From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

This is the print version of The World of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) If you print this page, choose "print preview" in your browser, or click printable version, you will see the page without this notice, without navigational elements to the left or top, and without the TOC boxes on each page. Refresh this page to see the latest changes. For more information about the print version, including how to create a truly printable PDF File, see Help:Print versions.

Foreword

Guide to Readers

The book is organized into different parts, but as this is a work that is always evolving, things may be missing or just not where they should be, you are free to become a writer and contribute to fix things up...

This book intends to explain to you the overall utilization that P2P (Peer-to-Peer) technologies have in todays world, it goes deeper into as many implementations as it can and compares the benefits, problems even legal implications and changes to social behaviors and economic infrastructures. We explain in detail about the technology and how works and try to bring you a vision on what to expect in the future.

Authors

The following people are authors to this book

Panic

There are many other contributors/editors to the book; a verifiable list of all contributions exist as History Logs at Wikibooks (http://en.wikibooks.org/).

Acknowledgment is given for using some contents from other works like Wikipedia, theinfobox:Peer to Peer and Internet Technologies

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License."

What is P2P ?

Generally, a peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network refers to any network that does not have fixed clients and servers, but a number of autonomous peer nodes that function as both clients and servers to the other nodes on the network. This model of network arrangement is contrasted with the client-server model as any node is able to initiate or complete any supported transaction. Peer nodes may differ in local configuration, processing speed, network bandwidth, and storage quantity.

Although the term has been applied to Usenet and IRC in all their incarnations and is even applicable to the network of IP hosts known as the Internet, it is most often used restricted to the networks of peers developed starting in the late 1990s characterized by transmission of data upon the receiver's request instead of the sender's. Such of the early networks included Gnutella, FastTrack, and the now-defunct Napster which all provide facilities for free (and somewhat anonymous) file transfer between personal computers connected in a dynamic and unreliable way to a network in order to work collectively towards a shared objective.

Even those early Networks did work around the same concept or implementation. In some Networks, such as Napster, OpenNap or IRC, the client-server structure is used for some tasks (e.g. searching) and a peer-to-peer structure for others, and even that is not consistent in each. Networks such as Gnutella or Freenet, use a peer-to-peer structure for all purposes and are sometimes referred to as true peer-to-peer networks, even though some of the last evolution are now making them into a hybrid approach were each peer is not equal in its functions.

When the term peer-to-peer was used to describe the Napster network, it implied that the peer protocol nature was important, but in reality the great achievement of Napster was the empowerment of the peers (ie, the fringes of the network). The peer protocol was just a common way to achieve this.

So the best approach will be to define peer-to-peer, not as a set of strict definitions but to extend it to a definition of a technical/social/cultural movement, that attempts to provide a decentralized, dynamic and self regulated structure (in direct opposition to the old model o central control or server-client model) with the objective of providing content and services. In this way a computer programs/protocol that attempts to escape the need to use a central servers/repository and aims to empower or provide a similar level of service/access to a collection of similar computers can be referred to as being a P2P implementation, and it will be in fact enabling everyone to be a creator/provider, not only a consumer.

From a Computer Science Perspective

Technically, a true peer-to-peer application must implement only peering protocols that do not recognize the concepts of "server" and "client". Such pure peer applications and networks are rare. Most networks and applications described as peer-to-peer actually contain or rely on some non-peer elements, such as DNS. Also, real world applications often use multiple protocols and act as client, server, and peer simultaneously, or over time.

P2P under a computer science perspective creates new interesting fields for research not on to the not so recent switch of roles on the networks components, but due to unforeseen benefits and resource optimizations it enables, on network efficiency and stability.

Peer-to-peer systems and applications have attracted a great deal of attention from computer science research; some prominent research projects include the Chord lookup service, the PAST storage utility, and the CoopNet content distribution system (see below for external links related to these projects).

Distributed Systems

Ganglia

Ganglia is a scalable distributed monitoring system for high-performance computing systems such as clusters and Grids. It is based on a hierarchical design targeted at federations of clusters. It leverages widely used technologies such as XML for data representation, XDR for compact, portable data transport, and RRDtool for data storage and visualization. It uses carefully engineered data structures and algorithms to achieve very low per-node overheads and high concurrency.
Ganglia has been ported to an extensive set of operating systems and processor architectures, and is currently in use on thousands of clusters around the world. It has been used to link clusters across university campuses and around the world and can scale to handle clusters with 2000 nodes. ( http://ganglia.info/ )

Distributed Computation

The basic premise behind distributed computation is to spread computational tasks between several machines distributed in space, most of the new projects focus on harnessing the idle processing power of "personal" distributed machines, the normal home user PC. This current trends is an exciting technology area that has to do with a sub set of distributed systems (client/server communication, protocols, server design, databases, and testing).

