Lets Talk About BT v2

[Intr4ns1t]

So, I am bored, and seem to have a case of insomnia, so I thought I'd start another less than exciting, wordy, and mostly friendly thread for people to have opportunity to talk about this hobby in more depth than usual. The last thread I started like this actually turned out pretty well in my opinion, so lets see if we can't manage that again. I thought it was pretty informative and would encourage anyone who to post their thoughts on the subject at hand, or anything relevant to the current state of BT affairs.

What I primarily wanted to talk about was the pros and cons of the different approaches to security in private tracker land, and their relevance to the current state of the internet, with an eye to the near and not so near future. It seems, to me, that many of the current policies that are embraced as necessary, are/will become outdated, and do not parallel the rapidly advancing state of technology and the way we connect to the internet.

In particular, I would like to talk about the social focus of that security, versus the code side of security. What exactly is the point of personalizing the security process, and what are the advantages/failings of that approach? What are the real benefits versus the perceived benefits? Is it an effective use of manpower, in light of the hugely increasing accessibility to what is fast becoming, literally, the world wide web?

I understand there's a psychological advantage in that approach to securing a tracker, and that it pays dividends with the userbase, regarding willingness to slough off the paranoia that we are told we should exhibit at all times, and actually download with reckless abandon. But, how much is this advantage really advantageous now? This approach has led to a thinning of the bandwidth for many, many files, as very many of the people that use small trackers belong to many of them, no matter how many they'll admit to signing up to. It's almost become a prerequisite to belong to many trackers should you want to join one of the better run trackers, and that makes sites need to garner public interest to get bandwidth, to not be one of hundreds of sites with 5 thousand members and 10 snatches a day.

Yes, I understand that the advantage of the hydra is that you can cut off one head, and still have many heads left, but if all of those heads are filled with nothing(in this instance implying no traffic, if stuff isn't shared, the whole protocol is pointless), you just end up with a really stupid dragon.

I have one request in this thread. Please, try to leave semantic debates out of this discussion. The english language is very elastic, so try to stretch your brain with it ;)
With that said, I especially would like the input of people who have a more technical knowledge of the security side of the internet, so without further delay, let's have at it.

[stoi]

About the files, at least they are there for you to download. But it is a catch 22 situation.

members complain about slow downloads, but they want retention, well if there is a torrent from 2-3 years ago with 1 seeder, the chances of getting a fast download are slim to say the least, and if there was a seedbox member on it, then members would complain it isnt fair that the seedbox member is bullying them out of bandwith (if another leech does come on) and then you get others that say thanks but i will ait for more seeders, and then turn around and say they cant upload because there are to many seeders and not enough leechers, well its their own fault because they didnt jump on it whilst it had 1-2 seeders and 200+ leechers, so in that respect we just cant win.

I have seen ppl say on other forums/blogs etc that they are seeding anywhere from 400-5000 torrents at a time, well yes they are keeping them alive but if they have crap upload (which most will) then i pitty the downloaders, especially if some are big files.

I try to keep my active torrents down to about 20, but keep an eye on others just incase a leech comes along (I dont do it as often as i should though, multi torrent clients have made things easier, but lazier imho)

and lets be honest 90% of members on trackers dont usually look any further than the 1st page of browse, i have lost count the amount of times i have bumped an old torrent to the top of browse and comments like "great game i have been looking for this for ages, thanks for the upload" when its been on the tracker for 2-3 years is silly, a simple search would have brought it up.

[ca_aok]

The problem is more tangible increases in security than we currently have would require inconvenience on the part of the users, or a huge increase in site load.

I think there's something to be said for security through obscurity. Let's face it, are the anti-p2p people going to go after a site like Demonoid, with hundreds of thousands of members, or some little "rare" tracker with a few thousand that few people have ever heard of? I completely agree that the smaller trackers have nothing in the way of content or speed and retention compared to a large tracker, and I've slowly been gravitating away from them, but it makes sense to me that if it's harder for people in general to get invited, it's harder for the IP phishers to get invited.

I think we'll see a much more serious push against bittorrent in the coming years. I'm not sure what it'll be, but I doubt the sites we've come to know and love will outlast this decade. What rises from the ashes will be more interesting to see. No matter what we do, the weakest link is the direct connection between peers displaying the other users IP addresses. Unless we see a rise in cheap proxies that are somehow legally immune, this will always be a serious issue.

As for the sites themselves, there's not a lot more they can really do to hide. The few sites I've seen that have taken it to a crazier extreme (running on a Tor hidden service, etc) are super slow and frequently down.

