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BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of Traffic
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Nov 04, 2004 04:00 PM
from the thats-a-lot-of-bits dept.
from the thats-a-lot-of-bits dept.
Pranjal writes "According to a reuters article on Yahoo, BitTorrent accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet -- more than all other peer-to-peer programs combined -- and dwarfs mainstream traffic like Web pages." The article goes on to talk about how BT is no longer beneath the radar of those who like to sue file sharers.
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Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
At least under U.S. law, it's a bit more difficult to find the makers liable as long as the software is capable of being used for innocent uses, which I think (BitTorrent) surely is."
But that doesn't mean that they won't be sued into bankruptcy anyway. Anybody want to bet that is (MP/RI)AAs next move? Sue the creator and coders of the various BitTorrent applications to bully people who might consider writing useful P2P software in the future?
Of course I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for anybody caught infringing on software/movie/music copyrights with BitTorrent. It's not anonymous by any means -- and the trackers provide a nice centralized target. Isn't it clear that BitTorrent wasn't designed with copyright infringement in mind?
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Informative)
This kind of software is not ilegal here in Brazil, for instance.
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Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer in in the question itself: don't develop/store in USA.
This kind of software is not ilegal here in Brazil, for instance.
It's not "illegal" in the United States either. I was saying they would be sued not charged. Huge difference. Anybody can sue you for anything. Unless they are grossly abusing the system (and the Judge orders them to pay defense costs) it is going to cost you money to mount your legal defense.
And the "just write this software overseas" argument is old. Most of us aren't willing to give up our American citizenship and move overseas just to escape legal liabilities. I'm not saying that to flame -- it's just the truth. There are more constructive suggestions then "do it elsewhere".
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Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Funny)
You misspelled "while bankrupting everyone"
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Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:5, Informative)
The torrent announcer is basically just a web CGI. A properly made wget command will give you the list of all the IPs, without having to mess with actually connecting to the swarm.
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Re:Sue BitTorrent application authors like Blizzar (Score:5, Insightful)
They *could*, but they won't, because it deprives them the means to control distribution.
This is an industry whose MO has been to resist *every* new technology, whether it's beneficial to them or not - look at the lawsuit launched by Disney/Universal against the VCR - they wanted it banned, caput, illegal... even though today home video sales make up a huge percentage of their profits, they still hate it, because they no longer control the distribution (once they sell a video, they can't stop you from selling it to someone else.)
Look at the music industry, who fought tooth-and-nail against *radio*, claiming it would end music (after all, who would pay to go to a concert when you can get the music for free in your own home, and if nobody will pay for live music, how will musicians earn money?) It wasn't until they discovered they could control the airwaves that they finally (and begrudgingly) gave in - until the advent of the home tape recorder gave them new reason to fear.
The entertainment industries don't *care* about any potential benefits new technology will bring them, they're stuck in their old business model ways, and fear anything that might possibly provide competition for their cartels.
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You misread. (Score:5, Insightful)
No no no. He said it was clear that BitTorrent wasn't designed with copyright infringement in mind. And that's why copyright infringers should use something else. Because it is sub-optimal for stealing. The distributors (supernova or whatever) will be wide open targets.
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Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Informative)
The university through which my own university's connectivity is provided, has quite a hefty firewall setup, with the capacity to classify traffic based on content rather than port usage. They then later used this to setup traffic shaping and limit p2p activity to a mere fraction of what it was before.
As the hotlinking whore I am, I will just link to their week-long sampling of traffic, which shows that BitTorrent accounted for 44% of outgoing traffic. This is before traffic shaping. No graphs of after-traffic shaping has been provided (yet).
In: http://www.cc.utu.fi/verkko/maarat/sisaan.png [cc.utu.fi]
Out: http://www.cc.utu.fi/verkko/maarat/ulos.png [cc.utu.fi]
Translation:
Muut = Other
Rest should be self-explanatory.
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C&D time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:C&D time? (Score:5, Informative)
how easy it is to host it somewhere where you can post such files/links(torrents) without fear? just about just as easy.
for example, piratebay gets such threats regularly. here's one of their responses http://static.thepiratebay.org/sega_response.txt [thepiratebay.org].
how easy it is for a litigation company to milk a publisher for money, by offering them a service that they'll scan the net for infringiments and then bill them (the publisher) for every c&d they send(and sell it to the ceo's as if this created automagically more income for the publisher, however, conviently for the litigation company the effect of these c&d's on sales can't be measured at all so they got a good milking cow right there without any means for the client to measure their 'performance' ).
