Over at ACM.org, Carlos Baquero wants to know, what happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept?
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems became famous at the turn of the millennium, mostly due to their support for direct file sharing among users. In the 80s, the music industry had already evolved from selling analogue vinyl records to digital compact disks, but only with the introduction of lossy data-compression techniques, such as the MP3 coding format, it became feasible to upload/download music files among users' personal computers. Still, content had to be catalogued and found, and P2P systems such as Napster emerged to provide that functionality.
Some of the early systems, such as Napster and SETI@Home, exhibited a mix of P2P and classic client-server architecture. Gnutella and Freenet, the second generation of systems, provided a much larger degree of decentralization. The emergence of P2P greatly impacted the business models of the music, and later film, industries. With time, these industries evolved to offer flat rates and subscription services decreasing the incentives for, music or video, file copying and sharing.
[...] Looking at Google trends, we see that the concept almost faded from our lexicon. Nevertheless, the technology is still used; it evolved and became more specialized. A good portion of the fabric beneath modern data centers (web 2.0) and blockchain technology (web 3.0) evolved from early P2P research.
The author chronicles the rise of systems like Gnutella and Freenet, commenting on their benefits and their eventual downfall into obscurity due to routing algorithm problems that had trouble consistently delivering content from local sources, which impacted lookup times. He then continues:
The next generation of systems, in the early 2000s, solved this problem by introducing topologies that exhibited locality. The closer one came to the target, the more paths one had to the target and the routing algorithms could pinpoint the next hop with local information and a distance metric. Functionally, these systems provided the users with a Distributed Hash Table (DHT). These efficient content-addressable networks (Chord, CAN, Pastry, Tapestry) allowed structuring N nodes in a topology that supported log(N) routing steps while only storing log(N) network contacts on each node.
[...] The paradigm shifted again in the late 2000s. In 2007, Amazon's Dynamo presented a pragmatic system design that built on prior research in DHTs and Eventual Consistency (leveraging filesystems research from the early 90s, Coda and Ficus, that exhibited P2P characteristics before the term was fully established). In Dynamo the focus was high availability, and, unlike prior P2P systems, the nodes were placed under the same administrative control and inside the data centers. The number of nodes scaled down from millions to hundreds, albeit more powerful ones, allowing some simplifications on the DHTs. Availability and low response time were now the key concerns, they were good for business.
[...] The phrase "all successful systems attract parasites" is often cited in biology, and the same can be applied to P2P systems. Filesharing users terminated nodes once their ongoing downloads finished and did not further contribute to the system. Some nodes refused to forward queries from other nodes or lied about their uptimes to improve their position in the network.
Different strategies were tested to control free riders: enforcing download and upload quotas to avoid unbalanced downloads; partitioning files in blocks and sharing them in a random order, to prevent nodes from quitting when they were close to having the full file. These strategies tried to coerce users into contributing to the collective, but an important tool was still missing: a clear incentive system.
He concludes with some words about Blockchains, commenting, "We probably need to wait for another 20 years to study the legacy of blockchain systems and see which technological concepts turned out to have a lasting impact."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 05 2022, @10:57PM (17 children)
A major problem I have had with P2P is the accusation of piracy. I have to be a leech to evade detection and harassment by the anti-piracy vigilantes. The longer I stay connected in order to be a good citizen, the greater the risk is that I will be accused of piracy.
Nevertheless, I think I have become marked. Now I get piracy accusations even before I have finished a download, when I can't possibly have uploaded everything to someone else, because I don't have it all myself yet.
I wouldn't care about those vigilantes, except that my ISP listens to them. They don't reveal my identity, but they do cut my service and force me to read a lecture about how naughty piracy is in order to get service restored. Ticks me off.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fliptop on Monday December 05 2022, @11:23PM (5 children)
I assume you're talking about torrenting legal content, like the latest Ubuntu release? If they're harassing you about that, yeah, that sucks.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 06 2022, @06:31AM (4 children)
My position is that copyright being unenforceable, based upon a wholly artificial scarcity, is a secondary concern. The primary issue is that no one, not even creators, should want copying restricted even if it was possible. Yes, I do want artists fairly compensated. I do not agree with the taking of the natural right to copy, by fiat, as the means to that end.
