Researchers Outline Targeted Content Poisoning For P2P Data 201
Diomidis Spinellis writes "Two USC researchers published a paper in the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Computers that describes a technique for p2p content poisoning targeted exclusively at detected copyright violators. Using identity-based signatures and time-stamped tokens they report a 99.9 percent prevention rate in Gnutella, KaZaA, and Freenet and a 85-98 percent prevention rate on eMule, eDonkey, and Morpheus. Poison-resilient networks based on the BitTorrent protocol are not affected. Also the system can't protect small files, like a single-song MP3. Although the authors don't say so explicitly, my understanding is that the scheme is only useful on commercial p2p distribution systems that adopt the proposed protocol."
Researcher is the wrong word. (Score:5, Insightful)
Abstract: Today's peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are grossly abused by Illegal distributions of music, games, video streams, and popular software. These abuses have resulted in heavy financial loss in media and content industry. Collusive piracy is the main source of intellectual property violations within the boundary of P2P networks. This problem is resulted from paid clients (colluders) illegally sharing copyrighted content files with unpaid clients (pirates). Such an on-line piracy has hindered the use of open P2P networks for commercial content delivery. We propose a proactive poisoning scheme to stop colluders and pirates from working together in alleged copyright infringements in P2P file sharing. The basic idea is to detect pirates with identity- based signatures and time-stamped tokens. Then we stop collusive piracy without hurting legitimate P2P clients. We developed a new peer authorization protocol (PAP) to distinguish pirates from legitimate clients. Detected pirates will receive poisoned chunks in repeated attempts. A reputation-based mechanism is developed to detect colluders. The system does not slow down legal download from paid clients. The pirates are severely penalized with no chance to download successfully in finite time. Based on simulation results, we find 99.9% success rate in preventing piracy on file-level hashing networks like Gnutella, KaZaA,Area, LimeWire, etc. Our protection scheme achieved 85-98% prevention rate on part-level hashing networks like eMuel, Shareaz, eDonkey, Morpheus, etc. Our new scheme enables P2P technology for building a new generation of content delivery networks (CDNs). These P2P-based CDNs provide faster delivery speed, higher content availability, and cost-effectiveness than using conventional CDNs built with huge network of surrogate servers.
This isn't unbiased in the least. Sure, arguably it is "research" but calling them researchers from an university makes them seem neutral at best.
Re:Researcher is the wrong word. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was thinking the same thing. But not necessarily based on them being biased, but for this: Why would anyone want to 'research' this? I can understand making a protocol resilient to poisoning (same as making a computer resilient to virus attacks, there will always be a-holes trying to mess things up wether legal or illegal), or making it faster, adding some nifty features perhaps. But poisoning to prevent illegal sharing with the pathetic argument that this hinders commercial distribution? What kind of a researcher is that? A RIAA paid one I'd guess. Possibly as valuable as those 'researchers' for tobacco companies who said there was no health problem with smoking.
Re:Researcher is the wrong word. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Researcher is the wrong word. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
How much are they charging for the research details? Is the RIAA willing to buy out this information? If its from a university then someone is looking for grant money.
I, for one, welcome our new RIAA-cheating overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Researcher is the wrong word. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, here's the thing: by having this information out in the open, people can look at how it's done and look at the protocols they use, and find out whether such vulnerabilities could exist. Sure, it might not help anyone right now if they're vulnerable, but it does mean that the protocols that people use in the future are a lot less likely to have such weaknesses that allow for data corruption.
Copyright or not, when you have the ability to corrupt data on a whim, the network is quickly rendered useless.
Re:Researcher is the wrong word. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Aren't there laws against DOS attacks? If you jammed the RIAA's network you would surely go to jail if caught. They should leave the law enforcement to the police. Its too bad nobody can seem to get them on racketeering. They extort millions (heh, literally apparently) from the american public and at the same time have not paid millions of dollars owed to the artists that they supposedly represent.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I see one good thing about this; they positively could not have poisoned Freenet, (unless they are talking Freenet 0.7, maybe) but every additional Freenet 0.5 user makes the network faster and more anonymous; by trying to screw with it, they made it a little better.
plug: gotthefire.net
Re:Researcher is the wrong word. (Score:5, Funny)
of COURSE they aren't real researchers. The summary writer mistakenly thought the study authors were from UCLA, which would mean they would have been some of the smartest, unbiased, amazing people in the world. However, they were actually from USC, meaning they were spoiled, unprofessional, RIAA lapdogs who also smell.
