From what I have read on the upcoming implementation on i2p in qbit, I do not forsee it being adopted by the core torrent user base. The main issue I have with it is that while you can download from clearnet peers, you are only able to seed to other i2p peers. This completely eliminates any adoption by anyone using private trackers. Its not like the guys in brazil are going to jump through an extra hoop to hide their ip since they never needed to in the first place, so they can be ruled out for adoption as well. What I really fear is that its going to create a completely unnecessary schism in the userbase with a sort of ‘leechnet’ walled garden of i2p users which would hurt the greater availability of seeders. I also haven’t gotten a straight answer from anyone how ports are going to work in i2p, since normally its imperative to have a forwarded port in order to be a full participant. Unless i2p users can seed to clearnet users without issue, I am going to be worried about the impact on torrent health as a whole.
The main reason is that libtorrent, which is the literal backbone of most torrenting clients, has implemented supported for I2P only recently in its latest v2.x branch… It takes time for libtorrent to iron out bugs and stablize and it takes more for clients to upgrade their embedded libtorrent to v2.x.
libtorrent 2 also has some issues. On unRAID for instance it causes crashes so I am forced to use v1 builds. And on other systems it has high memory usage so it’s not exactly ready for prime time.
I hate to put it this way because libtorrent is a wonderful piece of open-source software maintained by volunteers but as is typical with its history, releases are going to be bumpy.
Yeah my comment wasn’t a knock at the software or devs. I just think libtorrent v2 is not quite ready for widespread use yet. Since OP is talking people migrating to I2P then it needs to be more stable before that can happen. A few years from now I’m sure it will be a great option.
It supported torrent for ages, but it has only one tracker that doesn’t really have very much content. Now qBitTorrent or something else supports it out of the box.
I2P is very slow, slower than Tor. Maybe after more people join, it will be faster. Last time I tried it was painfully slow to even load most eepsites.
Because I’m not knowledgeable enough to make it work. I’ve managed to install it and figured out that I need to run the restartable version. Lots of text with screenshots or a video(s) would help. I’m not a digital native. This is one of many retirement projects. Listening to more music than I can afford to buy greatly improves the quality of my life.
I would also say that this is because anonimity is not needed by all countries. I know that in Spain torrenting is not a big issue and ISPs don’t care that much (even though distributed Copyrighted content is still not allowed). They usually go after people profiting from distributing copyrighted company rather than people downloading or distributing for free.
Disclaimer: I think some of my info is a bit outdated so if anyone has more recent info about Spain’s situation please tell me.
I think non technical people find the concept of a network within a network confusing. I think its more of i2p itself.
I do think it is the future of filesharing and if I was to create a torrent I’d use i2p. Hopefully with more clients implementing support it sees further adoption.
In internet years, Torrenting is old. I2P is old. Even torrenting in I2P is old. Nothing about this is “the future”.
Ideally, the future of file sharing would involve a fully/natively integrated anonymous network with content-addressable distributed filesystem.
But this will probably not happen, as that architecture didn’t see large scale success before, except in Japan where at least some elements of this architecture are used in their popular P2P networks.
The I2P crowd themselves tried with Tahoe-LAFS, but that was never really a network, even aMule over I2P had more traction, and by traction I mean tens or hundreds of users, not thousands or beyond.
Ironically, the one content-addressable distributed filesystem that gained some attraction (outside Japan) is IPFS, which doesn’t offer anonymity, or replication, or anything special really. Yet for some reason, some hype-susceptible techies liked it, together with the NFT crowd, a great fit.
The future of file sharing will depend on where most content will land where it will be easily accessible and quickly grabbable. How those networks will look like? Nobody knows.
that architecture didn’t see large scale success before, except in Japan
Perfect Dark is a major network in Japan. Freenet is a network most people in the globe are not aware of. Hell, Perfect Dark may have a larger Japanese user-base than Freenet’s global one.
