This worked really well for me after a few seconds of stuttering at the start. Looking at the network requests, it's streaming from an MP4 file on the server which I guess is being fed by the torrent. But doesn't it effectively mean that this site is hosting the MP4 of potentially illegal content - even if just a few seconds of it? Or even as just a container for it?
That's not how I expected it to be designed. I assumed that you would only be asking for the pieces to fill a moving buffer starting from the beginning of the file (like a sort of client 'superseeding.')
It depends. In Germany, for example, it's illegal to SEED, downloading is not a problem. That's why websites similar to mega upload and russian movie streaming websites are so popular there.
If this thing only gives content to you and you don't give anything back than it's pretty cool.
i was hoping that it was a javascript torrent client, not a server based media player that happened to use a torrent to obtain that media (then immediately serving that media). It's a cool tech, but it's a tech that can be targeted by "authorities", and so sooner rather than later, will get taken down due to copyright claims.
Tried different links (magnets or .torrent) without any luck. I'm curious to see how it behaves even though I don't intend to use it afterwards.. just for the sake of doing it in the browser. Anyone care to give me a small sample magnet ? <10M
This works fine for me: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:373b1794e9e73dbf206bce304a5900851193f285&dn=steal+
this+film+part+1+and+2&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A8
0%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337
Same.. I get an error (I fixed the space between ? and xt). Chrome devtools/network shows nothing suspcious, some basic ping pong between their server for small HTTP request returning 200. Weird. Thanks for the help though
Tried an mkv from NYAA: no go, format not supported (loads to 100% but then gives the error)
Different mkv from Kickass: format not supported (without loading, apparently, though I wonder if it's cached given that it was Guardians of the Galaxy)
TV episode of Gotham: same as for previous
Something is happening because it says e.g. 'Gotham' in the top and retrieves a nice faded background of the cast but I keep getting 'format not supported'
EDIT: seems to be my browser or connection; trying a different machine on a different IP and it works very nicely and quickly indeed.
Didn't have time to look through the DOM. Is this a javascript torrent client? I think there was one out there in the wild before, but I'm not sure how good it was. I always thought if there was a simple JS torrent library out there, Bit torrent could make a comeback.
Damn, it's awesome that bandwidth has become this cheap.
This isn't a torrent client in your browser, the server actually does the torrenting for you and then streams the file to you as it's downloading on the server.
What if the data isn't a video.Does every format have a header which provides that it's actually a video?I assume it works through a stream feeding it with data at a time and then decoding it?
What are the legal ramifications of streaming pirated content? Could you cache popular content to preserve downstream traffic? Or is that the loophole? This plus content aggregation/browsing.. hmm..
Depend where the server is located. In this case its UK law that dictate the rules. If it did go to court, I would suspect that the case Public Relations Consultants Association Limited [PRCA] v. The Newspaper Licensing Agency Limited and others (http://www.ip-watch.org/2013/05/07/viewing-cached-copyrighte...) would be relevant.
"The court said: Whether looking at a cached copy of protected content, without downloading or printing it, amounts to infringement. Lower courts held that it does, a finding unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court.".
The defence is linked to Art 5(1) of the Copyright Directive[1], which states that where a reproduction is temporary, incidental or transient. it will not be considered to be an infringement.
A download would classed as anything that didn't satisfy those conditions. So if you're storing something for the purposes of making use of it later it would fall outside the exception as it would not be temporary or transient.
Technically your browser downloads content of course, but provided the content is only viewed whilst you are in the browser and not retained following the end of your browser session (or were merely retained in your cache), this would not constitute a download for the purposes of putting a user outside the exception to infringement under Art 5(1).
The legality of is moot. Do the copyright cartels like it (no need to answer)?
If so, then high-profile and particularly-irritating pirates will be targeted, and if the laws don't specifically make it illegal then they will be twisted to enable prosecution anyway.
In the United States, prosecutors routinely fabricate financial returns for piracy, that way it's a felony instead of a misdemeanor. They do this by making the argument that the movies they downloaded for personal viewing constitute financial proceeds.
When such a thing is not only possible, but standard operating procedure, asking about the legal ramifications are silly. You're probably still safe just by being part of the herd, but they've been known to single out people to make examples of too.
