DOCSLIB.ORG

Small Is Not Always Beautiful

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Small Is Not Always Beautiful Small Is Not Always Beautiful Paweł Marciniak∗ Nikitas Liogkas Arnaud Legout Eddie Kohler Poznan University of UCLA I.N.R.I.A. UCLA Technology, Poland Los Angeles, CA Sophia Antipolis, France Los Angeles, CA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract peers. This paper investigates this parameter by running real experiments with varying piece sizes Peer-to-peer content distribution systems have on a controlled testbed, and demonstrates that been enjoying great popularity, and are now gain- piece size is critical for performance, as it deter- ing momentum as a means of disseminating video mines the degree of parallelism available in the sys- streams over the Internet. In many of these proto- tem. Our results also show that, for small-sized con- cols, including the popular BitTorrent, content is tent, smaller pieces enable shorter download times, split into mostly fixed-size pieces, allowing a client and as a result, BitTorrent’s design choice of fur- to download data from many peers simultaneously. ther dividing content pieces into subpieces is un- This makes piece size potentially critical for per- necessary for such content. We evaluate the over- formance. However, previous research efforts have head that small pieces incur as content size grows largely overlooked this parameter, opting to focus and demonstrate a trade-off between piece size on others instead. and available parallelism. We also explain how this This paper presents the results of real experi- trade-off motivates the use of both pieces and sub- ments with varying piece sizes on a controlled Bit- pieces for distributing large content, the common Torrent testbed. We demonstrate that this parame- case in BitTorrent swarms. ter is indeed critical, as it determines the degree of The rest of this paper is organized as follows. parallelism in the system, and we investigate op- Section 2 provides a brief description of the Bit- timal piece sizes for distributing small and large Torrent protocol, and describes our experimental content. We also pinpoint a related design trade- methodology. Section 3 then presents the results of off, and explain how BitTorrent’s choice of dividing our experiments with varying piece sizes, while Sec- pieces into subpieces attempts to address it. tion 4 discusses potential reasons behind the poor 1 Introduction performance of small pieces when distributing large content. Lastly, Section 5 describes related work Implementation variations and parameter settings and Section 6 concludes. can severely affect the service observed by the clients of a peer-to-peer system. A better under- 2 Background and Methodology standing of protocol parameters is needed to im- BitTorrent Overview BitTorrent is a popular prove and stabilize service, a particularly impor- peer-to-peer content distribution protocol that has tant goal for emerging peer-to-peer applications been shown to scale well with the number of par- such as streaming video. ticipating clients. Prior to distribution, the content BitTorrent is widely regarded as one of the most is divided into multiple pieces, while each piece is successful swarming protocols, which divide the further divided into multiple subpieces.A metainfo content to be distributed into distinct pieces and file containing information necessary for initiat- enable peers to share these pieces efficiently. Pre- ing the download process is then created by the vious research efforts have focused on the algo- content provider. This information includes each rithms believed to be the major factors behind Bit- piece’s SHA-1 hash (used to verify received data) Torrent’s good performance, such as the piece and and the address of the tracker, a centralized com- peer selection strategies. However, to the best of ponent that facilitates peer discovery. our knowledge, no studies have looked into the op- In order to join a torrent—the collection of timal size of content pieces being exchanged among peers participating in the download of a particular ∗Work done while an intern at INRIA Sophia Antipolis. content—a client retrieves the metainfo file out of band, usually from a Web site. It then contacts the and seed to model more realistic scenarios, but do tracker, which responds with a peer set of randomly not impose any download limits, as we wish to ob- selected peers. These might include both seeds, who serve differences in download completion time with already have the entire content and are sharing it varying piece sizes. The upload limits for leechers with others, and leechers, who are still in the pro- follow a uniform distribution from 20 to 200 kB/s, cess of downloading. The new client can then start while the seed’s upload capacity is set to 200 kB/s. contacting peers in this set and request data. Most We collect our measurements using the offi- clients nowadays implement a rarest-first policy for cial (mainline) BitTorrent implementation, instru- piece requests: they first ask for the pieces that ex- mented to record interesting events. Our client is ist at the smallest number of peers in their peer based on version 4.0.2 of the official implementa- set. Although peers always exchange just subpieces tion and is publicly available for download [1]. We with each other, they only make data available in log the client’s internal state, as well as each mes- the form of complete pieces: after downloading all sage sent or received along with the content of the subpieces of a piece, a peer notifies all peers in its message. Unless otherwise specified, we run our ex- peer set with a have message. Peers are also able to periments with the default parameters. determine which pieces others have based on a bit- The protocol