This new implementation of an old concept has it's roots in the realization that there is now a staggering number of computers in our homes that are vastly underutilized, not only home computers but there are few businesses that utilizes their computers the full 24 hours of any day. In fact seemingly active computers can be using only a small part of it processing power. Using a word processing, email, and web browsing, require very few CPU resources. So the "new" concept is to tap on this underutilized resource (CPU cycles) that can surpass several supercomputers at substantially lower costs since machines that individually owned and operated by the general public.

SETI@Home

One of the most famous distributed computation project, , hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. SETI@home was released to the public on May 17, 1999.

In average it used hundreds of thousands of home Internet-connected computers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The whole point of the programs is to run your free CPU cycles when it would be otherwise idle, the original project is now deprecated to be included into BOIC.

BOINC

BOINC has been developed by a team based at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson, who also leads SETI@home.

Boinc stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, a non-commercial (free/w:open source software), released under the LGPL, middleware system for volunteer computing, originally developed to support the SETI@home project and still hosted at ( http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ ), but intended to be useful for other applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. an open-source software platform for computing using volunteered resources that extends the original concept and lets you donate computing power to other scientific research projects such as:

• Climateprediction.net: study climate change.
• Einstein@home: search for gravitational signals emitted by pulsars.
• LHC@home: improve the design of the CERN LHC particle accelerator.
• Predictor@home: investigate protein-related diseases.
• Rosetta@home: help researchers develop cures for human diseases.
• SETI@home: Look for radio evidence of extraterrestrial life.
• Folding@Home ( http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/ ): to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.
• Cell Computing biomedical research. (Japanese; requires nonstandard client software)
• World Community Grid: advance our knowledge of human disease. (Requires 5.2.1 or greater)

As a "quasi-supercomputing" platform, BOINC has over 435,000 active computers (hosts) worldwide. BOINC is funded by the National Science Foundation through awards SCI/0221529, SCI/0438443, and SCI/0506411.

It is also used for commercial usages, as there are some private companies that are beginning to use the platform to assist in their own research. The framework is supported by various operating systems: Windows (XP/2K/2003/NT/98/ME), Unix (GNU/Linux, FreeBSD) and Mac OS X.

World Community Grid (WCG)

Created by IBM, World Community Grid ( http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ ) is similar to the above systems. Fourteen IBM servers serve as "command central" for WCG. When they receive a research assignment from an organization, they will scour it for security bugs, parse it into data units, encrypt them, run them through a scheduler and dispatch them out in triplicate to the army of volunteer PCs.

To be a volunteer one only needs to download a free, small software agent (similar to a screensaver).

Projects get selected based on the potential to benefit from WCG technology and address humanitarian concerns, and chosen by an independent, external board of philanthropists, scientists and officials.

The software is OpenSource (LGPL), C/C++ and wxWidgets and is available for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Grid Networks

Grids first emerged in the use of supercomputers in the U.S. , as scientists and engineers sought access to scarce high-performance computing resources that were concentrated at a few sites.

Open Science Grid

The Open Science Grid ( http://www.opensciencegrid.org/ ) was built and is operated by the OSG Consortium, it is a U.S. grid computing infrastructure that supports scientific computing via an open collaboration of science researchers and software developers from universities and national laboratories, storage and network providers.

Globus Alliance

The Globus Alliance ( http://www.globus.org/ ) is a community of organizations and individuals developing fundamental technologies behind the "Grid," which lets people share computing power, databases, instruments, and other on-line tools securely across corporate, institutional, and geographic boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy.

The Globus Alliance also provides the Globus Toolkit, an open source software toolkit used for building robust, secure, grid systems (peer-to-peer distributed computing on supercomputers, clusters, and other high-performance systems) and applications. A Wiki is available to the Globus developer community ( http://dev.globus.org/wiki/Welcome ).

High Throughput Computing (HTC)

As some scientists try extract more floating point operation per second (FLOPS) or minute from their computing environment, others concentrate on the same goal for larger time scales, like months or years, we refer these environments as High Performance Computing (HPC) environments.

The term HTC was coined in a seminar at the NASA Goddard Flight Center in July of 1996 as a distinction between High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Throughput Computing (HTC).

HTC focus is on the processing power and not on the network, but the systems can also be created over a network and so be seen as a Grid network optimized for processing power.

Condor Project

The goal of the Condor Project ( http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/ ) is to develop, implement, deploy, and evaluate mechanisms and policies that support High Throughput Computing (HTC) on large collections of distributively owned computing resources. Guided by both the technological and sociological challenges of such a computing environment, the Condor Team has been building software tools that enable scientists and engineers to increase their computing throughput.

From a Economics Perspective

For a P2P system to be viable there must be a one to one share of work between peers, the goal should be a balance between consumption and production of resources and maintaining a singe class of participant on the network. Since most P2P systems have an hard time creating incentives for users to produce, most P2P system have a pyramidal scheme as users interact with it and do depend on the network effect it creates, the more users the system has the more attractive it (and the more value it has) as any system that depends on the network effect, it's success is based on compatibility and conformity issues.

