The Easiest Way in the World to Share Files P2P – and How it Works

There are dozens of ways to share files on the Internet but one site has made it so simple that anyone with a Firefox or Chrome browser can share content in seconds. In fact, Sharefest is so simple there’s barely anything to talk about, but behind the scenes it’s a different matter. TorrentFreak caught up with its creators for the lowdown on their super-simple, drag-and-drop, BitTorrent-like swarming system.

Sharing files is now something that many Internet users do on a daily basis, whether that’s documents, images or video.

There are plenty of ways to distribute those files, such as via email, public file-hosting sites, Dropbox-like operations, BitTorrent…the list goes on.

But what if all of those options – even email – are just too complicated?

Sharefest is without doubt the most simple way to share files available today. Fire up the Sharefest website and drag a file to the middle of the page. A link will appear – paste that to as many people as you like. Wait for the transfer to complete. Done.

Simplicity aside, what’s so neat about Sharefest is the technology going on behind the scenes.

Sharefest operates on a mesh network similar to BitTorrent and all transfers are executed peer-to-peer. Files can be shared with many people at once and the technology can swarm to speed up transfers, just like BitTorrent. It’s Open Source and apart from Chrome or Firefox, no additional software is required.

TorrentFreak caught up with Hadar Weiss from Peer5, the outfit behind the project, for the lowdown. Weiss says that the key is bringing file-sharing to the web.

“We are fascinated with the potential of P2P communication within the browser,” Weiss explains.

“We think that P2P is very powerful and there are great implementations such as BitTorrent. But P2P can reach its full potential only when it reaches the Web. Until then, it’s not really for the mainstream. For example, we like to ask ourselves, why can’t my mother use P2P filesharing? The answer, (we believe) is in a user friendly web technology.”

Sharefest uses WebRTC, a technology that can enable browser-to-browser communications such as file-sharing and video/chat applications without need for a plug-in. The technology is present in the latest Chrome and Firefox browsers.

“People talk a lot about the WebRTC revolution, and they mostly refer to the audiovisual world. We believe the change is bigger and that we will see many web applications that use the WebRTC Data API for things other than audio or video. Many of them would need a ‘BitTorrent-like’ many-to-many system, and that’s what we build.

“Sharefest actually started just as the canonical example for many-to-many sharing that uses our technology. We wanted to Open Source some of the stuff we developed at Peer5, and file-sharing was the coolest use-case,” Weiss says.

So, using a real-world example in which I want to share a 250MB video with half a dozen friends, how does that work behind the scenes? Presumably there’s a BitTorrent-like tracker to coordinate transfers among peers who swarm to share the data and speed up downloads?

“There’s a swarming technique, and mesh networking. Meaning that any peer can be connected to number of different peers and can send and receive data. So if there are six others, you might be connected to all of them, or just one,” says Weiss.

“The tracker decides who is connected to you, depending on many parameters (we call it the matching algorithm). The most trivial is what blocks you have. Two peers with roughly the same blocks are rarely connected. Geography, ISP, available bandwidth are also important factors of course, and we will put even more in the future. The nice part, because it is server based, is that peers discover each other very quickly.”

Interestingly, Weiss says that the Sharefest tracker doesn’t need to know the IP addresses of peers.

“To match two peers, the tracker sends the relevant peers a message through a WebSocket channel. They then start a standard WebRTC handshake – SDPs which describe the local peer capabilities are sent through the server, and they start talking with the STUN server. The STUN server help the two peers create the real P2P connection, overcoming firewalls and NATs,” Weiss adds.

Also, Sharefest peers are able to discriminate in a way similar to BitTorrent peers, taking more data from better performing peers while taking less from others.

Sharefest is a work-in-progress and will have more features added over time. One that we’d really like to see is the ability to resume partially completed uploads. Weiss told us that this feature is not only in the works, but just about to be released. Perfect.

US ISP Can Monitor File-Sharing Traffic

At the moment, there are quite a few BitTorrent traffic monitoring firms and systems out there, but AT&T seems to make a premiere as the first Internet service provider to get a patent under which the company is allowed to monitor file-sharing traffic.