does not strictly define the piece field message, exchanged upon the establishment of and subpiece sizes. An unofficial BitTorrent speci- new connections, which contains a bitmap denoting fication [3] states that the conventional wisdom is piece possession. to “pick the smallest piece size that results in a Each leecher independently decides who to ex- metainfo file no greater than 50–75 kB”. The most change data with via the choking algorithm, which common piece size for public torrents seems to be gives preference to those who upload data to the 256 kB. Additionally, most implementations nowa- given leecher at the highest rates. Thus, once days use 16 kB subpieces. For our experiments, we per rechoke period, typically every ten seconds, a always keep the subpiece size constant at 16 kB, leecher considers the receiving data rates from all and only vary the piece size. We have results for leechers in its peer set. It then picks out the fastest all possible combinations of different content sizes ones, a fixed number of them, and only uploads to (1 MB, 5 MB, 10 MB, 20 MB, 50 MB, and 100 MB) those for the duration of the period. Seeds, who and piece sizes (16 kB, 32 kB, 64 kB, 128 kB, do not need to download any pieces, follow a dif- 256 kB, 512 kB, 1024 kB, and 2048 kB). ferent unchoke strategy. Most current implementa- tions unchoke those leechers that download data at 3 Results the highest rates, to better utilize seed capacity. Our results, presented in this section, demonstrate that small pieces are preferable for the distribu- Experimental Methodology We have per- tion of small-sized content. We also discuss the formed all our experiments with private torrents benefits and drawbacks of small pieces for other on the PlanetLab platform [5]. These torrents com- content sizes, and evaluate the communication and prise 40 leechers and a single initial seed sharing metainfo file overhead that different piece sizes in- content of different sizes. Leechers do not change cur for larger content. their available upload bandwidth during the down- load, and disconnect after receiving a complete 3.1 Small Content copy of the content. The initial seed stays con- Even though most content distributed with Bit- nected for the duration of the experiment, while all Torrent is large, it is still interesting to examine the leechers join the torrent at the same time, emulat- impact of piece size on distributing smaller content. ing a flash crowd scenario. The number of parallel In addition to gaining a better understanding of the upload slots is set to 4 for the leechers and seed. trade-offs involved, it may also sometimes be desir- Although system behavior might be different with able to utilize BitTorrent to avoid server overload other peer arrival patterns and torrent configura- when distributing small content, e.g., in the case of tions, there is no reason to believe that the conclu- websites that suddenly become popular. Figure 2 sions we draw are predicated on these parameters. shows the median download completion times of The available bandwidth of most PlanetLab the 40 leechers downloading a 5 MB file, for dif- nodes is relatively high for typical real-world ferent numbers of pieces, along with standard de- clients. We impose upload limits on the leechers viation error bars. Clearly, smaller piece sizes en- Download Completion Time Download Completion Time Average Peer Upload Utilization Average Peer Upload Utilization 1 1 1 1 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 Upload utilization Upload utilization 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 Cumulative fraction of peers Cumulative fraction of peers 0 0 0 0 0 50 100 150 200 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 10 20 30 40 0 10 20 30 40 50 Completion time (s) Completion time (s) Time slot (5s) Time slot (5s) (a) Piece size of 16 kB (b) Piece size of 512 kB (c) Piece size of 16 kB (d) Piece size of 512 kB Figure 1: CDFs of peer download completion times and scatterplots of average upload utilization for five-second time intervals when distributing a 5 MB content (averages over 5 runs).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Study of Peer-To-Peer Systems
    A Study of Peer-to-Peer Systems JIA, Lu A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy in Information Engineering The Chinese University of Hong Kong August 2009 Abstract of thesis entitled: A Study of Peer-to-Peer Systems Submitted by JIA, Lu for the degree of Master of Philosophy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in June 2009 Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have evolved rapidly and become immensely popular in Internet. Users in P2P systems can share resources with each other and in this way the server loading is reduced. P2P systems' good performance and scalability attract a lot of interest in the research community as well as in industry. Yet, P2P systems are very complicated systems. Building a P2P system requires carefully and repeatedly thinking and ex- amining architectural design issues. Instead of setting foot in all aspects of designing a P2P system, this thesis focuses on two things: analyzing reliability and performance of different tracker designs and studying a large-scale P2P file sharing system, Xun- lei. The "tracker" of a P2P system is used to lookup which peers hold (or partially hold) a given object. There are various designs for the tracker function, from a single-server tracker, to DHT- based (distributed hash table) serverless systems. In the first part of this thesis, we classify the different tracker designs, dis- cuss the different considerations for these designs, and provide simple models to evaluate the reliability of these designs. Xunlei is a new proprietary P2P file sharing protocol that has become very popular in China.
