EU Invests $22 Million in Next-Generation BitTorrent Client
Written by Ernesto on February 20, 2008A few weeks ago we reported that the EU Greens launched a pro-filesharing campaign named “I Wouldn’t Steal”. In a continued effort to support the development of P2P technology, the European Union has now invested $22 million in the development of an open-source BitTorrent client.
The team behind the social BitTorrent client Tribler is responsible for the core P2P technology for the project, dubbed P2P-Next. The project received $22 million (15 million Euro) from the European Union and another $6 million (4 million Euro) is brought in by some of the partners.
One of the biggest names taking part is the BBC, who will use the new BitTorrent client to stream TV programs. Other partners in the P2P-Next project are the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limited and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The main goal is to develop an open source, BitTorrent-compatible client that supports live streaming.
Approximately 50% of the people who use BitTorrent at any given point in time download TV shows. The current project will help broadcasters to find better ways to reach this online audience, and offer high quality on-demand television.
“This cooperation with both the British and German public broadcasters indicates that P2P is here to stay. We welcome the decision of the European Union to award this proposal around P2P. This means that Europe can expand it’s roughly two year lead in this important area,” Tribler’s Johan Pouwelse told TorrentFreak.
“Tribler serves as a testing ground for several world-first innovations. It serves as a living lab for P2P research. Key to our endeavor is an academically pure architecture: no central servers exist in Tribler in combination with being backwards compatible with BitTorrent,” Pouwelse added.
As part of the project, the Tribler team, together with Harvard researchers, implemented the “Nobel prize winning” mechanism design theory into their BitTorrent client. The ultimate goal is to encourage people to share as much as possible without imposing share ratio sanctions, and to let users moderate the available content.
BitTorrent sites are watching the P2P-Next project closely, and some might even be interested in experimenting with the new technology. We asked Johan Pouwelse if he sees possibilities to collaborate with BitTorrent sites, and he said: “We are creating tools for traditional broadcasters and also new entrants to the distribution market.”
I guess we should take that as a yes.
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk7)
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wow this sounds promising
WTF ?
A non-open-source client funded by the biggest, baddest and meanest corporation on the planet itself ?
Anyone else having trouble with this ?
Anybody seen my tinfoil hat ?
Correction: open souce.
Anyway: EU bad.
Well … pass the tinfoil hat to me too.
1 step back, 2 steps forward.
p2p & torrents powers us little guys, RIAA, and MPA cant stop it anymore.
22 million for something that takes a month to code…
i ve already altered azureus’s piece selection mechanism to allow streaming while downloading…the way i ve done it, doesnt hurt the swarm health cause randomness is still maintained upto a certain extent so congestion is still avoided, but prioritization is given to the pieces inside the (sliding - moving) window of pieces who’s position is dictated by ur current playback location in the file….. offcourse when the avg swarm speed is lower than the playback rate, the playback wont be perfectly smooth on average for the swarm, but u can counter that by buffering a bit more (thus a slight delay be4 u are able to playback the file).. but on private sites where the seeders almost always outnumber the leechers, it works perfectly well…
i m going to ask my uni if i m able to release the code (cause unfortunately it doesnt belong to me cause it was for my masters thesis)
[quote comment="294029"]A non-open-source client funded by the biggest, baddest and meanest corporation on the planet itself ?[/quote]
WTF are you talking about?
a) it’s GPL’ed open souce and
b) it’s mainly academic project from public universities founded by EU money (research grants!).
You better eat your tinfoil hat since it’s smarter than yourself …
The EU should go to hell. They should not be spending taxpayers money like this.
This kind of project should be funded entirely by private corporations and individuals.
[quote comment="294049"]22 million for something that takes a month to code…
i ve already altered azureus’s piece selection mechanism to allow streaming while downloading…the way i ve done it, doesnt hurt the swarm health cause randomness….[/quote]
A message from the Tribler team…
Sounds like interesting thesis work.
Please take a flight to Amsterdam then and drop by our university if you can implement this in a month.
We have a few open positions actually.
The algorithm you describe has been published in 2006:
http://castor.sics.se/presentations/papers/bitos.pdf
This algorithm cannot be expanded to live real-time streaming from a webcam. You need an incentive for uploading in a multicast tree like setting. We implemented give-to-get and are getting it ready for deployment. Algorithm details & paper:
http://www.tribler.org/Give-To-Get
A lot of hard work is needed to move beyond tit-for-tat and improve speeds. Doing fraud proof sharing ratio enforcement without central servers is our aim.
Johan.
OMG!
[quote comment="294065"]The EU should not be spending taxpayers money like this.
[/quote]
Why?
They should not found public research that might even spin off some nice gadgets for the world of filesharing.
