Ask Bram Cohen about BitTorrent 477
It's a clever P2P 'information broadcasting' concept, as the simple diagram on the BitTorrent home page shows. It's gotten a fair amount of notice, especially here on Slashdot. And reader Ignorant Aardvark wrote to us about BitTorrent sites disappearing, possibly because of RIAA/MPAA intervention, so this technology is now generating some controversy as well. The person behind BitTorrent is Bram Cohen, and he's agreed to answer 10 of the highest-moderated questions about BitTorrent you post here. So ask away (after reading the project FAQ and other info about BitTorrent and Bram, of course). We'll run Bram's answers as soon as he emails them back to us.
most obvious question... (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess with the news that it's gathered as of recent did you ever foresee people using BitTorrent for illegal purposes? (i.e. hosting full albums, distributing illegal ISOs, obtaining full length movies [slashdot.org]) Do you fear the consequences that often come from the RIAA/MPAA?
Re:most obvious question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you wish that it was used more for distributing legal ISOs and other files? If so, do you believe you should promote it more for this purpose or promote development of tools to push it in this direction (perhaps automatic creation of torrents on a successful build, etc.).
Re: most obvious question... (Score:5, Interesting)
> are you troubled that it is being used for copyright infringement? Pleased? Apathetic?
I can't resist pointing out that the same could be asked of the inventors of any layer of the standard networking protocols.
I.e., if I were in his shoes I might well not have any opinion on it at all.
Re: most obvious question... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Bob Metcalfe, how do you feel about your invention being used primarily to transport unathorized copies of copyrighted works?"
Re:most obvious question... (Score:5, Funny)
And if so: would be interested in some property in the Florida Everglades?
Re:most obvious question... (Score:4, Informative)
The first slashdot story [slashdot.org] on it was in March 2002, where its was used to distribute CodeCon [codecon.org] 2002
This is for CodeCon 2003:
"CodeCon [codecon.org] 2.0 is the premier event in 2003 for the P2P, Cypherpunk, and network/security application developer community.
It is a workshop for developers of real-world applications with working code and active development projects."
you get the idea...
peek-a-booty (top 10 vaporware of 2001) was also presented at CodeCon 2002.
Improvements (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any plans for improvements to BitTorrent to improve some of its (few) weaknesses, such as searching for torrent files, bandwidth usage by trackers and inability to download if the tracker goes off the air?
Re:Improvements (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Improvements (Score:3, Interesting)
Shareaza now has bittorrent support and it only uses one port for ALL connections.
I too would like to know if there has been any thought on how to solve to 2 weak centralized parts of torrent.
1.
2. trackers can become overloaded and make for easy targets to disrupt the network.
Re:Improvements (Score:3, Interesting)
Ideally, this is a setting where you provide a maximum acceptable ping time, and an IP address to use for that test. If the ping time rises above that threshold, data transfers are slowed
New Versions (A different kind of improvement ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Please help NAT users... (Score:3, Informative)
The way it works, it seems, is that BT requests peers from the tracker, the tracker gives a list of peers to connect to, BT connects to whichever of them are alive or reachable from that specific location on the Internet. After that, the BT clients tell eacother which parts of the file they have, and which parts they are interested in.
I don't k
Controls (Score:2, Interesting)
Impending doom (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would he? (Score:5, Interesting)
BT is a file sharing tool, but unlike other P2P applications, the centralised trackers (and their hosts) are the immobile weak points. Hell, trackers are regularly crushed by the traffic generated by their own *users*.
90% of the trackers I've seen are sharing legal files, or files that have nothing to do with the MPAA - for example, unlicensed fan-subtitled Japanese animation is booming. But the community is very good at removing files when movies / series *do* get licensed for a US release. I don't think it's a widespread threat to the MPAA - illegal distribution points would be extremely easy to knock offline and prosecute.
There is a demonstratably good use for BT, witness the Red Hat
There's a grey line with the TV show download sites, but if the video streams don't cut out the commercials... I don't see why anyone would want to complain about that ("you're viewing our advertising - stop it!" doesn't make much sense).