    [Show full text]
  • Bittorrent, Inc., ) DOCKET NO
    142 3020 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION COMMISSIONERS: Edith Ramirez, Chairwoman Julie Brill Maureen K. Ohlhausen Joshua D. Wright Terrell McSweeny ____________________________________ ) In the Matter of ) ) BitTorrent, Inc., ) DOCKET NO. C-4464 a corporation. ) ) ___________________________________ ) COMPLAINT The Federal Trade Commission, having reason to believe that the BitTorrent, Inc., a corporation, has violated the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”), and it appearing to the Commission that this proceeding is in the public interest, alleges: 1. Respondent BitTorrent, Inc. (“BitTorrent”) is a California corporation, with its principal office or place of business at 303 2nd Street, Suite S600, San Francisco, CA 94107. 2. Respondent is the developer of a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing system used to exchange software, music, movies, digital books, and other large files online. 3. The acts and practices of respondent as alleged in this complaint have been in or affecting commerce, as “commerce” is defined in Section 4 of the FTC Act. 4. Respondent has set forth on its website, www.bittorrent.com, privacy policies and statements about its practices, including statements related to its participation in the Safe Harbor privacy framework agreed upon by the U.S. and the European Union (“U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework”). The Framework 5. The U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework provides a method for U.S. companies to transfer personal data outside of Europe that is consistent with the requirements of the European Union Directive on Data Protection (“Directive”). Enacted in 1995, the Directive sets forth European Union (“EU”) requirements for privacy and the protection of personal data.
    [Show full text]
  • Deluge-2.0.3
    deluge Documentation Release 2.0.3 Deluge Team June 12, 2019 CONTENTS 1 Contents 1 1.1 Getting started with Deluge.......................................1 1.2 How-to guides..............................................2 1.3 Release notes...............................................3 1.4 Development & community.......................................6 1.5 Development guide............................................ 11 1.6 Reference................................................. 21 i ii CHAPTER ONE CONTENTS 1.1 Getting started with Deluge This is a starting point if you are new to Deluge where we will walk you through getting up and running with our BitTorrent client. 1.1.1 Installing Deluge These are the instructions for installing Deluge. Consider them a work-in-progress and feel free to make suggestions for improvement. Ubuntu PPA Until the stable PPA is updated, the development version of Deluge can be used: sudo add-apt-repository-u ppa:deluge-team/stable sudo apt install deluge PyPi To install from Python PyPi, Deluge requires the following system installed packages: sudo apt install python3-pip python3-libtorrent python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2- ,!gtk-3.0 gir1.2-appindicator3 Install with pip: pip install deluge Windows Unfortuately due to move to GTK3 and Python 3 there is no installer package currently available for Windows. Intrepid users can install Deluge from seperate packages as detailed in issue #3201. 1 deluge Documentation, Release 2.0.3 macOS There is no .app package currently for macOS, but can try Deluge with homebrew. 1. Install Homebrew 2. Open a terminal. 3. Run the following to install required packages: brew install pygobject3 gtk+3 adwaita-icon-theme brew install libtorrent-rasterbar 4. To fix translations: brew link gettext--force 5.
    [Show full text]
  • Justin Sun Chief Executive Officer Bittorrent, Inc. 301 Howard Street #2000 San Francisco, CA 94105
    Justin Sun Chief Executive Officer BitTorrent, Inc. 301 Howard Street #2000 San Francisco, CA 94105 Charles Wayn Chief Executive Officer DLive 19450 Stevens Creek Blvd #100 Cupertino, CA 95014 February 9, 2021 Dear Mr. Sun and Mr. Wayn, We write to you expressing concern about recent user activity in DLive communities attempting to attract American citizens, and particularly adolescent users, to white supremacy and domestic extremism. We noted the company’s internal governance actions taken on January 17th, 2021, in the wake of the riots at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6th, 20211; however, it is evident that oversight from outside of the company’s internal review body may be necessary. According to media reports, DLive CEO Charles Wayn stated last year in a set of emails that the company strategy to combat extreme right-wing content was to “tolerate” them and allow other more popular content producers to “dilute” their reach.2 If true, this is unacceptable. During the January 6th, 2021, storming of the United States Capitol, your platform live streamed a number of individuals who entered and were around the building. Several of these individuals earned thousands of dollars in DLive’s digital currency that day, and a number received large donations through the platform ahead of the event. One individual received $2,800 in a live stream on January 5th, 2021, in which he encouraged his viewers to murder elected officials.3 We understand that DLive has supposedly removed 1 Wayn, Charles. “An Open Letter to the DLive Community.” DLive Community Announcements, (January 17th, 2021).