It’s worth mentioning that the former leader of the Freenet project wasn’t the most competent. Combine that with him spending years trying (and failing) to cater to the needs of imaginary dictatorships’ defectors (anyone of them using Freenet instead of Tor is the imaginary part), instead of focusing on maximizing the reliability and performance of the network to help its actual users. So it’s not just the ignorance of the masses that was at fault. The default FN user experience was often a horrible one. And users needed to ignore the officially-recommended microblog/forum applications, and even use a patched FN version, to get a decent performance out of the network.
Anyway, Freenet is the past and the present. And as I wrote in the parent comment, I hope a Freenet-like network would become a major success in the future, but I’m not holding my hopes up.
I feel that there’s so much potential in Freenet that’s not being utilized. Or “Hyphanet” as it’s now called. It could be one of the coolest things ever, but as it is I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go there because of the default FN experience.
Apparently Ian and “Locutus” decided that they wanted the Freenet name, so now Locutus is Freenet and Freenet is Hyphanet.
I’m sure this won’t confuse anyone.
That’s my point, that’s significantly more effort then just implementing i2p. You shouldn’t have to worry about that because we should be using better protocols. It’s the protocol’s fault here, and VPNs are band-aid solutions.
BiglyBT handles all of the I2P router itself if you don’t have a existing install, you can point it to an existing I2P install if you have one that’s running 24/7 so is well integrated which is what I do
I’ve been doing it for 20 years and have never been caught. I’ve never even heard of i2p until here just a couple of weeks ago. The fact that certain people are pushing it so hard and referring to standard methods in such a derogatory way makes me highly skeptical of trying it out.
And just because there is some new method available doesn’t mean you’re retaining your privacy there either. I have a VPN to hide my IP and as far as I’m concerned that’s enough ‘privacy’ to avoid any issues.
What’s the worst that’ll happen, my ISP sends me a letter telling me to knock it off? You’re acting like this is some sort of top secret black ops mission in need of complete secrecy.
Because people believe a VPN or a seedbox is gonna save them from legal repercussions. They paid for it with their real information and credit card too, for convenience. They compromised their private tracker identity and must abandon the trackers the moment the legal landscape incentives companies to pursue individual copyright infringements. But most probably won’t, and face the consequences if that ever happens.
that all depends on your college and how much your IT admins have locked down their connection… Usenet will work on any connection… unless it’s being actively blocked.
I had someone explain to me how it really isn’t a privacy concern to use usenet but financially it does feel like a bit of a bamboozle but you have to realize that usenet often will max out your download speed which is pretty nice and it has some magic that prevents people from knowing what you’re trying to access so it’s likely worth the like $10/mo
Shouldn’t a VPN hide you? I get that port + user agent can be an identifier, but all you have to do is stay up to date and change your port every so often, then you’re good. If not, let me know, cheers
tl;dr bit torrent is just a way to overcome file distribution issues in a secure and repeatable way and by secure I don’t mean private and yes vpn can work if implemented correctly but theres lots of failure modes for vpns which will leak your info. Just about any old turd with php skills and no real knowledge of how privacy works can spin up a legitimate enough looking vpn company to dip into all of the people looking to skirt Netflix rules.
I said specifically “in that protocol” all bit torrent does is it breaks down everything to a hash that can be looked up in a dht wich holds all of the addresses of the individuals sharing that hashed data. I’m not wrong. You can always have a vpn I mean look how hard China tries to stop vpns and still will likely never really nail it down so long as cryptography on the internet is necessary. They would have to deploy Red Star Linux and a whole gestapo to randomly audit chinese citizens computers directly. So long as we have open source hardware keeping big tech and five eyes etc countries and spy agencies a touch more honest we will have lots of ways around all of the censorship and antipiracy trashbags.
You just rambled on for a bit without really answering my question: how does taking the proper measures (VPN, changing port, updating client, using anonymous mode if available) not make you more private during the file sharing?
I understand how the bittorrent protocol works, but with constant randomization you should have no unique identifier except if youre the only seeder on 10 old torrents… So please clarify
If you look around you can get it for $3.50 a month (I have an account with News Demon that’s unlimited for that price, which I don’t remember exactly but I think I got it during a black friday sale)
i’ve messed around with i2p, it requires much more technical knowledge than just torrenting and there’s a bit of a learning curve to navigating and configuring it. plus it honestly hasn’t changed much in years, and i’m not sure how much i trust the developers working on it. i do agree that it’s better than tor though
Agreed. Even getting support over an issue (initially) was troublesome. But somehow I ended up solving it through other channels. But just like torrenting, or any other tech, once you get enough experience to solve issues on your own, things get a bit easy.