And the RIAA has no threat with BitTorrent as it's extremely unsuitable for small files. 100MB+ torrents are probably the sweet spot. Sure, albums could be bundled together into one larger torrent - but with P2P music people usually only want that one song that's good from an album and aren't going to want to download the rest.
It can also be a pain in the ass to share anything with BT - but that's a good thing.
python (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:python (Score:5, Informative)
He seems to like JavaSCRIPT, Python, and not much C/C++.
Future Considerations (Score:5, Interesting)
Why Python? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why Python? (Score:3, Funny)
[code]
10 find w@r3z
20 get w@r3z
30 post w@r3z
40 goto 10
[/code]
Re:Why Python? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why Python? (Score:3, Funny)
question (Score:4, Interesting)
What are the weaknesses? (Score:5, Interesting)
As the person with the most in-depth knowledge of BitTorrent, what do you see are the weaknesses of the BitTorrent model?
Bandwidth Scaling (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bandwidth Scaling (Score:4, Informative)
Success (Score:5, Interesting)
torrentse.cx (Score:3, Informative)
p.s. yo Bram, it's James.
Partially Right (Score:3, Informative)
Re:torrentse.cx (Score:5, Insightful)
An idea (Score:3, Funny)
Re:torrentse.cx (Score:5, Informative)
Have you been personally threatened by the RIAA ? (Score:3, Interesting)
a balance? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you worried? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not much in the way of an interface. (Score:4, Interesting)
At any rate, I'm clueless as to how this thing works, or even what it is doing at the moment. There is no UI, no shortcut to any docs, nothing. Was this intentional, or is it because Bit Torrent is still in development and things like a UI and documentation are low on the list? Currently I have Bit Torrent installed, but I have very little idea about what it is doing on my computer or what I can do with it - other than hunting around the net for FAQ's etc.
I'm not complaining - I just haven't had the time to look for these things. If they were there I probably would have used it more.
not useful for that (Score:5, Informative)
BT is a temporary solution for getting high demand files. It works in an inverse supply-demand curve: the higher the demand, the higher the supply of bandwidth.
the solution then is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Tracker Overloads (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I'll also say, I wonder about performance of PHP trackers (as this one is).
I also saw some place where you mentioned the should use round-robin DNS for the tracker host to "scale". This isn't a good solution though, as any network engineer who runs a large internet accessible website will tell you. Cachine of DNS records make round-robin not as effective as it needs to be.
I saw a suggestion where a
-malakai
Emalgamation... (Score:3, Interesting)
We need a Mozilla Firebird addon and an IE plugin for
Searching for torrents (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Searching for torrents (Score:3, Insightful)
Just my thoughts, but I think adding searching would make BitTorrent appear more like a P2P network for illegal files if a user had the ability to search the whole network. When you have to find the torrent file as it is now, I think that it keeps more people honest by taking convenience out of the equation. That way, if you want a redhat ISO, you get it, but if you're searching for Enter Sandman, the MTV Icons won't come back after you.
Re:Searching for torrents (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you should learn how to disagree without attacking someone, but since you sound like such a charming individual let me explain what I mean so you'll understand. If the capability to search was added, there would be a guaranteed hoard of people taking advantage of the software. Right now BitTorrent is a rather small enterprise compared to other networks like Kazaa, and its usefulness as a large file transfer mechanism is sustained by the way that people are using it. Instead of letting everyone use this service for whatever they please why not maintain it as a tool people use for transfer instead of a mass search engine? There are a few benefits...
I hardly consider careful discretion a restriction of rights.
Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
The Crazy Bus With No Driver... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've got one... (Score:3, Funny)
What would you change? (Score:4, Interesting)
Performance (Score:5, Interesting)
Ethics and Programming (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, there is a problem with decentralized p2p that you solved. Is it the fact that there was a request, self-created, that you were solving? Or was it in hopes of doing something 'good'?
What are your views on working on other technologies that are on the fence, like DRM, exploits? I don't mean in terms of creating to be malicious, but for learning or for profit.