[chrisbeebops]

The simple truth is that few people in p2p care about real security or even know what real security means.

Most users want something for free, and want to put minimal effort, time, and money in order to get it. This means the number of ratioless trackers opening is on the rise as users no longer see the point in saving up ratio credits to download older content. Users are buying cheap servers for a month or two, buffering a TB of credit, then hit&running on everything in perpetuity, adding no benefit to the site and hurting retention.

Staff meanwhile are concerned chiefly with what they can get for themselves, and the prestige of their site. New sites opening monthly, with staff immediately requesting (and funnily enough receiving) invites and VIP status places previously out of reach. Older sites plagued by inactive user bases are content with letting their sites slowly die as handing out invites (or *gasp* open signups) would hurt their own site's prestige (kudos to HDBits for actually purging some deadweight and allowing at least a few new members). Not to mention site owners taking money from the site's account for their own, personal use. Sites with bugs in the

To be honest, there is no such thing as security in p2p. Absolute security means that you can trust beyond a shadow of a doubt every single member of a site. I don't know the nicks of 99% of the people on a site and neither do you. I don't know any of them IRL. I have no way of knowing if a given person on a site is a legitimate p2per like me or an informant until it is too late and I am already in trouble for my actions. And with the current design of bittorrent, anyone can join a swarm I am a member of and pull my IP address.

There is some truth in the saying, security through obscurity. Being a member of a smaller tracker and fewer trackers does make it harder to bust you. But all it does is increase obsurity... not security. MPAA/RIAA like to go after the big targets for the big headlines, but there is no reason they could not go after you as well.

p2p protocols are inherently insecure, and if you are looking for security and peace of mind, you are in the wrong place. Security means you place inherent trust in everyone you can and do connect to (this means every member of every tracker you are actively using for leeching or seeding. Despite anyone's best wishes, it is not possible to know or trust every single person in a tracker, and to trust that every single person will be responsible with his invites, and his invitees will be responsible, and so forth.

The only thing that could remotely come close to security is to force everyone to use anonymous proxies and/or VPN's in countries with lax anti-piracy enforcement. But this even itself has inherent disadvantages (added cost, decreased speeds, increased difficulty in staff finding and removing bad users).

If you want true security, look into F2F (friend-to-friend) protocols. They work by allowing you to specify the exact set of users you wish to connect to. Through this, groups of friends can spider out to connect everyone indirectly. If you and I aren't friends, but share a mutual friend, you can still download files I am sharing, but connections will be routed through mutual friends (or whatever chain of friends connect us together).

This likely decreases speeds, available content, and bandwidth usage efficiency. But it is definitely the most secure. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Tokeman]

F2F sucks, unless everyone indirectly knows some one with (FTP) access to dumps. Its great for securely sharing what's already out there, but not new releases...

[Intr4ns1t]

Apologies for my delay in responding, forst off, I managed to get some sleep after all, and was quite busy yesterday evening, but I am here. Some good posts sop far folks, so thanks for the serious responses :)


About the files, at least they are there for you to download. But it is a catch 22 situation.

members complain about slow downloads, but they want retention, well if there is a torrent from 2-3 years ago with 1 seeder, the chances of getting a fast download are slim to say the least, and if there was a seedbox member on it, then members would complain it isnt fair that the seedbox member is bullying them out of bandwith (if another leech does come on) and then you get others that say thanks but i will ait for more seeders, and then turn around and say they cant upload because there are to many seeders and not enough leechers, well its their own fault because they didnt jump on it whilst it had 1-2 seeders and 200+ leechers, so in that respect we just cant win.

I have seen ppl say on other forums/blogs etc that they are seeding anywhere from 400-5000 torrents at a time, well yes they are keeping them alive but if they have crap upload (which most will) then i pitty the downloaders, especially if some are big files.

I try to keep my active torrents down to about 20, but keep an eye on others just incase a leech comes along (I dont do it as often as i should though, multi torrent clients have made things easier, but lazier imho)

and lets be honest 90% of members on trackers dont usually look any further than the 1st page of browse, i have lost count the amount of times i have bumped an old torrent to the top of browse and comments like "great game i have been looking for this for ages, thanks for the upload" when its been on the tracker for 2-3 years is silly, a simple search would have brought it up.

