Microsoft backs torrent blocker!

Although in the long run this might not work.. apparently. I think it will actually lead to more invasions of privacy in the future similar to this. If instead of relying on ISP's to block internet content and using Microsoft to enforce copy right laws then we could, eventually be facing the following:

-Law enforcement on an unprecedented scale and in your home.
-Globalist laws enforced which completely abolish our personal privacy in the name of terrorism.
-When things go completely tits up for a lot of Europe, a lot more protests and riots will break out and sites, like ATS and Twitter may go down.

Little progressive steps like this worry me. I would usually quote parts of the article but i'm on my phone and I don't mean to be overly sensational but this is big news, here is the link: www.bbc.co.uk...

torrent blocking...hmm
sounds reasonable by just the name...blocks torrents...ok, what else do I need to know about this

and how would this effect ATS and the like?

I am somewhat in agreement with this, or really any measure to curb the free for all piracy..just so long as it focuses strictly on stopping the actual information from being traded verses blow gaping holes in services.

I am not for law enforcement for this...this is a technical leaking issue that needs to be plugged..just figure a way to literally stop the information.

If I was to make a say, video game. I would cater mostly to the PC market, and not just that, the internet connected PC market...make it a requirement to log in to access your character and launch, along with requiring you to be connected to a main server for access to game critical information.
Torrented games are singleplayer only, to go in multiplayer, they must buy it. I suggest the same for singleplayer..that would solve most games piracy...no need for legal to get involved, max profits, everyone wins.

I am a hypocrite on this subject. cognitive dissidence. I want the piracy of games and quality content to end...and I buy everything I like eventually...but perhaps not initially. (actually, I wait for GOTY editions to get all the extra content in one package verses buy new, then keep buying dlcs and such)

reply to post by SaturnFX

We need to block torrents because people download illegally? Maybe we should add FTP, HTTP, IRC, NNTP and a few other protocols to the block list. Epic fail. May it explode in their faces and be their end in the desktop segment.

Torrents are also used for legal purposes, such as linux, wikileaks and many other uncopyrighted works. I personally rarely use it due to its awful download speed but to block it seems overkill.

Not to mention people that download illegally spend more money on packaged product than people that don't, according to an independent survey.

reply to post by SaturnFX

What worries me is the doors this opens. People who entertain ideas of revolution and have a Microsoft computer or console could face major privacy breaches like realtime computer monitoring and maybe even video surveillance through applications like kinnect, laptop webcams and windows phones.

I know it sounds far fetched but I'd bet on my op.

reply to post by TechUnique


Ok, let me clarify what that article is talking about.

First, bittorrent is a protocol for file sharing. It's revolutionary because it removes the need for a central sever to store files.

A standard HTTP download means you connect to a server, and pull the file from it, pretty simple.

Bittorrent removes that need by allowing you to get bits and pieces of the file, from the other users downloading it. Those users are called a "swarm" because it's a bunch of clients, connecting to other clients who have the file, or parts of it they need, all passing information all over the place, without a central file server.

In fact, with bittorrent, once a single complete copy is available in the swarm, the original hoster can disappear, and the file will stay alive as long as someone has 100% of it.

Bittorrent is used for downloading linux distros, game updates and patches, and tons of other users. Sure, like anything, some people download pirated content.

But that's like saying microsoft is promoting piracy because most people pirate via windows operating systems.

Anyways.... what this technology does isn't "block bittorrent". It appears to be basically, packet forgery. Rogers was doing this.

When you connect to a client, you stay connected unless your software disconnects. what packet forging does, is join in and send packets that appear to be from you, or a downloader, but in fact, they aren't, and they are requesting that the connection be broken. This is mostly a pain and makes it take longer to download. It doesn't block anything, and doesn't stop anything.

As well, this doesn't just go after all torrent traffic, they have to join a swarm on a given file, so it's not as bad as it seems, they'd be messing with illegal content only, unlike ISP level forging that just screws with all torrent traffic.

reply to post by TechUnique


from your link...

Pirate Pay said it blocked 44,845 attempted illegal downloads of the film.

and then 5 minutes later the people went to a different site and got it or went to P2P. And so this company has no way of knowing if they blocked it at all. So then anyone, paying them, has to take their word for it.

How perfect is that! Thats a great busines to be in. Like selling the Brooklyn Bridge over and over again.

Thats one thing about those excessively greedy capitalists, they always love to give more money away to legalized criminal activity, such as sanctioned hacking, which as you know has made the net a wonderful place for all providing you have ALL your shields up 24/7 avoiding their proliferation of viruses on the net.

Crazy people such as these you are discussing need to occupy themselves with this type of work and investment. As usual the actual investors (the CHinese) who pumped so much money into these types of companies, have no clue whatsoever they are been sold shinola.

So whats needed is the ability to block specific torrents of pirated stuff, and let legit stuff remain.
I am good with that idea.

Specific targets of data leave less room to corrupt.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
Not to mention people that download illegally spend more money on packaged product than people that don't, according to an independent survey.

