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I used to work at a BitTorrent monitoring company, “often used for piracy” is a very favourable explanation. 99.9999% of torrent activity is piracy. My guess i

I used to work at a BitTorrent monitoring company, “often used for piracy” is a very favourable explanation. 99.9999% of torrent activity is piracy. My guess is that’s the reason.

encryptluks2 4y ago
By that reasoning shouldn't encryption also be banned?
- altairprime 4y ago
  Less than 99.9999% of encryption is for piracy, so no, the reasoning isn’t transitive from torrenting to encryption.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    But near 100% of piracy uses encryption
- colordrops 4y ago
  No, the vast majority of encryption is not used for illegal activity.
  - BudaDude 4y ago
    Only because the technology was pushed forward and adopted for the masses. P2P is used a lot of normal actives (Zoom, Discord, Games, Collaboration apps). It's just when it comes to sending large amounts of data, that Apple wants to have a say in it.
    - newaccount74 4y ago
      I don't think Apple cares about sending data in general. Apple allows other P2P file sharing apps on the app store (Resilio Sync or Möbius Sync come to mind).
    - frumper 4y ago
      Funny that you mention normal activities that are all allowed on Apple as examples of good P2P uses. Most of the sending large amounts of data P2P uses are illegal file sharing.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      Oh sure, I use torrent for legitimate things as well, e.g. Internet Archive downloads and Linux ISO image downloads, and don't think that Apple should ban the apps. I'm just pointing out that the analogy doesn't work.
  - sieabah 4y ago
    Are you sure? VPNs probably carry that torrent traffic with encryption. Onion sites which carry the most illegal content on Earth also use encryption. Your reasoning is aligned with banning encryption because in all cases where something is illegal they tend to use some level of encryption.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      We are very very sure. HTTPS adoption across the web is at 95%. Onion and VPN traffic are rounding errors compared to the amount of traffic on the web.
    - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
      The phrase used was "The vast majority" Consider the fact that every major website uses encryption in transit (HTTPS). Consider how much data Netflix streams to users. Those video streams are encrypted. I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of encryption is for protecting non-pirated and legal content.
      - cronix 4y ago
        And everything on Netflix is also available, unencrypted, on torrent.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vlod 4y ago
  Maybe you forgot that the communication to https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com is encrypted.
throwaway14356 4y ago
that is because you keep promoting it as such. In reality there is no piracy without a day in court.
- kube-system 4y ago
  In reality, Apple isn't a criminal prosecutor.
UnpossibleJim 4y ago
Most game file transfers are torrent based, so if you've ever played an MMO you've been involved in a torrent. Definitely not piracy. This type of torrent transfer goes for a lot of updating processing as companies can't handle the bandwidth.
- sshine 4y ago
  Does the App Store prohibit the use of a custom torrent client for downloading game data? This is a legitimate use-case for torrenting, but also one that does not warrant general-purpose torrent clients in the App Store.
  - UnpossibleJim 4y ago
    I'm just going off of the statement %99.99999whatever of torrent use is for illegal purposes, which is a BS statistic.
    - malux85 4y ago
      We were monitoring 18.5 million torrents, over 292 million IP addresses, it took a Cassandra cluster of 18 nodes just to store this information. It was writing 18,000 writes a second, 24/7. This information was not pulled off pirate sites, it was sucked out of the distributed hash table directly. I singlehandedly wrote the code that did all of this, I have first hand knowledge of the entire system. Part of my job was also to analyse this data, I spent a year writing reports, clustering this info, generating realtime demand graphs and segmenting different media types. Just because you cherry pick some data about games distributed with bittorrent doesn't mean you can extrapolate entire network conclusions from that - that's first grade BS statistics right there Piracy was probably higher than 99.99999%. It's the vast, vast, vast majority
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    I've seen indirect evidence of custom torrent clients in games in the App Store. More directly: Resilio Sync is in the App Store and uses a variation of torrent tech for personal file sync. It can't be easily used as a general-purpose torrent client with its focus on personal sync.