A tech being easy to grasp can be an issue too, leading to more script kitties messing in with the protocol.
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From what I have read on the upcoming implementation on i2p in qbit, I do not forsee it being adopted by the core torrent user base. The main issue I have with it is that while you can download from clearnet peers, you are only able to seed to other i2p peers. This completely eliminates any adoption by anyone using private trackers. Its not like the guys in brazil are going to jump through an extra hoop to hide their ip since they never needed to in the first place, so they can be ruled out for adoption as well. What I really fear is that its going to create a completely unnecessary schism in the userbase with a sort of ‘leechnet’ walled garden of i2p users which would hurt the greater availability of seeders. I also haven’t gotten a straight answer from anyone how ports are going to work in i2p, since normally its imperative to have a forwarded port in order to be a full participant. Unless i2p users can seed to clearnet users without issue, I am going to be worried about the impact on torrent health as a whole.
Doesn’t it make the use of private trackers obsolete when no one can get sued anymore because they’re all using an anonymous overlay network?
Its makes VPN obsolete, not sure about Private Trackers, they have a lot of things that public don’t due to retention.
BiglyBT can download/seed to both clearnet and I2P users
deleted by creator
yeah I dont always get i2p seeds when I’m downloading or uploading clearnet torrents but it does happen every so often
The main reason is that
libtorrent, which is the literal backbone of most torrenting clients, has implemented supported for I2P only recently in its latest v2.x branch… It takes time forlibtorrentto iron out bugs and stablize and it takes more for clients to upgrade their embeddedlibtorrentto v2.x.libtorrent 2 also has some issues. On unRAID for instance it causes crashes so I am forced to use v1 builds. And on other systems it has high memory usage so it’s not exactly ready for prime time.
I hate to put it this way because
libtorrentis a wonderful piece of open-source software maintained by volunteers but as is typical with its history, releases are going to be bumpy.Damn bro. Opsec 💯
I’m standing here with my dick out while you’re hiding in full camo in the bushes
Yeah my comment wasn’t a knock at the software or devs. I just think libtorrent v2 is not quite ready for widespread use yet. Since OP is talking people migrating to I2P then it needs to be more stable before that can happen. A few years from now I’m sure it will be a great option.
This is the best answer. The software just has to mature a little bit more. But it’s a matter of time.
Once we reach the phase where most mainstream bittorrent clients support I2P by default, it will become the new standard.
Most people don’t use bleeding edge features.
2 main issues with it:
Too slow for the average user. A lot less torrents available.
It supported torrent for ages, but it has only one tracker that doesn’t really have very much content. Now qBitTorrent or something else supports it out of the box.
I2P is very slow, slower than Tor. Maybe after more people join, it will be faster. Last time I tried it was painfully slow to even load most eepsites.
Because I’m not knowledgeable enough to make it work. I’ve managed to install it and figured out that I need to run the restartable version. Lots of text with screenshots or a video(s) would help. I’m not a digital native. This is one of many retirement projects. Listening to more music than I can afford to buy greatly improves the quality of my life.
Why is it in Java??
There is a more performant C++ implementation but it’s been a long while since I’ve used either it or the java implementation. Worth checking out.
The java version is plenty fast but uses alot more memory then i2pd and needs a display/vnc to configure compared to i2pd
You can configure it on a headless machine and just forward the webui over an SSH tunnel for configiration / monitoring
3 billion devices run Java.
Hmm. What more can you tell me about these 3 billion devices? Are they in the room with us?
I would also say that this is because anonimity is not needed by all countries. I know that in Spain torrenting is not a big issue and ISPs don’t care that much (even though distributed Copyrighted content is still not allowed). They usually go after people profiting from distributing copyrighted company rather than people downloading or distributing for free.
