather to enable content distribution through a cheap, mass-distribution manner. They're not advocating stealing others work, or even making professionally produced work cheaper. Simply, they're trying to develop a cheaper barrier to entry into the content distribution sphere. Notice on their 'history' page that they keep mentioning how all thoughout history
  • So if this content is just sorta being pushed to us without us knowing, might any future end-user litigation be able to follow suit of this guy [theregister.co.uk]?

    After all ... If you didn't tell your computer to download that MP3, how can you be found liable?
  • You know, I'm freaking sick of "cool web interfaces." They're inefficient and by nature inhibitive when it comes to performing advanced operations. Like creating many-to-many relationships or giving instanteous, absolute feedback to changes. HTML just doesn't have the controls necessary to do so without creating tons of overhead -- or necessitating the use of javascript. Which even at this late date is a real bear.

    Sure, they're nice for some things, and multiplatform, but they're not for everything. I
  • And how exactly is this better than a binary newsgroup harvester?
  • ...and I'm bored. Now I've got a web page that tells me that I haven't received anything yet. Exciting!

    I wish someone would make something like AudioGalaxy again. That was sweet. I could search for files that I wanted while I was at work and when I got home, they'd be there on my computer. It was simple, and it worked well. Is anyone working on a project like that?

  • Baaaad name (Score:3, Funny)

    by shaneb11716 ( 451351 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:40PM (#6008732)
    So you call it konspire, eh? And this helps the P2P keiretsu allay the fears of the music industry that it's not all about ripping them off how, exactly?

    You P2P guys really crack me up.

    -Shane
  • The concept seems pretty bad if a channel creator want to distribute illegal stuff. The fact that he sign the stuff can make life easier for law enforcement to prove that the guy really put the illegal stuff online.

    However, if I'm working on some project and want to share a bunch of stuff to the other working on the project (without versionning), then the idea is good. I can put a file on my channel and it will be automatically replicated to the other channel subscribers.

    From what i read from their site

  • Something I don't understand (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zutroy ( 542820 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:42PM (#6008747) Homepage
    I'm watching the "caught prebroadcasts" page on the web interface, and there's a channel called "TEST Kubrik movies" that's sending a new Kubrick movie out every, oh, 3 seconds. How is this possible? Did I misunderstand how the system works?

  • Retrograde step (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Graspee_Leemoor ( 302316 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:47PM (#6008799) Homepage Journal
    This is a retrograde step.

    It turns p2p file downloading into a "tv-like" experience where you have to be online at the right time to get the file.

    Sure, you could probably script it so you get the files, but that makes it like tivo where you can watch programmes when you want but you have to remember to set it up so it records it in the first place.

    We have evolved beyond that. Now, with p2p you can search for and download whatever you want, when you want. OK, so someone still has to be sharing it, which is less likely with older stuff, but there are starting to be Farenheit-451-like sharers out there (myself included) who are keeping one thing (e.g. a favourite anime series) alive by always sharing it.

    Also, there is a significant barrier to adoption of a new p2p-like app. You have your p2p working fine, and downloading well, then you are expected to start using a new one. You don't know how it works yet, let alone how to optimize it or where to get what you want; you know that everyone else faces the same hurdles so there won't be much content for a while, if at all.

    This wouldn't be so bad if you could try out a new p2p app while using an old one, but you really need to dedicate all your bandwidth to a program to make the most of it.

    At the moment emule is where it's at (at least for me), and I won't stop using it unless everyone else does and the sources dry up.

    graspee

  • Merge with bittorrent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Iakona ( 649806 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:47PM (#6008802) Journal
    The concept of konspire is really cool. It provides a good method of anonymity of the original sender. Pesonally I'd like to see it use the bittorrent method of file delivery because you have the potential of only having to send the whole file once, plus if konspire decides to send the file to a 28.8k modem user first, everybody else will have to wait until that user gets the file before they can receive it, where as bittorrent's method can send to many people simultaneously and still use less bandwidth. The problem with bittorrent is that you know who sent the original files, because you got the .torrent from them, so a combination of both technologies would rule!