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Re:C&D time? (Score:5, Informative)
If you really want to shut down a torrent you need to shut down the tracker. The tracker needs a fair bit of bandwith (noticable by ISPs) and is necessary for the whole thing to work. That said, trackers require an order of magnitude (or two) less bandwidth than people who host files directly, so even these guys can fall under the ISPs radar. Legal challenges can be spotty (some ISPs remove the files immediatly, others (in foreign countries) don't care), and suing the user is obviously not a viable option except as a way to extort money from 8 year old girls.
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Solution: Publisher Anonymity BT with I2P (Score:5, Informative)
"Given that BT requires a link to a .torrent, how hard
is it for companies to send a C&D to the ISP/owner of any site hosting illegal .torrent links? "
A few people are working on an anonymous BT tracker tool system for I2P [i2p.net].*ONLY* the BT tracker will be anonymous in this subtool that is being worked on as seen here on an update from 2 days ago [i2p.net]. This would allow for publisher anonymity and should be fast since the tracker only coordinates the peers, with the peers doing the heavy lifting.
Of course having full anonymity (for the peers as well) would be useful , and maybe possible, but as your post suggsted - BT is vunerable at the tracker/publisher source. This is a solution to that vunerability, and in any event I2P is fully anonymous itself, if you want peer anonymity for a file :).
This BT tool is not ready yet for I2P, but I2P itself is making remarkable progress so I would not be surprised if it is ready within less than a few months. For more information you can also find the #I2P channel, with the #Freenet channel, on irc.freenode.net , I2P's chat network and IIP (I2P and the Metro IIP are linked).
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Re:C&D time? (Score:5, Informative)
YMMV of course. I'm not advocating digital theft, nor am I criticizing it. I'm just curious as to why people aren't protecting themselves. Maybe I'm just fooling myself that they work at all, but I'd like to think they do.
-- Foz
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so little HTTP bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:so little HTTP bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:so little HTTP bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I wrong in finding that hard to believe?
I'm with you on this one. I'm watching a big chunk of the internet. My top 3 numbers are as follow:
25% http
6% gnutella
5% bittorrent
Maybe what I'm looking at is atypical, but I'm just not seeing the numbers reported. The article does not seem to list any source for its numbers.
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Someone has to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank god.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you guys though that America was the home of the free.
Re:Thank god.... (Score:5, Informative)
I got a C&D letter from my ISP, who got one from AOL TimeWarner. My kid downloaded a movie via Bittorrent, and my account was at risk. It wasn't a legal thing other than my TOS with my ISP forbids downloading copyright protected works. Plus, I'm not convinced that trading of copyrighted works without some form of payment to the copyright holder is a good thing. Basically, what you're doing is showing them how large a market there is for thier crap. I'd rather everyone just boycott the crappy content (I gave the kid hell for risking my connection for "The Butterfly Effect") so they get the idea to produce better stuff, not try and suck all the downloaders into paying.
I now only allow bittorrent when I need an ISO of ubuntu or fedora or something.
If you're Canadian, be careful.
Soko
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Re:Thank god.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, considering that almost *everything* on the internet is protected by copyrighted (thank you, Berne Convention), your ISP must only allow you to visit Project Gutenberg, right?
What the hell are you doing reading this?!? It's copyrighted! Get the hell off the damn internet before your ISP shuts you down!
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Re:Thank god.... (Score:5, Informative)
Downloading is protected under, at least, Part VIII of the Copyright Act, which is "private copying". From it, you can infer that you can download as much music as you like. Private copying arose from the days of tape cassettes; it gives musical copyright holders the right to levy blank audio media as a form of remuneration for private copying. It only covers music. Movies and software downloads can violate copyright without permission.
Uploading was upheld on an evidentiary matter. There was insufficient evidence to show that the user intended to upload the music, but rather uploading seemed to be a side-effect of using the peer to peer software, according to the judge.
To be clear, the judge did not "legalize" uploading. He simply stated that there was insufficient evidence to show that the user intended to upload, in other words, he never had the mental culpability (ie. mens rea [wikipedia.org]) to have infringed the copyright.
