
Unstoppable file-sharing network ‘Tribler’ spells trouble for copyright holders - zacharye
http://www.bgr.com/2012/02/10/unstoppable-file-sharing-network-tribler-spells-trouble-for-copyright-holders/
======
Silhouette
> "Tribler" is a peer-to-peer file-sharing client that is completely
> decentralized. "The only way to take it down is to take the Internet down,"
> the software’s creator says.

Which is a pretty f--king stupid thing to say at a time when we are trying to
avoid draconian, Big-Media-backed legal shenanigans like SOPA/PIPA and ACTA.

Are they _trying_ to demonstrate that the only way to enforce copyright law
_really is_ to monitor everyone's communications 24/7, assume that anyone who
uses encryption to an unrecognised/unauthorised host an infringer, and
ruthlessly cut off Internet access to any such person? Because anyone who
thinks such a scenario is unrealistic hasn't been paying attention.

People who make and advertise file sharing tools for the obvious purpose of
conducting illegal activity are the enemy of those of us who want to have such
tools for legitimate purposes and of those of us who want to have the content
we honestly pay for in unrestricted formats that don't get in the way of us
enjoying them.

<skeptic>Also, with my technical hat on, how exactly does this work? I'm
betting you aren't really as isolated and decentralised as you think you are,
because, well, you can't be off the network and yet still be on the network.
The article says it's a BitTorrent client, so surely someone is seeding
something somewhere.</skeptic>

~~~
Karunamon
>People who make and advertise file sharing tools for the obvious purpose of
conducting illegal activity

Except that's not what Tribler is. If you can't think of legitimate reasons
for a decentralized, censorship-proof file sharing network that don't violate
the law, I daresay your imagination is broken...

~~~
skymt
Go right ahead. Name some uses for a censorship-resistant network that doesn't
violate the law of the country in question. (It doesn't count if the use
merely breaks a law you dislike, as in Chinese or Iranian suppression of
dissidents.)

~~~
icebraining
Distributing personal files without being subjected to fraudulent DMCA
takedowns, like the ones that Warner Bros sent to any file containing the
string "the box".

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dwhly
One word... Kadmelia!

It's worth saying (and has been said elsewhere already) that fully distributed
search has existed for years. Kadmelia is just one notable example in wide
use. I do think it's great that it's coming to the torrent world though!

The characterization of it by many seems to suggest that this is novel and
groundbreaking.

The statements made about how you'd have to shut down the internet to take it
down are also a bit hyperbolic. After all, algorithms to sniff, detect and
either block or throttle this kind of traffic are widely deployed. Of course
it's an arms race and encryption and obfuscation are used to counter. I'm not
sure what the current state of that battle is, but clearly the main tool in
protecting these kinds of capabilities is our voices, not fundamental
technical properties.

~~~
StavrosK
For anyone searching, it's "kademlia".

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TheCapn
Anyone have a summary of the bootstrap process for this? There is no "central
servers" or the like but how does one client find the next?

~~~
irickt
An overview is here: [https://torrentfreak.com/tribler-makes-bittorrent-
impossible...](https://torrentfreak.com/tribler-makes-bittorrent-impossible-
to-shut-down-120208/) It's based on bittorrent with search, metadata, and spam
control all distributed among peers.

~~~
TheCapn
"Tribler is based on the standard BitTorrent protocol and uses regular
BitTorrent trackers to communicate with other peers. But, it can also continue
downloading when a central tracker goes down."

Well there we go. A bunch of sensational journalism hype again.

The problem with Tribler then is that the network becomes stagnent once the
tracker goes down. Sure peers receive shared connections from one another to
create a web architecture but unless you've dialed into a web that has the
host of a scene group the group will stagate on content will it not? Without a
__central __tracker to facilitate the sharing of new peer data to prevent the
swarm from becoming stale the content will eventually all reach 100% download
and remain so with no nocomers being able to find the network.