Our civilization is entering the Information Age. There are all kinds of wondrous things that would be possible, if copyright wasn't blocking access to content. For instance, research into cures for cancer and other discoveries may be held up for years. Suppose, for instance, that there is a food or drug that can increase a person's intelligence, or reduce their bigotry, but we haven't discovered it yet and won't for another century thanks to copyright and patents. That is what the publishing industry demands of us all, and why? Only so that they don't have to bother polishing any of the various other methods available for turning a profit.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 06 2022, @09:21PM (3 children)
It's my opinion that anything on the internet should be free to read, hear, watch, record, and copy. That's why ebook versions of my books are all free; it costs almost nothing to give them away, my ISP costs me ten times as much as my web host (R4L.com).
All the music I have now is free. KSHE plays half a dozen full albums every Sunday night and have been for over a half a century, and I record them with Audacity. Back in the '70s I recorded it with a cassette.
And no, I'm not an outlaw; at least, not since 2000 when they legalized ganja. Recording the radio was never illegal in the US, and in 1978 they wrote a law specifically legalizing this activity that hadn't ever been illegal, knowing full well what liars the media are, and more likely, they weren't paying enough for laws they like in our plutocracy that dresses up as a democracy.
The media would have you think that copyright is about copying, but is no more about copying than right to work laws give you a righ to work. A copyright is the right to EXCLUSIVELY PUBLISH. Unfortunately, the law considers P2P to be "publishing".
Microsoft went along with the media whole-heartedly, and disabled recording and playback in my Windows 10 tower and the notebook, although it works on my brand new Asus (meant to replace the aging Dell notebook). I'm thinking of uninstalling and reinstalling Audacity on the W10 tower to see if MS has fixed it (doubtful), but I just replaced the hard drive in a broken computer, installed Linux, and use it to record the Windows 10 tower.
I wish it was easier to use all the data storage in my house, not just the big network drive. But I understand few need that capability, it's set up for offices in businesses and governments. Most people don't even have computers anymore, they don't need them. Of course their phones are computers, but they don't realize that.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 07 2022, @04:47PM (1 child)
I have encountered several authors and artists now, and they were unanimously opposed to change in this area. Among them are a couple of well known names: Mercedes Lackey (she intimated that I was an idiot), and Piers Anthony who wrote back that he flatly disagreed about abolishing copyright as it was the only protection artists have. I practically trolled on this matter many of the authors at the only GenCon I have ever attended. Then there are aspiring authors, dreaming of someday being published and loved and at least slightly famous. They're even worse. The people at NaNoWriMo threatened to ban me. Claimed I'd broken the rules on civil discourse, when I had not, that's how touchy they are about it. They don't want to talk about copyright that way at all.
SF authors in particular, who I would have thought should be the most open minded of us all about the future, instead show a shocking narrowness when it comes to copyright. It is jarring to read a futuristic story containing 20th century copyright, such as the Hugo Award winner Hyperion. I have heard Doctorow is perhaps the biggest exception, but other than him, so much for them being insightful visionaries. What a huge fail. The Muses of SF missing the boat on how literature will be disseminated in the future.
It is refreshing and hopeful to read that you seem to understand.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday December 12 2022, @09:35PM
I have encountered several authors and artists now, and they were unanimously opposed to change in this area.
That's very understandable. They're afraid someone will repossess their lifetime+95 year cash cow. Now, I'm not for abolishing copyright but I'm 100% against the Bono act. Had the copyright remained at 20 years, as patents are, I would be quite happy to insist that copyright cover digital media. If you're in it for the money and can't make a profit in twenty years, you never will.
You can't copyright a recipe, so why can you copyright a computer program? They're exactly the same thing, except one is cooking instructions to a human and the other is any instructions to a computer.
Claimed I'd broken the rules on civil discourse, when I had not, that's how touchy they are about it.
And they say writers are against censorship!
It is refreshing and hopeful to read that you seem to understand.
Thanks, but again, I'm not against copyright, just insane, radical copyright. Imagine how technology would suffer if copyrights lasted a century? That's how art is suffering.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 08 2022, @11:48PM
I wish I could access my server over sshfs from my Android devices.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MIRV888 on Tuesday December 06 2022, @02:53AM (8 children)
'but an important tool was still missing: a clear incentive system.'
That's a typo
disincentive
Copyright assault by the music / film industry is what killed p2p.