    [Show full text]
  • Analys Av Popcorn Time Med Hjälp Av Sniffingprogrammet Wireshark
    Analys av Popcorn Time med hjalp¨ av sniffingprogrammet Wireshark Kevin A.˚ Kimaryo Fredrik Siemund Lund University Lund University [email protected] [email protected] Sammanfattning—Vi har anvant¨ sniffingprogrammet ocksa˚ sa˚ det funkar, men ar¨ det en stor fil som laddas upp Wireshark for¨ att analysera vad som hander¨ nar¨ man streamar i omraden˚ med laga˚ overf¨ oringshastigheter¨ kan det innebara¨ (svenska: strommar)¨ film med den olagliga tjansten¨ Popcorn stora belastningar pa˚ internettrafiken och andra anvandare¨ i Time. Popcorn Time ar¨ en BitTorrent-klient vilket betyder att anvandarna¨ bade˚ laddar upp och ner data vid tittandet av en omradet˚ kan uppleva storningar.¨ Dessutom kan det vara valdigt¨ film. Popcorn Time hittar andra anvandare¨ genom att ta kontakt dyrt att tillgodose den nodv¨ andiga¨ uppladdningshastigheten for¨ med en server som i BitTorrent-protokollet kallas for¨ "tracker", att kunna distribuera stora filer pa˚ ett snabbt och smidigt satt.¨ vilket ar¨ det enda centrala elementet i Popcorn Time och som Istallet¨ for¨ att ha en enda nedladdningskalla¨ sa˚ kan haller˚ reda pa˚ vart andra anvandare¨ finns. Vart˚ resultat visar man utnyttja de anvandare¨ som laddar ner filen; man later˚ att Popcorn Time i princip beter sig som en vanlig BitTorrent- klient med den enda skillnad att tjansten¨ dessutom anvander¨ ett dem inte bara ladda ner utan aven¨ ladda upp delar av filen protokoll for¨ streaming av video, kallat GVSP. till andra anvandare.¨ Detta ar¨ tanken bakom BitTorrent och innebar¨ att anvandarnas¨ (det vill saga¨ de som laddar ner en I. INLEDNING fil) uppladningskapacitet utnyttjas och pa˚ sa˚ satt¨ skickas och Att streama innehall˚ over¨ natet¨ blir allt vanligare.
    [Show full text]
  • Bittorrent Is an Auction: Analyzing and Improving Bittorrent’S Incentives
    BitTorrent is an Auction: Analyzing and Improving BitTorrent’s Incentives Dave Levin Katrina LaCurts Neil Spring Bobby Bhattacharjee University of Maryland University of Maryland University of Maryland University of Maryland [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION Incentives play a crucial role in BitTorrent, motivating users to up- BitTorrent [2] is a remarkably successful decentralized system load to others to achieve fast download times for all peers. Though that allows many users to download a file from an otherwise under- long believed to be robust to strategic manipulation, recent work provisioned server. To ensure quick download times and scalabil- has empirically shown that BitTorrent does not provide its users ity, BitTorrent relies upon those downloading a file to cooperatively incentive to follow the protocol. We propose an auction-based trade portions, or pieces, of the file with one another [5]. Incentives model to study and improve upon BitTorrent’s incentives. The play an inherently crucial role in such a system; users generally insight behind our model is that BitTorrent uses, not tit-for-tat as wish to download their files as quickly as possible, and since Bit- widely believed, but an auction to decide which peers to serve. Our Torrent is decentralized, there is no global “BitTorrent police” to model not only captures known, performance-improving strategies, govern their actions. Users are therefore free to attempt to strate- it shapes our thinking toward new, effective strategies. For exam- gically manipulate others into helping them download faster. The ple, our analysis demonstrates, counter-intuitively, that BitTorrent role of incentives in BitTorrent is to motivate users to contribute peers have incentive to intelligently under-report what pieces of their resources to others so as to achieve desirable global system the file they have to their neighbors.