Are you insane? Or are you working for MPAA, RIAA, IFPI or such?
[quote comment="294065"]
This kind of project should be funded entirely by private corporations and individuals.[/quote]
WHAT?
What would private corporations do good for something that ought to be publically available and transparent (by providing a proprietary piece of payware and monopolistic ambitions?) Are you dumb?
Other than you are working for some old fashioned content MAFIAA I cannot make any sense from your posting.
Tribler even researches on a distributed .torrent-file publishing mechanism that would turn every peer into it’s own tracker-architecture - ultimately rendering attacks against Torrent-sites like TPB ore demonoid useless and obsolete. So no head to chop of anymore. Pure filesharing anarchy!
If that’s not worth our tax-payers money than what ;)
Yes! The EU should go to hell. They should not be spending taxpayers money like this. I mean, government funded research into important internet infrastructure? Come on! It´s bad enough that they can´t keep their filthy hands off roads and energy.
Ehm.
You know, you are also paying for it when private corporations fund projects. The cost is always passed on to the consumer.
This way, it will be GPL, and it will not have the restrictions that corporations would put on it; like DRM management and copyright control.
[quote comment="294030"]
Anyway: EU bad.[/quote]
Rather EU then US*haha*
I think americans are now jealous to us because we can develop new BitTorrent clients and you get to jail even saying the word torrent…
DRM?
You get a jail ticket if you only think about torrent in France. Ask Azureus’ founder why he relocated himself to US.
If you say “this kind of project should be only Undergroup developed” i could agree, but why private commerial? WTF
There’s nothing better then academic projects, young people, non-commercial.
They’ll try to do it on the best coding, not “what client asks”.
I hope this can open the eyes of some companies that still see torrents and p2p as threats.
[quote comment="294049"]22 million for something that takes a month to code…
i ve already altered azureus’s piece selection mechanism to allow streaming while downloading…the way i ve done it, doesnt hurt the swarm health cause randomness is still maintained upto a certain extent so congestion is still avoided, but prioritization is given to the pieces inside the (sliding - moving) window of pieces who’s position is dictated by ur current playback location in the file….. offcourse when the avg swarm speed is lower than the playback rate, the playback wont be perfectly smooth on average for the swarm, but u can counter that by buffering a bit more (thus a slight delay be4 u are able to playback the file).. but on private sites where the seeders almost always outnumber the leechers, it works perfectly well…
i m going to ask my uni if i m able to release the code (cause unfortunately it doesnt belong to me cause it was for my masters thesis)[/quote]
Nobody gives a shitt about you. Go kill yourself.
How can anybody be against this? This is finally a step in the good direction and it gets negative response? This is better than investing the 22 million dollars in stopping downloading, like the US does(and probably MUCH MUCH more)
I guess they want to make it mandatory for every internet user to pay broadcasting fees and not just those who own an antenna and a box.. at least that’s how it works with “tv-avgift” in Sweden at the moment.
@ Dr. Tribler
How does “without imposing share ratio sanctions” coexist with “Doing fraud proof sharing ratio enforcement without central servers is our aim”?
To be fair, I can only vaguely remember the ideas behind Harvard and Tribler’s new system as published here some months ago … but the crucial thing to look out for is that where we users really want our content is at home, and home broadband is severely asymmetric.
I try to seed fairly, but my medium spec cable connection is ~500k down and only ~40k up on a good day. This spells ratios of 0.1 or so unless you seed like crazy for days on end: which I concentrate on doing for the swarms which need it most. I.e. if it’s got 100 seeds, I’m not hanging around … I’ll be over at the torrent with 1 or 2.
So long as all this can be implemented to suit real world use, I’m all for it. Anything to make ratios either work or cease to matter, for the vast majority of us outside of campus who have to put up with domestic connections!
Yeah, like 12 asked?
Is this client going to DRM the file?
I’ll rather have EU money spend on this then on hideous islands build in fron of the dutch coast trying to imitate Dubai…
And as far as I know the EU only made pro-sharing statements so I don’t see why they would force this project into becoming some evil Big Brother.
Not that they could by just funding it…
Nice idea, but most of the content eager to be devoured is coming from the USA. Although, there will be a few Americans and continental Europeans happy to get BBC live without Sat.
Seems like a lot of money for something others have been doing on shoestring budgets. If they employed the makers of Azureus and all the others client makers, I might feel better. Too much public money!
Best news of this year :D
[quote comment="294109"]Ask Azureus’ founder why he relocated himself to US.[/quote]
Because of the weather?
[quote comment="294065"]The EU should go to hell. They should not be spending taxpayers money like this.
This kind of project should be funded entirely by private corporations and individuals.[/quote]
You mean the same way the MPAA and RIAA operate? You pleb.
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