And yes I happened to go to UCLA, but that is besides the point.
Re: (Score:2)
We developed a new peer authorization protocol (PAP) to distinguish pirates from legitimate clients. Detected pirates will receive poisoned chunks in repeated attempts. A reputation-based mechanism is developed to detect colluders. The system does not slow down legal download from paid clients. The pirates are severely penalized with no chance to download successfully in finite time.
Oh, this cracks me up. Did anyone notice notice how this doesn't mention bittorrent, which AFAIK makes up 90% of the possibly infringing content? Of course, anyone who's seen a torrent client in action knows that clients sending bad data are banned fast.
Now that I think about it, this "researcher" should rank high on the "Best ways to make money and improve your karma" list. He's obviously a better way to drain RIAA money than lawsuits :)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
... with no chance to download successfully in finite time.
That is mathematically speaking a pretty silly statement (as there obviously is some non-zero chance of obtaining each piece), moreover so considering the next sentence which says they had a 0.1% failure rate.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
SLASHDOT SUMMARY IS WRONG (Score:5, Informative)
I'm part way through the research paper, the article summary is just plain wrong.
There is no vulnerability here. They CANNOT poison Gnutella, KaZaA, and Freenet, eMule, eDonkey, Morpheus, or any other existing network with this technique. To quote the paper: Presently none of these P2P networks has built with satisfactory support for copyright protection.
The "problem" they want to "solve" is that existing networks to not possess adequate support for poisoning attacks. This paper proposes creating a NEW additional P2P network. They propose deliberately building in special support to ENABLE poisoning attacks.
While I'm sure the RIAA will eagerly read it over while dreaming of world conquest by releasing their own deliberately crippled "legal P2P network" where they get paid for each authorized client-to-client transfer. As far as most readers here are concerned, this is a completely non-newsworthy story, the contents of this paper are completely irrelevant and harmless. There is absolutely nothing new or surprising about the fact that you can deliberately make your software insecure and you can deliberately leave it vulnerable to poisoning. Yes, a P2P new network could be built Defective By Design.
-
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure if I missed the last line of the summary in my haste to read to the PDF file, or if the summary was updated, but the last line of the summary is correct and it pretty well refutes the rest of the summary-as-written. The earlier statements in the summary about success rates in blocking particular existing networks are wrong. Those blocking percentages are modeled results *if* those sorts of networks were to become paid access networks implemented this deliberate poisoning capability into their d
Re: (Score:2)
Could they be sneakier than big pharma?
(Btw. I only read the last page of the FA, honestly)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
These abuses have resulted in heavy financial loss in media and content industry.
Bullshit. It's been shown that music pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates, and the same is probably true of movie pirates and software pirates, too. They've declared war on their best customers.
Actually (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, poisoning P2P networks as a commercial venture could be prosecuted as theft-by-deception.
Stealing bandwidth is a crime. Downloading songs isn't, if you aren't profiting form it.
Re:Actually (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Downloading songs isn't, if you aren't profiting form it."
Depends on your locale, doesn't it? Not all laws are the same in every location.
Re: (Score:2)
And secondly, how exactly would one make a profit from downloading a song?
Resale of something you got free, ie. radio-copied mixtapes, bootleg cd/dvds, hosting files on a private pay access ftp, etc.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Resale of something you got free, ie. radio-copied mixtapes, bootleg cd/dvds, hosting files on a private pay access ftp, etc.
Yeah, there are HUGE profits from selling radio copied mix tapes. (Especially if you use the new 8-track format.)
Really, these are things you literally couldn't give away. Anyone who wants these and isn't fussed about copyright has no problem downloading it himself, or swapping with a friend.
