5 ms·

It would be nice to have a torrent system where noone that is uploading has all the data for a specific torrent (or at least they arent uploading the whole file

It would be nice to have a torrent system where noone that is uploading has all the data for a specific torrent (or at least they arent uploading the whole file to any specfic person... probably would be harder to prosecute in the event that some files become illegal)... You could take 1% of the billonaire's fortune and give it to the "victims" and everyone would be happy.

smabie 6y ago
No one can have all the files and BitTorrent works just fine. Though, I don't see why anyone wouldn't want the whole file. What's the point if you can't actually use what you downloaded?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  You could or could not have all files, but you would never upload a whole file to a single user (ie: part of a file is possibly meaningless if you upload random chunks)
anaganisk 6y ago
Im not sure how that would work technically speaking if there is just a single seeder and leecher, also don't you become an accomplice for helping?
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  every seeder could technically have all the files but would only share random chunks with each user
bakies 6y ago
Can't this already be true? You do not need the entire torrent in order to seed downloads. Clients leeching know which blocks seeders are providing and will download what's available.
pgsandstrom 6y ago
Sounds a bit like freenet: https://freenetproject.org https://freenetproject.org
luckylion 6y ago
If you share significant parts of a copyright protected work, you're probably still on the hook. For most things, it's not actually the files that are copyrighted, it's the content encoded in them. At some point, I suppose things get very fuzzy, e.g. you're just uploading a single second of an album, but I don't know who practically useful that would be.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
Uploading parts of illegal files is equivalent from a security perspective. It seems like there's no advantage to your proposal. The Whonix wiki has an incredible amount of information on topics such as this: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Documentation https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Documentation Basically, it's very hard to protect the security of users when a government seeks to prosecute dissidents. There's a lot to take into account. A simple "we saw an upload from IP address x.y.z.w containing <illegal file>" will be enough to hang whoever it is. On second thought, I guess it would be a nice addition to let users control which files they're seeding, rather than the whole torrent. I'm just not sure it's enough to get them off the hook in the event of legal troubles.
- jayd16 6y ago
  Ideally, you'd want to come up with some way to pack files such that many files share the same chunks. Perhaps you could make the act of sharing (all or most of the) legal and illegal files indistinguishable.
  - p1mrx 6y ago
    You could have a protocol where every block of the file is actually two "random" blocks XOR'd together, but this doesn't really work. If you create a new 1GB torrent, you'll need 1GB of new (never seen before) blocks with ~100% probability, so it will be obvious who's seeding the data. Or you could make the block size smaller (e.g. 1 bit) and tell the lawyers to piss off because 0 and 1 are public domain.
    - wmf 6y ago
      See https://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/waldman:tangler-large.pdf https://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/waldman:tangler... and https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
      - ficklepickle 6y ago
        Off-topic meta discussion about that second link you posted. It is an example of a fourth-level municipal domain[0], which are a relic of the past internet. Sooke is a municipality on Vancouver Island. Sadly, new domains of this sort were discontinued in 2010. A cool relic of the internet past and massive geek cred. I remember these URLs from my childhood and they make me very nostalgic. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ca#Third-level_(provincial)_and_fourth-level_(municipal)_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ca#Third-level_(provincial)_a...
marcinzm 6y ago
>probably would be harder to prosecute in the event that some files become illegal Cynically I'd assume they'd just use it to add a conspiracy to commit a crime charge to the list since you technically need to coordinate with other people.
AdamJacobMuller 6y ago
No reason you can't do this with the existing protocol. I'm not sure how much it helps from a legal POV and i suppose it depends upon your threat model, but, its fairly trivially doable.
nabla9 6y ago
If you want to circumvent the law, you must find a legal technicality, not a technical technicality. The key weakness in every smartass technical technicality to circumvent the law is forgetting that intent is core concept when the law is interpreted in the court. Did the defendant have intent to do X? Did the defendant use some purpose build technique to avoid doing the most literal interpretation X ? .. Yeah, defendant is guilty of doing X.
- spockz 6y ago
  IANAL, but afaik this depends on whether the legislation is English law or Latin law from origin. Where Latin law is more about the intent and english, and therefore US law, is more about the letter of the law. Perhaps the distinction is along a different axis but this is how I remember.
  - nabla9 6y ago
    You are thinking about common law (originated in England) vs civil law (based on Roman law) In both systems intent is very important in criminal cases. The real difference is between criminal law and contract law. In contract law. In contract law the intention is fixed by the language of the contract document. It matters less if matter if one party didn't intent to violate the contract. It is what it is.
    - spockz 6y ago
      Thank you for clarifying this. Do you have a link to some overview material on the differences between laws in different countries? Is the distinction between criminal and contract law the same in every region?
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  "must find a legal technicality, not a technical technicality." I think we are ok as long as there are no precedents? Isnt that how smartass laws work?
  - 6y ago

smabie 6y ago

No one can have all the files and BitTorrent works just fine. Though, I don't see why anyone wouldn't want the whole file. What's the point if you can't actually use what you downloaded?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
coronadisaster 6y ago
You could or could not have all files, but you would never upload a whole file to a single user (ie: part of a file is possibly meaningless if you upload random chunks)

anaganisk 6y ago

Im not sure how that would work technically speaking if there is just a single seeder and leecher, also don't you become an accomplice for helping?

