What makes bittorrents execellent?

What makes BitTorrent so excellent, and what is it's purpose?

bittorrent is the ultimate tool for 0-7 day hot software like Linux ISO images, movies, tv-series, music and anything else which can be stored digitally for that matter.

Each .torrent file has a hard-coded tracker address all the clients connects to upon starting the transfer. Each client constantly reports back to the tracker all the chunks it has received and therefore can send others. A torrent becomes unusable if the tracker stops responding, and they usually do. A torrent also turns to wasted space when there are no users with 100% of the file (called seeders) left.

Bittorrent clients will only give you a good download speed if the other people who are downloading it give you a good upload speed. This can make some torrents slow, so please keep your bittorrent client running with the torrent open for 24 hours or as long as possible after you have finished downloading yourself.

It is very easy to find torrents for tv-series, movies and other fun on the Internet using search engines. You can search Google by searching for keyword filetype:torrent. USENet is a good place to get torrents for misc things. epguides is a good place to find tv-shows release dates.

P2P Traffic to Grow Almost 400% over the Next 5 Years, as Legitimate P2P Applications Become a Meaningful Segment

Team Member - J. Gorman - According to a story via Google news P2P network is expected to as stated in the title, grow 400%. Primarily right now P2P networking is largely used to share music, but the article states there has been a huge increase in video content being shared. Additionally, the use of legal P2P content will increase as content providers see the potential to share their content in a more cost-effective way. With legitimate P2P networking expected to grow 10x faster than illegal P2P sharing, would you pay for this type of service if it were available?

Personally, I think if I'm going to be uploading content continuously, Comcast and other ISPs will need to increase their upload caps for households. Right now, depending on the amount of content you would share legally or illegally you as a user could reach your cap very quickly. Additionally, in the basic sense of P2P networking you're basically paying your ISP so that your household can act as a mini-server for sharing content.

In current configurations for ISPs their service is based on a bandwidth cap, which means you're basically allotted a specific amount of bandwidth. However, if you're continually downloading movies you're going to have an increased load on your bandwidth and basically eating up all of it so that your neighbors will have a slower connection. If everyone started using P2P model for downloading and sharing content, which more than likely would be a continuous download/upload scheme, all users would see a significant decrease in speed. In my opinion, ISPs will need to increase bandwidth in order to support the P2P model, otherwise our 8 meg Comcast connection will start running like a 56k connection from the late 90s.

Link to original article

Downloading torrents and sharing files

Team Member - Kevin Jung

Users browse the web to find a torrent of interest, download it, and open it with a BitTorrent client. The client connects to the tracker(s) specified in the torrent file, from which it receives a list of peers currently transferring pieces of the file(s) specified in the torrent. The client connects to those peers to obtain the various pieces. Such a group of peers connected to each other to share a torrent is called a swarm. If the swarm contains only the initial seeder, the client connects directly to it and begins to request pieces. As peers enter the swarm, they begin to trade pieces with one another, instead of downloading directly from the seeder.

Clients incorporate mechanisms to optimize their download and upload rates; for example they download pieces in a random order to increase the opportunity to exchange data, which is only possible if two peers have different pieces of the file.

The effectiveness of this data exchange depends largely on the policies that clients use to determine to whom to send data. Clients may prefer to send data to peers who send data back to them (a tit for tat scheme), which encourages fair trading. But strict policies often result in suboptimal situations, such as when newly joined peers are unable to receive any data because they don't have any pieces yet to trade themselves or when two peers with a good connection between them do not exchange data simply because neither of them wants to take the initiative. To counter these effects, the official BitTorrent client program uses a mechanism called “optimistic unchoking,” where the client reserves a portion of its available bandwidth for sending pieces to random peers (not necessarily known-good partners, so called preferred peers), in hopes of discovering even better partners and to ensure that newcomers get a chance to join the swarm.

Were you waiting for the release of the new AC/DC album? Why?

Team Member - Bill Frost

Over the weekend, I saw a commerical for the forthcoming AC/DC album "Black Ice". The new album was released in Wal-Mart stores today. Whereas I don't claim to be a huge AC/DC fan, there are definitely songs that I enjoy listening to. "Thunderstruck" is by far my favorite. There are however thousands, probably millions, of fans that anxiously waited for October 20th to arrive. Too bad there were already over 400,000 AC/DC fans listening to a digitized version of "Black Ice".

Reportedly on October 7th, the album was leaked to the popular website BitTorrent and the downloading began. There had been a rumor that Sony had sent false information and fake downloads out to popular BitTorrent sites in an effort to frustrate pirates. There has been no conclusive evidence to this story and it appears the record label is the one frustrated by the "success" of the number of downloads.