Re: (Score:2)
That's distribution.
Re: (Score:2)
If you download something and then sell it, I'd call that prima facie evidence that the downloading itself was done for commercial purposes.
Re: (Score:2)
First of all there is no requirement that you be profiting from copyright infringement for you to have broken the law. And secondly, how exactly would one make a profit from downloading a song?
This may surprise you, but the law is not the same in every country. In spite of industry attempts...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The article says the method works only on P2P networks that have adopted the authors' proprietary PAP protocol. That's not likely to be many of them.
The dawn of a new age (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans had discovered methods to speedily and automatically transmit mountainous volumes of data. It was a new frontier, a utopia where information was shared peacefully between the people who wanted to see it. And what was its downfall? Not the anarchists, or the communists, or the Islamic fundamentalists, but the so called leaders of the free world.
"We had to do it," they said, "there is such a thing as too much freedom."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Get over yourself, the method doesn't do shit to bittorrent, the most popular p2p format so it's basically useless. If anything this will just get idiots off limewire into onto a decent network.
Re: (Score:2)
Although I agree (about LimeWire, KaZaA, etc)... the only reason this isn't happening to BitTorrent, is because they haven't figured out how yet, not because they think it's some infallible, untouchable, system nor that they think everyone should be using it instead of the others.
Re: (Score:2)
One problem with bittorrent is that it has a centralized tracker. You see what is happening to The Pirate Bay. If legal issues are of concern, I'd say that it's the bittorrent guys that should start moving onto a more decent network. And if that is to happen, we need to eliminate problems like content poisoning.
Re: (Score:2)
Semi-centralized, really. There is no clean way for me to connect to a "different Kazaa network", yet mostly anybody can host .torrent files and a tracker.
snuggl (Score:2)
One problem with bittorrent is that it has a centralized tracker. You see what is happening to The Pirate Bay.
This may be of interest. [reddit.com]
For those who can't be arsed to follow the link:
Wow (Score:3, Funny)
Toy Story quote (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well. maybe we should throw something poisonous in their well.
Oh, wait. We're already doing it, and it works great. :D
Two "researchers"? (Score:2)
They sound more like wannabe whores to me. How is this blatant soul-selling behavior legal and prostitution is not?
Re: (Score:2)
No, you may not! Didn't your momma ever teach you not to proxy^H^H^H^H^Hcough in public?
Freenet is gnutella? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was curious as to how they were poisoning Freenet, which should be robust against this with its Forward Error Correcting.
According to the paper, Freenet falls under the category of the "Gnutella family" (p.2). The Freenet Project that I know is in no way related to Gnutella.
Are they referring to a different file sharing program by the name of Freenet, or is this statement of theirs just plain inaccurate?
Re: (Score:2)
Looking at their level of competence, I'd say: Both.
And neither. :P
Freenet (Score:5, Interesting)
The paper won't download here, so I'm asking without RTFA, but how can this work against Freenet [freenetproject.org]? Do they discuss Freenet in the paper at all? Freenet does chunk-level hashing, and the network enforces that the data matches the hash at all steps. Nodes returning invalid data will rapidly get dropped by their peers. Attacks like this are something that Freenet is explicitly designed to prevent. Also, the anonymity guarantees that Freenet makes would make it hard (potentially very hard) for them to identify a single user, let alone "collusion".
I'm forced to wonder whether the researchers mention Freenet at all, or if the poster is simply lumping Freenet in with other p2p apps that it has very little in common with. (Bittorrent and Freenet should be similar in some ways to their resistance against this attack, but Freenet's strong anonymity guarantees should make it more resistant. The fact that a node engaged in widespread poisoning will have trouble even staying connected makes Freenet even more resistant.)
Re:Freenet (Score:4, Insightful)
They lump Freenet into the category of "Gnutella-like networks", and say that their attack against gnutella should also work against Freenet since it is Gnutella-like (p.2 and p.12).
In other words, it is as you said, they are lumping it together with other networks.
