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."
Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is good. Bittorrent is a great protocol, but it can be improved in many ways. Something like this is likely to fix that (legal attacks won't).
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end it won't matter. Someone will figure out how they are doing there and modify the swarms so it becomes ineffective. The true way to combat piracy is to look at why people are pirating and modify your business strategy so that pirates become paying customers by their own choice. Yes, there are "die hard" pirates who will pirate regardless, but there a lot that wouldn't if they could get it legitimately.
Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Which will result in increased private trackers, whichever flavor of megaupload is coming down the pipe, expanded usenet, encrypted file contents, etc etc. I have yet to see any attempt by content holders cause any more than a minor hiccup in the download stream. Oh, wait, I have seen one - I haven't downloaded a song since iTunes began allowing me to get DRM free songs through their service.
**AA, always taking the hard road (Score:5, Insightful)
They can spend lots and lots of $$$, effort, and time trying to make it harder to get access to content that people want... ... or, they could just make the content available for a reasonable price in a timely manner. But I guess that takes too many brain cells.
And why is MSFT so interested in making their platforms less useful for consumers? As a stockholder, I'd like to see them quietly funding 'legitimate' sharing sites to make the Windows OS the preferred content consumption platform, rather than keeping me from getting what I want.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally think that is a very ignorant thing to say. First off, I think the evidence that piracy "hurts" these industries is sketchy at best. Sure... *IF* the person pirating said copyrighted material would have bought it legitimately otherwise, then I could buy that argument, but I'm not convinced that's the case. I think it's more likely that most of the pirated material simply would not have been purchased at all. If someone wanted it bad enough, and they couldn't obtain it any other way, of course they'd pay for it.
For me though the real issue is how anyone thinks they could make such a bold claim to stop piracy all together. If it just so happens that torrents no longer function because of their software, or some other means, people who want to pirate copyrighted material will just come up with another way. This is a never-ending competition and the RIAA, the MPAA, or any other organization for that matter, will *NEVER* win it as long as there is some method to digitize the material and there is someone out there with the intelligence and the desire to put forth the effort to get around whatever copy-protection mechonism is in place at the time.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds more to me like Microsoft and the media companies are being scammed.
the'd better be careful (Score:4, Insightful)
If riaa/mpaa whomever attempts this on torrents for my legitimate content, I'll track them down and file charges for denial of service.
iTunes Store, Amazon, Spotify (Score:5, Insightful)
These are awful business models. Their content is all available for free on Bitorrent. They can't possible expect people to pay for content they can get for free.
So they're all a dismal failure, right? Well no. They're actually doing pretty well. There is a simple way to reduce piracy, make the content available at a good price on demand so that it's just as wasy to get it legally. Most people don't actually mind paying for content, they just don't want to drive to the store to buy a disc to watch a film.
Don't start a war you aren't likely to win. (Score:4, Insightful)
In attacking BitTorrent, Microsoft is attacking a protocol, which may or may not contain something illegal. When they disrupt a valid download, it is they who will be in the wrong, and it is they who can potentially be the target of legal action (assuming they get caught). They are also attacking a group (hackers) known to fight back in ways that are difficult to detect.
If Microsoft can target BitTorrent downloads, then hackers can look for flags which indicate Internet traffic originated from a Microsoft program, and target it. If that happens, it won't be long before Microsoft products become known for their inability to function reliably over the Internet (some might argue that this is already true, but I'll ignore that possibility). Yet the individuals/groups Microsoft would have to identify are much harder to find, and thus much more difficult to prosecute or sue.
I believe this is a very foolish act, perhaps and act of despiration, on Microsoft's part. It doesn't appear likely to work very well, and is likely to make them a target.; Moral: don't start wars you aren't likely to win.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is adopted, P2P will adapt. Period.
It will take a month or so, so maybe we'll suffer a little bit. OTOH the media companies will have been ripped off for millions of dollars by a Russian company with 'Pirate' in their name. This will help me with the transition pains.
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Don't attack the medium, attack the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Again they embrace a way of attacking the actual network without discriminating between legal and illegal use of it.
Distributing copyrighted material via bittorrent is NOT a crime, assuming the content owner is doing it or in some way approves of it being done. It's no different from putting copies of your product on a truck, assuming again that you would want to.
I think we should start sending false traffic-announcements, swap roadsigns and pave false roads going to nowhere in an attempt of obfuscating the road network all over the entire world. This is ofcource to prevent thieves, smugglers of lewd and illegal goods as well as well as drunk-drivers and other highway-killers from reaching their homes, customers and/or victims. Since all highway killers (due to road accidents) are using the roads to do it, we can eliminate all these deaths by preventing everyone from using the roads. It has just as much merrit as other attacks on infrastructure, although not as clearly claimed cash proffit. (I say claimed cash proffit as any test with free candies outside a store will tell you that giving away 1000 free bonbons is not ammount to 1000 less sold in the store. Someone should really test this and I would encourage them to do so.)
