BitTorrent May Prove Too Good to Quash 484
gollum123 writes "There is an article on washignton post on bittorrent where the author discusses why BitTorrent is here to stay. According to the author it is being increasingly used to distribute software and entertainment legally. It also mentions that in BitTorrent, unlike many other file-sharing programs, legitimate use doesn't amount to a token minority. It's central to this program's existence. It concludes by saying that the MPAA may be able to drive BitTorrent movie downloads into what Green called "the dark corners of the Internet," but this program isn't going to go away. It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web."
Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:5, Informative)
150k member max, and still beating them away with a stick!
No leechers rocks!
Just as long as admins remember to lose those logs... I just *hate* hardware failures...
dont you?
Re:Sources ? (Score:1, Informative)
Try googling for "whatyouwant filetype:torrent" or just "filetype:torrent torrent". You'll find zillions of trackers out there.
BitTorrent isn't going away.
Re:Sources ? (Score:4, Informative)
http://isohunt.com/
http://www.novatina.com/
or a shit load here:
http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?
Re:Sources ? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sources ? (Score:5, Informative)
Check out legaltorrents.com [legaltorrents.com]
Re:Thoughts of a "token minority" on slashdot... (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone not admitting that at this particular point in time is lying to themselves.
Maybe that was true when SuperNova and LokiTorrent were around. We are sorta heading back into the "time before torrents" when stuff wasn't easily available on a huge online database available on the web.
Have you take a split second to look at the legitimate uses of torrents recently? easytree [easytree.org], Etree [etree.org], etc? HUGE repositories of legal music for download?
It's obvious to me that you haven't.
Re:Distribute & Pay? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:4, Informative)
If you are running without that kind of tracking, sure, open it up and go hog wild. With it, you need to keep an eye on your capacity. It's a pretty big load.
That and the hardware is somewhat expensive.
I know the Big E tracker is handwritten, and babied, it could probably handle many more, but stability seems best at a cap of around 150K
BitTorrent has also become more managable (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bittorrent.com/index.html
for both Windows and Linux (MacOS real soon now), it's a lot easier for both users and network administrators to manage the protocol's bandwidth hungry ways. It's so much easier now that I think that you'll be able to talk organizations, which have banned its use, on the grounds that it eats up too much bandwidth, into rethinking their positions.
Heck, for that matter, I think that since BitTorrent bandwidth use is now mindlessly simple to manage, it will become a popular tool for businesses that need to move large data files back and forth between offices.
For more on all this see:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1775223,00
Steven
Re:Thoughts of a "token minority" on slashdot... (Score:3, Informative)
- Perfectly legitimate
- Backed by a large corporation
- Had heavy usage.
World of Warcraft.
Their open beta (over a gig) was distributed by BitTorrent. The larger patches are all BitTorrent. This alleviates pressure on their patch servers for that rush on the first day after a patch, so we can all get back to our addiction faster.
Blizzard is pretty damned mainstream.
Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Now why would it be in their best interest to distribute movies and music so that everyone else could get it without compensating them for it? Is this more of the silly "free advertising" argument? Seriously, how would you expect them to get paid if they did that? I guess a recording artist is expected to spend three months renting out a studio and equipment, just to have the music blasted onto Bittorrent where he won't get paid for his work.
Are you telling me the Bittorrent system has DRM or some other way of preventing people from getting the material without paying for it? If not, is there a way to graft on such a system? Only then would studios even consider using it. Otherwise, it's silly wishful thinking on the part of people who are, shall we say, used to the convenience of downloading whatever they want and so invent reasons for everything to be on P2P.
Use ports your ISP won't expect (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:BitTorrent is flawed (Score:5, Informative)
Who the hell modded you up?
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:1, Informative)
The source is heavily commented and not obfuscated at all so if you look at it, you should find it plainly tells you where to turn off uploading and recompile it if you so desire. That is how you can leech with BT according to the docs.
Re:BitTorrent is flawed (Score:1, Informative)
Here's how to prove this to yourself: download a song or an episode of a TV show or something, and try to play it when the progress bar hits 50%. If you can make it even 5% of the way through the file before getting to a chunk of information you don't have, I'd be impressed.
In fact, the bittorent protocol is specificaly designed to send different pieces of the file to different users, to maximize the effect of sharing bandwidth.
Re:I don't think so (Score:4, Informative)
Re:BitTorrent is flawed (Score:2, Informative)
Random First / Rarest First (Score:5, Informative)
What you said is completely false. BitTorrent uses either Random First, i.e. selects a random chunk to download, or Rarest First, i.e. downloads the chunk that the fewest clients have. It definitely does NOT go linearly from beginning to end of file. If it stalls around 90%, this is only because there are some chunks which are much more rare than others.
Re:Thoughts of a "token minority" on slashdot... (Score:3, Informative)
Note that in this case, you closing your client as soon as the download completes reduces the benefit the seller gets, but does not negate it, as BitTorrent uploads and downloads simultaneously, even if the file is incomplete.
Re:BitTorrent is flawed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Thoughts of a "token minority" on slashdot... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Irony of bittorrent (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Suggestion: Legit use for BT (Score:4, Informative)
Steam? As in Valve's distribution mechanism? That Steam, at least, doesn't do anything like that. There is no P2P mechanism in steam, clients are pure clients. Updates are downloaded from a network of mirrors distributed geographically [steampowered.com] ("Total Available Bandwidth: 14,635.00Mbps"). Come to think of it, I wonder what protocol is used to transfer data from the content servers... it might be some Steam-proprietary protocol, but chances are it's simply HTTP or FTP.
Anyway, maybe you're thinkink of Blizzard's World of Warcraft. They used to rely heavily on BitTorrent to transfer the beta client and major updates. These days, it seems that all updates are downloaded from the servers, at least from the looks of it. Maybe that will change with the next major update. (And maybe it's different in the US, I'm in the EU.)
That was a disaster for me and many other people, because Blizzards were too dumb to limit the upstream either manually or by some sort of algorithm, which lead to extremely slow downloads on asynchronous connections. You could extract the
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Thoughts of a "token minority" on slashdot... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm still waiting... (Score:3, Informative)
Not paying them to use your resources (Score:3, Informative)
On the general topic of media companies delivering content to you via Bittotrrent, and you using some of your upstream to distribute the file...
Yes, they are using some of your resources. However the way to look at it is not that you are paying them to use your bandwidth - instead realize that you are offering a mix of bandwidth and money for the services offered. To put it another way, they could also distribute the content via a standard means, but then you'd also have to pay more to support the far greater cost of bandwidth.
It's a win-win in another way - when content starts finally flying around in large qualities via a bittorrent like protocol, then said content companies and consumers will push for greater upstream caps instead of the measly 256k most of s with high-speed connections have now.
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:2, Informative)
Or it could be a firewall.
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Suggestion: Legit use for BT (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I don't know what video stores you frequent but the ones I do (Hollywood and Blockbuster) are open 365 days a year.
Hollywood Video (source [hollywoodvideo.com])
Hours of Operation:
We're open 365 days a year
Sun-Sat 10a.m. to Midnight
** Most Locations
The three Blockbuster Video stores closest to me are open 365 days a year as well but their store locator is down at the moment for proof.
Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... (Score:5, Informative)
If you have too many people with low upload rates, then the people who aren't restricting their uploads won't end up connected to each other -- and so will frequently end up uploading significantly more than they eventually download. That's one likely explanation for the parent poster's experience of uploading much more than he downloaded.
One other thing that can affect this is that most of the popular clients -- the last time I looked at them, anyway -- normally try to take as much bandwidth as they can for each torrent that you are uploading/downloading. Imagine that you are on two torrents, one popular and one unpopular. A bunch of people are connected on the first, and only one on the second. Often, half of your upstream will be used to upload to the one person on torrent 2, regardless of whether he is uploading or not.
Re:Unavailable movies. (Score:1, Informative)
Here's a couple I found. #japan-tv [afraid.org] and d-addicts [d-addicts.com].
Re:bad design (Score:3, Informative)
Also, Azureus is UPnP aware. This means if you have a relatively new router (everything I've used in the last year or so has been UPnP compliant) Azureus should go ahead and punch the holes it needs in the firewall for you. It's always worked well for me.