coronadisaster 6y ago
every seeder could technically have all the files but would only share random chunks with each user

bakies 6y ago

Can't this already be true? You do not need the entire torrent in order to seed downloads. Clients leeching know which blocks seeders are providing and will download what's available.

pgsandstrom 6y ago

Sounds a bit like freenet: https://freenetproject.org https://freenetproject.org

luckylion 6y ago

If you share significant parts of a copyright protected work, you're probably still on the hook. For most things, it's not actually the files that are copyrighted, it's the content encoded in them. At some point, I suppose things get very fuzzy, e.g. you're just uploading a single second of an album, but I don't know who practically useful that would be.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

Uploading parts of illegal files is equivalent from a security perspective. It seems like there's no advantage to your proposal. The Whonix wiki has an incredible amount of information on topics such as this: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Documentation https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Documentation Basically, it's very hard to protect the security of users when a government seeks to prosecute dissidents. There's a lot to take into account. A simple "we saw an upload from IP address x.y.z.w containing <illegal file>" will be enough to hang whoever it is. On second thought, I guess it would be a nice addition to let users control which files they're seeding, rather than the whole torrent. I'm just not sure it's enough to get them off the hook in the event of legal troubles.

jayd16 6y ago
Ideally, you'd want to come up with some way to pack files such that many files share the same chunks. Perhaps you could make the act of sharing (all or most of the) legal and illegal files indistinguishable.
- p1mrx 6y ago
  You could have a protocol where every block of the file is actually two "random" blocks XOR'd together, but this doesn't really work. If you create a new 1GB torrent, you'll need 1GB of new (never seen before) blocks with ~100% probability, so it will be obvious who's seeding the data. Or you could make the block size smaller (e.g. 1 bit) and tell the lawyers to piss off because 0 and 1 are public domain.
  - wmf 6y ago
    See https://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/waldman:tangler-large.pdf https://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/waldman:tangler... and https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
    - ficklepickle 6y ago
      Off-topic meta discussion about that second link you posted. It is an example of a fourth-level municipal domain[0], which are a relic of the past internet. Sooke is a municipality on Vancouver Island. Sadly, new domains of this sort were discontinued in 2010. A cool relic of the internet past and massive geek cred. I remember these URLs from my childhood and they make me very nostalgic. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ca#Third-level_(provincial)_and_fourth-level_(municipal)_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ca#Third-level_(provincial)_a...

marcinzm 6y ago

>probably would be harder to prosecute in the event that some files become illegal Cynically I'd assume they'd just use it to add a conspiracy to commit a crime charge to the list since you technically need to coordinate with other people.

AdamJacobMuller 6y ago

No reason you can't do this with the existing protocol. I'm not sure how much it helps from a legal POV and i suppose it depends upon your threat model, but, its fairly trivially doable.

nabla9 6y ago

If you want to circumvent the law, you must find a legal technicality, not a technical technicality. The key weakness in every smartass technical technicality to circumvent the law is forgetting that intent is core concept when the law is interpreted in the court. Did the defendant have intent to do X? Did the defendant use some purpose build technique to avoid doing the most literal interpretation X ? .. Yeah, defendant is guilty of doing X.

spockz 6y ago
IANAL, but afaik this depends on whether the legislation is English law or Latin law from origin. Where Latin law is more about the intent and english, and therefore US law, is more about the letter of the law. Perhaps the distinction is along a different axis but this is how I remember.
- nabla9 6y ago
  You are thinking about common law (originated in England) vs civil law (based on Roman law) In both systems intent is very important in criminal cases. The real difference is between criminal law and contract law. In contract law. In contract law the intention is fixed by the language of the contract document. It matters less if matter if one party didn't intent to violate the contract. It is what it is.
  - spockz 6y ago
    Thank you for clarifying this. Do you have a link to some overview material on the differences between laws in different countries? Is the distinction between criminal and contract law the same in every region?
coronadisaster 6y ago
"must find a legal technicality, not a technical technicality." I think we are ok as long as there are no precedents? Isnt that how smartass laws work?
- 6y ago