Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Encryption Networking Privacy Software The Internet

New P2P Torrent Site 'Play' Has No Single Point of Failure (thestack.com) 72

An anonymous reader writes: Play, a new peer-to-peer (P2P) site for downloading torrents, is practically impossible to shut down and promises to be the latest technology to revolutionise online downloads. The platform has appeared recently across ZeroNet, a Budapest-based open source site which is looking to offer a home to decentralised platforms which employ Bitcoin-crypto and BitTorrent technologies. As no central server exists, every additional user is a further point of connection inside the network, helping to avoid potential failures. As the first torrent site to appear on the network, Play can be accessed directly through a ZeroNet URL (only available with the tool installed). The site serves magnetic links sourced from RARBG, with which users can download films, series and other media files, in varying qualities. While ZeroNet itself is not an illegal platform, Play is identical to any other P2P download site in that it could face legal challenges over violating copyright.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

New P2P Torrent Site 'Play' Has No Single Point of Failure

Comments Filter:
  • Instead, it has many points of failure! But in all seriousness, we'll see what it does in 6 months. Anything that seems too good to be true...
    • by Anonymous Coward

      0net [google.com]

    • I don't understand this claim. Now once a torrent is streaming there is no single point of failure by virtue of the P2P aspect. But for people to find a torrent node with their desired item there needs to be some sort of directory. Historically it has been the directories that get shutdown. So how does this solve that problem? You can't just say the nodes serve the directory can you? because it some point someone needs a definitive entry point or well known fixed set of points, so it can be found to

    • by Anonymous Coward

      We will see. Worst comes to worse, Microsoft will be pressured into collecting data from machines, and if the telemetry data is blocked or it shows communication with P2P torrent sites, the activation of Windows would be pulled from that machine, or the box would be flagged so any accounts (Steam, Blizzard) would be insta-banned.

      • by aliquis ( 678370 )

        We will see. Worst comes to worse, Microsoft will be pressured into collecting data from machines, and if the telemetry data is blocked or it shows communication with P2P torrent sites, the activation of Windows would be pulled from that machine, or the box would be flagged so any accounts (Steam, Blizzard) would be insta-banned.

        Yeah, good idea. Speaking as someone who has been spending what? Hopefully under $2000 on games, comics and books through bundle sites and what not the last three years or so and close to not use the content and who don't download shit - yeah - great idea to ban me if I did! Just great!

        Because that will earn you more money! .. Not.

        • ... of course what I said above is also true for Microsoft.
          Have they ever done anything about piracy? Isn't wild piracy something which keep/kept them being the undisputed #1 when it come to operating-systems? Had Microsoft just somehow banned me I would of course use something else, how is that good business for Microsoft? It make no sense at all.

          Of course good (heavy and "uncrackable") DRM could had worked for Microsoft if they could also regionally lock down the pricing and usage somehow (by language?),

  • . . .aka the infamous "Slashdot Effect" DDOS. Let's see how that works out (grin)
  • by Anonymous Coward

    "Play is identical to any other P2P download site in that it could face legal challenges over violating copyright."

    Torrent download sites do not host any copyrighted content and don't violate any copyright agreement. They were prosecuted for that in the past because hollywood enforcers do not care about the difference between hosting files and hosting links that connect you to other users who share the files with you, which is perfectly legal everywhere. Obviously laws or democratic procedures have no place

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That might have been true 15 years ago.

      Nowadays, if a user can click something on your website and at the end of some process, be watching a movie, then whatever your website did that kicked that process off is contributory copyright infringement. Doesn't matter if you don't host the movie or copyrighted data yourself, or you're just pointing to a link, or a hash, or a picture containing some cunningly steganographied data that can be decoded into a pointer to a torrent. Whatever informatical version of a R

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @10:18AM (#51621533)

    There are also public web proxies [zero.pags.to] to view (and also post) without installing anything

    More zeronet websites [zero.pags.to]

    • by arth1 ( 260657 )

      You're generally not limited to using just one ISP.
      I have used two for 15 years now.

  • "The site serves magnetic links sourced from RARBG"

    What does that mean?

  • Another slashvertisement, oh boy...
  • As the first torrent site to appear on the network, Play can be accessed directly through a ZeroNet URL (only available with the tool installed).

    "Only available with the tool installed"? OK, so the ZeroNet tool is installed, it's open source (good), multiple platforms (cool) and it uses bitcoin cryptography to, and I quote the ZeroNet website: "Your account is protected by same cryptography as your Bitcoin wallet".

    Riiiiiiiiiiight. The same Bitcoin wallet that was cracked recently [slashdot.org]? Oh, and by the way, it only protects your IP address if you go through the Tor network. You mean, the same Tor network that was successfully attacked by researchers [slashdot.org]?

    And th

    • by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @10:51AM (#51621699) Homepage

      Bitcoin wallets aren't cracked. Unless you're an idiot and chose a Bitcoin wallet that's easily guessable (like choosing a password of password). The default Bitcoin wallets are just fine and cryptographically secure.

      The Tor network may have been "attacked". But short of having 50% of nodes under your control, you can't guarantee anything and the best attack is still a timing / correlation attack by monitoring both ends of a transaction (so presumably you don't NEED to know anything more than that anyway, if you've got that far) that pretty much NOTHING can stop.

      Stop getting your tech news from overblown headlines and look into... the tech. If Bitcoin wallets were "cracked", there would be billions of dollars lost overnight. That's not what happened. A handful of people deliberately choosing to use the equivalent of "123456" for a Bitcoin wallet key may have lost their money. That's it. And people using certain monitored elements of Tor where they are giving away their own IP, or the service they connect to is giving away it's IP, allowing silly attacks due to poor configurations (nothing can stop the stupid) may have given away more information than they knew.

      Otherwise, the sensible users of the systems using them what they were designed for have carried on completely unhindered. The systems both worked, as designed.

  • Play is similar to any other internet site in that it could face legal challenges over violating copyright.

    There, fixed that for you.

    Original:

    Play is identical to any other P2P download site in that it could face legal challenges over violating copyright.

  • FTA:

    As no central server exists, every additional user is a further point of connection inside the network, helping to avoid potential failures. If one of the connections fails, this does not necessarily compromise the entire downloads platform.

    So...the 'user' goes dark? I know, I know, the user's connection goes dark...but for some reason the phasing tickled the morbid elf in me, picturing users keeling over at their consoles while the network perseveres... :)

    "Given the colossal assemblage of stars in the universe, who is to notice when one flares and dies? Does the night sky lose luster, will the frantic twinkle of other stars pause in solemn contemplation of their fallen brother? Or does the cosmic ballet continue unabated, save for an i

  • "Page response time is not limited by your connection speed " [imgur.com]

    So what are they trying to get at here -- that it's like Akamai? Because this just sounds like marketing drivel.

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Working...