It worked.
I'll never understand it.
We migrated from 'get anything you want for free' to 'pay monthly fees for service.'
All it took was a little threatening and an ad campaign.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Tuesday December 06 2022, @03:34AM (5 children)
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 06 2022, @12:46PM (4 children)
But as the top of this thread indicates, there were also threats, backed by both ISPs and Congress, to enforce the will of big copyright holders on everyone else. The carrot is all well and good, but when you think about it for 2 minutes you'll notice that pirate streaming is better than the streaming services in terms of selection.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Tuesday December 06 2022, @05:33PM
Yes, there were serious threats, but what I doubt is that those threats by themselves would have been enough to cause the decline in unauthorised copying. It might well have continued unabated had the big copyright holders continued to attempt to ruthlessly enforce their copyrights while clinging to the old, formerly highly profitable 20th century distribution model the way they initially wanted. The more they tighten their grip, the more profit slips through their fingers. However, Apple, Netflix, and their ilk basically dragged them kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Netflix and other similar streaming services may not have as comprehensive a selection as TPB, but they sure as hell are more convenient, faster, and easier to use, which to most ordinary folk it seems is well worth the cost of the subscription and the hit in content selection. Most ordinary folk could not care less about the rights of these copyright holders, and threats didn't intimidate them that much; they care more about getting the stuff they want to listen to or watch as quickly as possible. But they seem to be willing to pay a reasonable price for a service that can give them what they want from the looks of things.
There seems to be a delicate balance for now, which can be upset if Big Copyright gets too greedy and prices their shit above what the market is willing to pay. Increasing the cost of copyright licenses for the streaming companies is the obvious way this can happen; the license costs will be passed on to the customers, who then have to pay with either more money or with ads, which were previously unknown in for-pay streaming. Another way is excessively fragmenting the streaming market, this makes legitimate streaming service both more expensive (as you now have to subscribe to more streaming services to get the stuff you want) and harder to use (as you now have to look in more places to find stuff). Both of these things seem to be happening, which might eventually make the P2P file sharing services more attractive than legit options again.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Tuesday December 06 2022, @10:55PM (2 children)
Was there ever a wide-spread belief people would actually get caught? Certainly not in my circle of friends. Back in the infancy of streaming TV/movies the ppl I associated with all had the skill to acquire pirated content and play it on the living room TV, but instead preferred buying a smart-DVD player and $20ish/mo to places like Netflix or Hulu. Paying for it wasn't the issue, but the time involved in building/maintaining a media server and ripping/downloading content was.
I'm not saying their anti-piracy tactics were fruitless but according to the *AA 3 zillion bits of content were getting pirated every month and that as time went on it was always gaining. Those claims didn't stop after a successful anti-piracy campaign but they DID slow down quite a bit when iTunes became a runaway hit and Hulu became a household name.
Personally I think anti-piracy threats increased piracy instead of decreasing it. I'll never forget sitting in the theater when they ran one of those "You wouldn't steal a car..." and and hearing people in the audience go "wait, you can download movies?!?" Brilliant move.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Wednesday December 07 2022, @01:57AM
OK. That was funny.
There's some really good points here.
Making access much easier (less technical) was something i didn't think about being a tech person.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Wednesday December 07 2022, @06:04AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 06 2022, @09:36PM (1 child)
We migrated from 'get anything you want for free' to 'pay monthly fees for service.'
I miss DOOM and Quake, where playing was free after the hardware cost, and anybody could start a server from a laptop or desktop, unlike the damned 21st century when you have a monthly fee to play games on the internet. It's disgusting, I have a PS4 but I'll be damned if I pay for what used to be free. It's my DVD and Blu Ray player, and it gets TV apps my TV won't. I pity today's youth, who don't realize how they're being robbed by villains with guns that fire people.
I bought a Ring doorbell, and if I'd bought it for security I'd have sent it back. Its motion detection is worthless, with more false positives and missed real positives, but what's worse is they want a God damned monthly fee to get to the videos after the first month! I refuse, I have almost 10 tb of storage I can use, I don't need your clouds, thief! They can forget that, and when I get a camera to watch the back yard I'll make damned sure I can store videos locally, and its price is its only cost.