I used to work at a BitTorrent monitoring company, “often used for piracy” is a very favourable explanation. 99.9999% of torrent activity is piracy. My guess is that’s the reason.

encryptluks2 4y ago

By that reasoning shouldn't encryption also be banned?

altairprime 4y ago
Less than 99.9999% of encryption is for piracy, so no, the reasoning isn’t transitive from torrenting to encryption.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  But near 100% of piracy uses encryption
colordrops 4y ago
No, the vast majority of encryption is not used for illegal activity.
- BudaDude 4y ago
  Only because the technology was pushed forward and adopted for the masses. P2P is used a lot of normal actives (Zoom, Discord, Games, Collaboration apps). It's just when it comes to sending large amounts of data, that Apple wants to have a say in it.
  - newaccount74 4y ago
    I don't think Apple cares about sending data in general. Apple allows other P2P file sharing apps on the app store (Resilio Sync or Möbius Sync come to mind).
  - frumper 4y ago
    Funny that you mention normal activities that are all allowed on Apple as examples of good P2P uses. Most of the sending large amounts of data P2P uses are illegal file sharing.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Oh sure, I use torrent for legitimate things as well, e.g. Internet Archive downloads and Linux ISO image downloads, and don't think that Apple should ban the apps. I'm just pointing out that the analogy doesn't work.
- sieabah 4y ago
  Are you sure? VPNs probably carry that torrent traffic with encryption. Onion sites which carry the most illegal content on Earth also use encryption. Your reasoning is aligned with banning encryption because in all cases where something is illegal they tend to use some level of encryption.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    We are very very sure. HTTPS adoption across the web is at 95%. Onion and VPN traffic are rounding errors compared to the amount of traffic on the web.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    The phrase used was "The vast majority" Consider the fact that every major website uses encryption in transit (HTTPS). Consider how much data Netflix streams to users. Those video streams are encrypted. I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of encryption is for protecting non-pirated and legal content.
    - cronix 4y ago
      And everything on Netflix is also available, unencrypted, on torrent.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vlod 4y ago
Maybe you forgot that the communication to https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com is encrypted.

throwaway14356 4y ago

that is because you keep promoting it as such. In reality there is no piracy without a day in court.

kube-system 4y ago
In reality, Apple isn't a criminal prosecutor.

UnpossibleJim 4y ago

Most game file transfers are torrent based, so if you've ever played an MMO you've been involved in a torrent. Definitely not piracy. This type of torrent transfer goes for a lot of updating processing as companies can't handle the bandwidth.

sshine 4y ago
Does the App Store prohibit the use of a custom torrent client for downloading game data? This is a legitimate use-case for torrenting, but also one that does not warrant general-purpose torrent clients in the App Store.
- UnpossibleJim 4y ago
  I'm just going off of the statement %99.99999whatever of torrent use is for illegal purposes, which is a BS statistic.
  - malux85 4y ago
    We were monitoring 18.5 million torrents, over 292 million IP addresses, it took a Cassandra cluster of 18 nodes just to store this information. It was writing 18,000 writes a second, 24/7. This information was not pulled off pirate sites, it was sucked out of the distributed hash table directly. I singlehandedly wrote the code that did all of this, I have first hand knowledge of the entire system. Part of my job was also to analyse this data, I spent a year writing reports, clustering this info, generating realtime demand graphs and segmenting different media types. Just because you cherry pick some data about games distributed with bittorrent doesn't mean you can extrapolate entire network conclusions from that - that's first grade BS statistics right there Piracy was probably higher than 99.99999%. It's the vast, vast, vast majority
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  I've seen indirect evidence of custom torrent clients in games in the App Store. More directly: Resilio Sync is in the App Store and uses a variation of torrent tech for personal file sync. It can't be easily used as a general-purpose torrent client with its focus on personal sync.