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Interesting article on TorrentFreak:http://torrentfreak.com/p2p-researchers-fear-bittorrent-meltdown-090212/Basically predicting a widespread meltdown if ThePirateBay goes under,
because they track over 50% of torrents. If TPB's trackers go down,
users will "fail over" to a bunch of other trackers that probably can't
handle the load, which will likely trigger a cascading failure of pretty
much all the trackers out there.But what it doesn't mention is that this will probably all be fixed by
the end of the week and it'll be back to business as normal before the
end of the month.In other words, the ultimate culmination of a multi-year, international
legal process against TPB will probably result in... a week or two of
disrupted downloading.On top of that, if trackers start to get taken down with any regularity,
the various torrent client authors will probably just take the time to
perfect their "trackerless torrent" technology (generally based on
DHTs), and then they'll be even more indestructible.And if everyone's going to upgrade, I bet they'll slip in "always on"
encryption (there goes any chance of backbone sampling!), and maybe some
early experimentation with onionskin routing.Piracy will never be killed, and fighting it only makes it stronger.
It's like a self-fulfilling, cyclical prophecy -- the only consequence
of passing bills in the (disingenuous) name of "fighting terrorism and
preventing child pornography" is to encourage the creation of tools that
enable more of it, at no reduction to piracy whatsoever. Which in turn
fuels calls for more disingenuous bills, fueling more technology
development, and so on.Call me crazy, but I am far more concerned that these P2P tools are
creating an untraceable infrastructure for *real* crime than for
pseudo-crime. One of these days there's going to be a huge story about
Iran coordinating with Hezbollah using encrypted P2P VoIP routed through
a decentralized onionskin network, or Al Qaeda distributing terrorist
materials using BitTorrent 3.0 -- and how the worlds' nations are
fundamentally unable to stop it... unless you give up more of your
rights to privacy, free speech, and other crucial civil liberties.The RIAA has done more to pave the way for future terrorist
infrastructure than Bin Laden could ever dream.-david