  • Interesting legal implications (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @01:56PM (#6008876)
    IANAL

    Queston for any reader who is: might this not excuse the computer owner from legal culpability, if it turns out he has recieved mp3s the RIAA don't like? He could just say "Hey, I subbed to the channel, but I don't control what goes out over it".
  • Looks like the internet [sourceforge.net]. Why not just use IPv6 tunnels? This would be a good way to get unsuspecting file thieves to help us propagate the 6bone.

  • p2p subscribing? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @02:08PM (#6008997) Homepage Journal
    sounds like an even more illegal way to get MP3s, since now they're making money off it instead of simply sharing.

  • When do we get "useful" P2P? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigattichouse ( 527527 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @02:10PM (#6009013) Homepage
    When does the technology get pervasive enough to start warranting more useful apps built on top of P2P? Like a way to post resumes, jobs, RFPs, etc.. and be able to query/respond... without needing the 400 job boards out there. Or code snippets, or news services that can survive massive overloads ala 9/11?
  • I just installed and tested it, and it's pretty cool. It's p2p filesharing for lazy asses. It won't be good for finding those obscure files, as I see no search functionality. Personally, I don't usually go looking for something in particular, I just want to find something cool to entertain me for awhile, which is why I really like torrense.cx [torrentse.cx]. This is similar to that, minus interactivity. All you have to do is subscribe to a channel and you'll automatically get whatever they put out. This is a great distr
  • Actually, this is a great way for a band to make some serious coin. Charge 19.99/month for access to this system during live tour seasons. Soundboard recordings, encoded into a lossless format, sent automatically to your computer starting within a few hours. The total bandwidth would be rather large, but within a P2P community it could be handled.

    Maybe as well offer an MP3 option to those who would want it (like me, I'm just going to rip it to MP3 anyway) to save bandwidth.

  • Legal Uses (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kstumpf ( 218897 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @02:41PM (#6009348)
    I can think of lots of uses for this system (ie. other than MP3 and porn). The gaming community in particular could really benefit. I used to run a review site for user-created Half-Life maps called radium. I would have loved to have this around back then. I could have advertised a kast channel people could subscribe to to receive new maps as they came out. Could even push out a file with a link to the accompanying review, or maybe just send the review itself, or maybe just send a few screenshots and a summary and a download link.

    Anyways, I think its a really cool concept. Its been crashing on me a bit though, so hopefully it stabilizes and gains acceptance. :)

  • P2P RSS Channels (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Orasis ( 23315 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @03:19PM (#6009704)
    The Tornado client for the Open Content Network [open-content.net] has support for P2P download channels based on RSS.

    Basically, you click on a link which will subscribe the peer to the channel, and the peer will automatically download/pre-cache any new items that are added to the RSS feed.

    You simply have to create an RSS feed and create a link that converts that feed into a channel that is subscribable via the Open Content Network. I've set up an example of a movie trailer RSS feed here [onionnetworks.com] And have linked it into the Open Content Network here. [onionnetworks.com]

  • out of region sports (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mantorp ( 142371 ) <mantorp 'funny A' gmail.com> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:07PM (#6010156) Homepage Journal
    This could be handy for people who can't watch their favorite teams because they don't live where the games are shown on TV. I'd love to have Tottenham games on my hd every Sunday morning. Or various European qualifiers they don't show on TV in the States.
    If someone can put Larsson's 2 goals from today somewhere I'd appreciate it too.

  • Finally a P2P with encryption and privacy! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IdleTime ( 561841 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @06:27PM (#6011423) Journal
    From reading several of the comments here, it is obvious that people has no clue, nor even bothered reading about the program.
    The connections are encrypted and you can set up your own channels and only give the key to people you trust. You can also easily change the key to each channel in case you suspect a breech in security.

    I'm sure we will see a lot of use of this technology, think about it as a continued development of P2P and IRC concepts icnluding privacy and encryption which makes intercepting the transports useless unless you have the necessary keys, else you will have to retort to brute force and that may take awhile.

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