
Japanese peer-to-peer (2008) - creamyhorror
http://jmoiron.net/blog/japanese-peer-peer/
======
creamyhorror
It's no surprise that Japan has evolved these anonymous networks, considering
the legal pressure its media companies applies to its filesharers. Even
Perfect Dark's users have been arrested, implying its security has been
broken.[1] Maybe we elsewhere can draw some lessons. Reposting a comment of
mine:

\-----

I actually submitted the Perfect Dark wiki article to HN after reading about
Isamu's passing:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark_(P2P)‎](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark_\(P2P\)‎)

Screenshots:
[https://www.google.com/search?biw=1097&bih=609&tbm=isch&sa=1...](https://www.google.com/search?biw=1097&bih=609&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=perfect+dark+p2p)

Basically, you dedicate some space on your hard drive to the program, which
then stores chunks of unidentified files there and constantly uploads to other
clients - it's true decentralized file storage with a degree of plausible
deniability. You can search for files you want, and after you've downloaded
them, you can vote on them to extend their lifespan or bury them.

It was a cool setup when I tried it back in '08 or so, giving off a very
cyberpunk[2] feel with its anonymity/tripcodes, spartan plain-text-on-black-
background UI, and the scrolling chatstream of Japanese comments (often with
SJIS text art) posted by other users. In the end I didn't actually use it for
anything, but it felt like a futuristic BBS.

It would be interesting to see a global equivalent emerge, maybe built upon
bittorent DHTs/magnet links. Maybe one already has, e.g. on Tor?

\----

[1] The Japanese network security firm NetAgent announced last year that it
was able to decrypt Perfect Dark's security and thus be able to compromise the
anonymity of the network.
[http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-06-10/2nd-man-
arre...](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-06-10/2nd-man-arrested-for-
uploading-anime-via-perfect-dark)

[2] Considering that PD v1.02 is codenamed "Stand Alone Complex", a reference
to the fictional emergent phenomenon of stand-alone individuals spontaneously
acting in concert without coordination (coined by the Ghost in the Shell TV
anime), its cyberpunk inspirations are quite evident.

~~~
antimatter15
Why don't these P2P apps store the file chunks in your hard drive's free
space? The fact that commands like `shred` exist means that you can readily
read/write from it, and your OS will automatically overwrite the cache
contents when you need to use space (and it doesn't matter because P2P
networks are fault tolerant anyway).

That way users don't have to face the idea of "giving up" their disk space to
be part of the network.

~~~
JulianMorrison
There is no generalized way to access the free space of a mounted and mutable
file system.

What you'd be better off doing on Unix type OSes is creating a large empty
file, deleting it but keeping the file handle, and reading/writing that.
That's a traditional way to make a self erasing scratch file.

It doesn't work on Windows, though, because Windows won't let you delete a
file that's open.

~~~
Dylan16807
If you do that the space is still occupied. And the file deletes itself
whenever the service is restarted, which is also undesirable.

------
sergers
i was a raw capper of japanese TV from about 2000-2008.

article is pretty much spot on. we started out on winmx, with huge userlists.
the fun thing about winmx it downloaded in order, it didnt grab multiple
pieces of random parts of the file.

i could start a download, startup my FXP ftp client and start uploading
immediately (would have to cap it so it didnt complete the upload before the
download completed).

after a few years winmx started to die out, the familiar reputable uploaders
we kept eyes are gone. (probably arrents and some people retiring).

then came winny, it was a little harder to use but then we figured out you can
just search the hash for the uploader and started grabbing all their content
with ease. it was pretty nice.

used share, didnt like it as much as winny.

winny eventually came to an end, well the uploaders were gone like winmx.

by the time perfect dark came out, we already invested in local japanese
residents to cap the streams directly and we no longer needed to use japanese
p2p software as a source of some of our caps as we could cap anything in hd.

------
donohoe
It looks like a great app and something I'd use (though the majority of
content available likely to be Japanese?).

The only other down-side I can see off the bat is that it runs only on Windows
machines.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_(P2P)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_\(P2P\))

Anyone aware of an OSX version?

~~~
unsignedint
It seems like protocol is pretty much deciphered (for forensic purpose, more
likely.) I never heard any existence of it outside of Windows.

I've once tried to run it on Wine while ago, it looks like it incorporates
quite a bit of environment checking (so to prevent someone from modifying
network parameters?) and I remember it was having problems running -- not sure
if it's still the case with later version of Wine.

------
unsignedint
What I found fascinating about this is not only technological aspect of it,
but the social aspect of it.

Apparently, there's some sort of hierarchical social structure, especially
prevalent in anime uploads; basically people with higher "caste" would upload
more popular anime.

I have heard of stories where those who are not complying these systems, or
people trying to get out of the system (especially higher ranked ones) are
shunned, either by giving anonymous tips to police, etc. (It has been rumored
sporadic arrests being made by police, despite larger user base, are because
of this.)

~~~
Amadou
Pirate Anime Yakuza? Sounds like an actual anime show.

~~~
unsignedint
Almost like that!

Maybe worse... These people can get pretty nasty. After all, you are dealing
with people who would try to locate you from a set of pictures. (Some people's
obsession goes so far locating someone's residence from a set of pictures,
examining time it was taken, and angle of shadow, etc.)

------
aaron695
Pretty sure this article is totally wrong on all it's assumptions on security
being broken.

All arrest to my knowledge were from people posting hashes in a public way.

Statements like this are definitely wrong, this is NSA style stuff, if
possible at all. I though there are only a handful (One?) md5 collisions
found.

"The relative weakness of md5 has led to hash spoofing attacks on the WinNY
network."

------
pawrvx
There's this really annoying ip filter that blocks non japanese ip from
connecting though....

------
badman_ting
On the upside, western internet users mostly ignored Usenet in favor of
BitTorrent, which made Usenet a real pleasure to download from for years.
Copyright holders are starting to catch on, though, so this is going away.

------
lcasela
What's with japan and tripcodes?

