New Auto-Seeding Torrent Server Released 240
ludwigvan968 writes "The University of
Texas New Media Initiative in association with Google's Summer of Code program have been working on a project to make sharing files over the internet easier than ever before. Summer of Code
intern Evan Wilson just released Project Snakebite, the first fully automatic BitTorrent server. Just as with a normal webserver, you drop files in a folder to share them. Snakebite takes care of generating
torrent files and running a tracker and a seeder for each file. Additionally, it builds a user-customizable link page with all of your files. It will even register your Snakebite server with an easy to remember URL for people that can't remember their IP. Snakebite is free and open software and is currently released for Debian. It's fully portable to both Windows and OS X and the developers just need some help packaging it."
OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:5, Funny)
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http://world4.monstersgame.co.uk/?ac=vid&vid=4701
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:4, Funny)
-Eric
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:5, Informative)
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Or lower down the network stack if you are not standing on your head
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, since VPNs are in the Network layer (packet-level) and Tor falls somewhere between the Session and Presentation layers (stream-level), Tor is higher in the stack than VPNs:
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It never was... instead it's a very simple, effective way to share files. Everything from suprnova to the pirate bay hasn't been about anonymity or secrecy - it's about being doing it in so great numbers the risk is neglible. The users hav been distributed, the link sites and tracker sites not so much. This makes it a lot easier to set up a tracker site, meaning less centralization so they'll have to take down m
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If by "basic anonymity", you mean lack of trusted anonymity or NO anonymity, then we all agree [noreply.org]. It is a pretty simple (and common) matter to become a maliscious Tor node. Google it.
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Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, enabling people to easily share their own torrents could help promote legitimate use of BT.
I've been personally involved in several situations where large, legal files needed to be distributed among a small group of people--unfortunately several didn't have the know-how to set up a tracker, and others simply didn't have the time to figure it out. A tool like this could enable every one of us to start it up on our own.
The one thing that I think it needs to also have is at least minimal security against discoverability--a password on the torrent listing page, for example. Would also be cool if you could control who was using the server, but I gather BT isn't too well-adapted to that requirement? Not sure.
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That's really the $1 million question. And it's pretty obviously not, as far as I can tell--a publicly accessible website is not the best way to hide your personal information. All the RIAA or MPAA needs is an IP address to file suit against you; this is like handing it to them on a silver platter. You'll be hard-pressed to claim you "didn't know you were uploading files" when you have a webpage that indexes the copyrighted material you chose to share.
Correction. (Score:2)
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The assumption that anything on P2P is copyrighted is an issue. Deal with it.
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It's not anonymous, and apparently it never will be. Although it seems like anonymous file sharing would be a straightforward problem to solve, the FreeNet [slashdot.org] project has been working on this for, what, five years now? They have yet to produce anything usable, or even anything approximating usable. Others [sourceforge.net] have [eff.org] tried [gnunet.org] as well, and none has produced anything that can actually be used for actual file sharing. I'd like to help, but at this point, I wouldn't even know where to begin...
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:4, Funny)
Illegally doing anything is illegal. If it's not illegal, and you do it, you're not illegally doing it. Duh.
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:4, Interesting)
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"Truly you have a dizzying intellect." -Dread Pirate Roberts
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:5, Funny)
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don't worry I don't come up with them that often...
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It's the 'making available copies to others'
It's really just a way of figuring out who gets the finger pointed at them: he who provides the shares, or she who gets the shares.
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So the MPAA/RIAA are only going after file sharing people? Not leeches. I thought they were hitting up everyone, but maybe they were just getting distributors.
So you would be totally safe if you only download stuff and never upload?
Except for child porn, which is not ok to download.
I think you have to assume they could know everything you do online.
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:5, Informative)
Yep
So you would be totally safe if you only download stuff and never upload?
I think you have to assume they could know everything you do online.
It's easy to find the distributors - their IP has to be advertised in order for them to distribute stuff. It's harder to find just the leechers. Of course, in a swarming application like BitTorrent, everyone is an uploader as well as a downloader, so it's easy to get peer IPs once you connect to the swarm.