It makes me question the quality of their research if they think that Freenet is so similar to Gnutella that the same class of attacks would work against both.
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Interesting)
This is utterly absurd. The verification on freenet is based on asymmetric crypto. If they haven't broken that, the most they can do is flood the network with corrupt chunks, in which case the software will just start dropping peers who send too many corrupt packets at too high a rate. Translation: you need # of bad guys >> # of good guys to have much of an impact on network quality. And of course it's complete trash against a darknet, but I doubt these guys know what that is.
Given the subject matter, weasel words, and shoddy methodology, I'm about as worried about this as I am about the zombie communist terrorist invasion predicted for 2012.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Given the subject matter, weasel words, and shoddy methodology, I'm about as worried about this as I am about the zombie communist terrorist invasion predicted for 2012.
I believe you mean zombie communist alien vampire terrorist invasion
Never confuse ignorance with determination (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact my experience has shown me that fundamentalists tend to be the most narrowly focused people I meet (whatever their beliefs).
Re: (Score:2)
They lump Freenet into the category of "Gnutella-like networks", and say that their attack against gnutella should also work against Freenet since it is Gnutella-like (p.2 and p.12).
Except it won't because freenet isn't p2p it's p2swarm.... a client can request data with the right "magic code" but all the nodes inbetween would cache it and all the pirates get it from one of the non-authenticating nodes. Note that this is really all a stupid authentication system, the sending peer could simply ask the master server "is this an authenticated client too?" and send poison data if not. This is basicly already done and better with private torrents - with the rights flags set the tracker will
Cuckoo eggs (Score:2)
the network enforces that the data matches the hash at all steps.
But what enforces that the hash matches the title, as opposed to a cuckoo egg [hand-2-mouth.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Freenet (Score:4, Insightful)
Freenet is a hard target. Arguably, the hardest of them all today. It's also the least popular.
The studios are playing a money game. Bang for buck. They want maximal deterrence for minimal spend.
Much like virus-writers aim viruses at the highest targets on the "adoption-by-the-masses"/"soft-bellyness" index, RIAA go-getem's do the same thing.
FastTrack - high adoption, soft belly.
Torrent - high adoption, not-so-soft... and segregated into lots of independent share-specific networks.
Freenet - low adoption, practically impossible to break.
It's a no-brainer. They've got no reason to go for the last. They may be greedy scum, but they're not that stupid with their money. Freenet would need to be adopted by the masses and get a ridiculous amount of media exposure to even pop up on their radar. Their goal is not to technically "stop filesharing" altogether, they realize that's a waste of money and effort. Their goal is to mitigate it by taking pot-shots at just the targets that are easy to break, and leave the harder ones alone (for now).
Being an informed geek, that actually makes me really happy. In a nutshell, It means we won.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Alternately, someone in the Freenet IRC channel was able to download it and insert it for me:
CHK@XJ75hZcrMrQyfhFQrwwWflZkatrK-ZDBzvmkoHdon2U,2UW5ISsU0Qafd3gCOvsB7lstjGrx5RGqPEU1vQm4Dfg,AAIC--8/IEEE-TC2007-09-0492R2-finalized-April8-2008.pdf [127.0.0.1]
Time the *$&*()^ out (Score:3, Funny)
These guys are from USC, not UCLA. As a UCLA graduate, I am extremely upset that anyone would make this mistake. USC students and professors are smelly, unclean, spoiled children who work for the RIAA. UCLA students and professors are the opposite.
Never, EVER, confuse us again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Which USC do you mean? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USC [wikipedia.org]
Poisoning is redundant, the content is poison (Score:2)
...given the absolute rot most people are downloading on the networks. I mean honestly. What could be more poisonous than a Britney Spears song? I'd say let the downloaders have the content. Can't think of anything more poisonous.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right. Britney Spears' songs are definitely toxic.