In 2008, Michael Heller, an academic at Columbia University in New York, in an interview to technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio ( Listen to: Are patents and copyrights making innovation impossible? OUT-LAW Radio, 28/08/2008 ) presented his theory, saying:
- "I discovered a paradox in the free market and it is this: usually private ownership creates wealth, but too much ownership has the opposite effect - it creates gridlock,". "When too many owners control a single resource – it can be a patent, a copyright, land – when too many people control a single resource, co-operation breaks down and wealth disappears. Everybody ends up losing.".
- "Imagine a drug developer walking into an auditorium and seeing 50 or 100 or several hundred patent owners, each with their essential patent on their lap, and the drug developer knows that unless he's able to negotiate successfully with every single one of those patent owners, his drug can't come to market,".
- "A standard, when it works, can solve the problem of gridlock. But to create the standard you need to get, in the context of a DVD, seven or eight hundred separate patents pooled together into a single patent pool; but there are many areas that we don't have because entrepreneurs can't get the pools together or can't get the standard negotiated.".
Heller has also published a book, The Gridlock Economy in it he expanded on his theory how too much ownership wrecks markets, stops innovation and costs lives.

Content for money

The privatization of the production and distribution of Cultural goods.

Content is virtual, made only of information. This information can be any type of non material object that is made from ideas (text, multimedia). In this way content is also the myriad ways those ideas can be expressed. It may consist of music, movies, books or any one single aspect of each.

Music

In todays interconnected world the distribution channels are so diversified that creating artificial control schemes will only degrade the level of satisfaction of consumers without increasing product value but incrementing the costs to the sanctioned distributors. If costumers are faced with a product with DRM, unauthorized copies if made publicly available, will create a competing product without limitations, thus creating a better product with a better price tag. In fact the use of DRM promotes the creation of a parallel market (if one can call it that because most offerings are gratis), this results from the consumers wishes are not being satisfied by the primary offer.

Video

Movies

TV

Recently some television networks are rethinking their approach to audiences, this has resulted from the level acceptance and interest that DVD show collections were having and several online attempts to improve distribution. Since now anyone can easily illegally download their favorite shows, a problem similar to the fragmentation of the distribution channels as seen in the music recording industry with the rise of alternative delivery technologies will have a similar result if television industry fails adapt and fill the audiences expectations of quick and easy accessibility to new fresh content.

TODO extend, address the rise of independent productions, compare the p2p meme of decentralization with the static settings of the industry, we are all producers now, real time interaction

ISPs

ISPs have been shaping/throttling P2P traffic, especially the more popular networks for years, resulting on an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and P2P developers. In the US the network neutrality discussion and recently the evidence of this actions by ISPs against P2P traffic has turned this matter into a political issue.

In November 2007, Vuze, creators of Azureus (a Bittorrent application), petitioned the FCC, resulting in a FCC hearing held in December 2007. One of the issues raised there, was the level of data available on BitTorrent throttling. This lead to a statement by the General Counsel at Vuze, Jay Monahan; “We created a simple software “plug-in” that works with your Vuze application to gather information about potential interference with your Internet traffic.”

This plugin has been gathering more hard data on the actions of ISPs, resulting in a growing list of ISPs that interfere with P2P protocols is maintained on the Azureus WIKI ( http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs ).

From a Sociological Perspective

From person to person or user to user, a new world is being born in that all are at the same time producers and consumers. The information will be free since the costs of distribution will continue to fall and the power for creative participation is at anyones hands.

Is it morally wrong?

As discussed previously there is no common ground to answer this question, views differ wildly, even states degrees with the interpretation or legality of restricting/implementing intellectual property rights.

TODO Disintermediation... Price Fixing... Copyright Extension... Radio Consolidation... DRM... U.S. vs. the world on file-sharing Copyright sings to a different tune, in BBC News paedophiles and terrorists Music Piracy Documentary Released As Torrent "the blurred line between 'fair use' and piracy"

DRM (Digital Rights Management)

In late 2005, market-based rationales influenced Sony BMG's deployment of DRM systems on millions of Compact Discs that threatened the security of its customers computers and compromised the integrity of the information infrastructure more broadly. This became known as the Sony BMG Rootkit debacle (see the paper Mulligan, Deirdre and Perzanowski, Aaron K., "The Magnificence of the Disaster: Reconstructing the Sony BMG Rootkit, for detailed information).

In February 6, 2007, Steve Jobs, wrote an open letter addressing DRM since it was impacting Apples business on the iTunes/iPod store ( http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ ).

On a presentation made by David Hughes of the RIAA at Arizona State University (2007), David Hughes, senior vice president of technology for the RIAA, dubbed the spiritual leader of Apple Steve Jobs as a "hypocrite" over his attitude to DRM on iTunes. "While Steve has been banging on about the music companies dropping DRM he has been unwilling to sell his Pixar movies through iTunes without DRM and DVDs without CSS encryption."

a danger for historical records

TODO Libraries fear digital lockdown By Ian Youngs BBC News

P2P United

A now disbanded organization formed by six of the biggest P2P groups (those behind eDonkey, Grokster, Morpheus, Blubster, Limewire and BearShare), with Adam Eisgrau as executive director. It was started in mid-July 2003 to provide a way to lobby for the P2P on U.S. Congress and WIPO, the UN organization that administers intellectual property treaties since the file-sharing industry (as an industry) had no identifiable name and face in Washington or in the media.