As far as seedboxes are concerned. I consider them to be a bain to swarms everywhere, for that whole cyclical idea you described. They are a good part of the reason that it has become a "job" to get a proper ratio on many sites for non-seeboxers. I think, though, that they are a sign of the future and the rapidly increasing speeds that are becoming available around the world for what is becoming cheap rates. No, it's not a universal, poor Aussies, but that is one of the things I think need to get addressed in the not too distant future. The way torrent sites sort users kind of makes it inevitable though, as everyone loves competing. Very few sites take an egalitarian approach to user levels. Bandwidth whores are rewarded, and I've only known of one site that punishes/d people for overseeding.


The problem is more tangible increases in security than we currently have would require inconvenience on the part of the users, or a huge increase in site load.

I think there's something to be said for security through obscurity. Let's face it, are the anti-p2p people going to go after a site like Demonoid, with hundreds of thousands of members, or some little "rare" tracker with a few thousand that few people have ever heard of? I completely agree that the smaller trackers have nothing in the way of content or speed and retention compared to a large tracker, and I've slowly been gravitating away from them, but it makes sense to me that if it's harder for people in general to get invited, it's harder for the IP phishers to get invited.

I think we'll see a much more serious push against bittorrent in the coming years. I'm not sure what it'll be, but I doubt the sites we've come to know and love will outlast this decade. What rises from the ashes will be more interesting to see. No matter what we do, the weakest link is the direct connection between peers displaying the other users IP addresses. Unless we see a rise in cheap proxies that are somehow legally immune, this will always be a serious issue.

As for the sites themselves, there's not a lot more they can really do to hide. The few sites I've seen that have taken it to a crazier extreme (running on a Tor hidden service, etc) are super slow and frequently down.

The bold part of your post is greatly troubling to me, as I agree wholeheartedly. That belief is part of why I posted this thread actually :P I do think that net neutrality and internet privacy in general are on the brink of disappearing, and I really believe it will be a quiet whisper behind us rather than a thunderhead in front of us when it does occur. As far as the obscurity issue, that'd be entirely feasible and effective, if not for sites like FST/ZP/TI/FNB/FSF/TF/BTRACS that make it a point to ruin that obscurity by laying bare every torrent site that anyone gives a shit about.

It pretty much makes it impossible to have a secure site as some self-serving individual, that didn't get treated with exactly the amount of respect they think they deserve, decides, "well fuck these guys, I'll Show THEM!" then proceeds to start a new account at FST so that they won't be held accountable via their real nick. That is one of my only real issues with FST, that utter lack of accountability, even when faced with an obvious breach of the one account rule. Yes, they ban dupes, but they do no service to filesharing by hiding those individuals. It's a blank check to post whatever you want about whoever you want, with no recourse, and that attitude is part of the growing trend in BT to just burn through accounts and start a new one when you burn too many bridges with the existing name. I am all for freedom of speech, in fact, I have fought, and would die, for your right to speak your mind, but only if you have the nuts to actually stand by your words as yourself. With that freedom comes the responsibility to be held accountable. Unfortunately, that concept is nigh on impossible, considering the inherent, and necessary anonymity of filesharing.


The simple truth is that few people in p2p care about real security or even know what real security means.

Most users want something for free, and want to put minimal effort, time, and money in order to get it. This means the number of ratioless trackers opening is on the rise as users no longer see the point in saving up ratio credits to download older content. Users are buying cheap servers for a month or two, buffering a TB of credit, then hit&running on everything in perpetuity, adding no benefit to the site and hurting retention.

Staff meanwhile are concerned chiefly with what they can get for themselves, and the prestige of their site. New sites opening monthly, with staff immediately requesting (and funnily enough receiving) invites and VIP status places previously out of reach. Older sites plagued by inactive user bases are content with letting their sites slowly die as handing out invites (or *gasp* open signups) would hurt their own site's prestige (kudos to HDBits for actually purging some deadweight and allowing at least a few new members). Not to mention site owners taking money from the site's account for their own, personal use. Sites with bugs in the

To be honest, there is no such thing as security in p2p. Absolute security means that you can trust beyond a shadow of a doubt every single member of a site. I don't know the nicks of 99% of the people on a site and neither do you. I don't know any of them IRL. I have no way of knowing if a given person on a site is a legitimate p2per like me or an informant until it is too late and I am already in trouble for my actions. And with the current design of bittorrent, anyone can join a swarm I am a member of and pull my IP address.