My mistake. Alice Cooper was "Poison" ;-)
wrong end of the stick... (Score:2, Insightful)
I read the summary as them finding a way to create a p2p network of 'customers' (clients who pay to be in your p2p network where you deliver paid content) and protecting yourself from the 'customers' who 'collude' (e.g. hacked client s/w?) with non paying client s/w to allow non paying customers to get the content. I don't think it's about subverting an existing network, it's about protecting a network from subversion. If so then the techniques could presumably be used for other purposes, poisoning surveill
Paper summary (Score:5, Informative)
As a comp sci grad student, here's what I got from a quick reading of this paper:
Imagine that you're a content provider, with paying users. You've decided to distribute content to your users by running a Gnutella-style network. How do we make sure that only paying users can get our content? After all, it's an open network.
We start by sending some sort of magic timestamp-thing to all of the paying users. I didn't read this part in much detail. Anyway, the paying users can all identify each other somehow. They mention that it maintains privacy.
Some of your paying users (the "Clients") are good, virtuous folk, and they're running the Happy Authorized Gnutella software you gave them. Others (the "Colluders") are running Evil Hacked software. No matter what you do, the Colluders are going to send chunks of your precious data to the "Pirates" (anyone who hasn't paid you).
Normally, we'd expect our Clients to ignore requests from our Pirates. This paper instead suggests: let's obligate the Clients to send poison data to the Pirates! The Pirates won't know which chunks are bad; they'll only find out that the file is corrupt once it's finished downloading. The Pirates won't be able to get a good copy, and they'll give up and go away.
And there's one other great thing: we can set up *fake* Pirates, and check which users aren't giving out the poison they're supposed to! So we've served data to all of the Clients; we've identified all of the Colluders; and we've defeated all of the Pirates.
(Bittorrent has data integrity checks for every chunk, instead of every file; that's why it's not vulnerable to this attack...I mean business model).
In summary: This paper describes a way that a company can charge for distributing their own content on a peer-to-peer network. It only works if they control a centralized "transaction server" thThat's why no one has ever at organizes the entire network, and if they control the software of all the "honest" people. They can't destroy our existing networks with it, and it doesn't prevent anyone from turning around and posting the file to BitTorrent once it's downloaded.
The tone of the paper is definitely not as neutral as I feel it should be. What they're trying to say is "there's no obvious way to charge people for running a Gnutella server, because pirates will eat your lunch. But we think we have a way." But it definitely feels like they're putting moral force behind what's really a network algorithms result.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My bad. (Score:2)
I once accidently did a minor DoS attack, when I was starting to write my own P2P client for the Kad network used by eMule, etc. it kept returning the same IP in response to every directory lookup.
Sorry to whoever had 127.0.0.1 back then, if your connection went down it was my fault.
(I don't remember the actual IP)
I can see it from here (Score:2)
*knock on Pirate Bay's office door*
"What the hell is that?"
*Hannigan the traveling salesman enters*
"Good evening, little girl, is your mommy home?"
"Dude, this is the pirate bay office."
"No worries precious, I'm sure your birthday party can wait a few moments longer until the dreadful pointlessness of existance crushes your youthful hopes and dreams like mine have been two decades ago, leaving me a hollow broken shell of a man seeking solace in cheap whores and nickel whiskey shots on hungarian hobos."
"Who
Great... (Score:2)
I only use the eDonkey network for small files (music, images, books), and BitTorrent for the big ones, so that thing won't even affect that.
The only bad thing is, that now rare bigger files (like lossless music, very specific software, etc) will be hard to get.
But I really do wonder. Because as far as I know, no network out there works without checksums. So poisoning will be detected, and then circumvented (e.g, manually).
The problem with anonymous peer to peer (Score:3, Interesting)
is that you don't know who your peers are. They might not even be "peers" in the everyday commonly-understood sense.
Solution: remove anonymity, or at least replace it with pseudo-anonymity. I don't know who the guy that signs his chunks with keyid 0xDEADBEEF is, but I know he's never sent me garbage in the past. The owner of keyid 0xF00C1000 sends me chunks that don't match up with the rest of the content. My computer has a hard disk. It can remember things like this.