Statistics from Mininova, a popular download site, showed four of the top five downloads to be by AC/DC. Although the band as refused to release their music through the Internet, others have been doing so and the results speak for themselves. While the sale of most recording artists music has been declining for the past five years, AC/DC has had remarkable success. Without the release of a new album, AC/DC's physical record sales reached 1.3 million in 2007 in the US alone. Now consider that nearly a third of those total sales were accounted for in just twelve days with the downloading of "Black Ice."

Read the story in it's entirity here.

New Find

Team Member - Mitchell Holloway

Came across this site today. It is basically a site that you can use to find any files. All you do is type in what you are looking for, just like Google, and away you go. A link list generates telling you what sites your inquiry is on. Just wanted to share with the torrent world!

Stanford University bit torrent's

Team Member - Michael Graulich

I read an article on how Stanford University is basically putting a bunch of their online courses up as torrents for downloads so people can learn more about technology that is out there. They have up online currently the 10 most popular computer science and electrical engineering courses.

Here's the url on this story
http://torrentfreak.com/stanford-university-embraces-bittorrent-081018/

Torrents go legal!

Team Member - Kevin Jung

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UICHfudGWYg&feature=related

Here is a little three minute video of making torrents actually legal for users. Some of the positives and negatives of making it legal in the U.S. Hope you enjoy.

Big Win for the MPAA & RIAA?

Team member - B. Frost

With the Presidental election right around the corner, voters are preparing to cast their ballots for a new Commander in Chief. Whereas most, if not all, attention is turned to Senators John McCain and Barrack Obama, the outgoing leader of the free world has put his "John Hancock" on a new law which favors the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). After a unamious vote by Congress, President George Bush has signed off on the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 (PRO IP Act).

Nice title, but what does it mean?

A major point of the PRO IP Act which would have given authority to the Department of Justice to pursue civil copyright cases was removed from the bill before it was passed. The creation of a "Copyright Czar" position remained part of the bill as it came to vote. Also included in the new law is a provision which would allow for the seizure and holding of materials or items if it is thought that these items could be used for committing a crime. This "extension of forfeiture" is almost exclusively found in drug-related cases. In such matters, a user's computer(s), external hard drives, MP3 player or IPod, even network modems, routers, and switches are fair game for seizure. If the accused chooses to fight the claims in order to retrieve their seized property, the typical time and cost associated with such a case is three (3) years and $ 10,000.

For those that have enjoyed their freedom to download music, movies, and more, it may be a wise idea to research which congressional members supported this bill and show your disapproval come Election Day.

Torrent troubles around the world

Team Member - Michael Graulich

I read an article about how torrent spy is starting to block us users on certain sites causing slower downloads because of fewer seeders and more peers.

here's the link to the article


http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/09/26/torrent_troubles_around_the_world/1

72% Of P2P Pirates Would Stop With ISP Warning

Team Member - J. Gorman
According to a news story I found via Google News search - Following a study by the Entertainment Research Group, 72% of P2P pirates would stop pirating content if their ISP's (internet service provider's) sent them cease and desist letters.

In addition to the cease and desist letters, apparently AT&T will be employing filters soon to block illegal content from being shared, however as the author of the article stated, this filtering can be extremely costly and usually can be worked around by people who know what they are doing.

In my opinion if ISP's begin to block content on P2P networks people will find other ways, whether they resort back to IRC chat to share music, movies, etc. or other avenues. The sharing of music, movies, etc. has been going on since the internet came online, it's just that P2P networks have made it easier for people to share with others.

This brings me to ask the question of whether I would stop using P2P networks if I received a cease and desist letter from my ISP. I can honestly say I'd probably fall into that 70% that would, because most items shared on P2P networks illegally you can find other places.

Would you stop using P2P networks if your ISP sent you a C&D letter? Please leave your comments.

Click here for original story

Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

Team Member Mitchell Holloway -

TV shows are by far the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
The top two shows in this weeks list, Heroes and Prison break, were both downloaded over a million times in a week. Since both shows are ‘released’ on Tuesday, BitTorrent sites see a significant traffic increase on that day. The rest of the shows in this weeks list are less popular, but still got somewhere between 700.000 and 300.000 downloads.

The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.
Ranking/--(last week)-- TV-show
1 - (1) - Heroes
2 - (2) - Prison Break
3 - (4) - House
4 - (6) - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
5 - (new) - Desperate Housewives
6 - (7) - Entourage
7 - (8) - Gossip Girl
8 - (back) - Supernatural
9 - (new) -How I met Your Mother
10 - (10) - Fringe

Court Deems Pirate Bay Block to be Illegal

Team Member Mitchell Holloway -

This August The Pirate Bay was “censored” in Italy following a decree from a public prosecutor. The Pirate Bay appealed the block and eventually won the court case. Earlier this week the Court of Bergamo detailed its decision, and ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement.