The innovative system is supposed to be used by AT&T to predict monitor network congestion before occurring. However, another possible use of it is to check out what material is very popular with pirates on file-sharing portals.

Recently, AT&T has adopted a “six-strikes” anti-piracy program which means that an Internet subscriber alleged of downloading copyrighted content gets 6 warnings before having their Internet connection terminated.

Industry observers have created a chart which allows to better understand how the new system works. According to it, AT&T will maintain RSS feeds of torrents that it could end up downloading and then search through. Although the names of the files will play a huge role in what the system detects as illegal content, it will still go one step further and dig into the file to make sure it is really what it says it is, because everyone knows there can be just a virus hiding under the latest Hollywood blockbuster name.

Apparently, the ISP’s technology will appeal to rights holders because of its possibilities and that they will be able to “convince” the broadband provider (if necessary) to use it as a method to reduce Internet piracy.

Turn Your RSS Feeds into Torrents

Almost anyone uses Rich Site Summary feeds today, as they keep the user updated by converting the required data into a standard format – the RSS document. Now RSS2Torrent can take these documents and turn them into full-pledged torrent feeds.

You know that reading RSS feeds is like reading e-mail – they keep users updated with the latest events based on a list of their favorite portals or blogs. BitTorrent Inc. admits that the relationship between RSS and P2P had always been a professional one, until RSS2Torrent managed to take it one step further.

A new service offered by the company is very easy to use, even for subscribers who are not avid web-surfers. For example, you can get IMDB’s RSS feed link by right-clicking the RSS logo and choosing “Copy Link Location” in the menu. Then you just go to RSS2Torrent and paste the link in question into the box. Click the “Create” button and the conversion will take just a few seconds. You will get a new link, which can be copied and opened with any BitTorrent application.

For instance, uTorrent users should go to the File menu and choose “Add RSS feed”. There they should paste the provided link, which has a look like “http://rss2torrent” and that’s it. The new content will be displayed if you click the “Feed” button on the left side of the app.

Vuze users should look for “Content Discovery” and “Subscriptions” and click the plus to add the desired feed. Then they should choose “Create New Subscription” and click the RSS tab to paste the content and save it. Users are free to choose any RSS feed they want, of course, while being sure that it is regularly updated and ready to be downloaded when the case.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for the source of the article 

Assange May Stay Hiden for Another 5 Years

The Ecuadorian government has reminded everyone that they still take care of Julian Assange, who has been effectively under house arrest in the embassy. The matter is that he refuses to go to Sweden to face sex charges, while the coppers outside the Ecuadorian embassy waiting to arrest him cost the British taxpayers £3 million annually. They must be well paid coppers, though.

In the meanwhile, any hope that the Ecuadorians might have changed their mind after change of government in the country has been dashed – in the interview, the ambassador admitted that Julian is ready to stay at the Ecuadorian embassy for another 5 years. It was denied that Assange’s health was worsening – instead, the ambassador maintained he was “in good spirits” and assured that Ecuador will continue to provide political asylum.

The United Kingdom and Ecuador are in a legal stalemate over how to handle problem with Assange and have created a working group to hammer out a deal. However, the United Kingdom admitted that no substantive progress had been made and any resolution would need to be within the local law. Ecuador claimed that human rights of the Wikileaks founder to safe passage out of the United Kingdom were being violated by an intransigent British government.

As for Julian Assange, he has claimed that if he was extradited to Sweden, he will be sent to the United States and potentially face the death penalty relating to charges of disclosing confidential data, all because of his connections to his own whistleblowing service Wikileaks. The only question he doesn’t want to answer is why if the United States wanted to extradite him they didn’t do so when he was in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the British Secretary Teresa May would have loved to extradite Assange to the US, but the problem is that there is no warrant from the United States for the Wikileaks founder. So, any claims that if Assange didn’t face the music for the sexual offences he would be extradited seems to be only his own thoughts.