Re:Interesting technology (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a two pronged attack I think. MIAA/RIAA sue the crap out of those they catch. This company promises to dramatically increase the number of people that are caught. Even if it only works for a month say they nab ~1M people pirating stuff. How many people will stop sharing because it is too risky. How much faith are you going to but into the next "untrackable" p2p method? They don't have to stop it from being possible to get away with pirating they just have to make the expected cost of pirating more expensive than it is to just go out and buy, rent or borrow the legit product.
Re:This is how Peerblock comes in handy (Score:5, Insightful)
PeerBlock is probably great for all the Neanderthals who still use Windows. It isn't available to anybody else.
The lists are available for download by anybody, and are in a format that can easily be used as a source for whatever sort of filtering software you want to use (like iptables, or the system built in to your BitTorrent client).
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
When everyone breaks a law, it's fair to assume society has decided it is invalid. People might say otherwise ("oh, but artists will STARVE without copyright!"), but actions prove that copyright is not truly accepted by any country in the modern world. Why does it exist? Money.
Re:This is how Peerblock comes in handy (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it is. You can still use their blocklists. I have a script on my NAS (running Transmission) to download them daily and tell Transmission to use them. Works perfectly other than having to automatically restart Transmission at 5am every day, which really isn't a problem.
If you're using a standard Linux with iptables (unlike my NAS which has iptables removed...), just use moblock. It handles getting them daily and blocking them at the firewall, though this won't really stop your torrent client from at least still trying to connect to those peers. Then again that's the same position PeerBlock users are in. Having the torrent client itself use them in probably more efficient, but this is easier.
Re:Challenge Accepted (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just 'cause son is old and no longer sold anywh (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure it does.
No one is selling a new copy. You can't even give some excuse about how the creator loses royalty money, because THE CREATOR IS NOT SELLING THE THING AT ALL.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know, while copyright has undoubtedly become a bloated perversion just reducing the period to a more sane 5 to 20 years would eliminate virtually all of the real problems with it. There's something to be said for giving authors, musicians, programmers, etc a window in which they have the exclusive rights to their work so that they can attempt to profit from it.
Sure, at least some would still create just for the love of it, especially musicians who can make money in live performances, but I guarantee Hollywood blockbusters would be a thing of the past. As would most popular literature. Not to mention Photoshop, Windows and probably Linux. Do we really want to hand the world to Apple and their tightly-bundled-to-the-hardware OS?
Re:Just 'cause son is old and no longer sold anywh (Score:5, Insightful)
A house divided? (Score:3, Insightful)
Private swarms really don't do much for resolving the issues of trust on a large scale. Causing one's enemy to fragment is what the Russian technique does.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:4, Insightful)
...and how many will just shift to filestube, downloading as happily as they ever had?
What I'm saying is, the adaptation may not be within a given protocol, but to a new protocol.
So far, we all went from sharing nibblers (or blank cassettes for music/video) via sneakernet, to BBS, to Napster, to eMule/LimeWire/ed2k, to BitTorrent, and now folks are getting into using one of a bajillion online "file storage" services to spread the stuff around.
Each time, it seems that the MPAA/RIAA can only seem to catch those who straggle behind and hadn't transitioned yet to the next stage.
Re:Peer ban hammer (Score:5, Insightful)
"The company doesn't reveal how it works, but they appear to be flooding clients with fake information, masquerading as legitimate peers."
In the US, this type of behavior in other circumstances is regarded as network intrusion and is considered illegal hacking. What makes this legal? The target also engaging in illegal activity?
Umm, wait till the shooting stops. (Score:1, Insightful)
Remind me again when performing DoS attacks against 3rd party servers became legal?
Hmmm, the Slashdot equivalent of the burglar complaining the homeowner shot at them while they were breaking in. Why do people do something illegal and then expect the law to come to their defense when they're prevented from continuing to do so?
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
This. A billion times this.
Basically, stop devaluating your product. The "honestly" bought copy is worth less to the customer than the P2P one. I get more value out of an illegal copy than I get from a legally bought one. This is afaik the ONLY product where you get actually MORE value out of an illegally acquired item than of a legally acquired one.
If I buy a TV that "fell off a truck", I have no warranty, I have no mail-in rebates, I have no discounts for add-ons, I get nothing extra. If I buy that TV legally, I get more than just a TV, I get a lot of services on top of it. So yes, the TV costs more, "legally", but I also get better value for it.
With content, it's reverse. If I download it, I can time and medium shift it, I get no ridiculous warnings and unskipable trailers, I can easily cut scenes out of it, collect a few movies on a media server if I please. All that and more is what I do NOT get when I buy it legally.
How backwards is that?
Re:Umm, wait a moment... (Score:4, Insightful)
Remind me again when performing DoS attacks against 3rd party servers became legal?
When the RIAA and MPAA became branches of the US government. Some say this was under Clinton, some say Bush Sr, some say Obama, truth is, all of them contributed
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
How fortunate you are.