There is some truth in the saying, security through obscurity. Being a member of a smaller tracker and fewer trackers does make it harder to bust you. But all it does is increase obsurity... not security. MPAA/RIAA like to go after the big targets for the big headlines, but there is no reason they could not go after you as well.

p2p protocols are inherently insecure, and if you are looking for security and peace of mind, you are in the wrong place. Security means you place inherent trust in everyone you can and do connect to (this means every member of every tracker you are actively using for leeching or seeding. Despite anyone's best wishes, it is not possible to know or trust every single person in a tracker, and to trust that every single person will be responsible with his invites, and his invitees will be responsible, and so forth.

The only thing that could remotely come close to security is to force everyone to use anonymous proxies and/or VPN's in countries with lax anti-piracy enforcement. But this even itself has inherent disadvantages (added cost, decreased speeds, increased difficulty in staff finding and removing bad users).

If you want true security, look into F2F (friend-to-friend) protocols. They work by allowing you to specify the exact set of users you wish to connect to. Through this, groups of friends can spider out to connect everyone indirectly. If you and I aren't friends, but share a mutual friend, you can still download files I am sharing, but connections will be routed through mutual friends (or whatever chain of friends connect us together).

This likely decreases speeds, available content, and bandwidth usage efficiency. But it is definitely the most secure. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

So, how do we address that inherent insecurity of the protocol? Create a module for torrent clients that automatically encrypts the ip address you are connecting to, as well as your own? That doesn't sound that difficult to me, but I am not technically knowledgeable about writing code. Would it be terribly difficult to create a piece of code that would encrypt that visible, loggable ip address, or even just not show peers as resolvable ip's? I'm serious too, though that question would probably be better asked at utor's forum. You are touching on the stuff that I was hoping to get to with this thread really, though I am still undecided whether it's just a flaw in the protocol or the users and sites both. I would love to see improvements in those inherent flaws, but until there is "public" and outspoken interest in a resolution of that shortfall, I'm sure bt client makers will concern themselves with the initial desire of most file sharers, namely faster consumption, at a low cost(ie, download and that's it).

I do not deny that we are a naturally selfish species, that's life, but, I do like to think we are capable of transcending those base animal tendencies.

[ca_aok]

The problem with the above "encrypting IP" thing is that while you could do so for the peer list, anyone with a network traffic monitor could still grab all of the real IPs. That's the thing, the weakness is the direct connection between clients, which is also one of the strengths, since it maximizes speed. You'd have to build some sort of mandatory proxy into the client which would need to run on some ridiculously beefy connection or downloads and uploads everywhere would slow to a standstill.

[chrisbeebops]

So, how do we address that inherent insecurity of the protocol? Create a module for torrent clients that automatically encrypts the ip address you are connecting to, as well as your own? That doesn't sound that difficult to me, but I am not technically knowledgeable about writing code. Would it be terribly difficult to create a piece of code that would encrypt that visible, loggable ip address, or even just not show peers as resolvable ip's? I'm serious too, though that question would probably be better asked at utor's forum. You are touching on the stuff that I was hoping to get to with this thread really, though I am still undecided whether it's just a flaw in the protocol or the users and sites both. I would love to see improvements in those inherent flaws, but until there is "public" and outspoken interest in a resolution of that shortfall, I'm sure bt client makers will concern themselves with the initial desire of most file sharers, namely faster consumption, at a low cost(ie, download and that's it).
Bittorrent was not designed with security in mind. Any member with access to the tracker can easily scan through all torrents and recover the IP addresses of each other member leeching or seeding the torrent.

Security and trust go hand in hand. On any given tracker, you probably know and trust a handful of users. But you do not know everyone very well. You cannot trust everyone completely. All you need is a single leak to compromise the security of a tracker. The only way to mitigate this risk is to have a smaller and smaller member base. This is to limit the odds of one user being a bad egg, and to limit the potential fallout of a bust (limit the number of users exposed to the breach). But that too has its disadvantages (lower content, speeds, and retention).

Encryption will not work because a client still needs to receive a decryption key in order to get IP addresses. Even if IP addresses are obscured for every client, it is still possible to sniff network traffic to detect P2P traffic.

The only way to increase security is to shift to a protocol whose foundation is trust. This means F2F (friend to friend) darknets. Speeds may decrease, but security will increase greatly, and users can easily set their own security level by saying on their own who they will allow connections to. Perhaps the current autouploaders and seedboxes of today will be the high speed F2F sources and routing links of tomorrow. Current P2P communities will serve as ways to find additional trustworthy F2F links.


I do not deny that we are a naturally selfish species, that's life, but, I do like to think we are capable of transcending those base animal tendencies.
You would hope so, but look at the current state of the bittorrent scene today vs a year, 2 years, 3 years or more ago. Things are getting worse, and money is becoming a bigger player in P2P as scene and P2P grow closer together with it, with quite a few people on both sides getting nice payouts for the ignorance of the masses.

