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The Internet

P2P Streaming Radio 276

Posted by michael from the bright-ideas dept.
sonicsft writes "RIAA, CARP, and streaming internet radio, oh my. Well these guys may have found a solution. With the tag line, pirate radio for the digital age, they've released a peer to peer streaming radio solution and claim that it is untracable/closable by the RIAA."
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P2P Streaming Radio More

P2P Streaming Radio

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  • how about source ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mAIsE ( 548 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @03:38AM (#3794718) Homepage
    if you really want to set it free GPL it
    • Somebody should write up a music version of GPL and propose it. There'll have to be a fee associated with listening to the music. It could be something like "You have 24 hours to listen to the song, after that you need to pay $1.00. That $1 means you have a license to listen to that song, in any format, with any device, for life."

      Then, if somebody creates a remix of the song, they re-license it so that part of the money goes to the original artist. So maybe that $1.25.

      Okay, I'm not the answer guy. My only point is that if somebody writes up a draft of it with all the basic problems solved and then publishes it, we may get an artist to start using it.

      Any muscially inclined people up for an experiment? I'll be first to buy a license.
      • You fundamentally don't understand the GPL in associating what you said with it. Go read it [gnu.org] and become educated before posting.

    • Check out OPENdj [opendj.org].

      It is my vision of this guys idea - but I have had opendj running from over a year ago.

      OPENdj's license is mostly Apache-ish, with some subprojects GPL'd due to GPL dependencies.

      - jonathan.

    • Just look for the link!!!!

    • Re:how about source ? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Hast ( 24833 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @09:16AM (#3795196)
      From the site:

      It's been GPL'd now, (mostly for my own personal safety). But please people, don't all do your own versions of it until I've had time to add some of the refinements I want to put in. Volunteer coders wanted please :-).

    • From http://www.chaotica.u-net.com/page/streamer.htm
      Download the source code


      It's been GPL'd now, (mostly for my own personal safety). But please people, don't all do your own versions of it until I've had time to add some of the refinements I want to put in. Volunteer coders wanted please :-).

  • Careful (Score:3, Interesting)

    by undeg chwech ( 589211 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @03:40AM (#3794724) Homepage
    The developer should be careful

    "There's no listener count yet. To be added soon, along with stats to give some idea about the 'shape' of the data tree. "

    It should be kept 100% anonymous, if there's a hint that the data is available then "they" will go after it ... like the PVR which had unsed tracking software built in that the courts demanded was turned on.

    • Re:Careful (Score:1, Redundant)

      by hardcorejon ( 31717 )
      Check out OPENdj [opendj.org].

      It is my vision of this guys idea - but I have had opendj running from over a year ago. It has had listener counting features (both for broadcasters and listeners) since its inception.

      An icecast server instrumented with expect scripts provides this service. Privacy is maintained in the sense that only the count of listeners is monitored, nothing is recorded such as IP address, length of connection, etc.

      OPENdj's license is mostly Apache-ish, with some subprojects GPL'd due to GPL dependencies.

      Check it out and tell me what you think.

      - jonathan.

  • Hey, this reminds me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JoeShmoe ( 90109 ) <askjoeshmoe@hotmail.com> on Sunday June 30, 2002 @03:43AM (#3794736)
    Remember that swarmcast technology that was on Slashdot a while ago? Basically everyone on Slashdot tried downloading some 350MB file of audio clips from a conference and everyone who was downloading was uploading at the same time and so the end result was that the more people who downloaded, the faster the downloads went for everyone.

    I'm guessing this is sort of the same kind of deal? How long until we modifies this to share "recipies"? ;)

    - JoeShmoe

    .

  • Not So Likely (Score:2, Interesting)

    by edthemonkey ( 136946 )
    Just like any sort of encryption scheme or digital rights system, there's always a vulnerability, the human factor.

    Somehow, someone will figure out some sort of system or program to trace the stream to it's origin. They'd like to think it's secure/untraceable, but someone will find a way around it.

  • This guy is begging to get sued (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sterno ( 16320 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @03:46AM (#3794745) Homepage
    The fact that this guy's website if expressly saying he's doing this to bypass carp is going to screw him in the long run. If he got taken to court and his most obvious defense would be to say that this was created to help independent artists broadcast their music. Then the judge will look at the pages from his website and that defense will be dead right away.

    If you're going to try to take on the system, try to do it in an intelligent manner.
    • It is not an indefensible position. This is just a piece of software. The fact that it may be used to stream copyrighted content does not mean that it is illegal. Certainly many forms of talk radio do not infringe on anyone's copyrights.

      For the record, OPENdj [opendj.org] has been doing this "P2P streaming" stuff for over a year.... and is open source software [freshmeat.net]

      - jonathan.
      • That is true, however, if they can show his intent was to produce something to circumvent a law... which is what the original poster is talking about, he'll have a hard time making a case for himself.

        It's like if The CSS case.. they claimed they wanted to write a dvd player. Okay, they lost the case anyway, but if their website had said "Cool! Now we can copy all our DVDs and fuck and ignore the stupid RIAA morons." it would have been even harder to try to claim, right?