This attempt was a bust and since then most of the members of the group has lost court cases or have settled and closed operations.

TODO Complete

Peer-to-Peer working group

The Peer-to-Peer WG (P2Pwg).

A great article about problems with the creation of the working group is available at (www.openp2p.com) by Tim O'Reilly 10/13/2000 is available (http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/10/13/working_grp.html).

For every action there is a reaction

It is today an evidence that there is a social movement against what is generally perceived as the corruption of copyright over public goods, that is, legally a minority is attempting to impose extensions and reductions of liberties to defend economical interests of mostly sizable international corporations that in it's vast majority aren't even the direct creators of the goods. In this particular case virtual goods, mostly digital that have a approaching 0 cost of replication and aren't eroded by time or use.

From a Legal Perspective

The most commonly shared files on such networks are mp3 files of popular music and DivX movie files. This has led many observers, including most media companies and some peer-to-peer advocates, to conclude that these networks pose grave threats to the business models of established media companies. Consequently, peer-to-peer networks have been targeted by industry trade organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA as a potential threat. The Napster service was shut down by an RIAA lawsuit; both groups the RIAA and MPAA spend large amounts of money attempting to lobby lawmakers for legal restrictions. The most extreme manifestation of these efforts to date (as of January, 2003) has been a bill introduced by California Representative Berman, which would grant copyright holders the legal right to break into computer systems believed to be illegally distributing copyrighted material, and to subvert the operation of peer-to-peer networks. The bill was defeated in committee in 2002, but Rep. Berman has indicated that he will reintroduce it during the 2003 sessions.

As attacks from Media companies expand the networks have seemed to adapt at a quick pace and have become technologically more difficult to dismantle. This has caused the users of such systems to become targets . Some have predicted that open networks may give way to closed, encrypted ones where the identity of the sharing party is not known by the requesting party. Other trends towards immunity from media companies seem to be in wireless adhoc networks where each device is connected in a true peer-to-peer sense to those in the immediate vicinity.

While historically P2P file sharing has been used to illegally distribute copyrighted materials (like music, movies, and software), future P2P technologies will certainly evolve and be used to improve the legal distribution of materials.

TODO ..."IP addresses are an identifier used to locate a particular network interface on the Internet. Be this a router, a PC, Mac, PDA, mobile phone or otherwise (with modules capable of utilizing one ranging to the size of a finger nail). IP addresses are not proof that a particular TYPE (PC running Windows, Linux or other free software, PDA, mobile phone, etc.) of computer hardware was used in the transmission. Nothing about this hardware can be *assumed*, and also nothing about the users IF ANY, of this hardware. So, I define my second point, which is that these electronic devices (of the types I listed above) may be operated without regard to physical location or the actual OWNER of the IP address." in "Patricia Santangelo files Answer, Demands Trial by Jury"...

As it should be obvious by now the problem P2P technologies create to the owner of the content, to the control of the distribution channels and to the limitation of users (consumers) rights is huge, the technology is making holes in the standard ideology that controls the relations between producers and consumers some new models have been proposed (see for example Towards solutions to “the p2p problem” - http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/pam-p2p/ ).

In 2007 a handful of the wealthiest countries (United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico) started secretive negotiations toward a treaty-making process to create a new global standard for intellectual property rights enforcement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) due to be adopted at the 34th G8 summit in July 2008.

It has been argued that the main purpose of the treaty is to provide safe harbor for service providers so that they may not hesitate to provide information about infringers; this may be used, for instance, to quickly identify and stop infringers once their identities are confirmed by their providers.

Similarly, it provides for criminalization of copyright infringement, granting law enforcement the powers to perform criminal investigation, arrests and pursue criminal citations or prosecution of suspects who may have infringed on copyright.

More pressingly, being an international treaty, it allows for these provisions—usually administered through public legislation and subject to judiciary oversight—to be pushed through via closed negotiations among members of the executive bodies of the signatories, and once it is ratified, using trade incentives and the like to persuade other nations to adopt its terms without much scope for negotiation.

Is it Illegal?

Peer-to-Peer in itself in nothing particularly new. We can say that an FTP transfer or any other one on one transfer is P2P, like an IRC user sending a DCC file to another, or even eMail, the only thing that can be illegal is the use one can give to a particular tool.

Legal uses of P2P include distributing open or public content, like movies, software distributions (Linux, updates) and even Wikipedia DVDs are found on P2P Networks. It can also be used to bypass censorship, like for instance the way Michael Moore's new film 'Sicko' leaked via P2P or as publicity machine to promote products and ideas or even used as a market annalists tool.

