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Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

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Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#31

Post by DSMan195276 »

derefr wrote: post #19

It seems like a lot of the most well-known pseudo-legal BitTorrent "groups" (PopcornTime, YIFY, ISOHunt, now Kat) turn out to be one-man shops, and as such, just completely dissolve as soon as their owner crosses paths with law enforcement. In some cases, these services are integral enough to the "scene" to be brought back by others. But other times, everything just stops for a while. This seems like a bus-factor pro…

> This seems like a bus-factor problem. Why does it keep happening? Why aren't these sites being run by multi-national teams that can survive a loss like this?

I mean, I would assume it's because it's shady business. Even if you made it multi-national, there are probably only a few places where you could reasonably keep the server hidden for an extended period of time (Keep in mind, these aren't Tor services or anything, they're pretty out in the open as far as I can tell) - and you're making money off of ads, so actually getting paid is another complicated issue. And really, if you only need one person, why bring in the risks of a second one? I don't think you'd be very concerned about "keeping the scene alive" if you're going to jail.

Wikipedia is easy in comparison because most countries don't throw you in jail for running a Wikipedia server.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#33

Post by ikeboy »

josho wrote: post #18

I find it interesting that a Polish man was charged by US laws, rather than under Polish law. I think he opened himself to US law by hosting the servers at one point in the US. Regardless, it is rather fascinating that his first visit to the US could potentially be from extradition.

Anyone doing things that affect the US is automatically subject to US jurisdiction. But whether they can be extradited depends on the particular treaty the country in question has with the US.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#34

Post by pablovidal85 »

scrollaway wrote: post #24
msie wrote: post #22

So Bittorrent is decentralized but you need a centralized index of the available torrents? Is this correct? Can you find anything without a site like KAT? TIA.

Distributed discovery is possible, but you quickly run into spam/noise problems. Centralized communities generally have features such as curation and deduplication (duplication is bad for torrents, as it causes peers to be spread across multiple slightly-different packages of files, reducing the available peers for both). It's not a technical problem, it's a social one.

I wonder if mediachain [1] could be repurposed as a decentralised tracker.

[1] http://www.mediachain.io/

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#35

Post by tpm »

msie wrote: post #22

So Bittorrent is decentralized but you need a centralized index of the available torrents? Is this correct? Can you find anything without a site like KAT? TIA.

Well there was btdigg, a DHT search engine, but it stopped working a few weeks ago. In theory, everyone connected to DHT could run queries himself, however I am not sure there is software to do that comfortably.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#36

Post by Aelinsaar »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21
derefr wrote: post #19

It seems like a lot of the most well-known pseudo-legal BitTorrent "groups" (PopcornTime, YIFY, ISOHunt, now Kat) turn out to be one-man shops, and as such, just completely dissolve as soon as their owner crosses paths with law enforcement. In some cases, these services are integral enough to the "scene" to be brought back by others. But other times, everything just stops for a while. This seems like a bus-factor pro…

> This seems like a bus-factor problem. Why does it keep happening? Why aren't these sites being run by multi-national teams that can survive a loss like this? Trust. You have to be sure the people you're working with are diligent, careful, and won't turn you in (and likewise for them).

This is the major hurdle in all criminal endeavor.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#37

Post by revelation »

msie wrote: post #22

So Bittorrent is decentralized but you need a centralized index of the available torrents? Is this correct? Can you find anything without a site like KAT? TIA.

The Freenet project (https://freenetproject.org/) has decentralized messaging (Frost) but the problem was/is spam and DOS by malicious actors eating up the (already little) bandwidth.

There is a successor (Freetalk?) which when I tried it had some novel features to combat that, i.e. solve captchas to gain "trust" and a "web of trust" where you can vouch for users and similarly receive trust.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#38

Post by kauffj »

msie wrote: post #22

So Bittorrent is decentralized but you need a centralized index of the available torrents? Is this correct? Can you find anything without a site like KAT? TIA.

LBRY (http://lbry.io) uses a blockchain to maintain an index of decentralized content, with a pretty creative naming scheme that allows writing URLs like this:

lbry://itsadisater

If you have LBRY installed, that link will go to a film starring David Cross and Julia Stiles that is being distributed, officially, via LBRY.

More on the naming/DNS thing here: http://lbry.io/what#naming.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#39

Post by airza »

derefr wrote: post #19

It seems like a lot of the most well-known pseudo-legal BitTorrent "groups" (PopcornTime, YIFY, ISOHunt, now Kat) turn out to be one-man shops, and as such, just completely dissolve as soon as their owner crosses paths with law enforcement. In some cases, these services are integral enough to the "scene" to be brought back by others. But other times, everything just stops for a while. This seems like a bus-factor pro…

Because realistically speaking nobody cares. Having people trust wikipedia to stay open or be at least backed up and not controlled makes them more likely to contribute to the upkeep of the site. If i'm downloading software for free from a list of public trackers, it is more or less completely interchangeable to me and everyone else involved in the process.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#40

Post by flukus »

msie wrote: post #22

So Bittorrent is decentralized but you need a centralized index of the available torrents? Is this correct? Can you find anything without a site like KAT? TIA.

There were quite a few decentralized ones around in the post napster era. The searching was generally poor.
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