TechWag

Brokep over at the Pirate Bay has a list of alternative sites to use now that Oink is down. This is part of the idea that the more trackers the harder it will be to take out one major site, and have everyone scramble trying to fill it in. The idea that the little trackers are the ones that can help fill in the backbone infrastructure that is taken out via RIAA/MPAA or IFPI take downs.

You can get to Brokep’s list right here and they did a good job of putting one together.

The problem with running a tracker is the amount of bandwidth they will use, this is a reality that anyone running a tracker has to be aware of. A home DSL line quickly becomes saturated (We ran some experiments with P2P and Bittorrent tracking on a Qwest DSL line about a year ago). That means you really can not use the DSL line for much of anything, and the DSL modem that we had was a regular store bought system. We blocked everything but the trackers need, and saw the DSL line fall over after about 10,000 connections.

For a small site this is ok, odds are most likely that getting 10,000 concurrent connections is something that is not going to happen any time soon. But to think of growth, and making the hydra work, most of the at home network connections are shared, there are other things you want to do with them, and if you end up in a situation like you being on comcast, odds are most likely the tracker will die. Odds are also most likely that the P2P system will also die. While it is great to have something fall over because there are too many users, it means that this becomes something you are going to do.

With an index it is relatively simple, you don’t have to do much to keep it running, but as torrentfreak and techdirt point out, the idea of linking to content is controversial at this point. One would have thought that building out a custom Google search engine for media would be the same as running a private index. There are places where linking to protected content is illegal (Australia), and where linking to anything the government does not like (China, Burma, Malaysia) can be more than just a friendly raid from the police.

The sad fact is that while we debate the legality and the issues, that setting up a bittorrent or P2P node is relatively easy to do, you can even do it on a windows Vista or XP box, the demands of running a tracker in terms of bandwidth means you need to have a clear channel from the ISP, and it does not provide you with any legal leg to stand on, once you hit a certain popularity, you will get a take down notice, if not a friendly raid from the police.

What really is a major problem here, is that while there is a lot of DIY or very cheap ways to set up a Bittorrent Index or bittorrent tracking system, do not do it in a country where you will get the 2AM knock on the door. You have to weigh risks and balances, and while the “way of the Hydra” sounds cool, the reality of the whole thing is that until the laws change, or until you are willing to go to jail for your beliefs, building a bittorrent tracker is as risky as playing Prussian roulette or mumbley peg. Someone is going to get hurt.

Tags: education, technology, Politics //