However trading copyrighted information without permission is illegal in most countries. You are free to distribute your favorite Linux distribution, videos or pictures you have taken yourself, MP3 files of a local band that gave you permission to post their songs online, maybe even a copy an open source software or book. The view of legality lies foremost on cultural and moral ground and in a globally networked world there is no fixed line you should avoid crossing, one thing is certain most people don't produce restricted content, most view their creations as giving to the global community, so it's mathematically evident that a minority is "protected" by the restrictions imposed on the use and free flow of ideas, concepts and culture in general.

P2P as we will see is not only about files sharing, it is more generally about content/services distribution.

Sharing contents that you have no right to is not theft. It has never been theft any were in the world. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong. Sharing content that you don't own or have the rights to is copyright infringement.

The legal battles we are now accustomed to hear about deals mostly on control and also on lesser degree in rights preservation. Control over the way distribution is archived (who gets what in what way), this deals with money, as there is added value to controlling and restricting access by format, time and space.

TODO the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998—alternatively known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act or the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Encryption paedophiles and terrorists

WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization)

The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations. WIPO was created in 1967 with the stated purpose "to encourage creative activity, [and] to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world". The convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, was signed at Stockholm on July 14, 1967.

TODO Add more info on the WIPO and relevant treaties.

EU

In August 2007, the Music industry was rebuffed in Europe on file-sharing identifications, as a court in Offenburg, Germany refused to order ISPs to identify subscribers when asked to by Music Industry who suspected specified accounts were being used for copyright-infringing file-sharing, the refusal was based in the courts understanding that ordering the ISPs to handover the details would be "disproportionate", since the Music Industry representatives had not adequately explained how the actions of the subscribers would constitute "criminally relevant damage" that could be a basis to request access to the data.

This was not an insulate incident in Germany, as also in 2007, Celle chief prosecutor's office used the justification that substantial damage had not been shown to refuse the data request, and does follows the opinion of a European Court of Justice (ECJ) Advocate-General, Juliane Kokott who had published an advice two weeks earlier, backing this stance, as it states that countries whose law restricted the handing over of identifying data to criminal cases were compliant with EU Directives. The produced advice was directed to a Spanish case in which a copyright holders' group wanted subscriber details from ISP Telefonica. The ECJ isn't obliged to follow an Advocate-General's advice, but does so in over three-quarters of cases.

In most European countries, copyright infringement is only a criminal offense when conducted on a commercial scale (for profit).

TODO EU Proposing to Make P2P Piracy A Criminal Offense "The EP excluded patent rights from the scope of the directive, and decided that criminal sanctions should apply only to infringements deliberately carried out to obtain a commercial advantage. Piracy committed by private users for personal, non-profit purposes is therefore also excluded." http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/145230&from=rss - The Pirate Bay legal threats and funny replies...

France

On June 12 2007 the Société des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF - http://www.sppf.com/ ), an entity that represents the legal interests and collects copyright revenue in behalf of independent French audio creations, have publicly announced that they had launched a civil action on the Paris Court of First Instance requesting a court order to terminate the distribution and function of Morpheus (published by Streamcast), Azureus and demanding compensation for monetary losses. In 18 September 2007 a similar action was made against Shareaza and in 20 December 2007 the SPPF announced a new action this time against Limewire. All of this legal actions seem to have as a base an amendment done to the national copyright law that stipulates that civil action can taken against software creators/publishers that do not take steps in preventing users from accessing illegal content.

TODO Also mention ALPA (Association against audiovisual piracy)

USA

Under US law "the Betamax decision" (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.), case holds that copying "technologies" are not inherently illegal, if substantial non-infringing use can be made of them. This decision, predating the widespread use of the Internet applies to most data networks, including peer-to-peer networks, since legal distribution of some files can be performed. These non-infringing uses include sending open source software, creative commons works and works in the public domain. Other jurisdictions tend to view the situation in somewhat similar ways.

The US is also a signatory of the WIPO treaties, treaties that were partially responsible for the creation and adoption of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

As stated in US Copyright Law, one must be keep in mind the provisions for fair use, licensing, copyright misuses and the statute of limitations.

MGM v. Grokster

TODO http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/

RIAA

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) ( http://www.riaa.com/ ) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. The RIAA receives funding from the four of the major music groups EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and Universal and hundreds of small independent labels.

Motion Picture Association of America

TODO Warner Bros. to Try File Sharing in Germany MPAA sues newsgroup, P2P search sites By John Borland, Published on ZDNet News, February 23, 2006

Canada

Canada has a levy on blank audio recording media, created on March 19, 1998, by the adoption of the new federal copyright legislation. Canada introduced this levy regarding the private copying of sound recordings, other states that share a similar copyright regime include most of the G-7 and European Union members. In depth information regarding the levy may be found in the Canadian copyright levy on blank audio recording media FAQ ( http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml ).