Disclaimer: I think some of my info is a bit outdated so if anyone has more recent info about Spain’s situation please tell me.
I’m from there and I can confirm this is still the case nowadays.
I think non technical people find the concept of a network within a network confusing. I think its more of i2p itself.
I do think it is the future of filesharing and if I was to create a torrent I’d use i2p. Hopefully with more clients implementing support it sees further adoption.
In internet years, Torrenting is old. I2P is old. Even torrenting in I2P is old. Nothing about this is “the future”.
Ideally, the future of file sharing would involve a fully/natively integrated anonymous network with content-addressable distributed filesystem.
But this will probably not happen, as that architecture didn’t see large scale success before, except in Japan where at least some elements of this architecture are used in their popular P2P networks.
The I2P crowd themselves tried with Tahoe-LAFS, but that was never really a network, even aMule over I2P had more traction, and by traction I mean tens or hundreds of users, not thousands or beyond.
Ironically, the one content-addressable distributed filesystem that gained some attraction (outside Japan) is IPFS, which doesn’t offer anonymity, or replication, or anything special really. Yet for some reason, some hype-susceptible techies liked it, together with the NFT crowd, a great fit.
The future of file sharing will depend on where most content will land where it will be easily accessible and quickly grabbable. How those networks will look like? Nobody knows.
Isn’t this just Freenet?
Yes. That was what I’m alluding to when I wrote:
Perfect Dark is a major network in Japan. Freenet is a network most people in the globe are not aware of. Hell, Perfect Dark may have a larger Japanese user-base than Freenet’s global one.
It’s worth mentioning that the former leader of the Freenet project wasn’t the most competent. Combine that with him spending years trying (and failing) to cater to the needs of imaginary dictatorships’ defectors (anyone of them using Freenet instead of Tor is the imaginary part), instead of focusing on maximizing the reliability and performance of the network to help its actual users. So it’s not just the ignorance of the masses that was at fault. The default FN user experience was often a horrible one. And users needed to ignore the officially-recommended microblog/forum applications, and even use a patched FN version, to get a decent performance out of the network.
Anyway, Freenet is the past and the present. And as I wrote in the parent comment, I hope a Freenet-like network would become a major success in the future, but I’m not holding my hopes up.
I feel that there’s so much potential in Freenet that’s not being utilized. Or “Hyphanet” as it’s now called. It could be one of the coolest things ever, but as it is I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go there because of the default FN experience.
wtf, I missed that news.
https://www.hyphanet.org/
Apparently Ian and “Locutus” decided that they wanted the Freenet name, so now Locutus is Freenet and Freenet is Hyphanet. I’m sure this won’t confuse anyone.
This as fuck. Plus it’s not mainstream so people don’t feel pressure to try it
This is exactly what I’m looking forward too!
Can we make it *arr compatible?
Because clearnet serves most of us just fine.
No it doesn’t, because that’s how you get caught
It’s not even prosecuted where I live. So I couldn’t care less if it’s clearnet or whether my IP address is public.
unless if you’re a thirdie or use a proxy or a good VPN
That’s my point, that’s significantly more effort then just implementing i2p. You shouldn’t have to worry about that because we should be using better protocols. It’s the protocol’s fault here, and VPNs are band-aid solutions.
imo I’m pretty sure that using a VPN is much easier than setting i2p
It’s literally a toggle in the BitTorrent client, which hopefully will eventually default on
BiglyBT handles all of the I2P router itself if you don’t have a existing install, you can point it to an existing I2P install if you have one that’s running 24/7 so is well integrated which is what I do
I wonder if someone in Somalia is worried about “getting caught” or if piracy out in the open works fine for them
Being from a 3rd world country, it’s really weird to me that you guys care about that.
I’ve been doing it for 20 years and have never been caught. I’ve never even heard of i2p until here just a couple of weeks ago. The fact that certain people are pushing it so hard and referring to standard methods in such a derogatory way makes me highly skeptical of trying it out.
Just because you haven’t been caught doesn’t mean https is suddenly a private way to pirate. It’s really not that complicated.