    • I thought that first, but on a second reading it doesn't seem so obvious. I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that he's just annoyed at so many music streaming and trading services having been closed down. For all we know, he just wants something to trade non-corporate music.

      From what he's said, he could easily just want a system for streaming fully legitimate mp3's, and simply be expressing disgust that the services that used to provide legal music are being shut down by bullies.

      Stating that it's "enough to play your tunes to your mates" would also have to count in his favour.

  • Companies like on-the-i.com [on-the-i.com] are already doing this and calling it multicasting.

    Anyone know the difference?

  • Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @03:49AM (#3794753)
    Windows Only + No source + one guy = Killable by RIAA.

    I'm not impressed.
    • If TV has taught me anything.... (oops, forget the simpsons reference, TV=reading slashdot) it's that this guy's idea + win only + no source + one guy + killed by RIAA -> open source solution to this guy's idea

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30, 2002 @04:04AM (#3794784)
      Windows Only + No source + one guy = Killable by RIAA.

      Do you realize that that description fits Gnutella's initial release almost perfectly? Aside from Gnutella being originally a Nullsoft "product" of sorts, there's really no difference in circumstances.

      I'm not saying it will necessarily be a success, but your criteria for not being impressed don't impress me.
      • Mod parent up, he has an excellent point.

        The source may not be free, but the concept is, and even if it gets shut down, it will be re-engineered by someone else.

        Same as gnutella which was also "shut down" by AOL/Time-Warner after they realized what it was doing.

      • Windows Only + No source + one guy = Killable by RIAA.

        If you'd have bothered to read the article you'd have seen that it does have source and it's licenced under the GPL.

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)

      by EnemaSmurf ( 208140 )
      True, but thankfully his meme will live on.

      It shouldn't take too long before people implement their own on other p2p platforms, such as PeerMetrics [peermetrics.com] or JXTA [jxta.org]. Relying on shoutcast is definitely a weak element in the solution. Sharing of connected peers shouldn't be transparent, too, as it leads to discovery of the stream source (the unreferenced node).

      <rant>Speaking of which, do people know of other good p2p platforms out there for implementing stuff like this? This idea and other good ones would have come sooner if only there were more good, generic p2p vectors. As is, everyone home-rolls their p2p apps, still, thus requiring different channels of distribution, different standards, yada yada. We need a platform that's like apache with mods.</rant>

      • Oops. My mistake; following listed peers, discovery is traced by finding the node without references to a given stream.
    • windows only has nothing to do with it, Decss was for linux and it still got someone in heaploads of trouble.

      No source just means the software won't be improved, but it would still be distributed.
    • It's real easy to piss on other's efforts isn't it? If this guy is serious, if his software works, when the RIAA comes after him, how long do you think it will be before he opens it up?

      There's been a real trend of late to mod trash talk up as Insightful.
  • .....but thse guys are just begging to be done over.

    Making statements like that just invite the RIAA to sue their asses, wave these statements in court and walk home with a self satisfied smile on their faces as they drag the asses of these people in chains behind them.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Instead of taxing one individual, they can tax every person on this network they find, since they are all transmitters.

  • Very crash-prone. (Score:2, Informative)

    by echelon13 ( 584775 )
    I downloaded it, and noticed that the Streamer app would crash often when I loaded the "Stations" list. Looking at the log window, it seems that there have been stations set up with the intent of crashing the client.

    From what I've seen, this has potential. It's simply too buggy to be useful at the moment, though. It'd be nice if it was open-source, too. This guy is just setting himself up to be sued by the RIAA if this takes off...

  • Out of curiosity, anyone managed to get this working in wine? Everything seemed to be going fine on my try up to the point of picking a station, and at that point wine crashes.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @04:15AM (#3794816)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It also spreads the pain to the point where if the RIAA wants to sue then it is taking on its customers directly. It takes us another step towards the RIAA pissing off too many people, just enough so that the backlash starts in a big way. Connect a system like this with a donation network, a PAC, a legal defense fund, and more forms of action/advocacy... you might start to see congress understanding common sense just a bit more (or at least pretending to under threat of losing campaign dollars and votes).

    • This doesn't avoid "broadcasting" over the internet at all.
      Think about it, under this system, EVERYONE is broadcasting/webcasting and each USER would be required to pay the RIAA fee.

      No, it really does avoid that fee. The RIAA would probably be getting a stream from another user who is only streaming it to a few people. And since the rebroadcaster is only relaying data and not keeping track of their connection they can't say how many people are on at any given time. For all they know they are only broadcasting to the RIAA's computer and therefore should not have to pay (why should they have to pay the RIAA for broadcasting their data back to them?)
  • It scares me to think what any GUI for this would look like considering his HTML coding.
    • There's absolutely nothing wrong with his HTML coding. Its trivial to make it look pretty to satisfy the likes of you, but in its present state it fulfils it purpose of being a bare-bones interface to his program very well.
      • but green....I just hope he has one of his "mates" do up the release.

        Don't get me wrong, as soon as it doesn't dive under incorrect Server info, I'll use it no -matter how ugly it is....but greeen.
  • A lot of the feedback (no pun intended) is that there are problems with this system. It won't work, it will be traceable, it isn't Linux compatible, there are bugs, the RIAA will catch them, blah blah bloody-blah.