With borders and close ties to it neighbor, Canada as historically been less prone to serve corporations interests and has a policy that contrasts in its social aspects with any other country in the American Continent. The reality is that Canada has been highly influenced and even pressured (economically and politically) by its strongest neighbor, the USA, to comply with its legal, social and economic evolution. In recent time (November 2007) the government of Canada has attempted to push for the adoption of a DMCA-modeled copyright law, so to to comply with the WIPO treaties the country signed in 1997 in a similar move to the USA, this has resulted in a popular outcry against the legislation and will probably result in it's alteration. The visibility of this last attempt was due to efforts of Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa considered an expert in copyright and the Internet, that was afraid that law would copy the worst aspects of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Shadow Play

Some actions are not intended to see the light of day, this section is dedicated to bring out some of the subjects/actions in an attempt to help the reader to fully appreciate some of the less publicized information that has some kind of baring on the evolution of P2P.

OS

Since P2P (and P2P related technologies) started to pop up, the security of the user OS started to be placed above user freedom, probably due to most people being, technologically challenged, some organization (or groups with invested interest) are still free to think for the masses in place of just try to push the information out. There is an organized attempt to hide this fact from the public, it is funny to see that after this security enhancements are done they tend to be hidden so not to cause any brain damage or confusion (read foment rebellion) into users.

Well not all is lost, some people can't seem to be made to comply with this state of things and some information can be found and actions reversed.

about MS Windows

• TCPIP.SYS - [fix],[info] for Windows XP.

• CrackTcpip.sys - [similar solution for Vista SP1]

• BadVista.org - An information campaign run by FSF/GNU aiming to stopping Microsoft Windows Vista adoption by promoting free software. What's wrong with Microsoft Windows Vista? ( http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista ) gives an extensive list of problems in the OS related to user loss of freedom and DRM.

ISPs

TODO Add missing information about ISPs interactions with P2P technologies.

Internet providers (ISPs) aren't very pleased with P2P technologies due to the load the bring into to their networks, although they sell their Internet connections as unlimited usage, if people actually take on their offer, ISPs will eventually be unable to cope with the demand at the same price/profit level. This has made clients increasingly worried over some ISPs actions, from traffic shaping (protocol/packet prioritization) to traffic tampering.

San Francisco-based branch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) a digital rights group have successfully verified that this type of efforts by Internet providers to disrupt some uses of their services and evidences seem to indicate that it is an increasing trend other as reports have reached the EFF and verified by an investigation by The Associated Press.

EFF Releases Report Interference with Internet Traffic on ComCast ( http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair ), other information is available about this subject on the EFF site.

Traffic shaping

TODO Add missing information.

Traffic tampering

Traffic tampering is more worrying then Traffic shaping and harder to be noticed or verified. It can also be defined as spoofing, consisting in the injection of adulterated/fake information into communication by gaming a given protocol. It like the post office taking the identity of one of your friends and sending mail to you in it's name.

Pcapdiff ( http://www.eff.org/testyourisp/pcapdiff/ ) is a free Python tool developed by the EFF to compare two packet captures and identify potentially forged, dropped, or mangled packets.

Localization/Acceleration (Cache)

Network neutrality

Network Neutrality deals with the need to prevent ISPs from double dipping on charges/fees for both the clients paying for their broadband connections and WEB sites/Organizations having also to pay for prioritization of traffic according to origination and destination or protocol used.

P2P Networks and Protocols

This chapter will try to provide an overview of what is Peer-to-Peer, it's historical evolution, technologies and uses.

P2P and the Internet: A "bit" of History

P2P is not a new technology, P2P is almost as old as the Internet it started with the email and the next generation were called "metacomputing" or were classed as "middleware", the concept of it took the Internet by storm only because of a general decentralization of the P2P protocols, decentralization is the key word, not only it gives power to the simple user that is now in a leveled play field due to the easy access to powerful machines and infrastructures, but it also makes savings on information distribution resources a different approach from the old centralization concept, this can be a problem for security or control of that shared information, or in other words a "democratization" of the information (the well known use of P2P for downloading copies of MP3s, programs, and even movies from file sharing networks), and due to it's decentralizing nature the traffic patterns, are hard to predict, so, providing infrastructures to support it is a major problem most ISPs are now aware.

P2P has also been heralded as the solution to index the deep Web since most implantations of P2P technologies are based and oriented to wired networks running TCP/IP. Some are even being transfered to wireless uses (sensors, phones and robotic applications), you probably have already heard of some military implementation of intelligent mines or robotic insect hordes.

FIDO net

TODO Add missing information

eMail

Peer2Mail

Peer to Mail ( http://www.peer2mail.com/ ) is a FreeWare application for Windows that lets you store and share files on any web-mail account, you can use Web-mail providers such as Gmail (Google Mail), Walla!, Yahoo and others, it will split the shared files into segments that will be compressed and encrypted and then sends the file segments one by one to an account you have administration access. To Download the files the process is reversed.

Security

The ecryptation was broken in Peer2Mail v1.4 (prior versions are also affected) - Peer2Mail Encrypt PassDumper Exploit.

Usenet

Usenet is the original peer to peer file-sharing application. It was originally developed to make use of UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy) to synchronize two computers' message queues. Usenet stores each article in an individual file and each newsgroup in its own directory. Synchronizing two peers is as simple as synchronizing selected directories in two disparate filesystems.

