BitTorrent Encryption Confuses the BPI, ISPs and Journalists Who Don’t Research
Written by Ernesto on November 09, 2007A recently published article by The Register claims that an increase in encrypted BitTorrent traffic is due to the fact that people want to hide or scramble the files they are sharing. Apparently some tech journalists, and in particular the anti-piracy organizations, have no clue what BitTorrent encryption actually does.
Encrypted BitTorrent traffic now accounts for 40% of all BitTorrent traffic in the UK according to the article. The Register claims that filesharers use encryption to scramble their data so they can protect themselves from being caught, and the comments from a music industry representative make it seem like people can indeed hide what they are sharing. Unfortunately, none of it is true
This is what Matt Phillips, of the record industry trade association the British Phonographic Institute told the Register: “Our internet investigations team, internet service providers and the police are well aware of encryption technology: it’s been around for a long time and is commonplace in other areas of internet crime. It should come as no surprise that if people think they can hide illegal activity they will attempt to.”
So if it’s not hiding anything, why do people use BitTorrent encryption then?
I’ll try to explain it once more to the BPI, IFPI and RIAA and some tech journalists, just so they don’t embarrass themselves again in the future. BitTorrent encryption has nothing to do with hiding the data you’re sharing, it only hides the fact that you’re using BitTorrent to do so.
Encryption was designed to prevent ISPs from throttling BitTorrent traffic, which they started doing approximately 2 years ago. ISPs use so called traffic shaping devices to identify and slow down BitTorrent traffic because it takes up a lot of bandwidth (read: costs a lot of money). BitTorrent encryption, which is now supported by all the popular BitTorrent clients, hides the protocol header. As a result, these devices can’t detect that someone is using BitTorrent and you can download at full speed.
So, encryption does not hide the actual data people are sharing, everyone can still connect to a BitTorrent swarm, record your IP-address, and send you an infringement notice.
Now back to the claim that 40% of the BitTorrent traffic is encrypted in the UK. My first question would be, how do they know that it’s BitTorrent traffic if it’s encrypted? Apart from that I think 40% is a little too high, unless the ISP that reported the data is throttling BitTorrent traffic of course. We’ve been tracking the number of people who actually use encryption and it is currently slightly below 10%. It could be of course that these people are responsible for 40% of the traffic, but I seriously doubt that.
Bottom line is, anti-piracy organizations should take some time to read up on what filesharing actually is before they are going to accuse people of something, but I guess that’s wishful thinking.
Previously: Prosecutor Announces Charges Against The Pirate Bay
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77 Responses
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#47 - Ugh, I didn’t know that. But maybe someone else could take over code development?
[quote comment="207714"]
Actually it’s a layer on top of IP. This means there are still IP addresses being passed between individual clients and local router points and any external access points (such as HTTP proxies etc) with the outside internet.
To be fair, I2P is one of the more promising ideas I’ve seen. The main problem lies in scalability of throughput.[/quote]
I guess we can argue about the semantics until the cows come home, the bottom line is that i2p does not use ip addresses to comunicate between the endpoints.
The ip addresses of the other nodes running i2p in the network are completely meaningless. At best they show that you’re actually running i2p.
Promising indeed, if this takes off the M.A.F.I.A.A will be completely dead in the water.
mute, lol even the download page is a scam - good luck with that, haha.
“Go head do some testing of your own, youll find out it’s so easy to spot”
For a human yes but for a software it is another story.
“mute, lol even the download page is a scam - good luck with that, haha.”
Are you kiding?
Mute work great! Just not very popular yet. Still you can download tons of stuff with mute.
OVer was you can use any P2p application anonymously including BT via Thor.
Just try it!
Beside mute there is a lso ant and Winny still going.
Looks to me like they are trying to deter people from using encryption, because after all that technology has been around for years. I think they are scared that they truly are losing control with the encryption described here, it is useful and more people should be using it.
i think its more that they KNOW what they have said isnt true and its a way to make everyone that does know about BT think the retards dont know sh!t and they have nothing 2 worry about drop ur guard a lil and make it easier on them
what we need is a client that uses your IP address as a internal ip and then transmits with a fake one over the net (not sure if thats at all possible or not i havent really looked into it but i just thought it then)
anyway let me know what yas think
[quote comment="209091"]what we need is a client that uses your IP address as a internal ip and then transmits with a fake one over the net (not sure if thats at all possible or not i havent really looked into it but i just thought it then)
anyway let me know what yas think[/quote]
You can’t use a fake IP.
Your messages would reach the other end just fine, but you would get nothing back because return messages would be going to the wrong place.
You can use proxies, onion routing and various other tricks to hide your IP, but you can’t just enter the net with a fake one.
be silly making this topic uh cos now they know what encryption is derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
bit*
[quote comment="207198"]Seeing as privacy appears to be a major concern as of late - Would it not be in the interests for someone to design some sort of protocol ie a new version of Bittorrent which doesn’t expose your IP or anything about yourself?[/quote]
ummm… how would the seed computers know where to send the packets if they didn’t have your IP?
that’s is a pretty dumb question.
is that a real Dummies book on BitTorrent?! goodness.
[quote comment="207781"]Thus, everybody should enable it and show his solidarity with the poor suckers in the land of the free. Just have a look at your traffic, you can easily see the forged TCP-RST floods from Comcasters.[/quote]
/signed
Seriously, if it doesn’t come auto-enabled, just click on R4 encrypt. It won’t hurt, we promise.
disadvantages of encryption: none.
moo.
denotation,cashing inkings:innards grumbles … Thanks!!!
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i just don’t understand why does this have to be encrypted!!! i downloaded hundreds of films and music! i talked to a friend from uk and he jost told me that in uk, france, and other countries you can’t download this stuff.
also i see that in uk ODC hubs users bont’t have so many films and music.
WHY IS THAT
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cellists mislead Astaires doom Moravianizeds!.
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