Two months ago, following an order from an Italian prosecutor, ISPs started to prevent their customers from accessing the Pirate Bay. The administrators of the popular BitTorrent tracker were accused of making copyrighted material available on the Internet for commercial purposes.

Of course, the Pirate Bay team didn’t agree, and responded in true Pirate Bay style. “We’re quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators,” Sunde wrote in a blog entry.

The BitTorrent tracker was not going down without a fight, and later announced that it would appeal the decision in court, which they won. The block was lifted and ISPs could again grant their users access to the most frequently used BitTorrent tracker on the Internet.

The Court of Bergamo decided that this block was unlawful, and earlier this week they explained why. According to the court statement (Italian), no criminal court is allowed to issue an order to ISPs to block traffic to a foreign website, based on alleged copyright infringement. Italian law implements an European Directive, 2000/31 CE, which this means that this ruling should be valid in other European countries as well.

“Under Italian law, this is possible only for child porn and for unauthorized gambling, but there is no such provision for copyright infringement,” Pirate Bay’s lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Micozzi explained to TorrentFreak.

“We have to make sure that no legislative bill promoting such filtering provisions will be passed in the future. At the European level, many authorities pointed out the need to find a balance between the enforcement of alleged copyright infringements, users’ rights, and privacy issues.”

In hindsight, the block only helped the Pirate Bay to grow even further. The case generated a lot of free promotion, and the number of visitors from Italy increased by 5 percent. Not exactly the outcome IFPI had hoped for.

ISP’s versus BitTorrents – The Battle Continues

Team member – B. Frost

In an article published in November 2007 on PCWorld.com, Comcast was accused of blocking or limiting the bandwidth resources available to users trying to use BitTorrent networks. Whereas there is no denying that most of the traffic through bitTorrent networks is for the illegal acquisition of music, movies, and games, BitTorrent, Inc., the developer of the technology, argues that “bitTorrent can be and is used for the legal sharing of files that aren't copyrighted and even offers the protocol/software as a legitimate service for businesses.” An example of BitTorrent’s business use is game manufacturer Blizzard’s use of the technology to distribute both patches and updates to their World of Warcraft game. Comcast denied the claim as to necessarily targeting the BitTorrent users; but stated that they will monitor traffic on their network and try to make a concerted effort to restrict users who consume too much bandwidth. This is done in an effort to provide adequate services to all users on their network.

Fast forward to February of this year.

In a research study conducted by The Max Planck Institute in Germany, both Comcast and Cox Communications were found to be throttling back Web traffic on their networks associated with BitTorrent; and not just during peak times of Internet usage. According to the study for the Cox subscribers, 54% of the tests indicated blocking. The image above plots geographic locations where the BitTorrent tests were run. The red dots are test locations where the BitTorrent transfers were blocked. How do you know if your ISP is allowing you full access to bitTorrent site? The Max Planck Institute has posted a link which allows users to test if their ISP is limiting their BitTorrent connections.

Information gathered from – PCWorld.com

Operation of a bit torrent

Team Member - Kevin Jung

Operation:

A BitTorrent client is any program that implements the BitTorrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol.

To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a small file called a "torrent." This file contains metadata about the files to be shared and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file must first obtain a torrent file for it, and connect to the specified tracker, which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file.

Though both ultimately transfer files over a network, a BitTorrent download differs from a classic full-file HTTP request in several fundamental ways:

BitTorrent makes many small data requests over different TCP sockets, while web-browsers typically make a single HTTP GET request over a single TCP socket.
BitTorrent downloads in a random or in a "rarest-first" approach that ensures high availability, while HTTP downloads in a sequential manner.
Taken together, these differences allow BitTorrent to achieve much lower cost, much higher redundancy, and much greater resistance to abuse or to "flash crowds" than a regular HTTP server. However, this protection comes at a cost: downloads can take time to rise to full speed because it may take time for enough peer connections to be established, and it takes time for a node to receive sufficient data to become an effective uploader. As such, a typical BitTorrent download will gradually rise to very high speeds, and then slowly fall back down toward the end of the download. This contrasts with an HTTP server that, while more vulnerable to overload and abuse, rises to full speed very quickly and maintains this speed throughout.

In general, BitTorrent's non-contiguous download methods have prevented it from supporting "progressive downloads" or "streaming playback".

Study shows: p2p effect on legal music sales "not distinguishable from zero"

Team Member: P. Sloan
This is an excerpt from the article listed below.

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Entitled "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," the study matched an extensive sample of music downloads to American music sales data in order to search for causality between illicit downloading and album sales.

The study reports that 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, which was a decrease of about 80 million from the previous year. The RIAA has blamed the majority of the decrease on piracy, and has maintained that argument in recent years as music sales have faltered. Yet according to the study, the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total in 2002, leaving 74 million unsold CDs without an excuse for sitting on shelves.

For the full article please go here.