Sadly, there are not many sites where I can say that I even trust all staff. There are some sites where staff don't even trust each other. How can I be expected to trust every person of a 1,000.. 5,000... 100,000... member site when I can't even trust all of the 5 or 10 or so staff?

[Intr4ns1t]

You both point out the boldest shortcoming of torrents. How depressing. So the risk is absolutely necessary for the reward. I have to believe there has to be a better way to mitigate the risks than having to interview everyone that joins, though. While it seems like a great idea at it's face, it's a terrible way to replenish userbases. It requires a. a moderate personality who doesn't need your blood type to believe you, as well as having the time it takes to individually review everyone. b. a large staff to deal with that increased need for manual perusal. c. everyone being assumed totally honest from the get go(:rolleyes:)

I guess barring only ever sharing the hash with people via private messages, and never using a central tracker, there's no way to get around the risks?

[ca_aok]

You could build a network sort of like Tor where trackers would be linked together (would require serious recoding) to manage chains of peers rather than a swarm of peers. Each connection would take place through several hops in a chain of machine making it impossible to determine the IP of the downloader or uploader from any perspective. I2P was built with the load generated by filesharing in mind, however the overall download speed will be slowed to the slowest upload speed in the chain, which realistically will be 10-30kB/s, if that. You could specify a minimum and maximum number of hops within your client to attempt to speed things up, though lowering the number of hops would increase the chance of you being identifiable.

With fairly widespread demand and cooperation (which in the current climate doesn't exist and the general public is anti-P2P) you could in theory create a series of adhoc networks that would place entire cities into a virtual LAN, bypassing ISPs entirely. This would be nearly impossible to manage and control if an appropriate protocol was crafted. However, there'd be gaps wherever there wasn't network coverage, so you'd essentially be turning each city into its own darknet.

[Quarterquack]

F2F isn't any safer than P2P. In fact, it might be more dangerous since the responsibility is higher on every user's shoulders, and that the failure of one or more peers brings down an entire tree, as opposed to a single swarm.

[Intr4ns1t]

OK, so I guess my next question would be, does all the hardware have to be physically connected to work on/as a darknet? And wouldn't darknets come with their own risks, seeing as there is, afaict, NO control over the individuals on that network? What would prevent a torrent site from running on a darknet, beyond the end users being able to access it? I'm curious about that whole realm of networking, and why it isn't more prevalent in filesharing. Is it cost prohibitive? Forgive my laziness, but most of the good info I have found about darknets requires a higher level of knowledge re: syntax and vocabulary, as well as a more in depth understanding of the way computers connect to each other, than I possess atm.

[ca_aok]

You don't need to be physically connected. It could be done using either ad hoc wireless networks or existing internet infrastructure (darknets already exist in both manners). A darknet simply refers to a portion of the internet that's inaccessible from the outside and generally doesn't link back to the outside either. Sort of a miniature network within a network.

The control exercised over the darknet is based on who you allow to join, of course. There'd be issues with bad eggs in that system as well. You'd need additional anonymity layers as well, which already exist on the larger darknets (stuff like Freenet, etc).

What would prevent a torrent site from running on most of these anonymized solutions are several things:
1) Often these networks rely on F2F sharing, which makes growth difficult and makes new files hard to gain unless you've got links in the chain that are scene members.
2) Often these networks promote anonymity by using traversing several "nodes", aka other computers before actually accessing web data (i.e. the downloading files). The problem is that each computer in the chain is using their ISP's bandwidth to route this traffic, and slow machines become bottlenecks. Some of these networks attempt to avoid this by prioritizing a certain number of connections based on your speeds, but your speeds will still suffer drastically.
3) The additional encryption used by these sites adds a crapload of overhead to the data, which on a large torrent site that occasionally buckles under the load as is, would completely overload the site. They'd be forced to pay for beefier speeds and server specs.

Keep in mind that more anonymous filesharing solutions already exist. There are torrent trackers on Tor, I2P, and Freenet, with some additional protocol-specific filesharing software as well. There have been attempts in the past at other protocols and programs as well, like WASTE. But at the end of the day, speed, content, and efficiency trump the needs for security for most filesharers.

[Intr4ns1t]

You don't need to be physically connected. It could be done using either ad hoc wireless networks or existing internet infrastructure (darknets already exist in both manners). A darknet simply refers to a portion of the internet that's inaccessible from the outside and generally doesn't link back to the outside either. Sort of a miniature network within a network.