I have merely survived.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Where can I digitally download a new release movie still in cinemas (I'd rather pay for good speakers in the privacy of my own home), when I am in Australia, for a reasonable price ($5 - $15), in a DRM free format that allows me to stream it from a central linux media server to the TV and laptops?
Are any of those points unreasonable? Nope.
Are any of those points unrealistic? Nope I do all the above right now.
Are any of those points able to be accomplished right now? Nope.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:3, Insightful)
I have lived all my life too!
I hope I haven't lived all of it yet...
Re:Interesting technology (Score:4, Insightful)
the evidence is lacking.
I think in Microsoft's defense, they know there are a metric shitton of pirated copies of Windows.
It's one thing to say some of the people who pirate wouldn't if another method was available. It's another to say that when 90% of Windows in China [neowin.net] are pirated. At least SOME of those 90% would have paid for it if pirating weren't an alternative.
Microsoft has been on record as saying that they'd rather you pirate their software then purchase the competitors.
The real issue is stopping competition. The *AAs don't want you paying indie media producers. Microsoft doesn't want you downloading a free operating system or office suit.
This technology can just as easily target legitimate uses of bit-torrent, even if it only by stopping its use for anything.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
So, how much money does Hollywood make from 20+ year old movies? And what stops them from remaking the movie and getting another 20 years off the remake?
Basically, I call BS, changing copyright back to 20 years will have NO affect at all on Hollywoods Blockbusters.
However, they won't be able to sue the shit out of some small production company that wants to make a side-story off the original 20 year old movie like they can now... I think this is the real fear, some small productions have been HUGE hits and as technology gets better and better the "cost" to create movies will drop significantly; in other words, they are milking every penny they can now since they know their model is doomed in the long run.
We are at the point now where actors/actresses are not needed; they can be computer generated and used for the whole production; whole movies can be created by a small team of people -- now jump ahead 10 to 20 years, think what will be possible then. The only thing that can't be easily created is the "story" itself; but if thousands of old stories become "public domain" then interesting small-production remakes, additions, remixes, cross-overs, and restructuring will dominate YouTube and other near/or free services :)
We are already seeing some of this now (even with the draconian laws) so you know the networks must be shitting themselves....
Re:A house divided? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure they do.
Private swarms originate from private trackers. Private trackers regulate uploads and only allow vetted content for the group. It solves the issue of trust on a large scale quite nicely.
Re:This is how Peerblock comes in handy (Score:2, Insightful)
You are misunderstanding. If your client makes IP based connections instead of DNS based connections, it will never look at your hosts file.
As for what it contains, it isn't just IP addresses, first its a URL then an IP address.
Example:
doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1
That entry makes it impossible to connect to that godawful ad distributor.
Example 2:
google.com 74.125.227.98
That entry makes it possible to connect to google even if your DNS is not working.
Example 3:
*random IP address* *another random IP address*
This entry does nothing at all and is a waste of space.
Okay, so that Example 3 I've never tested, but I know if you don't make a DNS call, then your hosts file is never referenced.
Re:Peer ban hammer (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoofed IPs will never get routed correctly. You can't hold a "conversation", which means you can't even create an encrypted connection.
So they'll add a mechanism to ban peers based on bad peer exchanges.
If a peer gives you 2 or more bad peers... ban.
Which is, to answer the GP's question, exactly what's done for peers that send you bad chunks.
Re:Interesting technology (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't need a long copyright to remake a 20-year-old movie. There's nothing stopping them from making a movie version of a 200-year-old story that's in the public domain, and in fact that sometimes happens (The Count of Monte Cristo, for example). Same goes for one of their own stories that's fallen out of copyright protection; they can make a remake any time they want (and that remake itself will then enjoy copyright protection for the normal term), the only "problem" is that they can't prevent someone else from making their own (possibly much better) remake. Only someone who hates competition would see this as a problem.
I don't know about small production companies competing with the blockbuster-makers, however. This isn't the 90s, and computers aren't getting much faster any more; it costs a fortune to do CGI for a blockbuster; part of that is the hardware cost, which is very large due to the computational power needed, and part is the graphic artists, which aren't getting any cheaper. Computers are getting faster, but it's a snail's pace compared to what happened before, so the main improvement will be in the software tools, making it easier to create CGI scenery. For the foreseeable future, the blockbuster-makers would do well to stick to making blockbusters with lots of CGI, since the small studios can't afford giant server farms for doing such work; the small studios can instead concentrate on making movies that don't rely on much FX, and instead rely on acting talent and storyline.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
These attacks are illegal under US law and Microshit conspiring to fund it is only asking for serious fines/injunctions.
Re:Protocol encryption? (Score:4, Insightful)
poisoning (Score:5, Insightful)
Mind you, that's with current technology already.Once BitTorrent clients will get exposed to poisoning more, I'm fairly certain mechanisms to mitigate that will become far more effective.