The Progress Toward Bittorrent's Holy Grail?

[Hishighness420]

Hey Everyone, I’m Hishighness420 a.k.a. Lucas. This is my first post so I hope you’ll all go easy on me.

I’ve searched high and low on Google, but haven’t been able to find an up to date report on the progress that is being made towards making mainstream bittorrent anonymous and decentralized. (i.e. no need for web pages to find torrents) I want to make one thing crystal clear, because I’ve had a problem asking this question on another site where people just can’t seem to understand I’m talking about the FUTURE and not the present. I know about Azureus and Tor, and proxies are obviously not a great solution. But what I mean when I say mainstream is end users just being able to download a client, fire it up, and away they go, anonymously and being able to search for, find, and download torrents right from the program a la Napster, but without the obvious drawback of a centralized site that can be shut down by the Copyright cops. And, if anyone tried to track the people using the system they wouldn’t be able to get their IP or any other identifiable info.

Sorry I dumbed it down so much, but as I said I’ve ran in to problems with people misunderstanding my meaning.

So, I’m just wondering what progress is being made in this area, if it's being worked on etc.

HH420.

[pECi]

i like this system with websites more...it would be dull to be like dc, kazaaa, napster etc

...and without a ratio based system ppl wouldn't seed so much and speeds would drop...there are far more disadvantages for not having a website

[Hishighness420]

Until the website gets shut down.

[Sneakydave]

Decentralised tracking is being investigated by utorrent and azereus in particular and since you can now make your own torrents in utorrent and distribute them to your friends without the need to upload a torrent to a website progress is being made. Cant say ive seen any way to search for these user made torrents tho so theres a long way to go.

And peci, it might be nice to have websites but its also the biggest weakenss of the protocol, sooner or later the websites will be taken down.

[pECi]

preferably later :D

and if one site closes...another 2 or 3 rise to take it's place...so there's no worry about that

weakness as in traceable by MPAA RIAA SUXAA...couldn't care less

[Hishighness420]

Well my dream is to be able to open up one (or several) programs, type in any song, or tv show episode, or program, or game, and be able to download it quickly and easily, with full anonymity.

[deuce6000]

I don't think the full anonymity part is ever going to happen and if so then there will be no need to keep a good ratio which means that the whole basis of bittorrent has gone down the drain.

[Hishighness420]

We had quitters in the revolution too, we called them Kentuckyans! (hehehe, sorry I don't mean to offend but as soon as I read that it popped in to my head.)

Seriously though, I tend to disagree. I know that when I download something my down speed is limited by the height of my up speed, so if I don't upload at a decent clip it'll take me forever to get anything. Maybe a higher setting like that would be sufficient to keep things in good order.

[deuce6000]

Well the truth is if you are uploading at your full speed it actually slows down your download speed.I can download at 3000kbps and only upload at 256kbps.So your solution would be to limit the download rate to the max upload or am i reading it wrong.

[Hishighness420]

Yeah, now I'm not an expert or anything but Utorrent seems to automatically slow my download speed if I turn my upload speed down. Maybe I'm wrong, I'll admit it if I am. But if I am that'd still be a decent solution. Trust me I don't want to destroy Bittorrent, I just want to find a way around the constant harrassment and fear mongering of the RIAA, MPAA, et al.

[deuce6000]

I hear ya dude and if it's possible i'm sure we are all with you,nothing would be greater then the bittorent way of doing things along with full anonymity.Good luck to you :)

[RealitY]

You could take a look at programs like MUTE or similar. Closest thing Ive seen in the BT community is TPB working on a darknet system. Think its pay based though didnt read into it to much. Theres also VPN though it creates a NAT affect as in yellow light and not great for torrents as it creates speed issues. This is also a generally a pay service. As for what you want in theory its doubtfull you will see it any time soon. You might want to take a look at the Newsgroups (http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-newsgroups-79/) section and read though some of the pins such as NewsGroups Guide For GrabIt (http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/newsgroups/t-newsgroups-guide-grabit-69159) as you might find what your looking for...

[syD]

@Hishighness420

i think what u just wrote goes against the entire concept of bt... u see, bt is so fast because it has been designed in a totally different system than say emule.

you want a p2p that is as fast as bt and still has a huge searchable db with lots of sources at any given time? and you want complete anonymity while at it?

dream on man, thats not going to happen ;)

[pECi]

he basically would want a faster kazaa or something from what i understood

[Hishighness420]

I don't really care what protocol it uses as long as it's fast, anonymous, and decentralized.

[aburyach]

BT is pretty much as good as it gets... Yes, you can argue Newsgroups are beter- but they are not free.

[pECi]

oh well...i like bittorrent how it is now :D and if it would change it would lose it's charm;)

[Hishighness420]

Yeah, nothin like the constant threat of legal harrassment.

[nizrulesall]

Yeah, nothin like the constant threat of legal harrassment.
maybe you shouldnt dl torrents if you are worried about it constantly

[lysine]

maybe you shouldnt dl torrents if you are worried about it constantly

no doubt. maybe actually buying the media/programs would be a better idea, if you're so worried about being caught. I've been downloading from bittorrent sites since 2003 and haven't received one dmca warning letter, or been worried about being caught. sure it could happen, but I'm not sitting around stressing about it.

[Hishighness420]

Nor am I, I was responding to the previous post. But if the threat of legal action were eliminated I imagine people would be a lot more willing to put a lot more things up on torrent sites.

[pECi]

a great man once said


MPAA RIAA SUXAA...couldn't care less

[pandapop]

doesnt shareaza do exactly what you're suggesting? and isnt it rubbish?

[janine]

With the DHT thingy in uTorrent and Azureus, tracking is actually decentralized to such an extent that trying to shut down a popular torrent or actually singling out someone for prosecution becomes almost impossible. I've seen torrents live on for up to 1/2 a year with the actual, original tracker gone.

Somehow on these torrents there also seems to be a balancing function in effect. It seems impossible to DL at a higher speed than your UL. Very interesting, but I have no clue what does it or if it is even intentional from the coders.

All of this is totally contrary to the interests of private trackers and their members though, and you will therefore see most (or all) of them specifically saying that DHT must be turned off, or you could get banned (decent tracker software is aware and denies this anyway, though some coders stubbornly refuse to code this).

Not really any conclusion from me here, just some food for thought...

But personally I have come to the conclusion after torrenting for some years, that website based trackers are far superior for me. I want a decent description before I download, actual categories to search, no dupes, no crap files, no errors... and that means someone must moderate, set rules and that people behaving like morons will be stopped/thrown out.

In open filesharing there is just too many idiots, immature children & your general, everyday loosers that mess things up with viruses, trojans, spyware, crap files, inane naming&sorting habits, hit&running, leaving a seed hanging and the list just goes on and on and on and on...

Just my 2c ;) (or maybe 4)