Gnutella blacklists mediasentry IPs. IPs are ephemeral. What they ought to do is use a signed protocol, and blacklist bad signing keys. Or better yet, greylist everyone by default and whitelist the ones who show a history of integrity. No wait, program the client to do all that, and don't distribute any lists at all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Poison-resilient networks based on the BitTorrent protocol are not affected.
So, the most effective method of P2P is the one that's immune. Really, Edonkey? who uses that? Find yourself a good private BT tracker and be done with it. There are many to choose from. Not only are they immune to content filtering, but due to ratio requirements and the possibility of getting banned if you misidentify content you upload, they're immune to content poisoning as well as data poisoning and have pretty much guara
Ratios for overseeded torrents? (Score:2)
Not only are [private BitTorrent trackers] immune to content filtering, but due to ratio requirements and the possibility of getting banned if you misidentify content you upload, they're immune to content poisoning as well as data poisoning and have pretty much guaranteed high speed across the board.
But the sum of share ratios can never exceed 100%. Say I download a file and then leave my client seeding for a week, but almost nobody downloads the file from me because the torrent has a total of three downloaders getting pieces from about 100 other seeds. How do I get to even 90%? Or how strictly does a typical private tracker enforce ratios for older, overseeded torrents?
Re:Ratios for overseeded torrents? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever actually used a bittorent client before?
There is no such thing as an overseeded torrent. There are underseeded torrents, and those are frustrating, but there is no such thing as an overseeded torrent. The general idea with upload ratio requirements is that it encourages you to never stop seeding a torrent. If 100 people are seeding and only 3 are downloading, those three get the file extremely fast, and your bandwidth isn't taxed. If you download enough content that you are on a private tracker, then you should have a number of torrents to share. If you aren't downloading all that much, then it will be easy to keep a 100%+ share ratio. If you ARE downloading a lot, you should still be in the 50% range, and eventually you will hit critical mass and the ammount you download won't be able to keep up with the amount you upload.
It's good for everybody. Plus, if a private tracker has a very high seed rate, chances are the required share ratio will be lowered. It creates a win-win situation.
Remember, no such thing as an overseeded torrent. If you download a lot, you WILL share a lot. If you keep sharing after you download, you will soon be sharing more than you download. People move on, quit sharing, lose their computers, etc.
Your share ratio math ignores a lot of things that reduce the amount of data on the network which occur all the time. It's actually pretty easy to exceed 100% share ratios for everybody on the network. If you can't see how it's because you've locked yourself in a tiny box and completely ignored outside factors which remove data and introduce data without affecting increasing the amount of data a person can download. Whenever someone adds a new download to the tracker, the potential share ratio for everyone in the network increases. Whenever a new member joins, the potential share ratio for everyone on the network increases. Eventually it balances out to 100%, but the network is ever changing so it never actually gets there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think he has used torrent before. His complaint about "overseeded" torrents was that *you* get squeezed out from offering any upload on a torrent that has a large ratio of seeders-to-downloaders. If you download some old massively-seeded-and-few-downloaders file, it becomes almost impossible to meet private tracker upload ratios. You could seed for a month and end up with a 0.1 upload ratio.
-
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't see how it's because you've locked yourself in a tiny box and completely ignored outside factors which remove data and introduce data without affecting increasing the amount of data a person can download. Whenever someone adds a new download to the tracker, the potential share ratio for everyone in the network increases. Whenever a new member joins, the potential share ratio for everyone on the network increases. Eventually it balances out to 100%, but the network is ever changing so it never actually gets there.
No. Your ratio can only become better by making the newcomer's ratio worse, so they have to limit their downloads and try to get upload of their own. More files being added is an opprtunity to seed but it's no good if it's rushed by everyone else that needs to improve their ratio as well. If I'm just a few hours late on a release it'll have 100 seeds and never seed back 100% because even if some are late to the party the 100Mbit symmetric people will seed them in minutes.
I am member of a nice private tracke
Re: (Score:2)
Whenever someone adds a new download to the tracker, the potential share ratio for everyone in the network increases.
Only for the person who added the download. Anybody else needs to download it before they can start sharing, making it zero sum for them.