And just because there is some new method available doesn’t mean you’re retaining your privacy there either. I have a VPN to hide my IP and as far as I’m concerned that’s enough ‘privacy’ to avoid any issues.
What’s the worst that’ll happen, my ISP sends me a letter telling me to knock it off? You’re acting like this is some sort of top secret black ops mission in need of complete secrecy.
Because people believe a VPN or a seedbox is gonna save them from legal repercussions. They paid for it with their real information and credit card too, for convenience. They compromised their private tracker identity and must abandon the trackers the moment the legal landscape incentives companies to pursue individual copyright infringements. But most probably won’t, and face the consequences if that ever happens.
Likely because Usenet still works and so does xdcc via irc.
Does Usenet work over college wi-fi? I’m not sure how that would work.
that all depends on your college and how much your IT admins have locked down their connection… Usenet will work on any connection… unless it’s being actively blocked.
I see.
Can usenet be used without paying?
I had someone explain to me how it really isn’t a privacy concern to use usenet but financially it does feel like a bit of a bamboozle but you have to realize that usenet often will max out your download speed which is pretty nice and it has some magic that prevents people from knowing what you’re trying to access so it’s likely worth the like $10/mo
Torrenting often maxes out my download speed as well.
There’s almost no way to really hide you as a user in that protocol.
Shouldn’t a VPN hide you? I get that port + user agent can be an identifier, but all you have to do is stay up to date and change your port every so often, then you’re good. If not, let me know, cheers
tl;dr bit torrent is just a way to overcome file distribution issues in a secure and repeatable way and by secure I don’t mean private and yes vpn can work if implemented correctly but theres lots of failure modes for vpns which will leak your info. Just about any old turd with php skills and no real knowledge of how privacy works can spin up a legitimate enough looking vpn company to dip into all of the people looking to skirt Netflix rules.
I said specifically “in that protocol” all bit torrent does is it breaks down everything to a hash that can be looked up in a dht wich holds all of the addresses of the individuals sharing that hashed data. I’m not wrong. You can always have a vpn I mean look how hard China tries to stop vpns and still will likely never really nail it down so long as cryptography on the internet is necessary. They would have to deploy Red Star Linux and a whole gestapo to randomly audit chinese citizens computers directly. So long as we have open source hardware keeping big tech and
fiveeyes etc countries and spy agencies a touch more honest we will have lots of ways around all of the censorship and antipiracy trashbags.You just rambled on for a bit without really answering my question: how does taking the proper measures (VPN, changing port, updating client, using anonymous mode if available) not make you more private during the file sharing?
I understand how the bittorrent protocol works, but with constant randomization you should have no unique identifier except if youre the only seeder on 10 old torrents… So please clarify
If you look around you can get it for $3.50 a month (I have an account with News Demon that’s unlimited for that price, which I don’t remember exactly but I think I got it during a black friday sale)
Just remember that this is no longer Reddit and you’re likely welcomed to post links to things for other Lemmy users to find.
i’ve messed around with i2p, it requires much more technical knowledge than just torrenting and there’s a bit of a learning curve to navigating and configuring it. plus it honestly hasn’t changed much in years, and i’m not sure how much i trust the developers working on it. i do agree that it’s better than tor though
Agreed. Even getting support over an issue (initially) was troublesome. But somehow I ended up solving it through other channels. But just like torrenting, or any other tech, once you get enough experience to solve issues on your own, things get a bit easy.
A tech being easy to grasp can be an issue too, leading to more script kitties messing in with the protocol.
Can you trust Tor or VPN? Tor was developed with the help of US intelligence to help build a anonymous network.
Read all of the source and research who hosts the relays to determine their trustworthiness. Decide for yourself
I self-host my VPN and it’s open source
That’s great. But not everyone is interested learning and setting up their own VPS. If it was trivial no VPN service would be in business.
It is kinda trivial?
But it’s primarily cost and service intensive.
real answer? im way too stupid to figure out how the hell to use it. i spent 3 straight days trying to get it working a couple years ago with no luck.
I was in the same circumstances when I started. But then I asked around which helped me properly configure it.
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