However, I believe it's currently only illegal to upload - after all, you can hardly be charged distributing X-Men 3 if you never actually had a copy of X-Men 3. Copyright is a prohibition against distributing, not copying - it was originally setup for the protection of publishing houses, so that if they bought the rights to a novel, a rival publishing house couldn't just run off it's own copies without the expense of buying the rights. In those days, publishing was a large and expensive business, and it wasn't really conceivable that the laws be used against individuals; individuals had no way practical ways to publish. In the mdoern era, however, individual publishing has become dead easy.
Copyright does include copying (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, copyright is a limited monopoly over reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, and the preparation of derivative works (17 USC 106). Reproduction is controlled for the same reason you claim it isn't: when it was inefficient and expensive, personal copying was virtually unthinkable.
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But with bittorrent, you are distributing as you download (unless you use a hacked client) so you are illegal.
Other P2P applications would depend what you share with the world.
Just because publishing others copyright material is now dead easy does not make it legal or right.
What about allofmymp3? They are not in the US, so our copyright does not bind them. Assuming they are legal in their homeland, are you safe I wonder?
allofmp3 and 17 USC 602 (Score:2)
Assuming you meant "allofmp3.com" (no "my"), the most common allegations of the site's illegality depend on so-called parallel import laws (17 USC 602 [bitlaw.com] and foreign counterparts) and on an interpretation of saving the file on the user's hard drive as "reproduction".
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Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:5, Funny)
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Meanwhile, have you ever seen the RIAA's method of litigation? The evidence is paltry. It's the potential legal fees that cause people to settle.
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Someone used my wireless router. What's "WEP"?
Seriously, I can hit 5 unsecured access points right from where I sit.
People who don't know how/don't bother to secure their wireless routers number probably somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.
IP spoofing is no longer necessary to use someone's IP address. All it takes is a $29 wireless card.
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:4, Informative)
You didn't get it from me.
*whistles and walks away*
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Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:4, Informative)
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Not to mention the fact that when dealing with downloading music, I think it's harder for people to claim that they "didn't know" the music was ill-gotten. In the case of a burned DVD/CD being sold by a vendor, it can be more or less obvious that the DVD/CD is burned depending on how good their reproduction of the disc, label, pack
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OK, but is it anonymous? (Score:4, Informative)
Better read up again, the Napster case is a good example. Uploading violates the "distribution" right - like sending your own pirate radio broadcast (ignoring FCC and other issues). Downloading, i.e. taking that transient stream and making a permanent copy is a violation of the "reproduction" right. It is not fair use like your VCR because it's a copy of an illegal stream, and the taint follows the copy. You could argue you had good faith reason to believe that it was a legal stream you were copying, but I doubt it'll fly and in any case "good faith" copyright infringement also makes you liable.
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That's all fine and dandy, but the definition of "downloading" is blurred using Bittorrent. You are both downloading and uploading the file at the same time, in this respect it could be seen legally as both receiving and reproduction at the same time if you stretched the definition far enough, and therefore illegal.
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Having every 10th byte of a file would be just as copyrigthable as having the first 10% of the file. Atleast there's no logical reason to treat the two differently, especially not when the *purpose* in both cases is to collect pieces until you've got a complete file.
The swarm-technology you talk of *may* still be able to reduce legal liability (though it's hard to say without court-cases), but that's because they work differently;
They split a file in such a way that it
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The difference is you can play the first 10% of a file (under most encoding schemes) and get a complete segment of a copyrighted work. With every 10th byte, there is not way you could play that get anything resembling any part of a copyrighte
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I know the law quite well, and I have had to advise many engineers on the subject. My comment was not about performing an illegal act with intent, I am speaking about mere accusation and the damage that causes in this country. RIAA identifies you as a "file sharer," via bit torrent.
Make no mistake, jail is the least of your worries. Just being accused by RIAA or MPIAA is en
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Unfortunately, you missed the boat by about a century.
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So how do I avoid "special circumstances" (Score:2)
So if I write and record a song, and I want to distribute it over BitTorrent to promote my album, how should I verify that the song I wrote doesn't violate the copyright in something I heard 10 years ago on the radio?
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And what way might that be?
Automatic + Open = Garbage in? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Automatic + Open = Garbage in? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Automatic + Open = Garbage in? (Score:5, Informative)
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I dont think there is a silver bullet answer, but a combination of the above would be fairly effective.
Source (Score:5, Interesting)
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(Sorry, just got done reading my America the book calendar)
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Re:Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it's possible to compile Python into Java-style bytecode or native binary. See Psyco [sourceforge.net] for example.