    At least those guys are trying to come up with a system that will allow free, unfettered broadcasting over the internet. They are trying, and sure there are probably a million holes in their software at this stage, but hey, it never stopped Microsoft.

    I say give them our support, and see if we can't one day have a working P2P broadcast model that is free and untouchable.

  • Hobos with shopping carts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @04:21AM (#3794831)
    I've gone from being completely indifferent about internet radio to being a huge fan of it in the span of about a year. I have not listened to broadcast music in a couple years now. Just about everything I listened to for a long time came out of my friends and I's CD pools. We'd make compilation albums for each other or just snag songs we particularly enjoyed from albums in each others collections. Broadcast radio has always been shit but recently it has been so bad I simply can't stand to listen to it. I began to go to dozens of concerts from LA to San Diego. Last year I think I tallied 35 concerts in about 9 months. Was I going to see bigass arena shows being hyped by radio stations? Only in a very small handful of cases like the Yahoo Outloud Weezer tour, when I went to the LA and SD shows. Most shows I was going to were indie rock shows and small local shows. Anyhow, I was going to these shows SPECIFICALLY because the bands weren't being played on the radio. People I find incredibly talented like Ozma and The Get Up Kids will be lucky to ever have a single played on a station like KROQ. Going to all the shows I did and picking up albums from bands I liked, I not only put money in their pockets but got introduced to more bands than I can easily recall. These are some badass bands in my opinion but they're not going to be found on the radio.

    Then I started getting into more electronic stuff but was never really one for the electronic scene. I can't stand seeing a bunch of cornbread white guys revving their rice burners in parking lots. It isn't racism or anything, it just looks stupid seeing some pimply faced kid with his Fred Durst hat with a "Powered by VTEC" sticker on his read window. The drugged out raver wannabes aren't exactly up on my list of social affiliations either. Rather than tell them they shouldn't be who they want to be I just avoid the scene entirely. So that leaves me with nowhere to get music other than Napster or something. It is nice to see if I want to spend money on an album but most songs are recorded poorly at too low of a bit rate for my taste. Then I fire up iTunes on my Powerbook and browse to the electronic stations. Holy shit! Music that doesn't sound like ass when I plug it into my sound system and doesn't have an inane DJ being wiggity whack on the air. Fuck yes. Not only do I get a good stream of music but I also have a display of what song I'm listening to in case I find myself interested in the artist. Then there is the choice available, if one station starts in with something I don't like I can double click another one with a different stream. Internet radio has become the radio I've been wanting for years. In an hour block I get to hear about an hour's worth of music, not 10 minutes of decent music, 30 minutes of slop I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy and 20 minutes of inane advertisements for shit I don't buy and DJs I'd rather have shot into the Sun.

    Now it is facing some stiff opposition in the form the RIAA and their demonic minions. I don't want to see internet radio go down because it is the only inexpensive way I've got left to get introduced to some good music. Sharing with my friends is nice but there isn't enough variety to really find off the wall shit I end up really digging. P2P radio seems like an obvious solution because of the P2P buzzword culture surging as of late. The model however runs into serious problems. The RIAA doesn't have to go after a single individual or group of individuals to take out P2P radio like they were able to with various sharing programs. All they have to do is make some deals with cable and DSL providers. Lets say there was a popular P2P radio in my town, all it would take is a deal or lawsuit against Charter and he would be toasted. We'd all end up with our bandwidth curtailed more than it already is and P2P radio would end up specifically forbidden in the AUP.

    Switch to DSL you say? I fucking wish. PacBell couldn't find their dicks if they weren't at the end of their arms. Evne if DSL was viable for some people P2P regulating would still happen on the DSL system. Even with a competitive DSL provider like Covad or someone, they're still renting a pipe from PacBell and the bandwidth usage will make them be regulatory asses too.

    P2P pirate radio is a noble idea I suppose, sticking it to the jackasses that are the RIAA but it is a short term solution to a long term problem. The RIAA has far too many lawyers on their side and enough backing to cow the major cable and DSL providers into line. An idea would be to get together with a bunch of schools around the country. Many schools have broadcast radio stations that don't have to stand up to RIAA scrutiny or lawsuits. They could house and host internet radio stations with the same function as broadcast stations, providing students with hands on experience either behind a mic or in an equipment room, but have much better standing in any internet radio lawsuits. Anything with P2P in the name is going to get turbofucked rather quickly by the RIAA no matter if they can track people down or not. It's sad but true. So who wants to build an island 13 miles off the Montery penninsula with an OC-192 hooked up to it? We could be Sealand Redux.

    • Re:Hobos with shopping carts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cliff ( 4114 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:43AM (#3794961) Homepage Journal
      I'm so saddened by the loss of internet radio for precisely the reasons you mentioned. Did the copyright office ever give a specific justification for their rates? (I never bothered to read the ruling...I've been too disgusted with this whole deal. I'll have to suck up and read that damned thing soon, though).