Please dont answer these questions... (Score:4, Interesting)
I know this sounds paranoid, but look at the way SCO tried using arbitrary old quotes from RMS, ESR and even Almighty Bruce to "smear" them here: http://www.sco.com/scosource/quotes_from_leaders.
The same thing is becoming a court tactic to attempt to show cause, i.e. Napster pretty much lost because of the "especially since they are exchanging pirated music" quote: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-241977.html?tag=rn
What happened to the free porn? (Score:4, Funny)
Panhandling for internet dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you a target? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you feel you might be a target of litigation or any sort of legal action because you're the "point" person for this project? Stories like these prompted my question:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/
It looks like the media companies are looking for someone to "drag over the coals."
Future Plans (Score:5, Interesting)
What are your plans for the future direction of BitTorrent? Do you have any plans to design a protocol to enable trackers to coordinate? Any plans to enable BitTorrent to dynamically start sharing a file from an "upload" directory, based on distributed searches? In other words, are you interested in making BitTorrent a "full-service" P2P app in the style of Kazaa, etc...? Or are you happy with the functionality as it is?
Or are you perhaps waiting for the BitTorrent community to start chipping in some of the work, rather than leaving you to do all of it?
(Note: I'm not saying that it's somehow insufficient the way it is. I'm really just curious about what your plans are. One thing that keeps me from attempting to help with coding at all is that I have no idea where BitTorrent is headed, or if you even want any code contributions at this point.)
akamai (Score:5, Interesting)
User-based Search/Share (Score:5, Interesting)
enterprise use (Score:5, Interesting)
Unofficial clients? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since BitTorrent's model of "everyone sharing the same data" is fundamental to it's success, it seems like a client that selfishly restricts re-uploading is the complete opposite of the BitTorrent philosophy.
Any thoughts on future changes to eliminate or minimize this kind of cheating?
Re:Unofficial clients? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:If you read the spec (Score:3, Interesting)
In New Zealand, our national bandwidth is generally free but international is extremely expensive once a given cap is reached. Bittorrent is very difficult to use in this situation because it is so easy to run up a huge bill.
Any clients support this?
Working with the RIAA/MPAA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Working with the RIAA/MPAA (Score:3, Insightful)
The big question is, if the RIAA/MPAA are just fighting copyright infringement, then why would they dislike BitTorrent more than HTTP or FTP? After all, they can still send a DMCA complaint to the main server's admin or hosting company. Or easily find and sue the person who uploaded the infringing file in the first place. If the RIAA/MPAA had heard about HTTP and the Web when it was created, would they have tried to sue the developers? Unfortunately, I suspect the answer is "yes".
If they do go after BitTo
BT proxy (Score:5, Interesting)
However, it is just at the edge of feasibility to set up a bastion host running some form of BT proxy, whereby the basition runs BT, and the clients inside connect to the BT proxy via a web interface.
Has any thought been given to something like that?
Commercial Interest (Score:5, Interesting)
I certainly hope you'd keep a free version available, but a more feature-rich version would surely land you a great deal of money with the right pitch.
NAT (Score:4, Interesting)
However, NAT gateways render P2P useless, especially in large organizations where port forwarding is rarely an option. How do you see BitTorrent dealing with this problem until IPv6 is fully deployed and we can all have a private IP address?
Red Hat up2date (Score:5, Interesting)
You recently had some success in distributing RH9 isos. Was RedHat involved with this process? Are they evaluating your technology for other applications (esp. up2date)?
While I am moving away from RedHat because of the changes to up2date, it would be interesting to see a major UNIX player (perhaps even a BSD) begin distributing errata via Bittorrent - perhaps even allowing a configurable parameter to control the "willingness to upload."
Bittorrent integration into Solaris patchchk would also be quite a coup for your team, granted that they are perl-centric.
Preference system? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why did Tweedle Dee seem to have great speed, maxing out his bandwidth, when Tweedle Dum couldn't seem to get higher than modem speeds? Is the bandwidth evenly distributed? Is there a preference system? Is it first come first serve? Does Tweedle Dum simply have bad luck?
