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WebTorrent

webtorrent.io

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Re: WebTorrent

#11

Post by Raed667 »

Hamuko wrote: post #4
NegativeLatency wrote: post #2

This is pretty cool, but wouldn't it make it harder to get seeds in the first place? Just imagining someone getting their file and closing the torrent tab, I guess you could try and address this with some UI callouts, but as a frequent torrenter, since it runs on a dedicated machine/application I tend to seed heavily.

I once thought about using webtorrents on a video on-demand site that I was hosting. The idea would've been that I'd have the video available on the server both through HTTP and BitTorrent, and when a lot of people start watching the same VOD at the same time, they'd help seed it to each other and reduce the burden on the server. Never actually made it since the server that I had was actually good enough to serve peo…

Checkout PeerTube https://joinpeertube.org/

Re: WebTorrent

#12

Post by klabb3 »

lxgr wrote: post #5

Besides being an amazing technical achievement, I find this very interesting legally, as it further blurs the line between passively viewing content hosted somewhere and redistributing/actively sharing content. Have there already been cases of websites making their visitors unwitting peers, similar to e.g. JavaScript cryptocurrency mining?

Well spotted. In other words, WebRTC lets a site owner have their visitors distribute content directly to others without their knowledge or consent, basically making it impossible to argue that the distributor has intent to do so in the general case.

That said, it was already highly questionable for legal application, since a torrent client can run on any machine connected to a home wifi, including guests and compromised machines. It may have been enough for a "hey, you're breaking our tos, please check your devices" from the ISP, but should never have been more than that (like threatening letters from rights-holders).

Re: WebTorrent

#13

Post by consumer451 »

lxgr wrote: post #5

Besides being an amazing technical achievement, I find this very interesting legally, as it further blurs the line between passively viewing content hosted somewhere and redistributing/actively sharing content. Have there already been cases of websites making their visitors unwitting peers, similar to e.g. JavaScript cryptocurrency mining?

I am on a 200GB capped residential LTE internet connection. Upload is included in that data cap. If this was surreptitiously deployed that would cost me money and generally be not cool.

Re: WebTorrent

#17

Post by TremendousJudge »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #8
metadat wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately there are other ways to seed independent of WebTorrent clients. You are right, it'll be mainly used for HnRs. In some cases this is okay or even desirable.

> ...it'll be mainly used for HnRs... Evil work-around: show "file-progress" as % of 2:1 seeding? File isn't 'downloaded' until you have uploaded 2x!

That won't work, you can only mandate at most 1x; otherwise you have more supply than demand and users will never be able to "finish" their downloads

Re: WebTorrent

#18

Post by Sean-Der »

mhitza wrote: post #9

I couldn't find out at a glance, but is the webrtc connection between peers encrypted or plain sniff-able?

WebRTC is encrypted and authenticated. No concerns about that!

Another nice thing about WebRTC is that it uses DTLS. You can’t block web torrents because that would also block conferencing software and corporate VPNs (Cisco)

Re: WebTorrent

#19

Post by jordigh »

Oh, huh, I first knew about this from Peertube, and I assumed they were the ones who had created it. It seemed like a really clever solution to the problem of "how do I host my own YouTube without needing a massive infrastructure to deliver video?"

Really cool to learn that Webtorrent is a generic API that others can use. There seems to be a lot of good ways it can be used to decentralise the web again.

Re: WebTorrent

#20

Post by nashashmi »

consumer451 wrote: post #13
lxgr wrote: post #5

Besides being an amazing technical achievement, I find this very interesting legally, as it further blurs the line between passively viewing content hosted somewhere and redistributing/actively sharing content. Have there already been cases of websites making their visitors unwitting peers, similar to e.g. JavaScript cryptocurrency mining?

I am on a 200GB capped residential LTE internet connection. Upload is included in that data cap. If this was surreptitiously deployed that would cost me money and generally be not cool.

Seems like the browser should warn of a webRTC connection coming from the site.
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