For you, it is copyright infringement. But it's hard to catch you. I guess you are vulnerable to joker.org giving you up if they get subpoenaed, if they keep records.
For joker.org, that depends on how they are classified. It probably does not qualify for a transitory network safeharbor because 1) if it's servers are uploading it is giving the file to more than one person and 2) joker.org is arguably modifying the content by assembling it into a stream. Though I could be convinced it isn't modifying it just by streaming it. If they are caching, it would also bust their safeharbor.
If it is classified as a §512(c) site, it has a better argument actually. Though I don't see a DMCA agent listed on the site.
Anyone know how this would work in Germany? They're incredibly strict on torrents here (you can torrent one movie and get a letter in the mail 2 weeks later). This seems like it would be a nice workaround... While it lasts
It would work - however, I guess you mean: "Will I stay anonymous and/or not upload anything, so the movie industry will not send their goons/laywers after me."
The idea is that streaming can never be illegal under current german laws, so if the server is just handing an mp4 to the client, then it’s perfectly legal.
If you stream it through your browser, they still have the same IP, which is used to identify you.
As for prosecution of torrent seeders, that's not really possible anymore IIRC, since the "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (= stockpile saving of which IP address has been connect to which landline, in case it is needed for law enforcement) has been declared illegal.
AFAIK movie torrents were never really monitored, the focus was always on the latest music releases. I also haven't heard of any fines for torrenting in the last 2-3 years, but that might be because I'm not really in that age anymore.
They can have your IP but just streaming itself isn't illegal in Germany and since you actually don't personally seed the content here you might just be ok.
You can leech in Germany just fine. Legally, the problem here is only in uploading the content.
Or if you want to be extra careful, use a VPN. ipredator is reasonably good, and you get an IP number from Sweden so you can also bypass all the GEMA crap.
Does that matter? The joker.org server is doing the p2p download bit and streaming the content to the browser.
It's likely that it's caching material for torrents. I tried Guardians of the Galaxy and could skip almost all the way to the end of the film when it had only just begun.
That could quite possibly just being taking advantage of the torrent block downloading. Normally you download blocks based on the least available, but you can pull them in any order you want. This would allow the server to selectively buffer whatever you need fairly quickly.
Cache is likely and that has legal ramifications. If they are just providing a viewer their hands are clean legally, if they cache they are in danger RE DMCA. Cool product, works remarkably well.
I'd suspect they have to be using a cache, too, but I tried a whole slew of random torrents off kickass.to, and if it played it at all, I could scrub every single one of them to any point in the video with a mere 1-2 sec delay. So, they've either cached a gi-normous amount of torrents, or they've come up with something really interesting in the ability to dynamically stream any block with very low latency.
A free seedbox with no login barrier is unscalable for many reasons. Its neat, but I would rather see everyone who thinks this is interesting contribute to the Webtorrent project, which strives to make being a torrent node as easy as visiting a URL, using WebRTC as the data channel.
>I would rather see everyone who thinks this is interesting contribute to the Webtorrent project
Um. I'm not quite sure the set "thinks this is interesting" is entirely included within "has the ability to contribute to the Webtorrent project". In fact, I think the former more than likely has a bigger intersect with "will probably break the Webtorrent project and/or disrupt the community" than with the positive contributor set.
webtorrent doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. The most important part, client integration, hasn't occurred anywhere, and the author hasn't even pursued it.
How can you say it's not getting anywhere? Last time I checked, Feross is pushing an incredible amount of modular, high quality code. His #webtorrent IRC room is highly active and has even become a meeting place of sorts for people working on other decentralization projects. The idea that client integration is the most important part is entirely your opinion, and it's an opinion that not many agree with. In a completely browser-based form webtorrent could still have the potential to cut media hosting costs by a factor of 100.
I explained why in my comment. The protocol needs to be integrated into desktop clients and it hasn't been. Moreover, feross is not trying to convince client developers to incorporate webtorrent, nor is he submitting patches to those clients.
foobarqux, actually he is planning on doing that. I met with him just the other week, so I know this for fact. It just takes time, maybe you could help contribute?
Tribler is free and will prioritize piece-picking to allow immediate playback while the download is in progress. This has long been frowned upon in the BitTorrent community and usually leads to client bans from the more pickiest of the private sharing sites.