    [Show full text]
  • 38 Bittorrent Software and Usage Justin Mckinney
    ARTICLE BITTORRENT SOFTwaRE AND USAGE Justin McKinney Mark Simon Haydn 1. Abstract: While the circulation of cultural material outside of official channels is not new, the scale and infrastructure afforded by digital networks and peer-to-peer protocols has drastically changed its dynamics. Focusing on private trackers and online, members-only communities dedicated to sharing difficult to find and “gray-area” cinema content, our paper discusses new digital re- positories and their connection to the traditional film archive. With discussion of the types of materials held, user participation, and custodial efforts to restore or improve cultural material, we will discuss the activities of a contemporary private tracker community. Additionally, the paper will interrogate the legality and copyright issues surrounding these activities and ex- plore recent, licit adoption of the infrastructure that has been developed for online circulation. Discussion will conclude with attention to cases in which pirated material has resurfaced in a rights-holding context, and an assessment of what these developments mean for custodians of film material working in a traditional film archive context. As a combination of discussion, case study, and argument, the paper will serve as a topical primer on a pressing and under- researched area of interest in this field, building on a panel presented at last year’s Association of Moving Image Archivists conference in Georgia. 2. BitTorrent Software and Usage BitTorrent is a software protocol developed in 2001 and designed to aid the practice of peer- to-peer file sharing on the Internet. The primary advantage of BitTorrent is that it allows for segmented downloading, which is the coordinated transmission of a file sourced from multiple servers to a single destination.81 This protocol allows for the rapid sharing of large amounts of data by allowing a user to download a file from multiple sources that are uploading the file at the same time.82 This allows for more efficient and faster downloading than the traditional client-server model.
    [Show full text]
  • Digital Citizens Alliance
    GOOD MONEY STILL GOING BAD: DIGITAL THIEVES AND THE HIJACKING OF THE ONLINE AD BUSINESS A FOLLOW-UP TO THE 2013 REPORT ON THE PROFITABILITY OF AD-SUPPORTED CONTENT THEFT MAY 2015 A safer internet is a better internet CONTENTS CONTENTS ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................ii TABLE OF REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................................................................................iii Figures.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................iii Tables ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................iii ABOUT THIS REPORT ..........................................................................................................................................................................................1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 GOOD MONEY STILL GOING BAD ........................................................................................................................................................3
    [Show full text]
  • Miro— Open and Decentralized Internet TV
    INTERNET TV Miro— open and decentralized Internet TV Dean Jansen Participatory Culture Foundation Miro is a free, open-source platform for Internet TV. Ideal for high-definition video, it features an open content guide with over 5,000 channels that can be freely subscribed to. The application boasts nearly 500,000 users and has been downloaded more than three million times in the last year. Miro has been compared to Tivo, Firefox and iTunes; it functions as both a video library and a very intuitive system for subscribing to and watching internet video channels. Additionally, Miro can search and save videos from video-sharing sites, such as YouTube and Daily Motion. For public broadcasters, Miro (http://getmiro.com) offers a distribution platform that is perfect for moving high-quality, long-form video to a large, non-technical audience. The user-friendly integra- tion of BitTorrent in Miro lets publishers leverage the scalability and low cost of P2P distribution without confusing non-technical users. Public broadcasters can create custom versions of Miro that feature their own content and their own brand. Furthermore, Miro is open source and cross-plat- form, leaving broadcasters and their audience independent of any proprietary software (Adobe Flash, Apple iTunes) or operating system (Miro can run on Mac, Windows and Linux). Miro’s user base and content guide are both expanding rapidly. The application itself is on a tight development curve, releasing major updates and improvements five to seven times per year. Miro is being developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF), a US.based 501c3 non-profit organ- ization.
