I don't know if this is the appropriate forum, but I'm not a coder and the thread seemed right. My apologizes if the mod feels a need to move it. I wanted to toss out an idea for anominity so that others with more skill could contemplate if it was practical, feasible, too bandwidth consuming, or whatever:

1st, when a file query is received, the receiver never, ever looks at the content of its own hard drive. Instead it queries only its immediate neighbors. Call it a temporary subnet. If the neighbor replies yes it has the file, then rather than connect the requester to the content provider, the middle computer acts as a NAT router to pass the file, but never reveals to the requester the IP addy of the source. If the immediate neighbors all say "No," then the request is passed along to one of the immediate neighbors, a new temp subnet is formed with its neighbors, and the process repeats. And since one of the immediate neighbors is the one that referred it, the hard drive that was originally skipped will get checked as well. Its kind of a mutual denied culpability. Infinately slow? Bandwidth hog? TTL failure ridden? I have no idea. But anyone who asked for a file could potentially receive it. And they'd never know from whence it came.

Justin,
What you're suggesting is known as "proxying". It would work great but it would also double the amount of 'non-final' traffic, i.e., it would reduce the amount of files that were actually transferred by at least half.

If you would just randomly proxy 50% of all connections it would be enough to make finding out the identity of sharers more difficult if you are simply searching for a file and attempting to download it. But even by proxying all connections you won't achieve total anonymity.
It would remain trivial to gather enough data to issue 1,000 subpoenas a week just by having 10 or 20 ultrapeers spying on their leafs.

Hiya... And, come on, guys...

paradog and 'trap_jaw4' (heh heh heh heh !) Are 100% correct...

It is NOT possible to do any form of sharing of anything without an address... The idea that so-called 'anonymity' is possible is ludicrous.

FACE IT, GANG... There are a few truly experienced and knowledgeable people trying - AGAIN and AGAIN, to tell you what the score is.

ONCE AGAIN, YOU HAVE HEARD FROM TWO OF THEM.

Save your anxieties and understand that this whole 'threat' business will pass, as it has before... Only this time, it will 'pass' even faster.

peace, boys and girls...

urs


p.s. Check out the history of Philips and the MusicCassette.... There were attempts made within the stuctures of the United Nations to stop.... STOP cassettes from being manufactured...
HO HO HO... It's true history.

Philips were smart enough to not even try to patent-protect the 'MusicCassette'... They gave it to the world for free as they knew that that was the only way to immediately establish a global standard...

Think...

Remember, CD-Rs and CD-RWs are NOT manufactured by stoned freaks in dusty garages ! This is an industrial 'battle' on a global scale with VERY BIG PLAYERS.

Obviously you have never heard of Freenet. Just because the IP address is known doesn't mean there can be no anonymity.


Only if Gnutella wants to last longer then the first good p2p that does achieve anonymity.

Freenet may be anonymous (the original publisher of copyrighted material remains anonymous) but it's trivial to find out the IPs of users sharing copyrighted content later on. - And just because you are sharing automatically and Freenet doesn't allow you to look at what you are sharing, it doesn't mean that you can't be sued for whatever material you are sharing. I wouldn't feel too safe using Freenet if I were you.

How can you prove that a certain IP was actually sharing the content and not just proxying forward the request from someone else?

EDIT: Even if it can be proven, Freenet is so far ahead of the rest of the p2p community with anonymity that the RIAA would never think of trying to sue people using it. Not until all the other p2p programs are as hard to crack as Freenet is.

With FreeNet, Yes, you could search for a file and then accuse your proxies of 'distributing' it. But I don't think you'd be able to hold them liable for any legal responsibilities, not unless there's a sea change in the law. And it's certainly more defensible than traditional P2P, where you must manually select what files to share/re-distribute.

True, one judge has ruled that Aimster is liable for contributory copyright-infringement despite it's use of encrypted communications to shield it from knowledge of the contents. But, by that logic, phone companies would be liable for contributory damages anytime a criminal used their phone to plan a crime.

What's unique here (aside from the 'distributor' being a community of FreeNet/P2P users) is that the 'source' of a file can't be tracked beyond your immediate proxies. So, I wouldn't worry about legal liability when running a FreeNet node.

On the other hand, FreeNet is terrible at distributing large numbers of files, since they have to be cached/proxied by lots of Nodes (most of which will have limited disk-space allocated to caching).
____________________

Better might be the "UDPp2p" project, if they ever post any code...
http://udpp2p.sourceforge.net/

The DMCA sees only few exceptions where you would not be liable for caching (not proxying, btw) illegal content and they are explicitly meant for online service providers.

Unlike other p2p you don't know what you will be sued for, - from secondary copyright infringement to distribution of childpornography.

Telephone companies can easily prove substantial noninfringing use. Once people start using Freenet primarily for filesharing that would be hard to claim - but this is a competely seperate issue from users caching copyrighted content.

Won't work. The broadcasts will kill it.

I have a large library of music (over 2000 songs) and have stopped sharing it because I don't know exactly what I'm risking. I read that one person received an email telling him to stop sharing or else. If the first step is a warning, then is it safe to share until you get one? All the people out there that are turning off their sharing probably are as in the dark about this as I am, and if we knew that we don't have to worry until we get a warning then we'd all be able to share again. But does anyone really know what the tactics of the music industry are right now - and can they really successfully sue us - with no warning?