What's with the attitude that torrents == piracy? Torrents have many legitimate uses and is great technology for decentralized sharing, for example, you can download some Linux distributions via torrents from the official site what in turn reduces cost for the maintainers. It's the same as saying that all Tor users are pedophiles. I expect people here in HN to be more technologically literate and less biased than average Joe.
170 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 210 ms ] threadCould you provide us with a little info on the technologies behind it?
edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-seeding
super-leeching?
If this thing only gives content to you and you don't give anything back than it's pretty cool.
Different mkv from Kickass: format not supported (without loading, apparently, though I wonder if it's cached given that it was Guardians of the Galaxy)
TV episode of Gotham: same as for previous
Something is happening because it says e.g. 'Gotham' in the top and retrieves a nice faded background of the cast but I keep getting 'format not supported'
EDIT: seems to be my browser or connection; trying a different machine on a different IP and it works very nicely and quickly indeed.
http://v4.joker.org/v/d027a2418e34d040f015a75376d627c0a022e2...
For recent developments, take a look at http://webtorrent.io
This isn't a torrent client in your browser, the server actually does the torrenting for you and then streams the file to you as it's downloading on the server.
I've never seen one that didn't. Certainly the most common containers do.
"The court said: Whether looking at a cached copy of protected content, without downloading or printing it, amounts to infringement. Lower courts held that it does, a finding unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court.".
A download would classed as anything that didn't satisfy those conditions. So if you're storing something for the purposes of making use of it later it would fall outside the exception as it would not be temporary or transient.
Technically your browser downloads content of course, but provided the content is only viewed whilst you are in the browser and not retained following the end of your browser session (or were merely retained in your cache), this would not constitute a download for the purposes of putting a user outside the exception to infringement under Art 5(1).
[1] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...
See Richard O'Dwyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer
If so, then high-profile and particularly-irritating pirates will be targeted, and if the laws don't specifically make it illegal then they will be twisted to enable prosecution anyway.
In the United States, prosecutors routinely fabricate financial returns for piracy, that way it's a felony instead of a misdemeanor. They do this by making the argument that the movies they downloaded for personal viewing constitute financial proceeds.
When such a thing is not only possible, but standard operating procedure, asking about the legal ramifications are silly. You're probably still safe just by being part of the herd, but they've been known to single out people to make examples of too.
For you, it is copyright infringement. But it's hard to catch you. I guess you are vulnerable to joker.org giving you up if they get subpoenaed, if they keep records.
For joker.org, that depends on how they are classified. It probably does not qualify for a transitory network safeharbor because 1) if it's servers are uploading it is giving the file to more than one person and 2) joker.org is arguably modifying the content by assembling it into a stream. Though I could be convinced it isn't modifying it just by streaming it. If they are caching, it would also bust their safeharbor.
If it is classified as a §512(c) site, it has a better argument actually. Though I don't see a DMCA agent listed on the site.
I'd say no.
I would not use it if I'd fear to be discovered.
As for prosecution of torrent seeders, that's not really possible anymore IIRC, since the "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (= stockpile saving of which IP address has been connect to which landline, in case it is needed for law enforcement) has been declared illegal. AFAIK movie torrents were never really monitored, the focus was always on the latest music releases. I also haven't heard of any fines for torrenting in the last 2-3 years, but that might be because I'm not really in that age anymore.
Or if you want to be extra careful, use a VPN. ipredator is reasonably good, and you get an IP number from Sweden so you can also bypass all the GEMA crap.
[1] https://www.frootvpn.com
It's likely that it's caching material for torrents. I tried Guardians of the Galaxy and could skip almost all the way to the end of the film when it had only just begun.
That said, its likely that they're cacheing.
Um. I'm not quite sure the set "thinks this is interesting" is entirely included within "has the ability to contribute to the Webtorrent project". In fact, I think the former more than likely has a bigger intersect with "will probably break the Webtorrent project and/or disrupt the community" than with the positive contributor set.
Good job, I hope you find a way to make it stick around!
So all in all, hardly a new concept, but this looks really convenient to use.
http://www.tribler.org/
Here's the US-Turkey extradition treaty:
http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Turkey%20International%20Ext...