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WebTorrent

webtorrent.io

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Re: WebTorrent

#91

Post by lovvtide »

feross wrote: post #58

Disclosure: I'm the author of WebTorrent. It's so fulfilling to see WebTorrent still popping up on Hacker News after all these years. I started the project in 2013 and devoted most of my 20s to working on it, ultimately becoming a full-time open source maintainer. I started WebTorrent with the goal of extending the BitTorrent protocol to become more web-friendly, allowing any browser to become a peer in the torrent n…

As someone who's built (and is still currently working on) an app that integrates WebTorrent, I want to thank you for resisting the temptation to cash in on the token craze while so many other decentralization-adjacent projects have been ruined the get-rich-quick crowd. It gives me hope that some of that original ethos is still alive. And good luck with Socket. Super important work.

Re: WebTorrent

#93

Post by anacrolix »

m00dy wrote: post #31

I'm building a decentralized ai marketplace and guess what? This piece of software is the backbone of our off-chain file transfer protocol. It just works; however, its seeder (BitTorrent-tracker) depends on node-webrtc, and it is not an official node package for web-rtc. It has some weird issues. For example, when you seed the torrent through BitTorrent-tracker, and on the client side (chrome browser), I used chrome:…

I have this problem with WebRTC too. I'm operating from the native side with anacrolix/torrent and pion/webrtc. I wonder if it's not due to the JS implementation.

Re: WebTorrent

#94

Post by autoexec »

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?

> Have there already been cases of websites making their visitors unwitting peers, similar to e.g. JavaScript cryptocurrency mining?

I haven't seen it yet in websites, but I have seen video streaming apps using torrents on the backend without informing users about it. It's caused people who thought they were legally (or at least 'safely') streaming shows and movies for free using something they found in the app store to be surprised when they got hit with DMCA notices from their ISP.

Re: WebTorrent

#95

Post by alexb_ »

speedgoose wrote: post #37
consumer451 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thankfully internet innovation doesn’t stop because a few people have terrible internet service providers.

This isn't even really a "terrible internet provider" problem - this stuff is getting way way more common across all of America.

Re: WebTorrent

#96

Post by SahAssar »

moffkalast wrote: post #68
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that it doesn't work for two people on mobile data where a full TURN is needed. I've never completely understood why exactly it's broken in only that case This is not the only case where it doesn't work. One of the experiments I tried was desktop computer on fixed broadband connecting to another desktop computer on fixed broadband.

Hmm I suppose there may be edge cases where it doesn't work for home networks, but I doubt it's more than a few percent of users. For mobile data it's broken for 100% of devices.

> For mobile data it's broken for 100% of devices.

No, it's not. I've run my own webrtc signaling and STUN servers, and trying between multiple different mobile operators and devices I can establish a connection without TURN in most cases. Not 100% but in most cases.

Re: WebTorrent

#97

Post by Uehreka »

PaulBGD_ wrote: post #76
m00dy wrote: post #31

I'm building a decentralized ai marketplace and guess what? This piece of software is the backbone of our off-chain file transfer protocol. It just works; however, its seeder (BitTorrent-tracker) depends on node-webrtc, and it is not an official node package for web-rtc. It has some weird issues. For example, when you seed the torrent through BitTorrent-tracker, and on the client side (chrome browser), I used chrome:…

I originally went the same route as you, and found that https://github.com/pion/webrtc is probably the best package out there for webrtc. I learned go just for it, and it paid off tenfold. Less memory, more connections, lower latency.

Same (I tried Node-based WebRTC packages), same (I found pion to be head and shoulders above everything else), same (I learned Go just so I could work with it).

Its ability to be simultaneously low-level and easy to work with is truly something else.

Re: WebTorrent

#98

Post by autoexec »

mahathu wrote: post #59
klabb3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comprom…

Do countries other than Germany also have dedicated, famous [1] legal agencies sending out cease and desist letters and suing for damages (~900€) as soon as you accidentally seed a compromised torrent for even a few seconds? [1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal

In the US the ESA RIAA and MPA hire out several different third parties (some of which they have very close ties with) to do that kind of work on their behalf. They include companies like Rightscorp, Vobile, OpSec, or PML Process Management

Mostly they just threaten people with lawsuits in order to get settlement money from folks who may even be fully innocent, but who cannot afford to fight against an international media empire in court. Lawsuits against random users are less common than they were, but still happen. The bigger issue is that the media industry has been pressuring ISPs to permanently disconnect users after nothing more than repeated unproven accusations of copyright infringement.

ISPs who fail to close these accounts risk being fined billions of dollars, so anyone in the US who has been getting DMCA notices from their ISP should take steps to prevent that or else they're risking getting disconnected which is a problem for those without many options for high speed internet access.

Permanently cutting people off from the internet over nothing but accusations seems very extreme, but the media industry has already taken several ISPs to court for not doing it and so far they are winning.

Re: WebTorrent

#99

Post by karaterobot »

speedgoose wrote: post #37
consumer451 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thankfully internet innovation doesn’t stop because a few people have terrible internet service providers.

It is in general dishonest to diminish someone else's resources without their consent or prior knowledge. I can see how this is different from using someone else's computer as part of your botnet (because the act itself is illegal), but how is this different from, say, mining a bitcoin on someone else's computer because they visited your website?

By "this" I mean the case in which a visitor's bandwidth is used to redistribute a file without their permission.

Re: WebTorrent

#100

Post by lantry »

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?

There is https://arc.io/ which is a P2P CDN. Sites get paid a share of the profits based on the amount of data provided by their users. Seems like a cool alternative to ads IMO, but most people that hate ads also hate having their browser "hijacked" so idk if it'll take off.
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