Usenet was created with the assumption that everyone would receive, store and forward the same news. This assumption greatly simplified development to the point where a peer was able to connect to any other peer in order to get news. The fragmentation of Usenet into myriad newsgroups allowed it to scale while preserving its basic architecture. 'Every node stores all news' became 'every node stores all news in newsgroups it subscribes to'.

Of all other peer-to-peer protocols, Usenet is closest to Freenet since all nodes are absolutely equal and global maps of the network are not kept by any subset of nodes. Unlike Freenet, which works by recursive pulling of a requested object along a linear chain of peers, Usenet works by recursive pushing of all news to their immediate neighbors into a tree.

FTP

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP), can be seen as a primordial P2P protocol. Even if it depends on a client/server structure the limitation is only on the type of application (client/server) one run since the roles are flexible.

File eXchange Protocol (FXP)

TODO Add missing information

Other Software Implementations

JXTA

JXTA™ technology, created by Sun™ ( http://www.jxta.org ), is a set of open protocols that allow any connected device on the network ranging from cell phones and wireless PDAs to PCs and servers to communicate and collaborate in a P2P manner. JXTA peers create a virtual network where any peer may interact with other and their resources directly even when some of the peers and resources are behind firewalls and NATs or are on different network transports. The project goals are interoperability across different peer-to-peer systems and communities, platform independence, multiple/diverse languages, systems, and networks, and ubiquity: every device with a digital heartbeat. The technology is is licensed using the Apache Software License (similar to the BSD license).

Most of the implementation is done in Java (with some minor examples in C).

iFolder

iFolder ( http://www.ifolder.com ) is an still in early development open source application, developed by Novell, Inc., intended to allow cross-platform file sharing across computer networks by using the Mono/.Net framework.

iFolder operates on the concept of shared folders, where a folder is marked as shared and the contents of the folder are then synchronized to other computers over a network, either directly between computers in a peer-to-peer fashion or through a server. This is intended to allow a single user to synchronize their files between different computers (for example between a work computer and a home computer) or share files with other users (for example a group of people who are collaborating on a project).

The core of the iFolder is actually a project called Simias. It is Simias which actually monitors files for changes, synchronizes these changes and controls the access permissions on folders. The actual iFolder clients (including a graphical desktop client and a web client) are developed as separate programs that communicate with the Simias back-end.

The iFolder client runs in two operating modes, enterprise sharing (with a server) and workgroup sharing (peer-to-peer, or without a server).

Freenet

The Freenet Project ( http://freenetproject.org ), designed to allow the free exchange of information over the Internet without fear of censorship, or reprisal. To achieve this Freenet makes it very difficult for adversaries to reveal the identity, either of the person publishing, or downloading content. The Freenet project started in 1999, released Freenet 0.1 in March 2000, and has been under active development ever since.

Freenet is unique in that it handles the storage of content, meaning that if necessary users can upload content to Freenet and then disconnect. We've discovered that this is a key requirement for many Freenet users. Once uploaded, content is mirrored and moved around the Freenet network, making it very difficult to trace, or to destroy. Content will remain in Freenet for as long as people are retrieving it, although Freenet makes no guarantee that content will be stored indefinitely.

The journey towards Freenet 0.7 began in 2005 with the realization that some of Freenet's most vulnerable users needed to hide the fact that they were using Freenet, not just what they were doing with it. The result of this realization was a ground-up redesign and rewrite of Freenet, adding a "darknet" capability, allowing users to limit who their Freenet software would communicate with to trusted friends. This would make it far more difficult for a third-party to determine who is using Freenet.

Freenet 0.7 also embodies significant improvements to almost every other aspect of Freenet, including efficiency, security, and usability. Freenet is available for Windows, Linux, and OSX. It can be downloaded from:

Software Implementations

All software is available on The Freenet Project page.

Frost an application for Freenet that provides usenet-like message boards and file uploading/downloading/sharing functionalities. It should get installed with Freenet 0.7 automatically if you used the standard Freenet installers.

jSite is a graphical application that you can use to create, insert and manage your own Freenet sites. It was written in Java by Bombe.

Thaw is a filesharing utility and upload/download manager. It is used as a graphical interface for Freenet filesharing.

KaZaa

KaZaa ( http://www.kazaa.com )

TODO Add missing info

Software (FastTrack) Implementations

• Kazaa
• Kazaa Lite
• Diet Kaza
• giFT
• Grokster
• iMesh

GNUnet

GNUnet ( http://gnunet.org/ ), was started in late 2001, as a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services. A service implemented on top of the networking layer allows anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing. GNUnet uses a simple, excess-based economic model to allocate resources. Peers in GNUnet monitor each others behavior with respect to resource usage; peers that contribute to the network are rewarded with better service.

GNUnet is part of the GNU project. Our official GNU website can be found at ( http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/ ), there is only an existing client, OpenSource, GPL, written in C, that shares the same name as the network. GNUnet can be downloaded from this site or the GNU mirrors.

