

TorrentTraveler: Micropayments-based anonymous BT proxy - choogi
http://torrenttraveler.com/

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rglullis
This seems interesting, but I was even more interested in the payment system,
minno (<https://www.minno.co/>). The screencast shows that they are using
Facebook for authentication. I wonder if it's just for authentication or if
they are planning to use Facebook Credits. I wonder what Tipjoy's Ivan Kirigin
think of it.

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ivankirigin
I think this is great. I wish we had experimented more with microservices,
especially on twitter.

Merchant acquisition is the hardest part of a payments startup. Tipjoy failed
to get the top "merchants" on Twitter's platform to use us. That's because
they didn't really want to make money. Look at what tweetdeck, twitpic,
seesmic, etc. still do today with commerce: nothing.

There is a lot more to do for minno, but the micro sites are great.

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citricsquid
If you want to appear more legitimate, put up a bunch of use cases for things
like linux distros and data sets, that way you have plausible deniability...
more than now anyway.

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jaekwon
How does this affect copyright issues? The domain is registered in PA, USA, so
how long before you guys get shut down by the feds?

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mdolon
Just tried it out and it's surprisingly fast at downloading! (700mb file in
just a couple of minutes) Also, having worked with the guys who made this, I
can definitely say I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more exciting stuff
from them.

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Natsu
It would be nice if you could have the option to have them mail you a DVD.
After all, if your connection is spotty, a direct download isn't much better
than a torrent.

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david2777
I would think the problem with that would be that it is ok to burn something
like Ubuntu Live CDs, but people would start asking to burn illegal software,
and since it says on the site they don't endorse piracy, it may get a little
tricky.

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derefr
If you could upload a public key, and they would encrypt the download with it
and send you the result, that would be a pretty effective workaround for any
legality issues. After all, no one but the intended recipient can then
determine what's actually on the disk. And, as long as the download and
encryption are done together with no human intermediary, nobody at the company
can say they knew what was on the disks either. Bam: average-sized safe-harbor
provision.

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Natsu
There are two big problems with that: one problem is that, unless the torrent
itself is encrypted, they'll know what they downloaded. After all, they're the
ones encrypting it.

The second problem is that judges won't look kindly upon any attempt to blind
yourself to what's going on. You'd be a lot better off making a good faith
effort to comply with the law, even if you're not perfect at it. Otherwise,
people will see it as a wink-and-a-nudge kind of thing, which is exactly what
you don't want if you're trying to run a legitimate business.

~~~
derefr
How are these not also problems with the original service, though? If a judge
would say that "they know what they downloaded", then why wouldn't they "know
what they're proxying"? Since both processes would be automated, knowledge of
either would require explicit logging. (And before you say that the
downloading step enables a point where the entire illegal product is, for
however brief an instant, on-disk where logging could be much more easily
applied, consider this alternative setup: the company just rents out "CPU
time" to their customers to run virtual machines running with encrypted disk
images, a known image of which happens, as its effect, to download a torrent,
encrypt it, and dump the result to a write-only host-shared folder. They then
send their customers any such "dumped logs" on disks as a courtesy service.)

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nicpottier
Neat idea, but funny that it suddenly removes the number one reason I use
torrents: an unreliable connection.

Can you offer the download in some format that lets me resume? Perhaps a
private torrent of some kind? Then you'd have a customer in me.

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dmn001
Here's a less well known, but better site that I use:
<http://www.torrific.com> It's free, and signups don't require you to connect
with facebook to join.

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dvdhsu
> All files and database entries are deleted after 24 hours.

If I can't download the file within 24 hours, it is gone?

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choogi
Yes, all records are destroyed after 24 hours in order to protect the
anonymity of our users. You don't have to pay unless you actually download the
file, and our downstream bandwidth should give you ample time to complete the
download. If you don't receive the download then you can always re-download it
at no extra charge.

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dlindhol
A novel approach. Couple brilliant guys here. I expect big things out of them.

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akanet
This is fascinating - can we hear more about the architecture and policies?

~~~
choogi
We completely protect the anonymity of our users. We do not condone the
downloading of illegal content. On the back-end, we run a separate sandboxed
instance of transmission-daemon for each download request. Interestingly,
although the backend is written in Python, more than half of the code is bash.

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stwe
You claim to protect the user's anonymity, but your payment provider's only
login mechanism is via Facebook. That doesn't feel right.

~~~
choogi
The payment provider, Minno, is our primary project--we put together
TorrentTraveler mostly as a proof of concept for it. We built Minno with an
emphasis on user experience and privacy.

Minno only receives information about the size of the download (1GB, 2GB, etc)
so that it can charge accordingly. TorrentTraveler deletes all of of its
records for each download after 24 hours.

If you have any other questions/comments about Minno, feel free to ping me at
calvin [at] minno.co

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geuis
Although you say that you're deleting records after 24 hours, in the US (I
think) there are data retention laws, at least locally depending where you are
based. This, in combination with the overhanded and perverse trend of the US
government to go after "pirates" of copyrighted content (this isn't the
government's job), makes me ask how you will handle the inevitable demands for
user records.

People will immediately use your service to download "illegal" content, aka
movies and tv shows, and then download from you to themselves. How do you plan
on responding when the government comes a knockin?

Beyond this, I love the entire concept. Its a novel business idea and exactly
the kind that the reprehensible trend towards copyright restriction is going
to snuff out.

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vertr
How does this affect seeding? Do they seed the file until it's an even ratio?
I think services like this have a place in the bittorent ecology as long as
they are responsible to the network.

~~~
choogi
Thanks for the feedback -- the health of the torrent ecosystem is very
important to us. We seed to 1.2 or we kill the seed after 24 hours, whichever
comes first. We delete all records associated with each download after 24
hours in order to protect the anonymity of our users.

