BitTorrent file-swapping networks face crisis

BitTorrent "hubs" that publish lists of movies, TV shows and other free downloads suddenly went dark this weekend, in a major victory for Hollywood that highlights vulnerabilities in technology behind the world's busiest peer-to-peer network.

Last week, the Motion Picture Association of America launched a series of worldwide legal actions, aimed at people who ran the infrastructure for BitTorrent networks being used to distribute movies and other copyrighted materials without permission.

The MPAA's actions have put pressure on a short list of large Web sites that had served as hubs for the BitTorrent community and that had operated for months or even years. Many of those sites have now vanished almost overnight, including the SuprNova.org site that was by far the most popular gathering point for the community, serving more than a million people a day, according to one academic study.

News.context

What's new:
Many of the Web sites that served as hubs for BitTorrent file seekers have gone dark, including SuprNova.org, which was the most popular gathering point.

Bottom line:
The loss of the big sites is unlikely to eliminate BitTorrent swapping altogether, but it does bring to a close an era of operating in the open without fear of legal reprisals.

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The disappearance of the big sites is unlikely to eliminate BitTorrent swapping altogether, but it does bring to a close an era of operating in the open without fear of legal reprisals. The resulting shift to the underground will likely make files harder to find, as traders move onto private networks or smaller communities, file-swapping insiders said.

"We do not know if SuprNova is going to return, but it is certainly not going to be hosting any more torrent links" to content, said a message posted over the weekend to the SuprNova site, which was no longer available Monday morning. "We are very sorry for this, but there was no other way, we have tried everything."

The fallout marks a substantial victory for the MPAA and its allies, which have sat on the sidelines for years as sites such as SuprNova openly set up shop as file-swapping indexes. Such locales became convenient if not indispensable destinations for millions of people seeking one-click downloads of TV shows, movies, games and music.

Over the past two years, BitTorrent has risen to become one of the most popular file-swapping tools on the Net, accounting for a majority of peer-to-peer traffic on ISP networks as of last summer, according to network monitoring firm CacheLogic. Because the technology was designed from the beginning to make distributing large files

efficient, much of this traffic was dedicated to full-length, high-quality movies and software.

Nevertheless, the creator of the technology, Bram Cohen, said he's not surprised at the latest developments. BitTorrent was always designed

[lavacentral]

illegal downloading does not pay off

People who download illegal movies should realize that they are paying a high price for these movies. Most people get a high speed cable broadband service so they can download at high speed. They often pay upto $45 per month for this serivce. It would be wiser for these people to just get a slightly lower speed dsl connection (sbc_yahoo $26) and spend the other money to actualy buy DVDs or go to theatre and watch movies. People waste time downloading and the quality is not as good as buying your own DVD is not good anyway.
and lastly I think the article correctly points out that these networks will never go away. It just moves underground. No one can claim victory yet. This is the begining of the begining.

[Kelson]

Finally, a story that mentions the legit uses of BitTorrent

...even if it is on page 3.

My first experience with BitTorrent was as a way to download Linux distributions. A lot of the smaller ones, and even the bigger ones like Fedora and Mandrake, have been using BitTorrent to distribute their install CD images.

For smaller projects, it's a matter of necessity. They couldn't afford the bandwidth otherwise, and I've seen some of them hold donation drives just to be able to pay for their web hosting. For the bigger ones, it's a way to supplement their network of mirror sites. Given the rush that often hits new releases, being able to "join the torrent" is sometimes the only way for early adopters to get onboard.

[Prndll]

This is a bad presedent

This is the start of the very thing that will end up making the internet too cumbersum to use.

Pay close attention......

The ability to use the internet FOR ANYTHING is taking a beating.

Peer-to-peer won't be stopped so easily

The 'establishment' RIAA/MPAA forced a web-site to
shut-down. This will slow the revolution down for
months or weeks but will not stop it. The fundamental behaviours (technological and social) behind sharing are much stronger than any army of lawyers.

The next phase will be even more distributed than
the torrent phase. Central servers and initial
seeds will be replaced by clients that dynamically
discover their peers using techniques pioneered
in port-scanning worms.

The problem of proving that so-and-so served your
content to someone else will be made intractible
in a few more generations of software. To sue
people, industry lawyers will have to prove that
hundreds of computers were configured in a certain
fashion and that certain sequences of messages
were exchanged with malice of forethought.

It will be impossible to do this to any acceptable
standard of evidence when you consider that the
users are located in dozens of jurisdictions.

How much complexity would you like to use today ?

[hadaso]

The MPAA/RIAA are cutting the branch they're sitting on!

The MPAA/RIAA are cutting the branch they're sitting on!

What they shut down have nothing to do with the nature of bittorrent. They were just websites storing pointers to resources, and those resources might as well have been http or ftp links. So what now? There will not be central repositories of torrents? Then people would get used to searching for them using Google, and find those links scattered all around the web. What then? the MPAA would shut Google down? or censor the web? Eventually people would realize that the price paid to supporting their monopoly on content is not worth it. The only reason they have this monopoly is a law passed a 100 years ago after a supreme court decision that recorded music does not enjoy copyright protection. The law was changed then. It can be changed now. There is no need for these distributors (MPAA/RIAA) in an era when artists can reach the public directly using the internet.

Once there were people that were annoyed by all the taxes they had to pay to one king. But they continued paying. But one day they decided that taxing their tea is just too much, and they realized that they don't need this king. So they replaced the king. The act of replacement of the king was not legal at all in terms of the existing law back then in that jurisdiction. It was illegal, and it was violent. Many people died in the process, but the survivors enjoyed new and much better laws.

Laws are not absolute. They are made by people to serve people. They should balance interests. When the balance is broken something is wrong. But people tend to hold on when the balance is broken. And when it becomes more unbalanced to hold tighter. Eventually they realize they must jump off. And then the other side falls!

Sorry for the poor English. I hope the moral is understood...

big deal..

the majority of the user will just switch to Usenet newsgruops and IRC channels, since they are still under the radar scope of BayTSP.

and once anonymous p2p like mute (http://mute-net.sourceforge.net) hits mainstream, BayTSP can't do a damn thing about it. that will be the end of **AA. then, what can they do? shut down all internet routers?

technology is a payback, doesn't it?