Whenever a new member joins, the potential share ratio for everyone on the network increases.
Except for the new guy, whose share ratio will be lower because he has to download something before he can upload it.
The average share ratio for a given download will *always* equal n/(n+1) where n is the number of downloaders. It will never quite reach 100%, its certainley impossible for everyone to have 100%, since there are selfish people like me with high seed ratios
Re: (Score:2)
Or how strictly does a typical private tracker enforce ratios for older, overseeded torrents?
Private trackers enforce a ratio for your cumulative downloads and uploads not on a individual torrent basis.
Re: (Score:2)
But the sum of share ratios can never exceed 100%
I tried to have that discussion with several people in the past and was unsuccessful at penetrating their skulls with the concept.
For any one user that has a ratio of 2.0, there must be two users with a ratio of 0.5, etc. (in other words, the sum average ratio must be exactly 1.000) But there are other factors at work. deadbeats with low ratios (0.1) get banned. FreeLeech events. Both of these raise the average ratio above 1.0 . I think keeping the aver
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen private trackers actually request that users don't seed beyond a certain time past the "no leeches" point, or to cap the total number of torrents they are seeding.
So what should I do when my torrents are being pruned but are still at 0.2 or something?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
These corporate moneymongers are sad that they can only buy 3 boats this year instead of two
lolwut? Why would someone be sad that they could afford more boat than they originally expected?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This needs to be fought (Score:4, Interesting)
So what's wrong by buying a boat, forking out money enough to have people work months and feed their families?
I find this mentality a bit shortsighted: if I would have a pile of money in excess (yes, excess) and would "invest it" (say buy an appartmentblock, cash rent and take from people in that way for my "wellbeing") people don't say a thing.
But when someone aqcuires something, which creates work (luxury items need to be made, people make them, and they're expensive because they're not massproduced, right?) you stimulate an economy and economical activity (people can go to work, do something with their time and get paid) yet that is "wrong" because you can't take a boattrip?
As much I would enjoy excessive luxury as well, spending money stimulates an economy. If you have alot of money, the best thing to "make things happen", and give value is to spend it.
I'm working with banks and wealthmanagement software, I don't have such an abdunce of money as I see passing through our software, yet it creates cashflow and because of that cashflow +100 people here are able to work and drive nice company cars. They are happy. Clients are happy. And those who the people who are happy and comfortable (not excessively) pay to get value from are happy as they can make a business. (80% of the people here order their lunch in a small business who deliver to our office. This means they can bill each day for about 320 to run their business.)
While the economic attitude has proven flawed (growth instead of sustainability and stability). Our economy and wellbeing of those in and around it (you and I buddy) depends on the spending.
I do agree on the point the RIAA is a bunch of greedy bastards. And the value demanded for that music or whatever is not align with the perceived and experienced value delivered. But that is another issue.
Instead of looking down on someone with such a badass boat, ask him you can take a ride, chances are it's a very lonely person misguided trying to acquire wealth sacrificing alot you wouldn't sacrifice. Chances are you get your free ride. I've seen that alot.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You make some good points, but I take issue with the very idea that the record industry is made of nothing but millionaires.
Sure, a small percentage of people in that industry -- whether they're artists or executives -- do very well, but that's the case with every industry. The IT and Internet industries have their own share, from hard-working executives to stock option millionaires who were at the right place at the right time. Of course, most people who work in IT aren't millionaires, but that's also the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I absolutely love this observation.
Your point is very valid, and the "greedy
Re:This needs to be fought (Score:4, Insightful)
My annoyance is that "they" presume my downloading means they are losing money. I've been downloading a lot of recent movies lately, and no surprise, the movies are largely crap piled upon more crap (how they ever scored 7 or higher on imdb.com is a mystery to me). The RIAA/MPAA make the assumption that if I had not downloaded, I would have bought the DVD instead.
They presume wrong.
Out of some 20 movies downloaded there was precisely 1 that I will probably buy on DVD, and that's only because my niece wants to see Hannah Montana in 3D. Otherwise I don't waste my money on Hollyweird's shit unless it's exceptionally good. This past 2008-9 season almost nothing met that criteria. So for them to say, "We lost $400," is completely and totally inaccurate.