Anyway, the Ecuadorian government revealed that they had offered the Swedish legal authorities the opportunity to question Julian Assange about the allegations in their London embassy, but they didn’t get any reply.

Apple Users Sleep at Night, Android Users Don’t

According to the recent survey by an online advertising agency which runs mobile adverts, there are some strange facts about Android and Apple users. Chitika, which serves up adverts on over 300,000 sites in the United States and Canada, pointed out that Apple’s users love advertising. Indeed, even though there are fewer iPhones operating, they seem to be hitting a lion’s share of the advertising.

The results of the survey revealed that Apple’s share of the advertising traffic was 62%, while Android’s share was 38%. However, analyst estimates that Android devices are currently outnumber iOS in North America. Chitika tracked about 300 million ad impressions hour-by-hour within the first week of May and graphed the results according to the mobile platform used by the visitor.

So, for both groups of users most advertising traffic occurred at 10PM, which means that the late evening hours are the most popular browsing times for people. However, iOS users showed a sharp 7 hour fall-off after this peak, which means that Apple users normally go to sleep at night. In the meantime, Android users for some reason don’t stop hitting the advertising until 4:00 and 5:00 a.m.

Study on Social Networking

A study conducted by the University of Michigan claims that social media websites like Facebook and Twitter are a narcissist magnet. For example, young adults of college age and their adult counterparts are using such services in order to bolster their egos and control perceptions of others. It was also suggested that vain college-age students prefer using Twitter to make their opinions and views seem important.

According to a University of Michigan researcher, social networking is about making individual’s image, how they are seen, and also checking on how others respond to that image. Apparently, the young tend to overvaluate the importance of their own opinions. For example, via Twitter, they are trying to broaden their social circles while broadcasting their views about various topics and issues.

In the meantime, adults exhibiting narcissism also tend to prefer Facebook for the same purpose. The study suggests that middle-aged adults normally have already formed their social selves and they just use social media in order to gain approval from people who are already in their social circles. The study tried to find out whether the narcissistic behavior was related to the amount of time a person spent posting, reading posts and commenting.

Thus, people were divided into two groups. The first tested 486 college students with an average age of 19 over the extent of their social media usage. The group also took part in a personality assessment measuring exhibitionism, superiority, authority, and self-sufficiency. It appeared that young adult college students who used Twitter extensively scored higher in certain types of narcissism.

The second group of the study focused on 93 adults with an average age of 35. The group completed a similar online survey, and it also turned out that middle-aged adults narcissists posted more frequent status updates on Facebook as well.

Tor Systems Used for Illegal Activities

According to statistics, many thousands of people access shady sites via Tor every day. While most users say they use the systems because they want to stay anonymous, some exploit the layers of proxies to find drugs.

Originally, the Onion Router has been created by the US Navy a decade ago in order to keep government communications safe from prying eyes. The reports say that Tor had reached about 600.000 users annually. The way it works is quite simple to understand – instead of using one proxy to hide the IP addresses, it uses a whole chain of proxies, hence its name.

A decade ago nobody had this concept of privacy, but now this doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. While Tor claims to be used daily for various purposes by the military, journalists, law enforcement officers and activists, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center is warning that 1/3 of its users are suspected of conducting a wide range of unauthorized activities. Some people confessed they had started using Tor to buy drugs online. This is why some experts now believe that Tor should be blacklisted by governments. As for the United Kingdom, the country’s Prime Minister believes that sites and search engines have to take responsibility for what they offer, particularly when it comes to kids porn. David Cameron believes that Internet companies and search engines should use their extraordinary technical abilities to do more to root out child pornography. As a result, the government keeps convening a round-table of the largest online companies and demands to do more.

In the meanwhile, the backside of the problem is privacy – this is an overgrowing concern in the past several years. The experts admit that because of government collusion with record companies and rights owners to crack down on file-sharing copyrighted content, Internet users had to start using such networks as Tor, which were previously only used by advanced users and people looking for illegal content. So, people targeted by this type of law will do what they can to seek out material.