While it's true that Python is mostly used as an interpreted language, it's not a part of the language definition. Conversely, there are interpreters for languages like C++, I've used one as a part of the ROOT [root.cern.ch] system. ROOT users often compile into native binaries when their code is getting into production level. The same goes for Matlab, for example.
On the other hand, I believe that distributing software as source is much better than the binary, even if you don't have a GPL-like permission to modify/distribute it further. I believe one reason why the www got mainstream is that pages were distributed as source, so people could learn HTML from each other.
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Long story short, distributing a python application does not always translate into providing so
I guess (Score:2)
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Great automatic folder sharing (Score:5, Interesting)
Look out Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Next case: Google versus the United Kingdom; Google is accused of funding the manufacture of items useful to terrorism (as the Federation Against Copyright Theft tells us, piracy funds terrorism)
Next case: RIAA versus Canonical; Canonical is accused of supplying Azureus, a piracy tool, to people
Next case: RIAA versus GNOME Foundation; the GNOME Foundation is accused of supplying a GUI library to piracy tools
WHEN DOES IT END?
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Right abo
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Anti-Slashdot Effect for large content? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The greater the demand, the faster the download (Score:2)
Of course, that, and relative anonymitiy have caused its use for piracy, but really, it's just a means of distributing large and/or popular files efficiently.
More and more like Gnutella (Score:4, Interesting)
Bittorrent is great for very large, very popular files, but when you start dealing with small or unpopular files, I've never found an example where BT got me what I needed faster. Searching Gnutella takes longer than searching for a torrent on the Web, of course, but in the end, download times on very large files that aren't well seeded is radically different, mostly because of the larger chunk size and contingous second-block fetch in Gnutella.
Great idea for legal torrents! (Score:2)
Though a nice tutorial on setting up a vpn among computers with dynamic IP addresses (I don't have a static IP) would be appreciated.
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Check out Hamachi [hamachi.cc]. Once you setup a network in hamachi, every machine gets a nice static ip address.
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Try Hamachi [hamachi.cc]. It works flawlessly and your IP on the VPN is determined by your login, not your actual IP. So as long as you're running it, you'll have the same IP on the VPN, regardless of the current state of your real connection. You install it, run it, choose a network name and password and that's about it. They have a central server that handles keeping a list of everyo
Great for Home Videos? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that sites like YouTube are popular right now... but I really don't like the quality restrictions... and would rather family members could just download a nice sized full copy themselves so they could burn it to DVD if they like or whatever.
Bittorrent would be ideal for doing this... and this software sounds like just the ticket. All I would have to do is point my family at the page it generates... and when I finish editing a home movie drop it in the "upload" folder and wham... it goes out to everyone.
All it needs now is an "auto client" that you just give it the URL of the automatically created website and it will automatically download anything new that arrives (that's a lot of "auto" going on
I think it's funny that people around here always cry "Bittorrent doesn't have to be for illegal purposes" and then any time a bittorrent story comes up all they can do is argue the finer points of what would/wouldn't be illegal/enforceable if you use the new tech... sigh.
Friedmud
Debian package doesn't work with Sarge/Stable (Score:2)
The .deb doesn't work on Debian (Score:4, Insightful)
Oops! Another case of not testing your software before you release it.
Ah, this will return the internet to its glory... (Score:2)
Nice (Score:2)
Second? (Score:4, Informative)
I thought he.net had the first fully automatic [he.net] BitTorrent server [slashdot.org]
.
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Re:Google and Piracy (Score:5, Informative)
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Incorrect. Piracy is irrelevant for the majority of companies that make money from software. (Most software written is single use, business logic type custom apps).
and seeing how Google does not fall into this category,
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Incorrect again. Google makes a hell of a lot of money off their software - just not by selling it.
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Let me spell it out for you. A post suggesting Google sponsored this project to indirectly make money from piracy is a troll. A reply rudely slapping that post down is not.
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Let me spell it out for you. A post suggesting any large company with bo history of encouraging piracy sponsored a project to indirectly make money from piracy is a troll.
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Yes, I know, BT is has legal uses, but they're sure not taking any steps to make the illegal sharing of information harder.
Neither is wu-ftp, or Apache, or IIS, or any other application that allows one to download stuff from the inernet.
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