this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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What if... BitTorrent clients partially ignored the private bit of a torrent? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 month ago by ovovo@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Private torrent trackers have all the reasons to remain private, and I don't blame them for that and I am glad private trackers exists. But the torrent files themselves have a setting that says "this torrent is private", which makes the BitTorrent client to not distribute them via DHT, which makes magnetic links not work with them, so they are restricted to people who can obtain the torrent file from the private tracker.

What if clients had an option (on by default) to distribute the torrent via DHT and perform PEX, while still taking care to: a) not place the private tracker in the magnetic link the user might generate, and b) separate the upload/download statistics for the peers returned by the private tracker, so the ratio statistics in the private tracker are not skewed?

This way, private torrents could "escape" into the wild, still maintaining the privacy and social/closed community effects of the private tracker. Someone could download something for a friend or for a random person who asks for some content in a forum, send them the magnetic link, and don't have the private tracker activities or anonymity affected in any way.

What do you think of this idea? How do you think it would be received by private trackers and BitTorrent client developers? What are the drawbacks you can think of?

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[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Isn't that the whole point of a private tracker?

[–] ovovo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I thought that it was so it could maintain a lower profile, thus attract less unwanted attention, and maintain the health of the torrents with the minimum ratio rules.

But I am not dismissing this issue, I think it is important.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What does "maintain a lower profile" mean specifically? I think the point of a private tracker is that you don't need to enable DHT, which effectively broadcasts to the internet that your IP address is trying to download content identified by a specific hash.

[–] ovovo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

For the tracker itself, because it is much easier for the police to go after trackers that server thousands of pirates than to go after the individual pirates.