I love the technology this century. I hate its rich people, far more evil than any rich people in my life.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Wednesday December 07 2022, @02:04AM
You just described my media server and rainbow 6.
Bravo
(Score: 3, Informative) by liar on Tuesday December 06 2022, @03:30AM (1 child)
Shouldn't a vpn obviate your problem? Mine does...
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gawdonblue on Tuesday December 06 2022, @09:22PM
You're assuming that you're not being tracked through the VPN. It may help, but you really cannot trust VPNs not to be a honeypot.
Probably an NSA honeypot to surveil for the USA national interest (e.g. TOR [cryptogon.com]) but possibly also an FBI honeypot to surveil for criminal activity, including copyright infringement.
Obviously copyright infringement detected this way cannot be called out without potentially alerting the VPN users to the tracking, but do not be surprised if it is happening and that you are on a naughty list.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 06 2022, @12:02PM
Gnutella was a horribly inefficient protocol.
As I recall, it was slapped together by the guys who wrote WinAmp just before they sold out to AOL. They released it to the wild and then stopped development of it as they were getting their WinAmp payday. Being: a) functional and b) associated with the WinAmp gods, Gnutella and later LimeWire became wildly popular, even with their technical flaws. It wasn't until bit torrent came along, years later, that a decent technical upgrade in P2P protocol got hooked up with a significant content base.
In those years in the middle I was a mere one step removed from dot commies and their investment frenzy, but my contact with them came from the Hollywood clan, so file sharing tech wasn't an easy sell to his people.
Gnutella was initially deployed in a 90%+ dialup world, bit torrent took off on a mostly broadband connected base. I designed a protocol that whipped the chocolatey llamas' ass on dialup by making good use of broadband links in the network, but... No investors and I had a decent day job, so....
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Freeman on Tuesday December 06 2022, @02:48PM (2 children)
It's hard to hoover data from the rubes, if they're using a system designed to directly connect between each other. As opposed to having a centralized platform that you can feed advertisements into, track easily, etc.
The philosophy behind torrents is freely sharing files between everyone. This goes directly against all those that want to make money on content. The only one that could feed you advertisements is whomever you're getting your Torrent Client from. Which cuts out a boat load of middlemen. Middlemen don't like getting cut out. Also, the likes of the RIAA and the MPA which together make the MAFIA of the entertainment industry, if you exclude the likes of games/Nintendo. Have made "file sharing" a "bad thing". Not "illegal file sharing", all file sharing, because you know, only pirates use Torrent Clients. They've done such a good job at proliferating their message, that this video title "You wouldn’t DOWNLOAD a PC CASE?! - 3D Printed PC" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3xeBlEuufw [youtube.com] is easily recognizable as a variation of that stupid splash screen you get, before the start of most movies (at least theater movies anyway).
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Tuesday December 06 2022, @03:28PM
I found out in the last year or two they actually made a vehicle called the Pontiac Torrent [wikipedia.org].
So maybe I *would* download a car!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 06 2022, @07:10PM
> This goes directly against all those that want to make money on content.
I feel it is important to get this point correct. "Making money on content" is not the real issue, despite all the propaganda to the contrary. The MAFIAA has tried and tried to make a false equivalence between copyright and profit (as well as between copying and stealing, of course), wailing and screaming that without (C), they will go bankrupt and artists will all starve, and we will have no more art. That's patently ridiculous melodrama. We do want good artists rewarded and encouraged. The issue is "via copyright".
(Score: 2, Informative) by Techlectica on Wednesday December 07 2022, @12:56AM (2 children)
One of the interesting things I gleaned from watching The Playlist on Netflix was learning that Spotify is a hybrid application that uses a mix of client-server and P2P transfers. The initial music transfer is client-server to provide a quick response while the P2P network is searched, and once (a) peer(s) with a cached copy of the song is found, the P2P is used as a source to reduce the traffic/load on the Spotify servers. The incentive for keeping the app open is that people want to listen to the next song on their list.
So P2P is still there, it's just been co-opted. Music licensing from music orgs is what keeps the copyright police off their backs. There may be other businesses where that hybrid model might be getting used and we don't know about it. MMORPGs maybe?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 08 2022, @10:22PM (1 child)
I remember hearing that World of Warcraft distributed game patches via P2P to reduce their need for download servers.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday December 09 2022, @12:16AM
Specifically, bittorrent.