Among Tor users, there are innocent family people – they use Tor because they just don’t want themselves or family followed around by councils or the police. While the industry experts agree that the problems at hand can’t be ignored, the issue could easily get out of hand, like it happened with P2P.

Streaming Services Proved Profitable

Staffan Albinsson has signed a doctoral thesis which claims that Internet piracy is bad for the entertainment industry. However, the worldwide web comes to the rescue in other forms, such as music streaming services – those proved a great and valuable source of revenues. 

Albinsson’s findings start by reviewing the first major lawsuit of its kind – Metallica against Napster. Everybody knows the result of that epic battle, but there was something else, quite interesting: after the great fall of Napster and other file-sharing services, time for legitimacy came, and various services – for example, iTunes – made the first move by legitimizing online downloads.

Two years ago, the income from music streaming rose by 70% compared with the year before. As for today, music downloads are resulting in more income than CD sales. Albinsson’s study mentioned Swedish statistics which covered the last three decades and confirmed that digital piracy had indeed taken its toll on the music industry’s revenues. Anyway, the same period of time also saw an increase in revenues from live performances, radio broadcasts and TV. Moreover, since 2010 music streaming services, including Spotify and Pandora, had also contributed to the earnings of music creators.

This is an easy scheme of mutual contribution: the consumer is allowed to access a lot of content without violating the law, while the copyright owners are getting paid. This means that there’s no need for a discussion until next time new technology is introduced. The researcher admits that various forms of IP rights have different qualitative implications. Hopefully, the industry and everyone who is concerned about Internet piracy will consider the qualitative implications of IP laws.

French Electronic Voting Turned into Farce

The country’s first electronic election seems to be turning into a farce. Indeed, the reports are coming in of the sort of election rigging that one would expect from 3rd world countries, not France. It turned out that an "online-primary" claimed as "fraud-proof" and "ultra secure" as the Maginot Line is vulnerable to a Blizkrieg of multiple and fake voting.

The oncoming election was supposed to anoint a rising star of the moderate right – Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, 39. The latter was the Party's candidate in the election for mayor of Paris in 2014. The only problem was that she abstained in the final parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage a few months ago. The industry experts pointed out that it was going to be a tight election.

Afterwards, journalists from Metronews claimed that it was easy to breach the allegedly strict security of the election and voted a few times under different names in order to prove their point.

The new approach suggested that Parisians had to vote by making a credit card payment of €3 and providing the name and address of someone on the city's electoral roll. However, Metronews journalist managed to vote 5 times in total by paying with the same credit card under different names which, by the way, included “Nicolas Sarkozy”.

This situation appeared especially tricky for the UMP Party, because the latter has been accused of election fraud earlier. The matter is that back in 2012, the UMP almost split amid allegations of ballot-stuffing and other dirty tricks in an election in order to replace Nicolas Sarkozy as the national party president. An ex-Prime Minister, François Fillon, accused his competitor, the Party Secretary General, Jean-Francois Copé, of "fraud on an industrial scale".

China Closed Web for Maintenance

It seems that the Chinese government just switched off the Internet last week when it became concerned that some people might remember the importance of the date. The matter is that it was the 24th anniversary of the massacre of protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The authorities have come to a decision that the best way to commemorate the massacre is by declaring it “Internet maintenance day”. As a result, everyone had to spend the day updating their servers being unconnected to the worldwide web. In order to help the loyal network managers, the Chinese authorities simply switched off the web so that they weren’t bothered by too much traffic.

Of course, they couldn’t shut off the entire Internet, so a number of websites were told to commemorate Internet maintenance day while others had to update their servers in the normal manner. The websites under maintenance included blogs and portals which could want to remember 4 June for reasons other than being a patch Tuesday. In the meanwhile, the Twitter-like Sina Weibo was working, as well as the Chinese operations for MSN and Yahoo. The most interesting fact is that for some reason the dictionary website WordKu.com only offered one page showing a definition for the word "encore". Media reports say that a picture which edited the iconic image of a man standing in front of a column of tanks by replacing them with rubber ducks was censored as well.