They are liars. They lost nothing because I'm not a spender. My money gets invested into the stockmarket, not shiny discs, which probably pisses them off.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a serious question: If it's not worth wasting your money on to buy, then why on earth did you waste your time downloading and watching it? Either a product is worth the asking price or it's not. If it is worth it to you, buy it. If not, do without...
Until you watch it, how can you know if it was worth the asking price? (irregardless of how you obtained it)
Re:This needs to be fought (Score:4, Interesting)
The luxury industry has been linked with reducing the size of the middle class, since it tends to greater a broader disparity between those providing goods and services and those consuming them. You are certainly correct, of course, that spending money will 'stimulate the economy' regardless if it comes from the rich or the poor. The question is the type of economy you want to stimulate. Luxury spending tends to stimulate the segment of industry that sees little return back at the lower end of the wage pools. They reap higher profits, and provide fewer goods and services, thus tending towards increasing the divide in wealth. Spending in the lower end 'consumer grade' market tends to stimulate an industry that will increase growth where more goods and services are produced.
Henry Ford famously paid his employees enough so they could buy the cars they were building. Imagine what might have happened to the auto industry if he had catered only to the rich? Compare also to Walmart, who also wants to pay their employees enough to buy their products.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ask them. It's been well documented that all this complaining about P2P stuff started when executives were faced with the prospect of telling their shareholders that they failed to meet their projected profit increases. ie: For decades they'd been making more and more money every year, then suddenly when technology created hundreds of other ways to entertain people overnight, they didn't make as much more as they were expecting. (That is: they actually DID make more than the previous years. A lot more, by a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The whole point of money is to assign a single number to measure the amount of available resources. It's a logistical aid.
Other than that, I'm with you, bro.
Re:This needs to be fought (Score:4, Insightful)
I see that they gave percentages for prevention rates, but not for false positives. As someone who uses P2P legitimately (Linux distros, movies like Star Wreck, SHN and FLAC files the musician wants shared, etc) this pisses me off no end.
A false positive here is simply vandalism. If these researchers release this thing to the public and there are any false positives at all, they deserve to be jailed.
Re:This needs to be fought (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think that phrase means what you think it means.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need is the way of the future
Ok Comrade.
and attempts to deny this simple mechanical law of nature will only result in even more suffering for us.
Simple law of nature? What the heck are you smoking and why aren't you sharing it? The only law of nature is survival of the fittest. I don't think the gazelle being eaten by a lion volunteered to be eaten because the lion needed food.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Plenty of people already do it - heck even the musicians are starting to turn away from RIAA-backing labels. The RIAA however has found another way to keep their businesses alive: government bailouts. Just like GM, Ford, Chrysler and a host of other companies that couldn't cut it in the new world, they are now being funded by the government which just creates a law about who should pay for these old businesses. Who's paying for it now: the radio stations. The government has decided that the radio stations s
Re: (Score:2)
>dude you reek of yourself.
I'm sorry, did I touch a nerve? Or are you one of those who rail against the *IAAs while rushing like a good little sheep to consume their products?*
*buying OR downloading
Re: (Score:2)
And the rivers flowed green with grant money.
Re:Adopting the proposed protocol? (Score:5, Insightful)
They already tried this about five years ago with poisoned servers. What happened? The Kad search mechanism was adopted and the servers were useless.
The same thing will happen here, the protocol will change, the poisoners will have wasted a lot of money and achieved nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no need for existing protocols to change. This paper cannot be used to attack them. This paper proposes a new paid-P2P network, one deliberately designed to give a central authority (the RIAA) the power to poison the system.
-
Re:Adopting the proposed protocol? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the need for a 'private' P2P network that's not really private at all? If 'pirates' can get into your network, the problem isn't solved by poisoning.
Even if the content providers used a public network, there must be a better way, such as encryption and key exchanges.
And... And this is the killer: it only takes one person to move content from a 'private' network to a public network and they're fucked.