The Uncertain Future of BitTorrent 340
javipas writes "The people behind the popular BitTorrent tracker are working on a new version of the BitTorrent protocol that could become the successor to the current one, maintained by BitTorrent Inc. The company founded by Bram Cohen — original author of this protocol — now has decided to close the source for several new features in the BitTorrent protocol, and this "gives them too much power and influence". The new file format would be called .p2p, and would maintain backwards compatibility with current .torrent files."
Tin-foil hat... (Score:5, Interesting)
USB 2.0 is better than Bit Torrents. (Score:4, Interesting)
1. quickly net them more music than they can listen to in an entire lifetime.
2. make sure they have off-site backup of their music in case their house is burned down by RIAA goons.
And, if you don't put it on-line, none of it is traceable by RIAA. And Comcast can't stop it.
Re:Predictable (Score:4, Interesting)
So the war of words begins (Score:1, Interesting)
First of all, I RTFA. Nowhere on the page does it say that anything is closed.
The file format is just a list of files:
Now, onto the beginning war:
A. Bittorrent is the typical protocol now
B. They are now trying to enhance it
C. Pirate bay is now coming up with a different protocol D. Pirate bay says the other parties protocol gives the other party "too much power".
How many times have we seen this before? They are going to start sniping at each other because each believes their protocol is better, and thinks the other will have too much power by having the standard protocol. So we get into a war that attempts to divide the community, with fanboys on either side joining in. For previous "Art" see betamax vs vhs, blueray vs hddvd, compiz vs beryl, and even gnome vs kde.
While I am all for competition to make way for the better product, I think it would be best if the two sides would work together instead of trying to fight it out, to the probable benefit of no one.
Re:USB 2.0 is better than Bit Torrents. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shooting themself in the foot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Predictable (Score:2, Interesting)
Because if I am going to pay a content provider for a download, I want the transaction to be as follows:
1) I pay $$$
2) Provider sends me file, using their upstream bandwidth and my downstream.
As opposed to:
1) I pay provider.
2) Provider tells me where the files, or pieces thereof, are.
3) I use my downstream AND upstream bandwidth, and my file storage, and my processor cycles, to distribute the file for the person I just paid.
I know some game companies do this to distribute, and that's fine, because gamers know what they are paying for. But for mass distribution of passively consumed content? Fuck 'em - they can make their own capital investment in servers and bandwidth instead of "borrowing" mine.
hmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
I dont want to be paranoid, but...
RIAA/MPAA/**AA are trying to legislate against P2P
They have several key bitTorrent devs in their pockets
They are promoting a new *better* protocol
How long before this is a negotiating tools to the powers that that control the legislation - on the lines of "yes, P2P has legitimate uses, but the new protocol will safeguard those interests whilst protecting copyright" or something on those lines. In other words this could be an initial step towards the long term goal of a legal P2P system that is easy to police/control content. These people plan a long way ahead, I would not be surprised if something like this is brewing...
Mind you I like the concept of packet obfuscation to thwart ISP throttling mentioned in TFA.
On the subject of P2P (Score:4, Interesting)
Letter to Pirate Bay re: new torrent protocol (Score:5, Interesting)
ONION ROUTING:
1) Implement Onion routing (aka: Tor / anonymize the sources) as a built in feature.
2) Onion Routing should, where possible, try to use exit points and middle points that have roughly the same amount of bandwidth as you, otherwise torrenting will not become a reality through Onion Routing. So some kind of peer bandwidth algorythm needs to be incorporated.
3) Onion routing should be on by default, and each user should also become an exit point and donate 30% of their bandwidth to this. This will greatly increase the number of exit routers & provide this as a defacto alternative, as opposed to just some obscure security feature for the 31337 (hackers & government homeland types).
4) Individual site upload ratios, should take into consideration that fact that you are an exit point and some portion of that 30% should be counted toward your uploaded bytes ratio (even if traffic is going to other sites)... in other words, help promote torrent security = get bonus points from private trackers.