The control exercised over the darknet is based on who you allow to join, of course. There'd be issues with bad eggs in that system as well. You'd need additional anonymity layers as well, which already exist on the larger darknets (stuff like Freenet, etc).

What would prevent a torrent site from running on most of these anonymized solutions are several things:
1) Often these networks rely on F2F sharing, which makes growth difficult and makes new files hard to gain unless you've got links in the chain that are scene members.
2) Often these networks promote anonymity by using traversing several "nodes", aka other computers before actually accessing web data (i.e. the downloading files). The problem is that each computer in the chain is using their ISP's bandwidth to route this traffic, and slow machines become bottlenecks. Some of these networks attempt to avoid this by prioritizing a certain number of connections based on your speeds, but your speeds will still suffer drastically.
3) The additional encryption used by these sites adds a crapload of overhead to the data, which on a large torrent site that occasionally buckles under the load as is, would completely overload the site. They'd be forced to pay for beefier speeds and server specs.

Keep in mind that more anonymous filesharing solutions already exist. There are torrent trackers on Tor, I2P, and Freenet, with some additional protocol-specific filesharing software as well. There have been attempts in the past at other protocols and programs as well, like WASTE. But at the end of the day, speed, content, and efficiency trump the needs for security for most filesharers.


Thank you for the concise explanation ca_aok :)

[1000possibleclaws]

It's a circular narrative in many ways, where it kind of sums up the human race in a time capsule.

[Intr4ns1t]

It's a circular narrative in many ways, where it kind of sums up the human race in a time capsule.

:yup: Yup. Which, in conjunction with something in another thread here, makes me move to the question, what exactly is the point of a multi-terabyte buffer? I mean really? (not directed at you 1kClaws(?) )

I mean, I get it if you're an uploader, solely dedicated to a particular site, it's just incidental for those folks, but why does any user need to have 20tb of buffer anywhere? It smacks of a wasted account in my current viewpoint. How many times do you see users on all these private trackers with 2gb downloaded and 58pb uploaded?

I'm actually surprised more sites don't punish gross overseeding like that, after reflecting on it more. It would definitely help ratio economies, to keep a more level playing field, but then people would complain about speeds, but, they'd be downloading things. At least the ones who are there for the tracker, not the status. It'd surely make it a lot easier to get rid of the dead weight.

[chrisbeebops]

I'm actually surprised more sites don't punish gross overseeding like that, after reflecting on it more. It would definitely help ratio economies, to keep a more level playing field, but then people would complain about speeds, but, they'd be downloading things. At least the ones who are there for the tracker, not the status. It'd surely make it a lot easier to get rid of the dead weight.It more pushes towards the failings of a ratio economy. It assumes that the value of all uploaded data and all downloaded data is the same. In reality, this is not the case. Brand new content is worth less than old and rare content, since new content can be had from any number of trackers and other places at the same time, while old content is much harder to find and may only be available on a single tracker.

Because everything is worth the same, it is the greatest incentive to seed whatever gives the best upload per unit of storage. And so people constantly dump old content in favor of new content with more leechers. On ratio trackers, it gives users with high speed connections and servers even greater incentive to delete files within a few days or hours after the initial surge has passed.

In reality, the only people who need high speed servers are uploaders, since the limiting factor in almost all private tracker swarms is the initial seed. Instead of rewarding users for whoring upload on new content, we should be rewarding users who seed older content for a long time. Perhaps then fewer users will waste their money needlessly on overpriced slots on oversold servers.

[IdolEyes787]

I'm actually surprised more sites don't punish gross overseeding like that, after reflecting on it more. It would definitely help ratio economies, to keep a more level playing field, but then people would complain about speeds, but, they'd be downloading things. At least the ones who are there for the tracker, not the status. It'd surely make it a lot easier to get rid of the dead weight.It more pushes towards the failings of a ratio economy. It assumes that the value of all uploaded data and all downloaded data is the same. In reality, this is not the case. Brand new content is worth less than old and rare content, since new content can be had from any number of trackers and other places at the same time, while old content is much harder to find and may only be available on a single tracker.

Because everything is worth the same, it is the greatest incentive to seed whatever gives the best upload per unit of storage. And so people constantly dump old content in favor of new content with more leechers. On ratio trackers, it gives users with high speed connections and servers even greater incentive to delete files within a few days or hours after the initial surge has passed.