My knowledge of the DHT and Peer Exchange protocol extensions to BitTorrent
_are_ limited but isn't this what they tried to accomplish? How does Tribler
make this any better?

I'm stuck on the fence now. Tribler doesn't _appear_ to be new and fantastic
because its still strongly relied upon by central servers for bootstrapping
abilities. Sure the network established _might_ be large in size but without
fresh peer exhanges the swarm will die off once the tracker is brought down.

Someone to enlighten me perhaps?

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rmc
Some of this stuff, like peer exchange and magnet links, are not new and are
in most torrent clients for years. Pirate Bay has started promoting magnet
links and rumour is that they'll stop doing torrents all together.

It's the search part that's hard to do, and I wonder how tribler do it? Anyone
analysed their code? I wonder how you'd do a true decentralised p2p search
system.... (i.e. do to p2p search what google did to web search, come up with
a new algorithmic invention)

~~~
Silhouette
It would indeed be interesting to know how they do it.

If someone has finally developed a way of sharing large amounts of data in an
efficient, decentralised, and secure way, then it's not just the copyright
holders who need to be afraid, it's also anyone planning on investing in
Facebook (or those operating any other content-driven walled-garden services).

~~~
sedachv
It's going to be _very_ difficult to provide the same things Facebook does in
a decentralized way (I've thought about the problems around such a project a
lot and written up my ideas for an approach in a series of blog posts at
<http://carcaddar.blogspot.com/search/label/ClearSky> \- I've outlined the big
problems and proposed workable solutions for all of them, but the
implementation is difficult and will be hard to get right).

Justin Frankel released WASTE in 2003 and it does the basic P2P friendnet
thing, but without a great user interface, ability to log in via the web
browser from any random Internet cafe/computer lab, and a load of luck
("traction"), it's not going to work.

------
nextparadigms
Is Tribler "better" than Oneswarm and AllianceP2P? And if so, why?

<http://www.oneswarm.org/> <http://alliancep2p.com/>

Is it because Tribler is more focused on having everything public, while the
other 2 are more focused on "friend sharing" networks, so it's easier to find
files on Tribler?? From what I can tell they have more security/anonymization
than Tribler, and it's not just because of the limited access between friends.

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rbanffy
Quite the contrary - it may force them to evolve into companies fully adapted
to thrive in this environment.

No. Not really. What will most likely happen is that big-media will just use
it to push legislation that assume the users cannot be trusted and that
enforcement must be more thorough to catch all those bad guys. If you do a lot
of high bandwidth encrypted data exchange, someone will have to search your
computer for "stolen" content.

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joejohnson
Can anyone speak to how well the search function works within the Tribler
application? I can't get it to return any useful results :(

------
taylorbuley
These researchers view of technologies' I would consider to be quite robust --
"we don’t rely on shaky foundations such as DNS, web servers or search
portals" -- kind of blows my mind

~~~
Karunamon
Robust, from a legal standpoint. Robust as in "Government jackboots can't come
in and shut it down". SOPA proved that any centralized service, whether that
be DNS or HTTP, is vulnerable to governmental shenanigans. It's been on the
back of everyone's minds since Napster, but this brought it to the forefront.

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cdi
"Spells trouble to freedom of the net" is more like it. Copyright holders will
push repressive legislation sooner or later, and will use projects like this
as an example.

~~~
Zaak
It's unlikely that the absence of projects like this would cause them to
refrain from pushing repressive legislation.

~~~
cdi
absence of projects like this would make their arguments look weak.

------
pavel_lishin
I wonder how well it would work as a way to access data from outside national
firewalls. Seems pretty topical considering what's happening in Iran right
now.

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alex_c
Flashbacks to Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella, etc.

Come on, that wasn't THAT long ago. Do people really not learn anything from
history?

~~~
Zirro
Are you saying that they were as decentralized as Tribler?

~~~
bonzoesc
Gnutella definitely was once you found another node to talk to.

