7 ms·

Popcorn Time (or the next leeching app) isn't good for torrents and sharing in general. If everybody switched to this type of software, there won't be enough se

by jeswin 13y ago

Popcorn Time (or the next leeching app) isn't good for torrents and sharing in general. If everybody switched to this type of software, there won't be enough seeds. Or maybe seeders will predominantly be those with some commercial interests (malware, ads?); and torrents will no longer be truly peer to peer. Add: The old FAQ is gone, but quote from http://www.ibtimes.com/popcorn-time-movie-streaming-netflix-pirated-content-explained-tech-novice-1560827 http://www.ibtimes.com/popcorn-time-movie-streaming-netflix-... : "According to Popcorn Time’s FAQ, you do indeed seed (upload) parts of the movie while you watch. Popcorn Time does state that ‘your movies will stay buried in a secret folder somewhere in your drive until you restart your computer. Then it will be gone for good.’"

sillysaurus3 13y ago
Interesting... Do you have a link to more info about this? Specifically regarding the malware?
- jeswin 13y ago
  I was speculating that if everybody switched to streaming torrents, nobody will bother seeding. Except those who have some interest in being a seeder. I do think that many (non-technical) people being unaware of seeding or ratios helped torrents a lot. They watched movies, and they became seeders.
ilhackernews 13y ago
Actually. Those that are watching the movies are actually seeding those movies at the same time :)
- mistercow 13y ago
  It's really unusual though to have a seed ratio of 1 by the time a torrent has finished downloading. There's no way this is sustainable unless you make the movies hang around after they're watched and continue seeding into the future.
  - johnpowell 13y ago
    Isn't this just piggybacking on normal torrents on TPB. There are tons of seeds already by people that want to keep a copy locally and seed for months.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    The key difference between Popcorntime and 'normal' torrents is that it's not "by the time a torrent has finished downloading" but "by the time you have finished watching the movie". In order to use Popcorntime, you'd pretty much have to have a connection speed where downloading the movie is significantly faster than watching it (a few minutes at a reasonable speed/quality) and by the time the movie ends you have downloaded it once but uploaded many times. And given the way the tech works, you can ignore ADSL users with restricted upload speeds and other similar groups - the total average is disproportionally influenced by high-speed users; so if for every dozen ADSL users there's a single FTTH user, then the total still works out well - 10 users with a ratio of 0.1 are equalized by a single user with a ratio of 10.
  - furyofantares 13y ago
    > It's really unusual though to have a seed ratio of 1 by the time a torrent has finished downloading. If you are streaming, you will very likely be downloading faster than you can play the file (people who download slower won't be streaming). So you will be seeding a lot longer.
sergiotapia 13y ago
This is incorrect. By design, torrent participants both download AND upload at the same time. If you don't believe me, check your network activity using the tool that comes with your OS. You'll see significant upload transfer. :)
- mburns 13y ago
  I think you're missing his point. The success of bittorrent as a swarming protocol is that each client tries to download the least available snippet of the file it wants. This increases the chances that other clients will be able to find 100% of the pieces of a file as they go through the download process. With popcorn and other streaming-torrent hybrids, the clients requests are biased towards the snippets of file that the user is about to watch. This makes the beginning of the movie widely available (as all clients start there to begin a stream) but increases the chance that bits of the middle or end of the movie aren't available when a given client needs them.
  - gonzagonza 13y ago
    This is a _very_ interesting comment. There _must_ be a switch on the logic of the streaming. If you want to "stream" the torrent, you will need to start with the first chunks But i think we can do something nice about it. We need to add some transfer stats to the downloading and use it. You have the file xyz.mp4 with 20 chunks. First, you leech the first 4 chunks (first 20 minutes of the xyz.mp4 file) Then you analyze aprox. transfer speed. Let's say you are downloading 2 minutes of movie per second. If you already downloaded the first 20 minutes, you have at least 15 minutes until you need to start downloading the chunk number 5. We should use those 15 minutes to download the last chunks (20, 19, 18...) After 15 minutes you start downloading chunk number 5, 6, 7... and repeat the process. I think this could work fine, YTS should do something about this.
    - mrtree 13y ago
      I agree that we should try to make all chunks of a file available for the other peers, but also all files that participate in the p2p network. I am not sure which kind of structured p2p system popcorn time sues, but if it was a DHT it should make sure that there is replication of the rarest files works too. So that people who want to watch weird east European movies also have the opportunity, just as those who want to watch the latest blockbuster. I hope popcorn time does not immediately delete cached chunks...what a waste.
derefr 13y ago
The Popcorn Time "catalog" isn't composed of the sort of long-tail movies that need more seeds to stay healthy, though. It's the head of the distribution: the movies which already have thousands of seeders each, and at most 100 leechers at a time.
Link- 13y ago
There is some work being done on having an option to continuously seed the movie even after watching it, but nothing is crystal clear so far.
furyofantares 13y ago
I think it actually should work better than the usual method. With the old use case, you'll be uploading for the duration of the download, and once it's done, you might stop seeding and start watching your movie or show. But while streaming, you aren't likely to bother to stop seeding while watching, especially if the app doesn't go out of the way to interrupt your show to tell you it's done downloading. So while your average user may be uploading bits in the worst possible order required to keep the file alive, they will likely be uploading them for much longer.
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  It should keep seeding until the app is closed (so on average potentially a lot longer than the duration of the movie). They could also make it so the app minimizes to the tray, which could lead to even longer average seeding time (some people just close an app because they don't use it right then).
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
We already have a solution for that - cryptocurrencies. This is the exact situation in mind when bitcoin was created. Seeder gets some bitcoins for streaming the torrent, and leechers pay for the movie in bitcoins. You can seed and download at the same rate to come even. Nobody loses, there's the incentive to seed, everyone's happy. Now we only need system to incorporate crypto into such system. Maybe even into popcorn time fork.
- skrebbel 13y ago
  This is a nice idea, but if you're going to pay money for content, doesn't it make a lot more sense to pay it to a legit publisher/distributor rather than a pirate?
  - dagw 13y ago
    Absolutely. The problem is, as always, convincing the legit publisher/distributor to sell you the product you want at a price you find reasonable.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Barring ethical and legal issues, no, not really; the pirates offer a better product. And in some places, they're the only providers at all.
  - slowmotiony 13y ago
    Sure - providing you live in the US and you have a way to pay it to a legit publisher. Where I live, hulu/netflix/itunes are blocked.
  - nissehulth 13y ago
    Yes, but it seems the publishers aren't that interested in my money. While I do live in a country where I can at least watch Netflix, there's so much content that's not available to me due to artificial licensing constrains. Piracy is not the answer, but perhaps the only way to get some people to realize that the world is changing.
  - orclev 13y ago
Fuxy 13y ago
That could be adjusted. Maybe program it to say keep the last 5 things you streamed and constantly seed them every time you have the app open. That way torrents with lots of watchers would be more seeded since their in watched cache of a lot of people.
mrtree 13y ago
AFAIK popcorn time is also seeding.
vr000m 13y ago
It depends on the size of the swarm or systems consuming the content. For very small swarms, it would be imperative for everyone to contribute, but as the size becomes larger it may not be needed. Since a streaming app is deadline aware, which is different from a normal torrent. A normal torrent works on fetching either rarest-first or respond-first chunks, while a streaming app tries to fetch chunks linearly and as soon as possible. It is likely to fetch the same chunk from several places (basing them off RTTs (bandwidth-delay) and availability). Moreover, if popcorn inherits BT's congestion control algorithm (LEDBAT, which is a scavenger algorithm) we might not even see spikes in network traffic. LEDBAT: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6817 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6817