      My point is that it's funny that they should standardize on the same rate as broadcasters when the barrier to entries for webcasting is lower than it is for radio. What's this? If you want to play music for people you have to destroy it by inserting inane yakking, and loud commercials into the flow, just so sponsors get their oh-so-importaint "air time"?

      ("What? No commercials? That's un-American!" [well, at least maybe non-capitalistic, but I digress]).

      Ever since the shutdown, I've gone back to listening to my own CD collection, but for a long time I was listening one of the various SomaFM [somafm.com] streams, sitting back, coding, and occasionally writing down the name of a new group or album that I had never heard. I have made dozens of CD purchases based on that list. That source is gone now, and the list (along with CD purchasing for a few months, it looks like) frozen with its departure.

      Another funny anecdote: While driving (the only time I ever consider subjecting myself to broadcast radio) recently, I actually heard a song I liked. Missed the name of the artist, but I paid close attention to the lyrics to see if I could pick out keywords. Went home, logged in to the nearest P2P network and had that exact song in less than 30 minutes.

      If someone would develop a system with that kind of response time, that would allow me to download what I want by the song, I'd pay for that. The RIAA has had at least half a decade to develop such a system, yet instead they have tried to legislate the technology back into Pandora's Box.

      This disgusts me to no end, and I think I'm now fed up enough where this will now become a Personal Crusade for me. These leeches do the public, and the arts no good. They've refused to evolve, so now it's time for their extinction.

      So...

      ...who wants to build an island 13 miles off the Montery penninsula with an OC-192 hooked up to it? We could be Sealand Redux.
      Count me in on that undertaking. Oh yeah.
    • Ozma = Weezer. Although it doesn't get much worse than the last album. Pinkerton was a bucket of glorious pop, one of the best albums ever, but the "green" album was sub-par, and this latest foray is worse. And Ozma seems to be trying to copy weezer, always has been. Emo-pop-punk. But I think Ozma is better than weezer lately.

      I always thought the Get Up Kids were sub-par. If you like them, you'd LOVE Reggie and the Full Effect. Reggie is incredible, it's what the Get UP Kids should have been.

      I went to the yahoo outloud tour of weezer, (...goes to look at ticket) March 1, 2001, in Charlotte. I got lost trying to find the freakin venue, so I missed ozma, and only saw 1/2 of the get up kids. I wanted to see Ozma, but the Get Up Kids did well. Weezer, though, is incredible live. Whatever they do on albums, their live shows are technically perfect.

      Ah, well, back to Reel Big Fish's new CHEER UP! album. It grows on you, belive me. Also, check out Millencollin - Home from Home.

      ~Will

  • As the RIAA gets their DOS scripts ready...

    :-)
    • Ah, but can they DOS 100 million people at once? It will sure be fun watching them try. Especially when out of country script kiddies start firing back at them.

      Heck, maybe someone should write a program which makes mozilla or explorer refresh the RIAA homepage every 20 seconds. With about 50 million people running that, it would kill the RIAA in bandwidth costs alone.
  • The concept of P2P radio was just begging to be released by the likes of CARP and the RIAA. Well, Hillary Rosen, what have you to say for yourself now that you have uncorked the genie THIS time?

    ...

    And now for something completely different:
    If you have a website, I'll trade you the full version of Spheres of Chaos for a link here. As long as it's not a completely rubbish site that is. I need more traffic. it's a backwater in here... (emphasis added)
    need I say more :)
    • Yep, just read that, too. I guess he's got all the traffic he wanted now. :P
      It's okay, though, that "psychedelic" game is actually rather sweet. Not groundbreaking at all, but a nice game to waste a few minutes on. Played it months ago.

  • Crashing (Score:2, Informative)

    by bparrish ( 144030 )
    Someone is purposely crashing the network..if you start it up and click on stations, the streamer program will crash.

    They're sending bad data as new station hosts. Hope he fixes this soon.

    NEW STATION: ' ÷8çu_&#89 93;m¥i#½Eúq"&#8 962;8où& #8745;½n-fäMå'
    NEW STATION: ' ÷8çu_&#89 93;m¥i#½Eúq"&#8 962;8où& #8745;½n-fKå'
    NEW STATION: ' ÷8çu_&#89 93;m¥i#½Eúq"&#8 962;8où& #8745;½n-fIå'
    NEW STATION: 'çlH]rèX&#9570 ; oíQe1\KÇf:za¥G;~& #9532;3ïQc|ï:'
    • It could be that someone in Asia is trying to run it on a Chinese or Japanese system and this program can't handle the gibberish it gets when it tries to display one of these languages in english.
  • Will this really matter once Mircosoft has effectively forced everyone to use DRM? Sure, there will still be many users of Linux(provided Paladium doesn't refuse to run it) and Mac, but without a very large userbase, how effective can pretty much any P2P program be? Undoubtedly, you won't be able to do stuff like this on windows anymore, once Palladium becomes a real product, and the most important people to the user base would have been Windows users.

    Come to think of it, how will Palladium treat P2P software in general? I have doubts about it being varified as "secure".
    • I'm reasonably sure that the file format has to comply with .DRM. MS can't really shoehorn DRM into .MP3 format. Even if they manage to (I don't dare challenge them), there's still the matter of the hacker community who'll quickly break it.

