A friend told me...

[Col. Skillz]

newgroups are the p2p of the future. supposedly because its nearly impossible to get tracked or hunted by the riaa.

any truth to that? or will bit torrent always reign supreme?

[sassan]

First of all Newsgroups are not Peer to peer.

Second of all Newsgroups have been around far longer than anything I know (1980's), second to that would be IRC.

It's harder to track if you use SSL for example, but usually their not sough after. RIAA and other companies usually go after Bittorent (Your IP is fully shown) and Gnutella networks.

[Cabalo]

well, i've used newsgroups since 2000 to 2003 around, then i switched to BT.
for your information, your ISP has access to the relevant data either when you post something there or you download it.
i remember there was a police investigation on the newsgroups with a warrant back in 2002 in my country. so, no, i don't think it's that safe.

[SonsOfLiberty]

Have to agree, everything has risks...I do need to stay away from ultra hot torrents. Alot of ISP's in the states don't offer it anymore, they said there getting rid of it because of the kiddie porn, but I think it's because of the mass distribution of files.

[dutchmaster420]

you dont have to upload at all on usenet if you dont want to and as far as i know at least in the u.s. they only go after people who upload

Out of all file sharing options i would say usenet is the safest but as stated above everything has risks

[GWashington]

Usenet is a lot older than torrents and have had a lot less problems for end users than other filesharing means. If you have a couple of bucks to spend each month, its a much easier way to get what you want.

I think the fact that you're not using upstream, generally speaking, means your ISP will be less likely to give you a hard time. Also, you won't be using the connection 24/7 since you don't need to seed. And of course, I'd rather have my IP address available only to the usenet provider, a big company, rather than every peer on the torrent.

[Beck38]

newgroups are the p2p of the future. supposedly because its nearly impossible to get tracked or hunted by the riaa.

any truth to that? or will bit torrent always reign supreme?

Yet another p2p v. usenet thread. Okay, I'm game.

p2p is for little kiddies to play around. Usenet has been around for just about 20+ years, and there were other forms of message/file transfer systems (Fidonet in particular, back almost to the 70's), and even before that.

p2p has the potential, (note please I said 'potential', not reality!), to store and forward material literally until the end of the universe (when the electrons cease to move). All it takes is a bunch of peers to stay up and running, and therein lies the rub.

When p2p came out of the woodwork (Napster in particular) in the late 90's, it's usability lasted about one month. Then it got overrun by 'all the little kiddies'. In short, people with minimal bandwidth (particularly transmit as opposed to receive), and who simply wanted to leech anyway, and would turn on their machine only to grab as fast as they could.

If I had a penny for every file I attempted to get before the peer simply shut down, or even when the protocol improved to enable things like multi-feeding from different sources, even then, when one would have maybe 10 or 20 different peers feeding the same file, they'd ALL shut down before you could finish. Then, the protocol 'improved' once again, and you'd be able to restart days later, then once again, they'd shut down in the middle of the transfer.

Plainly, it was time for the little kiddies to go to bed. And they don't keep their systems alive while they're not in front of it.

But, the 'potential' of having things like movies or music bouncing around the ether for conceivably forever got the 'aa' folks really to notice, especially when newsgroup retention was generally around the lifespan of a fruit fly. Boy, has that changed, and now the guns are being re pointed a bit.

Folks will generally say that the 'upload' part is what they go for, and since most (but not all) p2p folks are indeed uploading into the system, that's a given. But whereas on p2p, those sources are pretty easily identified, on usenet they are not. The servers are commercial entities, with well over a quarter century of case law backing them up.

Folks tend to 'think' that utilizing (for instance) SSL is going to help hide them; and for those using shared transmission systems (like cable or wireless modems), it is. For those directly connected to the actual internet, like DSL, T-Span, or other non-shared systems, it isn't.

Yes, the line can still be 'tapped', but the reasoning for doing so don't exist, unlike 'party-line' shared systems. Although the traffic itself with SSL is encrypted, the destination is (of course) not, so bits headed toward a news-server is pretty obvious.

Now, as storage facilities get larger and larger, as disc space gets cheaper and cheaper, at some point that system gets close to what the p2p is, as far as 'once its there, its there forever'. The text groups are really already there, it's only a matter of time (and physics) until the binary groups get there.

At some point, it will be a wash. Six months retention? (Already there). One year? (Coming up quick) Five Years? (Conceivable, watch as disc prices continue to tumble and even the next generation of technology beyond perpendicular recording hits in the next half-dozen years).

Do a curve of disc capacity v. price. A terabyte <$100? Here already. How about < $10? Heck, how about <$1. It'll happen. What will be the effect of such a thing....? :w00t:

Long dissertation, but the handwriting's on the wall.

[Valoo]

I don't think usenet is the future of P2P, because it's not P2P. IMO the future is the use of more various ways of sharing with "servers" and not only home line connections (DDL like rapidshare, usenet, seedboxes).

@Beck38
I don't agree with you about the fact P2P is a "kiddies" thing.
Then, even Usenet allows a nice speed and a bigger retention each days, P2P is a less vulnerable system than usenet (even if it's more insecure for each peers).
Usenet only depends on a very few compagnies.

About the retention, you're right, XSNews (a dutch provider) is planning to grow to 400 days retention.

[iLOVENZB]

Like many filesharing methods it is possible for the RIAA/MPAA to track you down, but with Usenet it's a little harder than on p2p networks because your IP address isn't publicly revealed.

Also p2p is almost at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to pre times (unless your using private trackers) so I dont know why people bother lol.

[quadomatic]

Well since the only people who know what you're doing when you're on Usenet is your ISP, and even then, if you're using SSL, I don't think you would ever get in trouble if you're just DL'ing on Usenet.

I like Usenet because I'm afraid of dl'ing 0-day torrents, since MediaSentry and others would jump on that stuff ASAP. I don't think downloading new releases on Usenet would be an issue, since it's not like MediaSentry can connect to the torrent, upload bad data, and then just check who's on it.

[Sonnentier]

Usenet is getting more popular as it's a safe harbour today.

I think in the future the deletion of copyrighted files will become more important.

[$SnoopDo2G$]

PeerScenePeer 3000 is the future :lol:

[iLOVENZB]

PeerScenePeer 3000 is the future :lol:

I highly doubt so :D considering how pissed members in the scene get when they see 'scene' releases on p2p networks :cry: