TorrentTraveler: Micropayments-based anonymous BT proxy

by choogi • 15 years ago

41 26 15 years ago

mdolon• 15 years ago

Just tried it out and it's surprisingly fast at downloading! (700mb file in just a couple of minutes) Also, having worked with the guys who made this, I can definitely say I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more exciting stuff from them.

vertr• 15 years ago

How does this affect seeding? Do they seed the file until it's an even ratio? I think services like this have a place in the bittorent ecology as long as they are responsible to the network.

choogi4• 15 years ago

Thanks for the feedback -- the health of the torrent ecosystem is very important to us. We seed to 1.2 or we kill the seed after 24 hours, whichever comes first. We delete all records associated with each download after 24 hours in order to protect the anonymity of our users.

jaekwon2• 15 years ago

How does this affect copyright issues? The domain is registered in PA, USA, so how long before you guys get shut down by the feds?

akanet• 15 years ago

This is fascinating - can we hear more about the architecture and policies?

choogi4• 15 years ago

We completely protect the anonymity of our users. We do not condone the downloading of illegal content. On the back-end, we run a separate sandboxed instance of transmission-daemon for each download request. Interestingly, although the backend is written in Python, more than half of the code is bash.

stwe• 15 years ago

You claim to protect the user's anonymity, but your payment provider's only login mechanism is via Facebook. That doesn't feel right.

drdaeman• 15 years ago

Do you temporarily cache downloaded data to save bandwidth? And do you continue to seed the torrent after it's downloaded?

rglullis• 15 years ago

This seems interesting, but I was even more interested in the payment system, minno (https://www.minno.co/). The screencast shows that they are using Facebook for authentication. I wonder if it's just for authentication or if they are planning to use Facebook Credits. I wonder what Tipjoy's Ivan Kirigin think of it.

noaharc• 15 years ago

Thanks for the interest! Minno is our main project, and TorrentTraveler is just a quick hack that we put together to try Minno out. We'll be working with other developers to roll out more sites over the next few months. If you have any other questions ping me at noah [at] minno.co.

ivankirigin• 15 years ago

I think this is great. I wish we had experimented more with microservices, especially on twitter.

Merchant acquisition is the hardest part of a payments startup. Tipjoy failed to get the top "merchants" on Twitter's platform to use us. That's because they didn't really want to make money. Look at what tweetdeck, twitpic, seesmic, etc. still do today with commerce: nothing.

There is a lot more to do for minno, but the micro sites are great.

Natsu3• 15 years ago

It would be nice if you could have the option to have them mail you a DVD. After all, if your connection is spotty, a direct download isn't much better than a torrent.

david2777• 15 years ago

I would think the problem with that would be that it is ok to burn something like Ubuntu Live CDs, but people would start asking to burn illegal software, and since it says on the site they don't endorse piracy, it may get a little tricky.

derefr2• 15 years ago

If you could upload a public key, and they would encrypt the download with it and send you the result, that would be a pretty effective workaround for any legality issues. After all, no one but the intended recipient can then determine what's actually on the disk. And, as long as the download and encryption are done together with no human intermediary, nobody at the company can say they knew what was on the disks either. Bam: average-sized safe-harbor provision.

Natsu3• 15 years ago

One would assume that they simply block any infringing torrents once those have been identified by a copyright holder, or something like that, though I honestly don't know what they do. But I would assume that they do something, because they're likely to be talking to a lot of lawyers soon if people start using it for piracy.

That said, I'm not sure how letting people download it from their servers is any better than sending it on a DVD, and an envelope full of enough DVDs has a much higher bandwidth (and a much higher latency) than most internet connections in the USA.

If anything, the fact that a human would probably have to handle the DVD to put it into the mail would be a better copyright filter than most programs. "Oh, hey, this is that new movie. Nice try. tosses DVD into trash"

jaekwon2• 15 years ago

This might have even worse legal implications.

dvdhsu• 15 years ago

> All files and database entries are deleted after 24 hours.

If I can't download the file within 24 hours, it is gone?

choogi4• 15 years ago

Yes, all records are destroyed after 24 hours in order to protect the anonymity of our users. You don't have to pay unless you actually download the file, and our downstream bandwidth should give you ample time to complete the download. If you don't receive the download then you can always re-download it at no extra charge.

geuis• 15 years ago

Although you say that you're deleting records after 24 hours, in the US (I think) there are data retention laws, at least locally depending where you are based. This, in combination with the overhanded and perverse trend of the US government to go after "pirates" of copyrighted content (this isn't the government's job), makes me ask how you will handle the inevitable demands for user records.

People will immediately use your service to download "illegal" content, aka movies and tv shows, and then download from you to themselves. How do you plan on responding when the government comes a knockin?

Beyond this, I love the entire concept. Its a novel business idea and exactly the kind that the reprehensible trend towards copyright restriction is going to snuff out.

citricsquid• 15 years ago

If you want to appear more legitimate, put up a bunch of use cases for things like linux distros and data sets, that way you have plausible deniability... more than now anyway.

nicpottier• 15 years ago

Neat idea, but funny that it suddenly removes the number one reason I use torrents: an unreliable connection.

Can you offer the download in some format that lets me resume? Perhaps a private torrent of some kind? Then you'd have a customer in me.

dmn001• 15 years ago

Here's a less well known, but better site that I use: http://www.torrific.com It's free, and signups don't require you to connect with facebook to join.

dlindhol• 15 years ago

A novel approach. Couple brilliant guys here. I expect big things out of them.

TorrentTraveler: Micropayments-based anonymous BT proxy

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