      MS DRM isn't on my radar right now. Although if MS were to manage to force it onto ppl, it might actually get the RIAA to back down on shit like the SSSCA. If that happens, crack the DRM, and continue living happily.
  • damn this thing still uses direct connection you directly connect to the station so you get their IP and then you simple look up their ISP send them a nice letter and get them shut down.
  • Where does the RIAA ruling actually leave the people at Live365 ? [live365.com] and their users? So far they seem to be unfazed...

    Dirk

    • Re:live365.com (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Salsaman ( 141471 )
      A lot of the stations are not based in the US, thus are not affected by the RIAA's madness.

    • They are going to begin collecting a $5/month Royalty Administration Fee [live365.com] from all stations, including personal stations which have previously been free. They are collecting it regardless of broadcaster's location or broadcast content (news, talk, non-label acts). The fee is for more than just royalty payments and the mention a suggestion from SoundExchange [soundexchange.com] to indie artists to get registered to collect royalties.
  • Have you guys played their game, Spheres of Chaos [u-net.com]? Sure, it's just asteroids but believe me there's quite a twist. Everything you hit explodes into a billion rainbow-colored pixels.

    It's so simple I feel like an idiot for not thinking of it myself. This game is beautiful and takes very little processor.

    Judging by the fact that they have their game compiled for Linux as well (at about one-third the size as the Windows version, which both together make us less than 1 mega^H^H^H^H mebi^H^H^H^H million bytes) they'll probably go this direction with the Streamer app as well.

    Just out of curiosity, has anyone checked to see if the http interface is open to the public or is just restricted to localhost? Maybe we can start controlling other people's streams (e.g. knocking off the idiot who's doing the corrupt stream name)

  • they should say

    "If you or any of your family or friends are members or work for the RIAA or the MPAA then you do not have premission to use this software. Also if you work in law enforcement or in the FBI you must delete this software at once."

    Would be intersting.

  • This is a good idea beyond CARP. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Perianwyr Stormcrow ( 157913 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:08AM (#3794914) Homepage
    A streaming audio solution that WON'T kick your bandwidth's ass is something sorely needed for Internet radio at the moment, period. Regardless of tariffs. Why? Well, if this sort of system gets refined and takes off, suddenly everyone with a suitable connection for one stream can broadcast, instead of having to either a) have a massive pipe or b) hunt down (or pay for!) some sort of relaying service.

    This sort of idea seems destined for the time when everyone has 512k synchronous connections, though, because you'll need double whatever bandwidth is needed for your stream to relay.
    • you'll need double whatever bandwidth is needed for your stream to relay.

      Nope. Every internet connection has two seperate pipes - one up stream and one downstream. Except for some very minor overhead the two directions are independant. When you're recieving something your upstream pipe is still sitting there almost completely unused.

      That's why it pisses me off when people throttle their P2P upstream to something like 1k. They think they can download faster if they aren't uploading. It just isn't true.

      -
  • "it is untracable/closable by the RIAA"

    So did the programmers figure out how to make packets be invisible? If so, can they teach me that trick!?
  • Ah yes, another Slashdot poster-wanker. Here again we find a sophomore who, driven by the delusion of his intelligence and his ostracism by normal people (and no doubt the opposite sex), adopts his wankerdom as an ideology and an identity--and so hacks together some code to further The Cause and be admitted to the circle jerk of his fellow sufferers.

    A tool to track a spanning tree across network backbones would not be hard to write; the broadcaster is simply the root of the tree. Even if more care is taken to disguise a broadcast's origins, the leaves of the trees are vulnerable to infiltration, backtrace, and closure (as are the destination nodes and matchmakers of any P2P mesh). Tools to analyze virtual networks do exist and I'm sure many prudent people, organizations, and ISPs (who have the right to know how you're using their property) are writing more.

    These tools (and others) *will* be used to stop the theft of intellectual property. Any protests will fall on deaf ears, not because Big Brother has finally arrived, but because the ideology of the protesters is morally bankrupt.

    On a related note: communications have never been untraceable since the dawn of civilization and we've done just fine, thanks--not because of dumb luck, or by the efforts of holier-than-thou vigilantes, but because fundamentally sound societies have strong processes to ensure their values are respected across all aspects of life - including the proper use of new technologies. These processes are only getting better as civilization marches on - so focus your energy on helping define the optimal set of ethical, societal controls on technology, not undermining them.
    • A tool to track a spanning tree across network backbones would not be hard to write; the broadcaster is simply the root of the tree.

      Please describe the operation of such a tool. Given encrypted communication between nodes, how do you determine from the outside whether any given node is a relay or source?

      ISPs (who have the right to know how you're using their property)
      No more so than telephone companies have the "right" to eavesdrop on your conversations, or the post office to read your mail.
      ...the theft of intellectual property...
      Copying is not theft.
      fundamentally sound societies have strong processes to ensure their values are respected across all aspects of life

      "Fundamentally sound" societies are those that recongize a diversity of values. "Fundamentally sound" societies recognize that sharing information is what makes us human. "Fundamentally sound" societies are not operated for the benefit of media conglomerates.