So, as another posted noted, you can have a shared folder if it is unlikely to be shown that you intended to share its contents, and you can likely download music under the private copying provisions of the Copyright Act.
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So let me add this up... (Score:5, Funny)
50% is pr0n
10% is SPAM
4% is actual content
And the remaining 1% is slashdot talking about the 4% of legit websites
Re:So let me add this up... (Score:5, Funny)
Of that
Although I'd be willing to be
(furthermore, I left out the proportion of
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35% bittorrent (Score:5, Funny)
35% bittorrent
64% web
1% other
By content:
99% p0rn
1% Slashdot
It's easy to track down bit torrent downloaders (Score:5, Informative)
It's only a matter of time until they seriously crack down on Bit Torrent which is too bad because it's the only p2p app that will pull down 160KB/sec for me.
The secret is to allow for unlimited d/l and u/l but then create a perl script to monitor netstat -na and kill those connections via iptables which have a high recv q. Otherwise they'll suck down all your upload bandwidth.
using torrent == more probes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, I don't see this kind of spike when getting (legal) concert recordings from bt.etree.org. But that's probably subject to change without notice at any point. Fortunately, my only open port (ssh) is configured with libwrap to block access from any but a few specific IPs, and I keep an eye on my logs just in case. But I definitely think this is something people should be aware of. Using BT does make you a more visible target for attacks, and not just legal ones!
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Great legal BT links? (Score:5, Informative)
This [archive.org] site is excellent.
If you have never used BT and watched how it consumes bandwidth, you really ought to check it out. Pretty neat.
Tools like Etherape [sourceforge.net] will draw funky realtime network connectivity maps. Watching your computer talk to that many other peers makes you feel pretty exposed.
Azureus [sourceforge.net] is my preferred graphical client under Linux. Any other favorites?
Has Major ISP started to throttle BT? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sandvine's [sandvine.com] product is being speculated as the culprit. More details here [gnomeblog.com]. Is there anyway around this? I don't want to be stuck downloading new distros (which are coming soon) with slow BT.
Television Shows (Score:5, Interesting)
I have in the past downloaded shows when my VCR or DVR crapped out and didn't tape them so I was curious of the legalities of this.
Re:Television Shows (Score:5, Interesting)
The situation is quite different for over the air free broadcasts.
In fact it's far from clear to me that's it's illegal to download those in the first place.
And don't tell me the it's because commercials are edited out of the downloads: if I want to I have the right to ask someone to edit commercials out of a tv show I recorded, and then watch the show (for example someone who's time is quite valuable could hire someone to do this).
I can see arguments both ways for this, but it's not a clear one in any direction, so lawsuits are quite unlikely.
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Someone figure this out for me... (Score:5, Funny)
Darn those furriners! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always liked Cohen's attitude, and his transparency about Bittorrent's lack of privacy. I do though wonder if Slovenian law might differ from that of the United States.
Here is the study (Score:5, Informative)
... that apparently started all of this. It was published by Cache Logic, who make traffic statistics boxes.
http://www.cachelogic.com/research/slide1.php [cachelogic.com]
Who here runs bittorrent 24/7/365? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, who here runs bittorrent 24/7/365? Every college guy (like myself) should be running bittorrent. If not, you're missing some good stuff.
Consider the source of this number (Score:5, Insightful)
BitTorrent isn't "just" for illegal distribution (Score:5, Interesting)
I even took the time to write a Plucker BitTorrent mini-FAQ [rubberchicken.org] for the users who are misinformed about the technology itself. We've had great success overall, but it has definately tapered off. When we make our next release, it'll spike to 3-5GiB/day served up as before.
You can see some of our snazzy usage graphs [plkr.org] of the BitTorrent traffic as well.
I also modified our tracker [plkr.org] so you could sort and click to download the files directly from the tracker webpage itself, instead of using the normal download page [plkr.org] from our site. Thanks to some helpful http and rsync mirrors, the load is spread out nicely, and the mirror links are randomized to make sure it spreads evenly.
If anyone is interested in seeding for us, or being an http or rsync mirror for Plucker, please contact me.
Torrents and the *AA (Score:5, Informative)
The thing to consider is that unlike Kazaa-like networks where the big bad *AA could search for their albums / movies and find out how many illegal files a user has by viewing their shared folder, torrents exist only for a single entity at a time, so the *AA trying to sue someone for downloading [insert crappy pop album here] would only be able to sue for that particular infringment, and they wouldn't be able to prove the user has 10,000 other albums on their system.