In reality, the only people who need high speed servers are uploaders, since the limiting factor in almost all private tracker swarms is the initial seed. Instead of rewarding users for whoring upload on new content, we should be rewarding users who seed older content for a long time. Perhaps then fewer users will waste their money needlessly on overpriced slots on oversold servers.

That's a very good idea ( the idea of older torrents being "worth" more than new ones ) and I think you mentioned it in another thread, unfortuantely the sites that need it the most - the ones with the greatest initial speeds are the ones that would benefit from it the least - being as they are largely scene and most there only for the newest and the latest.

Btw TVTorrentz takes an entirely opposite approach and gives bonus to early upload since initial speed ( due to low membership/activity) is more a problem there than ( because of their "adoption" system) torrent lifespan. The adoption part means you gain progressively from seeding .It also means that if you fail to consistently do so over the course of time you will be disabled whatever your upload speed is.

@Intr4ns1t the TB buffers is merely people adapting to surviving ( or thriving in) an archaic system ( temporary seedbox - build buffer - leech - rinse - repeat ) Either that or it stems from the disparity in present home internet speed from country to country and without selfless action ( how often does that happen with bt?) on the part of the better equipped is largely unavoidable.
Maybe removing userclasses and viewable stats other than average seed time would help.:unsure:

[chrisbeebops]

@Intr4ns1t the TB buffers is merely people adapting to surviving ( or thriving in) an archaic system ( temporary seedbox - build buffer - leech - rinse - repeat ) Either that or it stems from the disparity in present home internet speed from country to country and without selfless action ( how often does that happen with bt?) on the part of the better equipped is largely unavoidable.
Maybe removing userclasses and viewable stats other than average seed time would help.:unsure:No matter what the game is (with the current game being ratio on most trackers), people will step up to play the game and to play it themselves. In ratio trackers, the game is ratio and upload, and so the way to be the best is to buy a server and seed new uploads from there.

In order to compete with servers, home users must seed for longer and longer in order to recover the credits spent on each download, since they will undoubtedly upload less during the initial swarm. Unfortunately there are limits to how long a person can seed releases... limits in storage space, not able to seed 24/7, etc. Plus seeding 24/7 has an added cost, the cost of electricity to run a computer for longer and longer hours, and the added wear on the computer parts. Unfortunately, the current seedbox culture has created a vicious feedback loop for users with slow upload speeds. In order to survive, a user with a slow upload speeds may consider purchasing a seedbox. This in turn means more peers with very fast connections, making it even harder for home users and forcing many more of them to use seedboxes.

As the current culture stresses high upload amounts and ratio, users will inevitably seed what is likely to give them the highest return on investment (investment being the money they paid for their seedbox), which means they will only seed new content for a short amount of time, then dump the content once the speeds drop off. It has become so bad that on some trackers, there are more seedbox peers than home users, with seedbox peers struggling to get a 1:1 ratio against even faster seedboxes. Wasted time, wasted bandwidth, wasted money.

Meanwhile look at how many sites are struggling to survive because of donations... not even new sites, but sites which have been around for a few years and still have staff pitching in 50% or more of the site's costs. Sites that many people take for granted... that they will happly use their 20euro/month... 50euro/month... or even more expensive seedbox on, but wouldn't even consider donating 5 euro a month or even 5 euro a year to keep the site going when donations haven't come close to covering sites costs. (I'll avoid mentioning any site names here as I think the money aspect is too complex to touch on in this thread.)

Sites should instead be creating a game where whoring upload on new content is not beneficial to one's status on a tracker, and seeding content for a long time (especially seeding content that no one else is) is extremely beneficial to one's status. Although there will be some users who will continue playing for the whoring game, the majority will find it more beneficial to themselves and the site in the long run to not buy a seedbox and instead invest in another hard drive if necessary, increasing the number of torrents they can seed and helping retention on the tracker.

[Intr4ns1t]

Sites should instead be creating a game where whoring upload on new content is not beneficial to one's status on a tracker, and seeding content for a long time (especially seeding content that no one else is) is extremely beneficial to one's status. Although there will be some users who will continue playing for the whoring game, the majority will find it more beneficial to themselves and the site in the long run to not buy a seedbox and instead invest in another hard drive if necessary, increasing the number of torrents they can seed and helping retention on the tracker.