Citation needed.

reply to post by SaturnFX


THat's kinda what this is addressing, they go into swarms posing as clients and just waste other peoples time. It only effects the torrents they specifically target. But again, it's not the same as stopping it.

Look at it this way. You call your friend bob on the phone, but instead of getting bob, you get someone pretending to be bob 9 out of 10 calls, and he hangs up on you.

there is always that 9th call though.

Something to consider is the increased amount of traffic generated by running software like this, on the one hand they complain that torrent traffic is crippling their ancient networks, but on the other hand, the solution to that is to add 50% more torrent traffic?

What is that all about?

reply to post by TechUnique

Microsoft computer or console could face major privacy breaches like realtime computer monitoring and maybe even video surveillance through applications like kinnect, laptop webcams and windows phones.

It's not far fetched at all, the NSA was recently allowed to respond to questions about it's partnership with google with "no response" not even a no comment, no response... Think about that, because even saying no comment would jeopardize the partnership that does, or doesn't, exist.

google also has patents for using a computers webcam and mic to view and listen to background information for targeted ads.

My suggestion, even as painful is it is, would be always read carefully the license agreement, specifically with any new windows os. I'm going to pay close attention to windows 8, because microsoft has been making partners and friendships with antipiracy groups, and it's only logical to expect they start to implement that at the OS level.

Originally posted by SaturnFX

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
Not to mention people that download illegally spend more money on packaged product than people that don't, according to an independent survey.

Citation needed.

lifehacker.com...
www.dailymail.co.uk...
www.forbes.com...

I should point out too that this same type of bogging down the net with wasted bandwidth has been tried over and over again. With no success. The fact that this Cambridge professor...

'Social issues'

Although exact details on how the system operates are not known outside of the company, security researcher Richard Clayton from the University of Cambridge told the BBC it was a process that could work, if only in the short term.

is a sad commentary on his education level sorry to say since all peer to peer networks have the ability through software, the client side, to block ranges of IP's.

And so there exists everywhere lists of companies who do damage to networks and the software merely blocks their ip address.

So that is how the software will block their attempts to disrupt traffic. On the user level. And they will just improve those systems to essentially exclude many of these types of companies as they become blacklisted.

So they will exist in their own little worlds and the masses will merely be using a part of the net that excludes them.

Just as today you see we have robust ad blocking software. No ads appear on most of the computers of anyone who has a reasonable education. They appear all over the Cambridge pc's I am sure but most people who use Firefox use ad blocking software which is free and which does not affect your ability to use the net.

So although advertisers might be convinced they are reaching their target markets, their ads go unseen.

Anyone who lacks an education however is fair game and they do struggle with pop ups and more ads than content. Maybe Cambridge should focus on television rather than pc's this whole business might be just too complex for them.

Kazza Lite, was attacked with everything and billions of dollars for years and years, and not only did it survive, but still today the largest distributed codec package is K-lite.

Never has so much money been spent so poorly than these misdirected attempts to disrupt the Internet.
And its due largely to just a lack of real education with regards to Internet basics.

Imagine the profitability for these media companies if instead of spreading viruses and wasting bandwidth, they invested in streaming fake scenery to homes who have projectors, like this one...
www.bhphotovideo.com...
installed in a living room ceiling, and providing fake scenery to fake bay windows on walls.

They would be rolling in dough, rather than whining about the Internet.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver

Originally posted by SaturnFX

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
Not to mention people that download illegally spend more money on packaged product than people that don't, according to an independent survey.

Citation needed.

lifehacker.com...
www.dailymail.co.uk...
www.forbes.com...

Thanks
I disagree with the music study mind you...I call bull
But the thing I actually do care about, which is video games being pirated...now that is a interesting consideration.
I often say I buy things I like (and don't buy things I don't). But, in this year alone, I have purchased 4 titles I first "borrowed"...which otherwise I wouldn't have bought due to either not caring enough, or never even hearing about

Good example. Anno 2070. Seen a friend was playing it...never heard of it..."borrowed" it just to see what it was all about.
Found it pretty fantastic, but it was limited (couldn't do half the good options, and couldn't link up with friends) so I purchased it within a week...that is a sale that wouldn't have happened otherwise

So, I may be open to altering my mind there. If this is the case, and my actions on anno as an example is a norm, then the solution seems simple...limit the capabilities of the game unless your online...but keep a core game together to get people hooked enough to want the full capabilities of the game.

thanks...still am anti-piracy on principle, but I do see elimination is perhaps a bad choice when incorporation and alteration may be a better alternative.

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver

Torrents are also used for legal purposes, such as linux, wikileaks and many other uncopyrighted works. I personally rarely use it due to its awful download speed but to block it seems overkill.