This, I would think, makes it dramatically harder, and alot less financially viable for them to start dragging BitTorrent users downloading illegal files into court, and is probably why it hasn't happened yet.
Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:5, Funny)
Presidential Debates, funny commercials
You put a comma where "aka" should be.
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Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Do those uses make sense? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't it make more sense to get these from "the source"?
In case you haven't been paying attention, the "source" is usually providing the torrent. (Go to any major Linux distribution to check. I dare you.)
The gutenburg mirrors seem like the best place for this.
But God-aweful slow. Distributing the bandwidth allows for a larger number of files to be moved faster.
Might as well add that with BT there is a chance that your GTA demo is really a mis-labelled Halo demo.
Again, many of these torrents are now provided by "the source". Since they seed the torrent, you can be sure that it's properly labeled. Improper labeling is usually a side-effect of getting it from "questionable" channels.
Google would be better for most of this.
Poppycock. Google only caches HTML. It's difficult to say if even they have the bandwidth to cache multimedia files.
For most of this, it makes more sense to get the files elsewhere. For now, BT makes the most sense for copyright infringement materials, where for the most part no-one dares to host them on typical static web pages or download sites.
Again, this is poppycock. PDF files can be *huge* for freely available information. "The BeFS FileSystem" and "Mozilla Platform Developers Guide" are just two examples off the top of my head. And only a few months ago, I mirrored creative commons PDFs for Slashdot, although I don't remember what they were.
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Re:Do those uses make sense? (Score:5, Informative)
AtariAmarok completely missing the point of BitTorrent and has probably never used it.
BT is crap for most copyright infringement materials. Why? Actually, for the exact reason stated--"for the most part no-one dares to host them on typical static web pages or download sites."
BT is nothing like napster or kazaa or that sort of P2P app. There is no search function in the BT client. Most BT links are on typical web pages. (Ok, they're not static--the list of torrents is probably in a database or flat file and page generated. But then again, look around the web, the typical web page these days is not static.)
As far the best source for ISOs, Gutenburg, game demos...
WHERE THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
No, not Earth, silly...this web site. /.
Hello, McFly. Ever hear of the slashdot effect? Ever hear of so many people hitting a server at the same time the poor thing dies? DDoS?
So when the DNF demo comes out, and a million fanboys on DSL at home and T-1s at work all go to download it at the same time, "the source" is the ABSOLUTELY WORST PLACE ON THE INTERNET to try to grab a copy.
Now, follow me, over the rainbow.
Imagine...it's easy if you try...an internet where we harness the bandwidth of all those fanboys. A system where instead of the flow of information getting choked off, the flow actually increases as more people download the file!
AtariAmarok mentions mirrors. Well, what if--I know this is crazy, but hang with me here--what if not only did each person downloading a file share that file to others to take advantage of downstream and upstream bandwidth, so that each download becomes a mirror, but what if this could happen simultaneous to download. Each user could share whatever piece of the file available locally without waiting for the download to complete. Each download, instead of being part of the problem, is part of the solution!
If only such a wonder system of distribution existed. Oh wait, it does.
AtariAmarok does make one valid point. How do you know what you are downloading is what you think you are downloading?
You don't. But then again, someone could hack the DNS server so when you try to visit slashdot you actually end up at some goat-related web site.
So, for AtariAmarok the solution is to unplug your modem, turn off your computer, and encase your hard drive in carbonite.
For the rest of us, BT is here. Ask your doctor if BT is right for you.
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Sad day for file sharing? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Can you be sued for only transferring part? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not actually true. According to the 1976 Copyright Act, as interpreted by the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives (Source [sbl-site.org]):
(9) Multimedia Material: Up to 10% or 3 minutes, whichever is less, in the aggregate of a copyrighted motion media work may be reproduced without permission. Up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds, of the music and lyrics from an individual musical work (or in the aggregate of extracts from an individual work), whether the musical work is embodied in copies, or in audio or audiovisual works, may be reproduced without permission.
Considering the way BitTorrent works, a possible defence might be that you're not copying more than 30 seconds of the work from any one source, so your actions are legal. Of course, this is completely against the spirit of the law and would result in further restrictions just as soon as the Government got around to passing them...
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