    • A tool to track a spanning tree across network backbones would not be hard to write; the broadcaster is simply the root of the tree.

      Here is my first thought (maybe 20 seconds worth). The root of the tree is the encoder. Why shouldn't this node also receive a copy of the stream from one of it's downstream nodes? Effectively you have a large circle now, preferably as large as possible. As for identifying all of the nodes in the tree, the nodes may simply indicate whether they can accept new connections without divulging their neighbors. This prevents a trivial tree-walking at least.
  • I just give it a quick try out of interest to see if it works from behind a NAT box or when it's firewalled. The answer seems to be no, though I may just be unlucky.

    On p2p filesharing networks I'v observed about two thirds of the users are firewalled/NATed and
    a lot of users don't have enough networking knowledge to set up port forwarding on their NAT/ICS/wingate PC or adsl router.

    If node is looking for another node to get an
    incoming feed from, it can directly connect to firewalled nodes so it has to get a message to the firewalled node via another node that the firewalled node has open a connection to.

    The webpage say it dosn't currently optimise the network topology, hopfully it will cope with firewalled nodes when that is done.

    Being behind a NAT means its effectivly firewalled and even if portforwarding is set up to allow it to receive incoming connections it won't know its own internet reachable ip address, it just sees a 192.168.x.x style address (rfc1918).
    The filesharing client edonkey copes by having
    edonkey servers tell client what their IP addresses are when they connect. The author could implement that in streamer, clientclient.
    • That's because you are using NAT. Don't blame firewalling. Firewalling != NAT. Not at all.

      I have a firewalled network, and it works just fine.

      This is what happens when we cross layer boundaries. Apps that don't play well with nat are apps that embed their IP address in higher layer data.. so layer 4 assumes it knows what's going on at layer 3. Bad idea.

      optimizing network technology is not related to nat.

  • Hello folks, Since it seems other folks are getting lots of attention, and this "P2P streaming" stuff is exactly what my OPENdj [opendj.org] project is all about, I feel I've got to pitch OPENdj to you...

    OPENdj is a distributed streamer, allowing DJs to schedule time on streams through a web based interface. It's pretty full-featured, with automatic archiving of all broadcasts, meta-tagging on broadcasts, searching on those metatags, listener counts, chat room features, etc.

    OPENdj is open source software [freshmeat.net], available for anyone to download, play with, and use.

    Check it out, let me know what you think.

    - jonathan.

  • There's a fun asteroids-type game on that page ^_^
  • Some unhelpful person has put crud data somewhere into the stream, which crashes the program.

    How would you stop this from becoming a problem?

    Well you could devise some way of ignoring dud hosts. BUT - to do this you would have to have a method of identifying which hosts were broken (e.g. user ranking like slashdot moderation). Hence you can't be anonymous anymore.

    I'm sure someone can counter this argument, I'd be interested to know any possible alternatives!

  • I was thinking about this a week ago, how to implement, etc. But it all came down to, "I don't have the time Right Now. Maybe when I finish my current project."

    Anyway, some ideas I had:

    • Keep everything encrypted. Only you and the other node (including relay nodes) need to see it.
    • Relay nodes. You set up your node to provide a minimum of two listen nodes for the stream that you're listening to, and possibly one (or more) listen node(s) for something you aren't listening to.
    • Multi-source listening. You download portions of the stream you're listening to from multiple nodes.
    • Have the original station node keep track of how many songs you have served (for originating streams only). Use this as a ploy to tell the RIAA, "see, I have been keeping records of how much I owe you, I just haven't hit $10 yet. I was going to cut you a check as soon as I did."
    • Have the number of songs you have served (as an originating node) be easily modifiable (or self modifying in some controlled manner) in the client program, so that it can't be taken as evidence against you in the courts. This idea needs some fleshing out.
    • Up play the non-copyright infringing points of the program. "Anyone can serve a popular internet radio station and not have to pay an arm and a leg for bandwidth."
    • Swarm/Crowds like peering, to maintain anonymity.
    • Have the ability to register/digitally sign station names, and have "plain English" names for the radio stations, to prove authenticity, but not reveal your identity.
    • Station ratings. (How?)

    That's all I can remember coming up with right now. There may have been more ideas that I can't remember right now.

  • Untracable? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Kirby-meister ( 574952 )
    "The IP of my home PC is automatically added to the list each time you run streamer..."

    How long before an RIAA rep knocks on his door?

  • The fact that the game the guy is selling on his website requires a check to be sent to him in the UK means that RIAA cant shut him down. He is British. He is not affected by your silly US laws (if he sensibly hosts it on a machine in the UK). Simple.

    Steve
    • I'm not selling Streamer.
      I'm trying to sell my game 'Spheres of Chaos', but no-one is buying it anymore. Probably those nice crackers, mistaking me for rich uncle Bill.
      p.s. Source uploaded :-)...but please don't everyone do their own versions yet. I want to implement all my ideas more first.

  • Obvious problems (Score:5, Informative)

    by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @07:10AM (#3795038)
    The first obvious problem is that by connecting to a number of servers, I don't even need a spanning tree attack to trace the source of the broadcast; I can do it all with the latency differential, to find the "root" node.

