Oh I think that It would be a Better idea from their end anyway to have the servers built into the client. that way anyone who wanted to use the P2P had to help with the overall usefullness of the service. Plus from the 5 or so minutes that I have been thinking about it there are some very interesting optimizations that could be done to the process to make it work better for torrents over strait p2p. if they built it in to the client, and didn't give people the option of being just a middleman then they would probably completely solve the exit server problem. I would also be willing to bet that the service of said hypothetical network would be pretty decent. already they only allow downloading equal to uploading, so if they made it into a three way balance between up, down, and onion then there would not be any desparity between users on the network and the networks ability to serve up files.
I am just suggesting some type of torrent client that uses the onion-router principle.
don't know, just a thought.
-=Matt=-
Oh I realize also that Open source is free for use (kinda) but I figured that it was still polite to ask if no one minded this use of the technology that they are putting so much effort into creating...
On 10/12/05, Brian C <brianwc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> wrote:
Hi,
Matt Thorne wrote:
> That isn't a bad Idea, and possibly something that They (with help
> ofcourse :-) could build into their P2P software. Probably not a bad
> thing for them to lookinto just for their own use, not because We ask
> them to, but becuase that would really mess with the heads of the people
> at (Insert 4 letter accronym here).
>
> question:
>
> how do the people who feel posesive towards tor think about this idea?
>
> -=Matt=-
>
> On 10/12/05, *Arrakistor* wrote
> What if we designated some type of tor family specifically for p2p
> content, and coordinated with the software developers?
>
If an anonymizing service based on Tor were integrated into some p2p
project or if a fork of Tor were to devote itself to serving p2p, then
that should only be encouraged by the current Tor community if
1. It didn't take away any current tor servers or tor resources.
2. It used another name and was clearly its own standalone effort.
The reason for 1 is obvious. If the point is to make Tor more usable,
then we shouldn't support a migration of its resources elsewhere.
The reason for 2 should also be obvious. Tor is a neutral technology
that allows privacy. Some people use their privacy for uses we want to
support; others for uses we wish they wouldn't engage in. But, if
something were called "Tor" and were devoted to p2p traffic then it
would taint the whole Tor project. Don't get me wrong. p2p also has
legitimate uses. But in the current climate anything remotely associated
with file-sharing is assumed to be illegal. Let's not let that shadow be
cast upon Tor. It has enough reputational problems already.
Also, Tor is open source. If someone wants to take the code and change
it to use their own farm of servers exclusively for p2p traffic then
there's nothing the Tor community can do to stop them. I'm not
suggesting we should try to stop them. Rather, I'm suggesting we insist
that if someone does do that, then they should not call it "Tor" or
anything confusingly similar.
Brian