7 ms·

Very interesting. Does this approach actually work in practice? Also what happens if illegal content gets scooped up into the index?

KoftaBob 3y ago
Based on my understanding of how the torrent DHT works, all that’s happening is that youre requesting metadata on various torrent info hashes, but that’s not the same thing as actually downloading/seeding the content in the torrent itself.
- no_time 3y ago
  >but that’s not the same thing as actually downloading/seeding the content in the torrent itself. The question is whether Law Enforcement and "Intellectual Property" watchdogs make a meaningful distinction between the two in their monitoring tools.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Seeing as they get so much other stuff wrong, it's highly likely they don't care.
Akashic101 3y ago
Considering the screenshot on the linked page shows The Flash among other movies I dont think the author is too concerned about that. I believe its similar to the area that Plex and Jellyfin operate in, mainly that they just provide the framework and tools, what the user does with them is not in their control
- EGreg 3y ago
  How will governments police it when MaidSAFE and other systems distribute totally encrypted content?
  - colinsane 3y ago
    BitTorrent already supports encrypted peer connections.
    - mixmastamyk 3y ago
      Doesn’t seem to work, our ISP has sent nastygrams despite this and site on https.
      - colinsane 3y ago
        > How will governments police it when MaidSAFE and other systems distribute totally encrypted content? so isn't the answer then "they'll continue to police it the way they already do"? i don't know what a MaidSAFE is, but the context of this discussion is the DHT, and so public (indexable) torrents, and so however you encrypt the content doesn't matter because you have to provide the decryption method to anyone who asks for any of the previous context (public torrents/indexes) to make any sense.
        mixmastamyk 3y ago
        Encrypted connections shouldn’t decrypt for anyone who asks, otherwise they have no reason to exist. The weak point seems to be the tracker or filename, but been told https hides that so not sure.
    - no_time 3y ago
      Encryption without authentication in this case is as good as XORing all outgoing data with a fixed key. So basically useless...
      - colinsane 3y ago
        yes, exactly. BitTorrent supports encryption. swapping it out for some other encryption mechanism won't change anything when it comes to government policing because that's already not where the weaknesses lie for those sharing p2p content today. so what was GP's point?
lobsterslive 3y ago
It works well in practice. The DHT protocol includes announce messages that broadcast when new files are shared on BitTorrent. It then includes a "geometric" way to find people who are sharing those files. It doesn't include the files themselves, just the torrents which include a file list and location hashes. If you listen to BitTorrent's DHT network, you'll build an index of everything shared on BitTorrent (over time), this will include commercial movies and such.
- grepfru_it 3y ago
  >It works well in practice. Hi, I worked on gnutella and lots of P2P systems in the early 00s. This will devolve into noise and spam as the number of users who adopt this feature pass a critical mass. With a fully decentralized system, there are no gatekeepers, and as such, there is no way to filter counterfiet items. While your client will present with you the data you are searching for, you will find out (usually hours later) that your supposed pirated download is actually just a 2hour loop of Rick Astley (still piracy though, so you are still winning.. i think?).
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
    But you can still pick the option with the most seeders, which should get you what you're looking for most of the time. The spam problem isn't nonexistent within the centralized services either.
    - grepfru_it 3y ago
      Hehe in a popular P2P client from the '03-'05 period, we said the same thing. Turns out there are groups with large amounts of funding which will provide a fake seed count. Either just faking metadata making it seem there was a high seed count but bogus nodes which would refuse connections (which was actual behavior from clients with bad ISPs - which we saw valid cases in asia or east europe) or would actually stream data (and some of them were on good hosts seeding multi mbps of bad data) What i'm saying is it becomes a numbers game and those fake seeders usually have deep pockets financed by the content creators themselves
quickthrower2 3y ago
I think illegal (unlawful?) content is its raison d’etre. With the odd exceptions of thinks like linux distros, LLM weights etc. to take pressure off centralized servers.

KoftaBob 3y ago

Based on my understanding of how the torrent DHT works, all that’s happening is that youre requesting metadata on various torrent info hashes, but that’s not the same thing as actually downloading/seeding the content in the torrent itself.

no_time 3y ago
>but that’s not the same thing as actually downloading/seeding the content in the torrent itself. The question is whether Law Enforcement and "Intellectual Property" watchdogs make a meaningful distinction between the two in their monitoring tools.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Seeing as they get so much other stuff wrong, it's highly likely they don't care.

Akashic101 3y ago

Considering the screenshot on the linked page shows The Flash among other movies I dont think the author is too concerned about that. I believe its similar to the area that Plex and Jellyfin operate in, mainly that they just provide the framework and tools, what the user does with them is not in their control

EGreg 3y ago
How will governments police it when MaidSAFE and other systems distribute totally encrypted content?
- colinsane 3y ago
  BitTorrent already supports encrypted peer connections.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Doesn’t seem to work, our ISP has sent nastygrams despite this and site on https.
    - colinsane 3y ago
      > How will governments police it when MaidSAFE and other systems distribute totally encrypted content? so isn't the answer then "they'll continue to police it the way they already do"? i don't know what a MaidSAFE is, but the context of this discussion is the DHT, and so public (indexable) torrents, and so however you encrypt the content doesn't matter because you have to provide the decryption method to anyone who asks for any of the previous context (public torrents/indexes) to make any sense.
      - mixmastamyk 3y ago
        Encrypted connections shouldn’t decrypt for anyone who asks, otherwise they have no reason to exist. The weak point seems to be the tracker or filename, but been told https hides that so not sure.
  - no_time 3y ago
    Encryption without authentication in this case is as good as XORing all outgoing data with a fixed key. So basically useless...
    - colinsane 3y ago
      yes, exactly. BitTorrent supports encryption. swapping it out for some other encryption mechanism won't change anything when it comes to government policing because that's already not where the weaknesses lie for those sharing p2p content today. so what was GP's point?

lobsterslive 3y ago

It works well in practice. The DHT protocol includes announce messages that broadcast when new files are shared on BitTorrent. It then includes a "geometric" way to find people who are sharing those files. It doesn't include the files themselves, just the torrents which include a file list and location hashes. If you listen to BitTorrent's DHT network, you'll build an index of everything shared on BitTorrent (over time), this will include commercial movies and such.

grepfru_it 3y ago
>It works well in practice. Hi, I worked on gnutella and lots of P2P systems in the early 00s. This will devolve into noise and spam as the number of users who adopt this feature pass a critical mass. With a fully decentralized system, there are no gatekeepers, and as such, there is no way to filter counterfiet items. While your client will present with you the data you are searching for, you will find out (usually hours later) that your supposed pirated download is actually just a 2hour loop of Rick Astley (still piracy though, so you are still winning.. i think?).
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
  But you can still pick the option with the most seeders, which should get you what you're looking for most of the time. The spam problem isn't nonexistent within the centralized services either.
  - grepfru_it 3y ago
    Hehe in a popular P2P client from the '03-'05 period, we said the same thing. Turns out there are groups with large amounts of funding which will provide a fake seed count. Either just faking metadata making it seem there was a high seed count but bogus nodes which would refuse connections (which was actual behavior from clients with bad ISPs - which we saw valid cases in asia or east europe) or would actually stream data (and some of them were on good hosts seeding multi mbps of bad data) What i'm saying is it becomes a numbers game and those fake seeders usually have deep pockets financed by the content creators themselves

quickthrower2 3y ago

I think illegal (unlawful?) content is its raison d’etre. With the odd exceptions of thinks like linux distros, LLM weights etc. to take pressure off centralized servers.