    The second obvious problem is that you can't find a broadcast source unless it's advertised, and once it's advertised, it can be found.

    The third obvious problem is that, even if you solve the second obvious problem using a distribguted naming service and... for lack of a better name for it... "AntiBGP", you still have the problem of being able to use differential to find the source of the inital advertisement.

    The fourth obvious problem is that you can find the source through traffic analysis: it's the one without an equal number of packets in and out.

    Something like this can only ever be effective with a distributed flood-fill model, where you can trust your nearest neighbor, or your nearest neighbor doesn't actually know what he has. Effectively, this means that you have to go to a store-and-forward model, use hard crypto on the interconnects, and then generate bogus traffic to avoid analysis.

    At that point, you would have to find a legitimate an legal use for the network before deploying it, or you are minimally an accessory before the fact and/or involved in a conspiracy to commit. If they can point at your node in the network and prove intent, then you are screwed.

    "BlackNet" is really unsuitable for streaming data.

    -- Terry
    • 1,2) These are problems if you are hiding behind the NSA but not the RIAA. The RIAA cannot chase every single source of a p2p radio program. Also, who cares if the music is live? Each peer could have a random delay assiociated with it.
      3) The distributed naming service doesn not necessarily have the true source, just middle men.
      4) A relay would have the same packets in and out. Not necessarily the source.

      I like what I think you term flood-fill:
      First, the source distributes menu of music. Each tune is broken into small parts. These are md5sum'd. That is stored on the menu.
      Source distributes music files to friends. Each friend does same.

      listeners connect to node, get menu, get node's friends and pull music. Peers also store music which supplants their network resources. Each music part is downloaded and compared to md5sum. If digest is wrong, dump the node and tell your friends.

      To listen to a broadcast means you must serve some songs worth of data and also be wiling to serve these parts too, within reasonable bandwidth bounds.

      Cheers,
      -b

      • I had a long response prepared, refuting you point by point, and going into detail as to how you could do all this cheaply, and how even an individual could do it, if they wanted, for around $20 a trace.

        Then I thought better of it. Let people pay people to figure out how to do it, if they don't already know.

        Let me point out that the biggest problem facing deployment of any technology like this is directory services. If someone owns the directory, then they own the network... that's why the phone companies don't worry about IP telephony damaging their long distance services with local-IP-IP-local hopping: endpoint identification means you'll have a hard time penetrating their markets. As long as the directory is ownable, then such solutions are not deployable.

        The problem will always come down to getting to a participating node, without getting to the originating node.

        If it comes down to a design discussion, this should probably be taken offline.

        -- Terry
  • trying to evade thier lawers with p2p schemes and the like is not the answer. while you think you may be soving this problem, your only giving them a reason to call you a pirate(so they have an excuse to buy laws) AND promoting thier artists at the same time! its a win/win for them.

    if you really want to know why CDs cost so much, its nothing more than supply and demand. its becasue people pay that much. if no one pays that much, theyll stop charging that much (after blaming every computer user for piracy, thanks to napster)

    these assholes have money and power because we gave it to them. if we dont give them money, then they cant hire lobyyists or buy themselves senators.

    STOP SUPPORTING THEM!

    its that simple.if we continue to support them, they will continue to try to controll our lives in the intrest of thier profit and to try to make it harder for (non manufactured) artists that they cant control (becase every independant band gets money, and more importantly, mindshare that could instead go to them)

    dont support muscians who are with the RIAA. its not hard, many musicans are not with them. there are many lables that have nothing to do with the RIAA. if musicans you like are with them, write to them. if enough people do, they will notice.

    heres ia a list of RIAA labels.

    http://www.riaa.org/About-Members-1.cfm

    ive been boycotting the RIAA(and MPAA) for years now and i dont feel like im missing much. i still enjoy clubs and concerts, and i still buy CDs. (without worrying that they will break my computer) i know im not denting thier profits, but more importanly i know im not helping them either. i hope that if enough people realize what they are doing and spread the word, they will either change or no longer have the power they do.

    if you are a musician thinking of signing on with an RIAA lable, follow the url below, and keep in mind you wont get any play on internet radio stations.

    http://www.therecordindustry.com/courtney_artist _r ights.htm
    (/. puts the little space after r)

  • 802.11a or 802.11b _local only_ broadcasts? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AgTiger ( 458268 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @10:59AM (#3795505) Homepage
    Pirate radio stations tend to be low power, and serve their _local_ neighborhood. They can't be heard across the country, and thus they tend to avoid notice, so long as they don't interfere with other stations, and don't massively offend the listeners who discover them.

    Since 802.11a and 802.11b traffic lives in parts of the spectrum where independent unlicensed transmissions are expected and are the norm, it might be possible to fly under the RIAA's radar with the following configuration:

    - Set up a server with a 10.0.0.0/8 addressing space.
    - DON'T hook it to the internet.
    - Include a DHCP Server.
    - Include a web page to describe what people have reached and allow links to software to listen.
    - Include a submissions directory so anyone who wants to drop an MP3 or OGG on you, CAN.
    - Play interesting music that YOU like, and even DJ the broadcast. (Voice changer might be desireable.)

