tpb developing new torrent protocol

[scrapmetal]

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay- ... nt-071030/

The guys from The Pirate Bay are always working on interesting side-projects, but there is one in particular that’s so significant, it might be the future of filesharing. For a while now, they have been working on a brand new protocol - which may come to replace BitTorrent in the near future.

pirate bay protocolWhy a new protocol? Well, the current BitTorrent protocol is developed and maintained by BitTorrent Inc. This company, founded by BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, recently decided to close the source of some newer additions to the protocol. According to The Pirate Bay, this gives them too much power and influence.

Another reason for a new and improved protocol is the massive number of spammers and anti-piracy organizations that abuse the BitTorrent protocol, either to make money or to bust people who download infringing material. The new protocol will be designed with these potential problems in mind.

The protocol will most likely use the .p2p file extension compared to the .torrent extension BitTorrent uses right now. The good thing is that the .p2p files will be backwards compatible which should ensure a smooth transition from .torrent to .p2p files.

It will be interesting to see whether other BitTorrent sites will support the new protocol. Erik from Mininova, the most popular BitTorrent site at the moment, told us they will absolutely support the new protocol. We at TorrentFreak are of course a bit concerned about these new developments since we owe our name to BitTorrent, but we wish The Pirate Bay crew the best

The new protocol is still in the development phase, but the initial release is planned for sometime early next year. More features and information about the new protocol, which is still nameless at this point, can be found at the protocol design page.

[Suomynona.Eno]

From a casual user perspective and in light of that latest round of news of users (through FCC) vs. Comcast suit (google that 1 or uhh..I'll come to back to edit this part with the link), I don't think it's bad idea at all.I just have these few questions though:-
- There's already other 'secure' and anonymous protocol efforts like WASTE? Would it be a good idea to rewrite everything from scratch or why not just collaborate with WASTE's people to avoid impending 'standards' glut?

- What we need is a new protocol that's not only secure and anonymous, but also (for lack of better terms) 'ISPs-friendly'.In short, something that 'gives back' to the bandwidth infrastucture they serve and gives them less 'justifications' to enforce strict traffic shaping policies.I can imagine a very tall order to juggle that part. I know from what I've read at securep2p's wiki that 1 main concern is the current upload inefficiency with current protocols that poses the biggest problem.

[MoJo]

Personally I have the philosophy which is "Don't fix it if it ain't broken!" ... what really is wrong with BT that TPB couldn't just fork it and spearhead there own revision. The Mainline BT argument of it being closed source is rather weak in my opinion. Mainline is close sourcing there own innovation and extensions to the BT client ... but no one is stopping TPB from creating there own open extension to BT just as Azureus wrote there own DHT layer, rather then just adopt Mainline DHT which came later. It is not a wise move personally to me, more effort should be made to securing BT and making it an accepted client which ISP's can't easily deem as a Pirates Haven which this new network would be eventually consider especially after any endorsement by TPB. So now an ISP can easily argue the Throttling of any new P2P oriented protocol rather the BT which is now slowly being considered as a ligitimate content delivery protocol. That shred of legitimacy is what is keeping ISP's from unanimously Throttling the BT protocol. If they worked on Improving BT by writing specs for viable extensions, they can easily be adopted by most BT clients and the users of uTorrent would make there clients developers (the Bram Cohen BT team) know that said extension should be added ... if not the uTorrent user will be alienated and hence the early Adopters and adamant supporters of uTorrent would start leaving in flocks ... in the end Mainline BT can't exist as a viable Business model if the users up and leave or if the Protocol is changed by a certain extent that Mainline BT won't support leading to a forked DHT community. When Bram Cohen bought uTorrent he bought the users not the code (the code is quite good though but he got it for a bargain) ... it is simple to realize that with the more users you have the more control you garner over the BT Protocol. With this control Mainline BT reinstated control over the direction of the Protocol and now they are steering it with the uTorrent user base to a closed source Model.

So in essence what I am saying to TPB is to improve upon the current work called BT ... if uTorrent adds a closed source feature or extension then make your own and improve upon theres or just do some new improvements in proactive manner. I'm sure TPB has the credibility that LibTorrent/ Azureus/ Mininova/ would all accept there extensions and insight ... if anything TPB give back to the community by being the guardians of the BT standard something Mainline BT wishes to have complete power over.

Just my 2 cents