    [Show full text]
  • Digital Piracy on P2P Networks How to Protect Your Copyrighted Content
    Digital Piracy on P2P Networks How to Protect your Copyrighted Content Olesia Klevchuk and Sam Bahun MarkMonitor © 2014 MarkMonitor Inc. All rights reserved. Agenda . P2P landscape: history and recent developments . Detection and verification of unauthorized content on P2P sites . Enforcement strategies . Alternatives to enforcements 2 | Confidential P2P Landscape History and Recent Developments 3 | Confidential History of Digital Piracy Streaming Download to Streaming 1B+ Users . Music piracy enters mainstream with Napster . P2P brought software and video piracy . Shift to consumption of streaming content – TV and sports most impacted P2P Live 300 MM Streaming Users 50 MM Users Napster UseNet 25 MM Users 16 MM Users < 5 MM Today 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 4 | Confidential First Generation of P2P From Napster to eDonkey2000 . Napster brought P2P to masses . Centralized server model made it possible to shutdown the network 5 | Confidential Second Generation of P2P Kazaa, Gnutella and Torrent Sites . Ability to operate without central server, connecting users remotely to each other . Difficult to shutdown . Attracted millions of users worldwide . Requires some technical ability, plagued with pop-up ads and malware 6 | Confidenti al New P2P piracy . No to little technical ability is required . Attractive, user-friendly interface . BitTorrent powered making enforcements challenging Popcorn Time BitTorrent powered streaming app . Allows you to watch thousands of movies instantaneously . In the U.S., software was downloaded onto millions of devices . Interface resembles that of popular legitimate streaming platforms 8 | Confidential P2P Adoption and Usage BitTorrent is among the most popular platforms online Twitter 307 million users Facebook 1.44 billion users Netflix 69 million subscribers BitTorrent 300 million users 9 | Confidential P2P Piracy Steady trend of a number of P2P infringements .
    [Show full text]
  • Problems with Bittorrent Litigation in the United States: Personal Jurisdiction, Joinder, Evidentiary Issues, and Why the Dutch Have a Better System
    Washington University Global Studies Law Review Volume 13 Issue 1 2014 Problems with BitTorrent Litigation in the United states: Personal Jurisdiction, Joinder, Evidentiary Issues, and Why the Dutch Have a Better System Violeta Solonova Foreman Washington University in St. Louis, School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_globalstudies Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation Violeta Solonova Foreman, Problems with BitTorrent Litigation in the United states: Personal Jurisdiction, Joinder, Evidentiary Issues, and Why the Dutch Have a Better System, 13 WASH. U. GLOBAL STUD. L. REV. 127 (2014), https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_globalstudies/vol13/iss1/8 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Global Studies Law Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PROBLEMS WITH BITTORRENT LITIGATION IN THE UNITED STATES: PERSONAL JURISDICTION, JOINDER, EVIDENTIARY ISSUES, AND WHY THE DUTCH HAVE A BETTER SYSTEM INTRODUCTION In 2011, 23.76% of global internet traffic involved downloading or uploading pirated content, with BitTorrent accounting for an estimated 17.9% of all internet traffic.1 In the United States alone, 17.53% of internet traffic consists of illegal downloading.2 Despite many crackdowns, illegal downloading websites continue to thrive,3 and their users include some of their most avid opponents.4 Initially the Recording Industry Association of America (the “RIAA”) took it upon itself to prosecute individuals who 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Researchers Make Bittorrent Anonymous and Impossible to Shut Down (Updated) by Ernesto on December 18, 2014 C: 350
    RESEARCHERS MAKE BITTORRENT ANONYMOUS AND IMPOSSIBLE TO SHUT DOWN (UPDATED) BY ERNESTO ON DECEMBER 18, 2014 C: 350 While the BitTorrent ecosystem is filled with uncertainty and doubt, researchers at Delft University of Technology have released the first version of their anonymous and decentralized BitTorrent network. "Tribler makes BitTorrent anonymous and impossible to shut down," lead researcher Prof. Pouwelse says. The Pirate Bay shutdown has once again shows how vulnerable the BitTorrent ‘landscape’ is to disruptions. With a single raid the largest torrent site on the Internet was pulled offline, dragging down several other popular BitTorrent services with it. A team of researchers at Delft University of Technology has found a way to address this problem. With Tribler they’ve developed a robust BitTorrent client that doesn’t rely on central servers. Instead, it’s designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline. “Tribler makes BitTorrent anonymous and impossible to shut down,” Tribler’s lead researcher Dr. Pouwelse tells TF. “Recent events show that governments do not hesitate to block Twitter, raid websites, confiscate servers and steal domain names. The Tribler team has been working for 10 years to prepare for the age of server-less solutions and aggressive suppressors.” To top that, the most recent version of Tribler that was released today also offers ‘anonymity’ to its users through a custom-built in Tor network. This allows users to share and publish files without broadcasting their IP-addresses to the rest of the world (note: see warning at the bottom of this article).
    [Show full text]