by jeswin 13y ago

sillysaurus3 13y ago

Interesting... Do you have a link to more info about this? Specifically regarding the malware?

jeswin 13y ago
I was speculating that if everybody switched to streaming torrents, nobody will bother seeding. Except those who have some interest in being a seeder. I do think that many (non-technical) people being unaware of seeding or ratios helped torrents a lot. They watched movies, and they became seeders.

ilhackernews 13y ago

Actually. Those that are watching the movies are actually seeding those movies at the same time :)

mistercow 13y ago
It's really unusual though to have a seed ratio of 1 by the time a torrent has finished downloading. There's no way this is sustainable unless you make the movies hang around after they're watched and continue seeding into the future.
- johnpowell 13y ago
  Isn't this just piggybacking on normal torrents on TPB. There are tons of seeds already by people that want to keep a copy locally and seed for months.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  The key difference between Popcorntime and 'normal' torrents is that it's not "by the time a torrent has finished downloading" but "by the time you have finished watching the movie". In order to use Popcorntime, you'd pretty much have to have a connection speed where downloading the movie is significantly faster than watching it (a few minutes at a reasonable speed/quality) and by the time the movie ends you have downloaded it once but uploaded many times. And given the way the tech works, you can ignore ADSL users with restricted upload speeds and other similar groups - the total average is disproportionally influenced by high-speed users; so if for every dozen ADSL users there's a single FTTH user, then the total still works out well - 10 users with a ratio of 0.1 are equalized by a single user with a ratio of 10.
- furyofantares 13y ago
  > It's really unusual though to have a seed ratio of 1 by the time a torrent has finished downloading. If you are streaming, you will very likely be downloading faster than you can play the file (people who download slower won't be streaming). So you will be seeding a lot longer.

