Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic 601
TheGift73 writes "The Russian based 'Pirate Pay' startup is promising the entertainment industry a pirate-free future. With help from Microsoft, the developers have built a system that claims to track and shut down the distribution of copyrighted works on BitTorrent. Their first project, carried out in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures, successfully stopped tens of thousands of downloads. Hollywood, software giants and the major music labels see BitTorrent as one of the largest threats to their business. Billions in revenue are lost each year, they claim. But not for long if the Russian based startup 'Pirate Pay' has its way. The company has developed a technology which allows them to attack existing BitTorrent swarms, making it impossible for people to share files."
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Informative)
casual piracy really is hurting the industry.
Lots of "people" say this, but the evidence is lacking.
Re:blocking = NOT net neutrality (Score:3, Informative)
Peer ban hammer (Score:5, Informative)
"The company doesnâ(TM)t reveal how it works, but they appear to be flooding clients with fake information, masquerading as legitimate peers."
All it would take is for a client to verify to data in the chunk (probably by it's MD5 or SHA), and if it's busted then try and download it again from the same peer. If it fails the second time then just ban the peer.
But I imagine they already do this, don't they?
This is how Peerblock comes in handy (Score:5, Informative)
Downloaded the blocklists for Pirate Pay as well as the antip2p blocklists.
I tested on a poisoned swarm that had listed 5000 seeders (which were mostly mediadefender and pirate pay poisoners)
Peerblock dumped over 4500 of the poisoned seeds from the torrent by blocking them and my torrent speed went from 20K/s download to 2500-3000K/s download
So for companies like this I highly recommend picking up Peerblock and getting some blocklists, especially the antip2p blocklists.
http://www.peerblock.com/ [peerblock.com]
Never ever again have problem with companies like Mediadefender or PiratePay and their ilk.
Re:Protocol encryption? (Score:5, Informative)
This service doesn't appear to be listening into BT chat between two parties. It is joining existing swarms and spreading misinformation to the swarm to confuse clients into halting their downloads.
Legal? (Score:5, Informative)
“We used a number of servers to make a connection to each and every P2P client that distributed this film. Then Pirate Pay sent specific traffic to confuse these clients about the real IP-addresses of other clients and to make them disconnect from each other,” Andrei Klimenko says.
If they're attacking computers without authorization, they're in breach of all kinds of criminal law. It doesn't matter if those computers are participating in infringing or not. Sounds all kinds of illegal, at least in the US.
I don't even watch anymore. (Score:4, Informative)
Suckers born every minute (Score:5, Informative)
The BitTorrent protocol will be reworked to neutralize this crap, but in the meantime someone gets to make an awful lot of money selling ultimately worthless software to the *AA clowns. BitTorrent is made stronger, the MafIAA has a little less money, and someone else profits handsomely at their expense.
Win-win all around.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Informative)
1: use encrypted peers
2: use a block list to avoid contacting known tainted peers.
3: if the torrents go down, resume downloading via usenet binary forums
4: continual attacks on the open Internet will just drive it into a new darknet.
The signal wants to be free 8)
And I 100% agree with the oatmeal. If they would sell it to me DRM free, I'd buy it.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Informative)
The MPAA's five years of consecutive record profits [zeropaid.com] don't help with the evidence either.
Re:This is how Peerblock comes in handy (Score:4, Informative)
For those wanting the actual blocklists to use with their torrenet client, Peerblock, linux blocking program such as nfblock
or whatever program you use
here are some blocklists some updated multiple times per day unlike what trolls may say
Go here: http://www.iblocklist.com/lists.php [iblocklist.com]
copy and paste the "Update URL" into your blocklist program of choice, Peerblock for windows, Nfblock for linux, or add them to your firewall, since it's a simple text based list of ip's updated throughout the day and at least daily.
They do contain the PiratePay ip's and tons of other antip2p ip's since the ip blocks owned by all the companies are public information listed by Arin.net for the most part.
So if you don't want to use peerblock but some other ip blocking program get all your blocklists here: http://www.iblocklist.com/lists.php [iblocklist.com]
And yes it blocks Pirate Pay and all torrent poisoning companies, you will see poisoned torrents seeders drop from astronomical 2000+ seeds (mostly poisoners) down to the real numbers and your torrent speeds will increase since your client is no longer trying to download from poisoners.
Re:Peer ban hammer (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting technology (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Protocol encryption? (Score:5, Informative)
That already happens - if a peer is found to be sending frequent chunks that fail the hash then the client automatically blocks it and knows it is unreliable. The BT protocol is already pretty good at detecting and routing around poisoned seeds/peers.
Assuming that there's at least one good seed in the swarm, all this will do is slow down the time it takes to complete a file and more wasted chunks/more hashfails.
The movie industry could take a page from the music industry's book. All of that poisoning of p2p networks did nothing to slow down music piracy. What really made a difference was offering a product that people wanted to buy at a reasonable price: DRM-free tracks in good quality for a sensible price. Give people what they want and they will buy it, even in the presence of "free". The music industry learnt this (albeit by being dragged kicking and screaming into the future) and are now reaping the benefits. The movie industry is not there yet - the difference between the two sides of the iTunes store, for example, is quite telling. Enormously expensive DRM-crippled videos on one side, that are not even price competitive with DVD and BluRays in stores, vs cheap, DRM-free, high quality music files on the other that are selling like hot cakes.
Re:This is how Peerblock comes in handy (Score:5, Informative)
The way poison seeders work is they will happily provide you 97% of the files. The remaining 3% you never get, and your client has a great preference built up for the seeders that got you to 97%. It will occasionally give one the boot and replace it, but with thousands of poison seeders your chances of getting a good one are very poor.
At least one popular client is smart enough to use block lists selectively. It happily downloads from the poison seeders, until they get slow to respond. Then it imposes the block list, kicks any peer on the block list, and rebuilds the peer table with non-blocked peers.
Re:Umm, wait till the shooting stops. (Score:2, Informative)
And yet, you would be wrong. At least in Texas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Horn_shooting_controversy
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Informative)
The arguments for a very short copyright were all out there in 1841, in a powerful speech to the British House of Commons by Thomas Babington Macaulay:
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver4.htm [baen.com]
Every single argument is still valid today.