Would this work?

[TheEmpathicEar]

Would this, http://torrentfreak.com/att-patents-tech...ve-140917/, work for my last video request?

[NIK]

No

I haven't actually got the faintest idea what you're talking about but the answer really is no, no matter what it is.

[stormium]

nm

[NIK]

'K, curiosity got the better of me and I went to the trouble of figuring out what you were talking about. I don't know why you couldn't have just said.

Anyway, the answer, as I said it would be, is no. Specifically because:
1. That patent was only just granted but it was applied for in 2005. The techniques it described have, for the most part, long since been superseded by DHT (which does a better job than the patent approach would). ie. it will never be implemented.
2. If it was implemented, pirates would rapidly abandon any tracker and/or torrent client which supported it. People, nowadays even more so, want more anonymity not less. Who wants their IP address bandied about as a source for Busty Mimi (or, worse, some title such as The Hurt Locker which suddenly becomes known to be "hot"), for weeks or months after they've stopped sharing it?
3. if it was implemented and, for some reason, the majority of filesharers decided to just accept fines in the interests of being able to more easily access minority titles, or the MAFIAA surrendered and gave up hassling everyone, it still wouldn't help. Firstly, it wouldn't work for anyone with a dynamic IP or who used a proxy or VPN (since the last known IP address recorded for them would rapidly cease to be valid) and secondly people stop sharing when they want to stop sharing. Only a tiny percentage of filesharers are able and willing to bother with reseed requests.

[TheEmpathicEar]

Thx. When it's described as above, it does seem like something more folks would want to avoid, rather than use.

EDIT: I re-read the comments section at: http://torrentfreak.com/att-patents-tech...ve-140917/. It's hard to follow.

[NIK]

You have to consider it in the historical context.

When BitTorrent debuted, and for several years afterwards, torrent files could only contain a single tracker, and there were no other peer discovery mechanisms (no DHT, no Peer Exchange, no Local Peer Discovery).

So when a tracker went offline every single one of it's torrents died. Not immediately, since already connected peers would stay connected. But once anyone completed/stopped there was no way to rejoin the swarm.

So a lot of techniques were being thought of to fix that. I'd not heard of this one before, but I do recall one where the single tracker would act as a tracker tracker, which would track the trackers who were tracking a given torrent. So when your client "announced" the tracker tracker would send back the address of the tracker which was currently tracking that torrent. If it went down, then next time anyone announced they would get the address of whichever tracker took over.

Anyway, multi-tracking as we know it today eventually triumphed and ruled the roost for several years before DHT gained momentum (with a significant boost from TPB as it happens, when they switched to magnet lnks (which don't actually rely on DHT but which complement it well).




EDIT. As for the comments section, it's a reflection on TorrentFreak itself. Ernesto writes big headlines, spins a story, then drops in right at the very bottom the key fact--in this case the date of the application-2005. It not "news" it's "olds". But he knows that most people only read his headlines. And that's what the comments reflect: not one person (not even the ones telling others they're "missing the point") has realised that the "impending" bad thing was actually stillborn 10 years ago.

The really interesting thing to me is that a relatively simple software patent (which are going out of favour anyway) took nearly 10 years to grant.

[TheEmpathicEar]

I'm curious. Do you think DC++ [Peer to Peer?] still has a place in the file sharing world?

[NIK]

A place? Yes. But a small and ever decreasing one. http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=d...%2B&cmpt=q is indicative. Every network has die-hard fans so it often takes literally decades longer than you would think for things to die out entirely.

For the time being, the relative popularity of the various existing networks will remain fairly static. Usenet might grow a bit faster than Bittorrent but if it does it will only be marginal.

The "next big thing" in filesharing will be decentralised anonymity (something akin to Tor) but that isn't going to take off until fibre broadband is widely mainstream. Several years away at least. There are lots of different software implementations already but the bottleneck caused by the low upload speeds of current consumer internet connections means the masses just won't migrate.

[TheEmpathicEar]

A place? Yes. But a small and ever decreasing one. http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=d...%2B&cmpt=q is indicative. Every network has die-hard fans so it often takes literally decades longer than you would think for things to die out entirely.

For the time being, the relative popularity of the various existing networks will remain fairly static. Usenet might grow a bit faster than Bittorrent but if it does it will only be marginal.

The "next big thing" in filesharing will be decentralised anonymity (something akin to Tor) but that isn't going to take off until fibre broadband is widely mainstream. Several years away at least. There are lots of different software implementations already but the bottleneck caused by the low upload speeds of current consumer internet connections means the masses just won't migrate.

Usenet is the one I have never used [as far I know anyway]. I had no idea it is still popular or worldwide for that matter...

[NIK]

You would know if you had used it: the learning curve is higher than with BitTorrent, and you have to pay.

These two articles do a decent job of explaining what it is and comparing it with Bittorrent. The more valid comparison is, as they point out, is with Bittorrent-via-VPN (or, as they don't point out but which is similar cost-wise, Bittorrent-via-seedbox).

https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/8190/usenet-introduction/

https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/8191/vpn-vs-usenet-face/