Youre using the wrong torrent program then, try Utorrent and with the correct seed/leach ratio, I can get1.5mbs downloads

And btw, they are just pissin in the wind as usual, they cant stop it and they know it.

reply to post by Juggernog

To be fair though, like the music study shows, people just end up buying it anyway. I like a few bands. I've only used the torrent to get the music before I could buy it. I have complete discographies of my favourite bands, plus a whole bunch of other random stuff, all legal, Amazon/shop bought CD's. Movies I rarely buy but do have all the Matrix, V for Vendetta, The Great Dictator, a few others, plus all ID Software's titles except their latest title Rage. That will have to wait for a while due to cash backing up rather than flowing. I see my bands live too. Uh-huh. And I'm 40 plus! Uh-huh.

ETA And like you say, the game-makers long caught onto the fact that they can control the cash online. No multiplayer? No fun for cash paying gamers. Win win! Chin Chin! (Another way of saying "Cheers!")

reply to post by Juggernog

I use NNTP. It fill's my pipe, unlike the single-seeded torrents I tend to need. I am not mainstream.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
reply to post by Juggernog

 

I use NNTP. It fill's my pipe, unlike the single-seeded torrents I tend to need. I am not mainstream.

Yes NNTP (Usenet) which was designed to survive nuclear winter by NASA.

And billions have been spent of your tax dollars and your cable bill to pay Russian pirates to spam Usenet with garbage on a daily basis for the last 10 years. You can't even imagine the amount of your money that has been spent to spam Usenet, so as to drive off, and smother unwanted or pornographic material etc.

It boggles the mind how incredibly uneducated most people are who use or work on the Internet.
Not even what I would consider a grade 1 level of understanding of how the Internet really works.
And how to use it so that it fulfills your requirements.

Most people seem to treat it like a television set, and just accept everything that comes their way by default.

One thing I know though is, if those little popup free virus things in the right hand corner do not go away very quickly, you will be looking at a more difficult net to understand as people break away from the mainstream, and form independent free networks using unbreakable encryption.
What is unbreakable encryption? That is information that is digital (as you would expect) and those digits have values, and those values are numbers, and so you take those numbers and you apply a small formula to those numbers based on some sort of unguessable process. For instance like a bitmap photograph of a forest scene.
Each of those pixels in that bitmap is also a number so you take number A, the data, and you say multiply it by number B, whatever value is the pixel next in line, and you run the data through the image in no time at all, and the data is streamed and only those with that exact bitmap, can decode it.
No one else on earth, could ever even with the largest supercomputer and with all the time until the heat death of the universe, could by random chance, portray a bitmap of an outside forest scene in its entirety on the screen. And if it did, by a miracle one time, you would still need a human operator watching every attempt, in order for them to say, hold it, right there, that one, that looks like Jebus!


That is what you are looking at. That is the future. And at that point you will have no control over what people see or say to each other unless you infiltrate, and use that bitmap. You would need to use physical spying techniques to get around that encryption and then they would just change the bitmap.
And take you off their mailing list.

Here is a simple technique.

You write software and you want to encrypt the data so you run it through a bitmap and everyone who joins your club the software retrieves the bitmap and the up-grader changes the bitmap every week lets say.

The software does it itself.

SO now you find the network is under attack, so you say well lets remove the attacker. So you send 100 new bitmaps to 100 of your list of users, and cut the rest off temporarily. No attack? Ok, send the next 100.
And keep sending them out in groups until you get the attack, then zero in on the attackers and cut them out of the loop by not giving them the current bitmap and expose them as bad guys.

Is that rocket science?

Originally posted by Rocketman7
reply to post by Juggernog

 

Yes NNTP (Usenet) which was designed to survive nuclear winter by NASA

The whole Internet was designed to withstand attack, not just a single protocol. Just to quibble. As a mass file storage mechanism open to all worldwide, Usenet was undoubtedly a part of "their plans".

reply to post by Rocketman7


and the bitmap only needs to be 100 pixels by 100 pixels to take eternity before you would stumble upon it.

and hence the software can switch bitmaps in an instant, and track an assailant before he gets a chance to wipe the silly grin off his face he would be cut off without the current bitmap key.

and depending on all the factors such as is this game site, which is being attacked via the competition, by a paid assailant, someplace that has a lot of users and is popular, or is it free , does the game transmit a lot of data, whatever the case may be, that will depend on how vigorously their VPN would be policed by them.

But they can police it in real time that way. And that goes for Utorrent and any other software company that wants to transmit data on a network. It depends on the nature of the attack though.

For Usenet it was spamming by paid companies in Russia, and they managed to convince others that they could use that same principal against P2P, so they spammed P2P and got all their IP addresses blocked.
I doubt their clients knew that. SO then the torrent system was developed, to be able to transmit larger files.
And it has always been attacked as these people are claiming, since it began, and it was never successful.

And even using Utorrent it has capabilities to block a user. So at any time you can just block any IP address with a click of the mouse.

And if your system was not working correctly, you might right when you begin, group block the first thousand users that connect. That will get rid of them en masse.

Then you have the remaining 3 billion users that will not be annoying like those uneducated Russians and their even more uneducated clients.