sergiotapia 13y ago

This is incorrect. By design, torrent participants both download AND upload at the same time. If you don't believe me, check your network activity using the tool that comes with your OS. You'll see significant upload transfer. :)

mburns 13y ago
I think you're missing his point. The success of bittorrent as a swarming protocol is that each client tries to download the least available snippet of the file it wants. This increases the chances that other clients will be able to find 100% of the pieces of a file as they go through the download process. With popcorn and other streaming-torrent hybrids, the clients requests are biased towards the snippets of file that the user is about to watch. This makes the beginning of the movie widely available (as all clients start there to begin a stream) but increases the chance that bits of the middle or end of the movie aren't available when a given client needs them.
- gonzagonza 13y ago
  This is a _very_ interesting comment. There _must_ be a switch on the logic of the streaming. If you want to "stream" the torrent, you will need to start with the first chunks But i think we can do something nice about it. We need to add some transfer stats to the downloading and use it. You have the file xyz.mp4 with 20 chunks. First, you leech the first 4 chunks (first 20 minutes of the xyz.mp4 file) Then you analyze aprox. transfer speed. Let's say you are downloading 2 minutes of movie per second. If you already downloaded the first 20 minutes, you have at least 15 minutes until you need to start downloading the chunk number 5. We should use those 15 minutes to download the last chunks (20, 19, 18...) After 15 minutes you start downloading chunk number 5, 6, 7... and repeat the process. I think this could work fine, YTS should do something about this.
  - mrtree 13y ago
    I agree that we should try to make all chunks of a file available for the other peers, but also all files that participate in the p2p network. I am not sure which kind of structured p2p system popcorn time sues, but if it was a DHT it should make sure that there is replication of the rarest files works too. So that people who want to watch weird east European movies also have the opportunity, just as those who want to watch the latest blockbuster. I hope popcorn time does not immediately delete cached chunks...what a waste.

derefr 13y ago

The Popcorn Time "catalog" isn't composed of the sort of long-tail movies that need more seeds to stay healthy, though. It's the head of the distribution: the movies which already have thousands of seeders each, and at most 100 leechers at a time.

Link- 13y ago

There is some work being done on having an option to continuously seed the movie even after watching it, but nothing is crystal clear so far.

furyofantares 13y ago

I think it actually should work better than the usual method. With the old use case, you'll be uploading for the duration of the download, and once it's done, you might stop seeding and start watching your movie or show. But while streaming, you aren't likely to bother to stop seeding while watching, especially if the app doesn't go out of the way to interrupt your show to tell you it's done downloading. So while your average user may be uploading bits in the worst possible order required to keep the file alive, they will likely be uploading them for much longer.

higherpurpose 13y ago
It should keep seeding until the app is closed (so on average potentially a lot longer than the duration of the movie). They could also make it so the app minimizes to the tray, which could lead to even longer average seeding time (some people just close an app because they don't use it right then).

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

We already have a solution for that - cryptocurrencies. This is the exact situation in mind when bitcoin was created. Seeder gets some bitcoins for streaming the torrent, and leechers pay for the movie in bitcoins. You can seed and download at the same rate to come even. Nobody loses, there's the incentive to seed, everyone's happy. Now we only need system to incorporate crypto into such system. Maybe even into popcorn time fork.

skrebbel 13y ago
This is a nice idea, but if you're going to pay money for content, doesn't it make a lot more sense to pay it to a legit publisher/distributor rather than a pirate?
- dagw 13y ago
  Absolutely. The problem is, as always, convincing the legit publisher/distributor to sell you the product you want at a price you find reasonable.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Barring ethical and legal issues, no, not really; the pirates offer a better product. And in some places, they're the only providers at all.
- slowmotiony 13y ago
  Sure - providing you live in the US and you have a way to pay it to a legit publisher. Where I live, hulu/netflix/itunes are blocked.
- nissehulth 13y ago
  Yes, but it seems the publishers aren't that interested in my money. While I do live in a country where I can at least watch Netflix, there's so much content that's not available to me due to artificial licensing constrains. Piracy is not the answer, but perhaps the only way to get some people to realize that the world is changing.
- orclev 13y ago

Fuxy 13y ago

That could be adjusted. Maybe program it to say keep the last 5 things you streamed and constantly seed them every time you have the app open. That way torrents with lots of watchers would be more seeded since their in watched cache of a lot of people.

mrtree 13y ago

AFAIK popcorn time is also seeding.

vr000m 13y ago

It depends on the size of the swarm or systems consuming the content. For very small swarms, it would be imperative for everyone to contribute, but as the size becomes larger it may not be needed. Since a streaming app is deadline aware, which is different from a normal torrent. A normal torrent works on fetching either rarest-first or respond-first chunks, while a streaming app tries to fetch chunks linearly and as soon as possible. It is likely to fetch the same chunk from several places (basing them off RTTs (bandwidth-delay) and availability). Moreover, if popcorn inherits BT's congestion control algorithm (LEDBAT, which is a scavenger algorithm) we might not even see spikes in network traffic. LEDBAT: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6817 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6817