BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of Traffic 788
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Funny)
The MPAA's response... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The MPAA's response... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The MPAA's response... (Score:5, Funny)
"Wow," I thought. "It must be nice to have a net worth up there at $0. Thanks to credit cards I'm still paying off a sandwich I ate 5 years ago!"
Re:OT: Growing Pains II TV Movie (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? He's not liberal.
Not Kirk Cameron, no. But the fundamental irony of the conservative religious right is best summed up in the wisdom of a T-shirt: "Jesus was a liberal Jew".
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Informative)
This kind of software is not ilegal here in Brazil, for instance.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Funny)
You misspelled "while bankrupting everyone"
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Funny)
PeerGuardian
"100% accuracy , 0% CPU usage, blocking of ALL protocols, kernel-level
yeah, I unplug my network cable occasionally too
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa, there. By that logic, we shouldn't be able to sue those evil companies that make those nasty guns. Are you saying that it's the USER, not the creator, that's at fault when a program or firearm is misused?! Preposterous!
[/sarcasm]
Re:Prediction: The creators get sued anyway (Score:5, Funny)
Sue BitTorrent application authors like Blizzard? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't find it very likely that BitTorrent authors will be sued. Many Linux distributions use BitTorrent to distribute Linux ISOs. Many download sites, like Filerush.com, offer torrents as alternatives in addition to normal HTTP/FTP download sites.
Heck, even the entertainment industry could use BitTorrent-like technology to offer video or music on demand without having to invest truckloads of money into bandwidth.
Not at all. For one, banning tools like P2P clients just because some people are using them for illegal activities is silly. If that's the path we are going down, why don't we ban stuff like knives and guns? Or PCs. Or the Internet!Wheher BitTorrent was designed with copyright infringement in mind is completely irrelevant. It's seeing many useful legal purposes. I use it for completely legal downloads all the time.
Blame the people, not the tools.
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.
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.
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like you can't legally download a digital copy of a movie you just watched on TV, even if it was broadcast over public airwaves and you were a good consumer and watched every commercial.
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Up here in Canada, if I buy a CD and lend it to my friend, and he then burns a copy for himself, and gives me my CD back, that's legal. But if I burn a copy of my CD and give him the copy, that's illegal.
I shit you not.
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:5, Informative)
17 USC 1008 exemption (Score:4, Informative)
S: 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:4, Informative)
You don't understand it.
It's not a matter of sender/recipient. It's who caused the download to occur. And that is generally the downloader, since no one made him initiate the download. The Marobie-FL case discusses this a bit.
Now, if your computer had been taken over by malware and was d/l'ing things without you causing it to, THEN, you might get off the hook.
I suggest taking a look at the Napster decision. It flatly says that downloaders are infringing on the reproduction right. And it's by no means the only such case. It's a pretty uniform holding.
Besides being more in accordance with traditional copyright law (for books and such), it also makes more technical sense: the uploader's computer is the one that actually copies the bits, puts them into packets and sends them. After all, how could the receiver make a copy if he didn't have one in the first place?
You didn't read 17 USC 101, which defines a LOT of terms in the law; common definitions often do not apply.
A copy is a tangible object. Bits are not a copy. The hard drive or RAM in question is. When you download, you are causing a copy to be made by reproducing the intangible work into a tangible medium within your control. All that is needed to reproduce is to have access to the work. Not access to a copy embodying the work. It's no different than if someone were to read a book aloud and you wrote down what they said; that's illegal.
N.b. that a single act of downloading may result in numerous instances of infringement, by various parties. But if you caused the download to occur, at least some of that is going to be your problem.
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:4, Informative)
And then I'd also say that the person with the wishlist is a contributory and vicarious infringer based upon the direct infringement of the uploader.
So they're both liable for copyright infringement.
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.
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OT but, What's Legal to dl??? (Score:5, Informative)
See, courts and judges are not extraordinarily stupid, as a rule. They will see right through such feeble facades as that and still be able to throw the book at you.
It's a bit like what went on during the 50's-70's with segregation. When obvious discrimination was overturned, subtle methods were tried. The courts overturned them just as easily, because what's illegal is the underlying behavior, whether accomplished through blatant or clever means.
And your idea isn't even clever.
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.
I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:4, Informative)
That's a LOT of content right there. Can anyone think of items I'm missing?
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.
Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:4, Interesting)
My biggest concern of course is the inevitable take-down notice we'll 'accidentally' get. We're a non-profit with no money for legal folks, and slightly techophobic directors, so the possibility of legal threats could prevent this.
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.
Re:Do those uses make sense? (Score:5, Informative)
In fact... google searches torrent files. [google.com]
Actually... thats a nifty feature...
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.
Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:5, Funny)
google: "torrent anime" 239,000
google: "torrent anime tentacle" 29,000
That's the unhealthy 10%
Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately "torrent" in that context doesn't mean what you think it means.
Oh yea. (Score:4, Funny)
C&D time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:C&D time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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' ).
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.
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).
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
This means... (Score:4, Insightful)
so little HTTP bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:so little HTTP bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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
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!
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.
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
Can you be sued for only transferring part? (Score:4, Interesting)
How much material needs to come from your computer in order for them to be able to sue you? If I provided only a second of content (say for a movie) how liable am I then for damages since I'm not providing the whole work?