SIMPLIFY ISP SHAPING BYPASS
Background: Forcing protocol encryption isn't enough these days; some ISPs are shaping or even blocking torrent traffic by methods such as sending TCP RST packets to close a session, or their infrastructure auto-analyzes your encrypted traffic patters and if they are high bandwidth, very encrypted and on for long amounts of time to the same destination you get flagged & shapped (regardless of the fact that you could indeed be doing something legal)
1) There's a page on Wikipedia that lists all the "BAD ISPs" (http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs). This is a list of ISPs internationally that in one way or another shape your bitorrent traffic (Comcast anyone?). We need to be one step ahead of these ISPs and render their multi-million dollars worth of shaping infrastructure useless - sooner rather than later - sooner so that they can't make up for the ROI on all that gear they purchased. If the ROI fails, the next time engineering dept approach CEO for X dozens of millions more, they will get declined and we (torrent community) will win.
2) This site breaks down "throttling" into 5 different categories or ways in which the ISP can throttle you... each listing the bypass method.
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Avoid_traffic_shaping#Escalation_of_the_crypto_settings [azureuswiki.com]
Note that level 5 (the most aggressive shaping method known so far) is only bypassable by a single client today (Azeurus), utorrent to my understanding can not bypass this.
Anyway my point with these above 2 items is that these facts need to be considered:
1. The number of ISPs throttling internationally is already large and growing larger
2. Your new torrent client needs to simplify bypassing these various levels of encryption so that it can be adopted by the masses. If it is not adopted by the masses (rendering ISP throttling useless), the ISPs will have won.
I don't have time to type more, so please research what other clients out there (beyond just torrent) are doing and borrow ideas from them.
Here's a brief list of intelligent encryption/anonymous software out there to investigate:
RODI: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/01/1252232 [slashdot.org]
MUTE: http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
ANTS: http://antsp2p.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
GNUnet: http://gnunet.org/ [gnunet.org]
I2P: http://www.i2p.net/ [i2p.net]
FreeNet: http://freenetproject.org/ [freenetproject.org]
TOR: http://tor.eff.org/ [eff.org]
THanks and good luck!
Re:Oh well, (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What the Story Submission Should Have Said (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh. That runs counter to my entire body of experience. Most dealers are selling just enough so that they can smoke for free and possibly make a little extra money on the side. Large scale distributors (the ones who sell by the pound or more) on the other hand probably care more about the money. It's more pure business at that level.
And yes, I do greatly respect dealers for "sticking it to the man." Or, at least for ignoring unjust laws like we all should.
Re:Oh well, (Score:5, Interesting)
I vote that we write one of our own. I've written a BitTorrent client before, and have written a protocol extension [sourceforge.net]. I'm just beginning to ponder a completely new protocol [sourceforge.net]. Any interest?
Re:Oh well, (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck close-sourcing Python code, anyway... reverse-engineering .pyc is beyond trivial. If there's anything really useful in there, it will be reverse-engineered and mysteriously make its way back into the BitTorrent OSS fork, anyway.
Re:USB 2.0 is better than Bit Torrents. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/22/hackers-project-sends-media-filled-hard-drives-to-troops/ [engadget.com]
Re:What the Story Submission Should Have Said (Score:4, Interesting)
Drug dealer or pot dealer? Because I can't think of a single pot dealer in my area that doesn't hold a day job. And most of them have fairly serious day jobs, not supermarket-type positions.
Re:Oh well, (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Letter to Pirate Bay re: new torrent protocol (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, yes. ISP's pulling that level of filtering are, as you imply, doing so where choices for cheap and freely usable bandwidth are limited. This can be because of the expense of bandwidth or a desire for casual monitoring (such as a campus network, where the student with the 3 Terabytes of MP3's and DVD's sharing them to the world is both a bandwidth and a legal problem). It's relatively common in small, insular markets, where a power user or systems dabbler such as many Slashdot posters would be regarded as a problem, not a good client base.
Some folks do find the proxy filtering an issue in corporate networks: I've certainly found it to be pesky for rsyncing or Bittorrenting freeware CD images, and had talks with upstream network managers who wondered why I was pulling so much data through the firewall (which I throttled, and did off-hours, but they noticed).
Re:Oh well, (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, defeating censorship is a goal I'm 100% behind.