Binary format for .torrent files (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is that.... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Won't exit nicely
2) Won't exit forcefully
3) Won't stop reading my hard disk after I delete or move the file
4) Won't let me reboot or logoff
The only way I can get it to stop reading my hard disk at all is wait until i get so mad that I forcefully pull the battery out of my notebook and scream "DAMN YOU Bram Cohen!!!"
What I'm getting at... why did you decide to write BT in Python? From the splash page of the BT website, it seems like you're eventual target are companies, or rather, the customers of companies. I can't help but think that Java would have been a better choice, not only for better platform support, but since it's already mass-deployed, and it's superior browser integration, not to mention it would be a much smaller download (currently ~= 3MB for Python-based BT). Are there any benefits of using Python (other than it's refusal to exit when killed via task manager... heh)?
legal stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm wondering the obvious: have you been approached by any Big Corporationtm-type groups to pull the BitTorrent source and binaries from your site? What about scare tactics? Have you spoken with a lawyer yet to determine just how much liability you'd have were someone to attempt to sue you?
(Incidentally, I'd assume your liability to be zero, but the way the world's running right now, scapegoating has become a popular hobby.)
Merging with Freenet? (Score:5, Interesting)
I love BitTorrent, it maxes out my cable modem at 200 down, 30 up; no other method of downloading can fill the pipe.
The only problem is the reliability of certain sites [torrentse.cx] with content -- which I'm sure you have no relationship with; but if BitTorrent could piggyback off Freenet, it might go a long way toward improving the stability of these sites.
Also, are you going to do anything with the bittorrent.com [bittorrent.com] site? (That's the one Mozilla "suggests" first when I start typing "bittorrent" in the URL bar.)
Compairson to other P2P (Score:5, Interesting)
The eDonkey protocol used the same basic premise. How is BitTorrent different to it and other P2P protocols and why did you make that choice?
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes! Finally! (Score:3)
Anyway, here are some questions:
Yeah yeah I know, one question per post, sorry
Re:Yes! Finally! (Score:3, Informative)
accountability vs. anonymity (Score:3, Interesting)
Alternative Uses (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) extending the HTTP protocol to allow web sites to become p2p. This would alleviate bandwidth problems for sites that serve medium to large sized files (such as photo galleries).
(2) file servers. A company with a heavily utilized file server could offload a substantial amount of the load to the client machines for commonly accessed files.
These would only apply to static/read-only data, of course. Any thoughts?
Trackers (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you see this as a problem that needs to be fixed eventually?
Or do you think it's the problem of those people who use BitTorrent and have something to hide?
So it's a feature?
Possible use for BitTorrent (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Possible use for BitTorrent (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Possible use for BitTorrent (Score:3, Interesting)
To solve the Slashdot effect without advance permission I would think servers would have to have a failover-to-bittorrent mode built into Apache (for example) and an HTTP-by-bittrorrent concept that the previous mod 5 poster suggested.
Incidentally, this is possible to do for well-behaved browser
Forward successful download stats to originators (Score:5, Interesting)
In order to foster more love from freeware/shareware distributors, could BitTorrent be made to inform the end user (me) that BitTorrent was going to send a "notice of download" (not including any personal information, such as an IP, etc) upon sucessful download (that I could preview before sending of course)?
If *I* was Warner Bros, and eveyone offered to distribute and pay for all the bandwidth for the next version of the Animatrix, while I still got to see download statistics, i'm not sure I'd even would need to provide a direct link to the 150 meg QuickTime files.
With this kind of feedback mechanism, the software/media providers get all the love - download stats, far far far less bandwidth used -
and we get all the goodness - their free movies, software, freeware, data, etc. Its the ultimate mirror.
Or am i missing something?
How do you feel about all the clients? (Score:5, Interesting)
And I know I'm cheating here, but:
What can you, me, or we as a community do to ensure that BT stays pure, or at least, survives in it's original, intended state?
Severing the last point of Centralization (Score:3, Interesting)
I've noticed several ideas (and have a few of my own that I won't bore you with) for taking the last step, and making BitTorrent no longer rely on a torrent-aware server to function. I must assume there is some reason that you're not pursuing this direction, and was curious as to why.