MANOLITO (MP2P)

MANOLITO or MP2P is the internal protocol name for the proprietary peer-to-peer file sharing network developed by Pablo Soto. MANOLITO uses UDP connections on port 41170 for search routing and is based on Gnutella. In addition file transfers use a proprietary protocol based on TCP.

MANOLITO hosts obtain an entry into the network by contacting an HTTP network gateway, which returns a list of approximately one-hundred MANOLITO hosts. Hosts can also be manually connected to. Servents maintain contact with a fixed number of peers (depending on the Internet connection) that are sent search queries and results.

Software Implementations

• Blubster ( http://www.blubster.com ), first implementation of the MP2P protocol, closed source but freeware for Windows.
• Piolet ( http://www.piolet.com ), closed source but freeware for Windows.

Mute File Sharing

MUTE File Sharing ( http://mute-net.sourceforge.net ) is an anonymous, decentralized search-and-download file sharing system. MUTE uses algorithms inspired by ant behavior to route all messages, include file transfers, through a mesh network of neighbor connections.
Author Jason Rohrer - jcr13 (at) cornell (dot) edu Created using C++ and Crypto++ Library, support is provided for multiple OSs there is a frontend for Windows created with MFC, Mute is Open Source and released under the GPL License.

iMesh

iMesh ( http://www.imesh.com ), a free but closed source P2P network (IM2Net) operating on ports 80, 443 and 1863, for Widows. iMesh is owned by an American company iMesh, Inc. and maintains a development center in Israel. An agreement with the MPAA had also been reached. Video files more than 50mb in size and 15 minutes in length can no longer be shared on the iMesh network, guaranteeing feature-length releases cannot be transferred across the network.

BitCoop

BitCoop (http://bitcoop.sourceforge.net/) created by Philippe Marchesseault is a console (Text Based) peer to peer backup system that enables the storage of files on remote computers with cryto and compression support. The size of files depends on the quantity you wish to share with the other peers. It is intended for server farms that wish to backup data among themselves. Supports various Operating Systems including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, it's implemented in Java (Open Source under the GPL).

CSpace

CSpace (http://cspace.in/) provides a platform for secure, decentralized, user-to-user communication over the Internet. The driving idea behind the CSpace platform is to provide a connect(user,service) primitive, similar to the sockets API connect(ip,port). Applications built on top of CSpace can simply invoke connect(user,service) to establish a connection. The CSpace platform will take care of locating the user and creating a secure, nat/firewall friendly connection. Thus the application developers are relieved of the burden of connection establishment, and can focus on the application-level logic! CSpace is developed in Python. It uses OpenSSL for crypto, and Qt for the GUI. CSpace is licensed under the GPL.

I2P

I2P is a generic anonymous and secure peer to peer communication layer. It is a network that sits on top of another network (in this case, it sits on top of the Internet). It is responsible for delivering a message anonymously and securely to another location.

p300

p300 (http://p300.eu/) is a P2P application created in Java with the intention of provide a just-works-single-download solution for a multitude of Operating Systems without the need to deal with user accounts or specific protocol and security configurations (ie. samba). Another aspect is that p300 is primarily meant to be used in LANs or over VPNs. This application is OpenSource released under the GNU GPL v3.

Netsukuku

Netsukuku (http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/) is a p2p (in mesh) network system, originally developed by FreakNet MediaLab, that can generate and sustains itself autonomously. It is designed to handle an unlimited number of nodes with minimal CPU and memory resources. It seems that it can be easily used to build a worldwide distributed, anonymous decentralized network, above the Internet, without the support of any servers, ISPs or authority controls. Netsukuku replaces the network level 3 of the OSI model with another routing protocol. An open source Python implementation was finished in October 2007.

Netsukuku is based on a very simple idea: extending the concept of Wi-Fi mesh networks to a global scale, although not necessarily using that medium. With the use of specialized routing protocols and algorithms, the current Wi-Fi technologies can be exploited to allow the formation of a global P2P wireless network, where every peer (node) is connected to its neighbors.

Other media will be equally functional to interconnect nodes, as the interaction is independent of that which it is transmitted through, but it is believed that Wi-Fi will be the most practical for ordinary users to take advantage of. Once greater proliferation has been achieved, it may become common to see some nodes establishing high-speed land-line connections between each other in the interest of increasing network bandwidth for connections over it and lowering latencies.

Other

• Thunderbolt (aka Thunder) (http://www.xunlei.com/) was created by Xunlei Network Technology Ltd. Thunderbolt proprietary P2P network supports Multi-protocol P2P resources (supports BitTorrent, eDonkey, Kad, and FTP) and also HTTP downloads (a download accelerator) as it web caches to aid in accelerating of downloads. It is mainly used in the Mainland China, recently an English translation has been released. Of particularly interest is that on January 5, 2007, Google acquired a 4% stake on the company.

• Cassandra (http://code.google.com/p/the-cassandra-project/) a Structured Storage System on a P2P Networ