So, something like, no upload or download is counted during the minimum seed time, them give credit for the overage? I have toyed with the idea with a trafficless tracker in the past, but I just can't see it ending up as anything other than a shtick. I have long pondered how to get rid of the idle wastrels that inhabit sites, and is a good portion of the reason I was so firmly behind the total traffic idea, but it's possible to call that a failed method in that it didn't encourage people to leech their asses off, which was the point. Even when you give people carte blanche, they want more. Like carte blanche and an ice cream cone, on a jet, flying to the moon, with solid diamond lensed sunglasses. :sigh:

[1000possibleclaws]

@1ntrans1t. It's just the problem with the sort of people that sign up to your site. Normal people use Demonoid, because it has the real carte blanche of free hit and running, optional ratio, and almost instant access. Everyone I know who torrents closes their torrents as soon as they hit 100%, that is the norm for torrenting. These public trackers succeed because people with fast pipes will make up for the slow users by reaching a ratio well over 1 by the time they realize they are at 100% and delete the torrent.


edit: did not realize I submitted this, was on the phone/not paying attention. I have a better written one below.

[Intr4ns1t]

@1ntrans1t. It's just the problem with the sort of people that sign up to your site. Normal people use Demonoid, because it has the real carte blanche of free hit and running, optional ratio, and almost instant access. Everyone I know who torrents closes their torrents as soon as they hit 100%, that is the norm for torrenting. These public trackers succeed because people with fast pipes will make up for the slow users by reaching a ratio well over 1 by the time they realize they are at 100% and delete the torrent.

hjahahaha. I'm a retard. Thought I was responding to a different thread. But just for shits and giggles, I know you, and never remove torrents from my client unless they are crap quality or a crap movie. Yeah, I'm one of those weird ones that actually watches/listens to all the stuff I download, but there are plenty of people, even on public trackers, that seed forever, despite your limited exposure to them.

[1000possibleclaws]

@1ntrans1t. Normal people use Demonoid, because it has the real carte blanche of free hit and running, optional ratio, and almost instant access. Everyone I know who irl closes their torrents as soon as they hit 100%, and that is the norm for torrenting. Torrenting publicly succeeds because people with fast pipes will offset slow uploading users by reaching a ratio well over 1 by the time they realize they are at 100% and delete the torrent.

BCG succeeds privately because they offer something demonoid doesn't; reliable and virus-free cracked game content. Seed-time is a small trade-off for this high quality standard. PTN has tons of random crap that doesn't need to be on a tracker website, and speeds equivalent to demonoid. It has a worse chance to get the results you want when you search, because of the tiny userbase. Sure you can think the site has incentives like 'total traffic', but in reality they are probably not even incentives for most users, or at least not good enough ones in comparison to other options. Also there is the fact that private trackers seem to attract the most moronic folk out there, but I guess that might be the reality of the world/the torrenting-world in general, outside of my own social bubble, ie that circular narrative of the dumb human race.



@1ntrans1t. It's just the problem with the sort of people that sign up to your site. Normal people use Demonoid, because it has the real carte blanche of free hit and running, optional ratio, and almost instant access. Everyone I know who torrents closes their torrents as soon as they hit 100%, that is the norm for torrenting. These public trackers succeed because people with fast pipes will make up for the slow users by reaching a ratio well over 1 by the time they realize they are at 100% and delete the torrent.

hjahahaha. I'm a retard. Thought I was responding to a different thread. But just for shits and giggles, I know you, and never remove torrents from my client unless they are crap quality or a crap movie. Yeah, I'm one of those weird ones that actually watches/listens to all the stuff I download, but there are plenty of people, even on public trackers, that seed forever, despite your limited exposure to them.

Sure there are altruists, but it's not the norm and it's not even needed for the system to work. And I don't normally download for buffer either (ie excluding what.cd, but then again by recently snatching big top10 releases, I've changed my musical tastes for the better), not sure what is weird about watching everything you download, that is also normal in the big picture.

ps I meant 'know' and in people I see face to face in real life. I'm not trying to put any of my online friends down, but lets face it we are all far from normal (ie casual) torrenters and are a bad measure for comparison and example.

[Intr4ns1t]

Sure there are altruists, but it's not the norm and it's not even needed for the system to work. And I don't normally download for buffer either (ie excluding what.cd, but then again by recently snatching big top10 releases, I've changed my musical tastes for the better), not sure what is weird about watching everything you download, that is also normal in the big picture.

ps I meant 'know' and in people I see face to face in real life. I'm not trying to put any of my online friends down, but lets face it we are all far from normal (ie casual) torrenters and are a bad measure for comparison and example.

I only added the "use the stuff I download" statement to snub all the buffer whores that really did take the enjoyment out of the hobby. I agree with you on pretty much everything you've said, fyi.