BTTP:// protocol? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Have you thought of this before? Would you (as the creator of the technology) be willing to write an RFC?
Do you consider BitTorrent a public archive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think that BitTorrent fits the definition of a publicly accessible and non-commercial media archive?
Let's get a few things straight. (Score:3, Insightful)
YES, many are using it as a warez service right now.. but ultimately, this is JUST like offering the files for download themselves.. just a bit more abstraction. Instead of offering a file for download, you are offering a meta-file that describes where to download the file.
Yes, bittorrent is awesome.. for distributed downloadnig.. it's one of those things that just makes sense on the internet: If a bunch of people want a big file, why not have all the people currently downloading it help each other out with the download, to relieve congestion on the main link? It makes perfect sense, and it works equally well for any kind of file.
Yeah, there has been an absllute orgy of open warez trading.. but that's ONLY because they can now download faster and keep up with the load.it's got nothing to do with sharing files over bittorrent.. if anything, putting up downloads with bittorrent is more involved than just putting up a file.
It's like blaming HTTP for early warez trading over the net.
Bit-Torrent browsing.. (Score:5, Interesting)
mod_torrent (Score:5, Interesting)
That sounds like an awesome module. Do you see it happening? Would you assist someone who was trying to write such a thing?
Streaming (Score:4, Interesting)
Bandwidth minimisation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Complete server package (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the more useful things I see BitTorrent as is what its name implies: A temporary P2P network to alleviate a 'torrent' of downloads. I especially like the way GameTab News (http://news.gametab.com/torrents.php [gametab.com]) handles it: They are always a seed for their torrents, and remain a contributing uploader as long as the torrent is on their site. My question is:
Do you see a BitTorrent server package, perhaps as an addon to Apache or something, that will run a tracker, make
Yours respectfully,
Clint Olson
P.S. Thank you for making this wonderful program!
Fix the single point of failure? (Score:4, Interesting)
Non-Linear Downloading (Score:3, Interesting)
(I don't think it currently works this way)
WxPython (Score:4, Interesting)
Any plans to accomodate smaller files? (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you thought of any ways in which the basic technologies of BitTorrent might be applied to increase download speeds for smaller files than those for which it is currently efficient? My best idea on the subject is to package several small, related files in archives whose format would allow you to see *where* in the archive the files you actually want would be located. There would be considerably many people out there who would want the whole archive's contents, who would act as seeds, and those who only wanted certain files could get the archive directory and download the file portions that contained the files of interest to them.
Is this an area which interests you at all, and if so, what are your own plans on the matter?
Please stop posting links to trackers! (Score:3, Informative)
Will you please stop posting links to individual torrent trackers? They are already overloaded with bandwidth as it is, and getting slashdotted is not helping the situation.
I belong to a very popular forum that found this article and has said some nasty things about ./ and its users, but I will not post them as I do not want to reduce my karma with flamebait material.
Having said that, I strongly urge Slashdot's editors to think twice about posting the actual links (or any stories relating thereto) of torrent trackers.
Respectfully yours, - Brad C.
Re:Slashdotting (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously, for a site like Slashdot, it would be useless, unless you're talking about for archive purposes. For someone's home web server that has almost all static, large contents (say, movies of them strapping a JATO to an AIBO or something), it would be perfect. Even if they had a little dynamic content like a guestbook, you just leave that page out, and the browser knows it has to go to the original site to get it/post to it.
All of which means that a person probably also has to intelligently pack the web site to prep it for BitTorrent use.
Re:Slashdotting (Score:5, Informative)
I absolutely hate it when people do this. BitTorrent works fine on directories without any help. Don't zip media files! Zip's compression does little for the filesize and, more importantly, you the downloader is unfortunate to only get part of the file, the Zip file remains corrupt. If you use Tar, at least, you can recover the portion of the files that you have downloaded.
Re:Are you a tool of Satan? - RTFM (Score:3, Informative)
"btdownloadgui.exe --max_upload_rate [X] --responsefile file.torrent"
Where [X] is the rate of kB/s. This will throttle the bandwith available to BitTorrent.
On a *nix box, I believe you just subsitute ".py" for ".exe"