    Basically, all I'm doing is taking ideas presented in the movie "Pump Up the Volume" [imdb.com] and thinking about how those ideas could be implemented using more modern methods. Done correctly, this could even be done with a mobile configuration in a vehicle.


    'Cast Hard! ;-)


  • Traceability (Score:3)

    by Salamander ( 33735 ) <jeff AT pl DOT atyp DOT us> on Sunday June 30, 2002 @11:12AM (#3795552) Homepage Journal

    Each node might not know where the root of the tree is, but they do know who their parent is. If the RIAA said "tell us who your parent is or we'll assume you're the root", iteratively, they'd find the root PDQ. This contrasts with a network like Freenet, which is designed so that each node really doesn't know where content came from and therefore isn't of much help identifying its real origin. Mesh-structured networks in general also avoid the fragility inherent in tree-structured networks.

    Streamer is not just reinventing the wheel; it's reinventing square wheels when round ones already exist.

  • If it worked. Which it doesn't

  • Untraceable may not help (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dstone ( 191334 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @01:04PM (#3796019) Homepage
    It's also fairly untraceable because each streamer 'host' doesn't reveal any information about whether it is actually the transmitter or not, or where it is getting it's signal from.

    I'm taking a guess here, but as long as you're still one of the upstream hosts serving an unauthorized/unroyaltied/unlicensed stream of audio, you might be shut down. Would it really matter if you were the root of a tree where the stream originated from? Even if you're not the root, you're copying and re-serving the stream yourself.

    "Did you steal this music?"
    "No, I just found this stream and I'm sharing it."

  • So how is this a solution? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TrentC ( 11023 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @01:18PM (#3796068) Homepage
    A friend of mine and I were talking about setting up an internet radio site (or at least a recurring program); as a result, I started following the whole CARP/webcasting royalty thing. I wrote letters (yes, actual, physical letters) to my Congressmen -- I even got a reply from Senator Gordon Smith (not a form letter-type reply, either). I was pleased to see the Librarion of Congress throw out the initial recommendation, but disappointed to see the revised recommednation get accepted.

    The guys who wrote this program are completely playing into the RIAA's hands -- by basically stating that their intent is to screw the RIAA and avoid paying the fees, they give the RIAA more ammo to get even more draconian measures adopted.

    I'm not clear why everyone thinks a P2P (ooh, buzzword time!) streaming radio solution is going to make the situation any better. Our energies are better spent talking to our representatives and showing them that internet radio promotes choice and diversity in music (both for RIAA-sponsored and non-RIAA sponsored artists), pointing out that lots of smaller business will have a positive effect on the economy (not only the RIAA, but ASCAP and BMI get more royalty fees from lots of small "stations"; plus people have to buy recording/mixing/broadcasting equipment, there's those broadband connections...) I have proof in my hand that at least one Senator will listen.

    Jay (=
    • I think the best argument against yours it to point out that "money talks" and that our opponents are very wealthy.

      Sure you may have found an honest politician but the majority (who don't know http from ftp) need financial support to keep their jobs. They would gladly sacrifice non-profit internet radio in order to stay in office, and I don't blame them.

      Music listeners have already been branded as thieves. This won't change no matter what we do in the public sphere--the music companies control the agenda. If we don't buy CDs b/c on principle, the drop in sales will be blamed on priacy. If most write our representatives they will think we just want something for free, where the music industry supports jobs.

      There is no winning in the political or the economic spheres. Let them legislate. Let the laws become draconian. Only then will regular people see them for their true colours.
      -b
  • I haven't seen a post on it so far, but I may have just missed it on a day that I wasn't checking /.

    Anyway...

    - a p2p live music sharing system that's just blown my mind.
    - open source
    - much more searchable than other such software
    - transfers only high-quality 44.1/16 (shn-compressed) audio
    - the traded artists want you to take part in it (all traded artists encourage taping/trading)

    This is a wonderful piece of software, built by the people, benefits bands, and doesn't have jack to do with record companies.

    I definitely suggest giving it a spin, you're likely to discover a band you'll love:

    http://sourceforge.net/furthurnet
    http://www.fu rthurnet.com/

    -Jackson

  • Streamer, anyone get it working?

    All the channels seem to drop out, even the lowest 24k channels. Good idea, if it Worked.

  • Working for me... (Score:2, Informative)

    by SailFly ( 560133 )
    I downloaded both the "streamer.zip" and the "streamer_source.zip" files which have links on the page.

    streamer.exe is a console program that handles the network connections, and also is a basic web server interface, so you connect to your localhost IP (127.0.0.1) to the streamer port (8464).

    I downloaded the Oddcast DSP plug-in for Winamp, and it seems to work ok.

    This could easily be ported to *nix and other platforms. However, when compiling the Visual Studio project I get:

    fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'IAINLIB.h': No such file or directory

    The author's e-mail account is also "IAIN", so I assume this is his own library of utility routines. I tried to work around it, and it appears this header has error handling and some necessary typedef declarations.

    I wish the author would share these files at SourceForge.net to provide a forum for more discussion and easier distribution via FTP or CVS.

    I would be an interested developer, and would contribute to this project in some way.

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