Re:Can you be sued for only transferring part? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have the following situations:
You're a seeder of a torrent, so you posses the whole file - at which point you're obviously busted, because you possess copyrighted material obtained illegally.
You're a peer on the network (or a leech as most are) and you're downloading a given torrent, and uploading to others as well. You're intent is obviously to get the entire file or collection of files. I would have to imagine you're busted here as well, a copyrighted piece of material is just that, and unless you're using it for education purposes - copyright law treats one second the same as a minute or an hour of material. Since your intent is to obtain the whole file, and aid others in the same, I think they have you.
Again IANAL, but it seems logical...
--J
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...
I'm not stealing anything (Score:4, Funny)
Phew, good thing I only use it to engage in copyright infringement.
35% bittorrent (Score:5, Funny)
35% bittorrent
64% web
1% other
By content:
99% p0rn
1% Slashdot
Nobody is suing file sharers. (Score:4, Insightful)
BT is not secure (Score:4, Informative)
Now, I love torrents. I use them for mostly anime, which the companies have, so far, given us a polite nod to do so. Just take them down when they put in a request, and no scary lawyers. (Although I am confident that this is going to change)
Of course, torrent has also made people used to convenient downloading of big in-demand files.
So, what will the *AA's going after BTs do? The same thing that going after p2p has done. Create a new, more secure, more stealthy "sequal" to bittorrent.
Re:BT is not secure (Score:4, Informative)
BitTorrent works like this. Download a
For the MPAA to get IP addresses, all they have to do is connect to the tracker and say "Hey, gimme some IP addresses", and the tracker will gladly oblige. Encrypting the tracker traffic would just mean nobody could eavesdrop on exactly *which* IP addresses the MPAA was receiving.
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.
Re:It's easy to track down bit torrent downloaders (Score:4, Interesting)
The best answer is the one running the tracker, but then, they're not providing any content.
So while it's easy to find out who's sending data, it won't be so easy on the legal side to actually prosecute them for it.
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!
Link is slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Has Major ISP started to throttle BT? (Score:4, Informative)
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:4, Informative)
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.
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]
What other options are there? (Score:4, Interesting)
a google doesn't show much
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c2coff=1&q=ano
Can any bit torrent clients/plugins use anonymous proxies?
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.
BT and Blizzard (Score:4, Informative)
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:Torrents and the *AA (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but it DOES allow them to see every single IP address of every single peer, seed, and client using that .torrent... which gives them enough ammo to go to ISPs and begin scaring people with threat letters.
let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly no reason not believe them, its not like they have a conflict of interest or anything. Nothing to see here, move along please!
You have nothing to worry about (Score:4, Insightful)
What's that, you say? You want to transmit copyrighted bits? Then be warned: with BT, the "man" is watching you, and if you're doing something illegal or unethical, you may be caught. There's enough freely distributable bits out there to keep you happy for the rest of your life. Try it out.
MPAA is already issuing ultimatums (Score:4, Informative)
I got nailed (Score:5, Interesting)
I asked the guy if Cox was monitoring my usage, and he said no, that "someone else" had called them to complain. I assume this someone else was the MPAA or somebody working for them.
Warning to Cox/Cable customers (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're doing any P2P activity, you should shop around for a more responsible ISP that fights to protect their customers' privacy. Generally speaking, the cable Internet providers are much less respectful of customer privacy than the telco companies. This is why I will not use Cox or Comcast.
Re:Death to BT (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe people will find a better method for p2p warez stuff, but right now, BT is great for getting a file quickly because everyone's sharing some of the load.
"file sharing" != "warez file sharing"
Sad day for file sharing? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Serious question to programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
I had a successful software company throughout the 80s and the early 90s. We sold over 100k copies of our software (which wasn't bad for our tiny operation), and I estimate that there were at least ten to a hundred times more pirated copies in circulation. Even with the piracy, the market was plenty big to provide for us. Piracy actually helped promote our product, call attention to the company and spawn sales. We weren't happy about the piracy but we also knew that it compensated for a lack of resources to advertise on a large scale.
To increase revenue we continually improved our products and released upgrades. We also provided an ancient concept called "support" that our customers appreciated greatly.
To answer your question specifically, I don't think any "true" programmer would ever be discouraged by piracy. That's like asking a painter if he is bummed out that too many people were appreciating his art but not hanging it on their walls.
Generally speaking, profit margin in software is *enormous*. Any product worth large scale pirating will be a product that also generates substantial legitimate revenue. I suspect one reason why publishers are griping about piracy is that the quality of a lot of software today is such that it's not worth the price they're asking in the first place, and they rely on advertising and insider deals to move product, as opposed to the quality and value of the product itself.
My contention is that these days, piracy is more a form of protest than theft. Publishers are not producing products that have the same value they used to. You have companies like Quicken which shake down their customer base each year for a few hundred bucks to install a stupid tax table that should be free. That's bullshit.
The software business may be dying, but it's not dying because of piracy. It's dying because it has matured like other industries and become controlled by a small number of "mafia" publishers and distributors of inferior products who gain market share via unfair trade practices and massive ad campaigns. Those companies are compelled to fight piracy moreso to protect their dynasty and squelch competition, than they are at risk of suffering any substantive financial losses due to piracy.