Forget Megaupload! Researchers call new file-sharing network 'invincible'
Published February 10, 2012
News Corp Australian Papers
Researchers have created invincible file-sharing software they say cannot be shut down by governments or anti-piracy organizations.
Known as Tribler, its creators say the only way to take it down “is to take the Internet down.”
Developed by a team of researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the BitTorrent network doesn’t require torrent sites to find or download content. Instead it is based on pure peer-to-peer communication, TorrentFreak reports.
The file-sharing community is still reeling with the seizure of Megaupload by US authorities over alleged copyright infringements, and the voluntary closure of popular website.
But lead researcher Dr Pouwelse told TorrentFreak that Tribler will still work if all the torrent sites and trackers are gone, and simply can’t be shutdown, blocked or censored.
Users can download the software and then share files with each other without a “listing site” hosting the files, like regular torrent websites such as The Pirate Bay.
Tribler has been designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline.
The technology has been tested for six years, and has never been offline, Dr. Pouwelse said.
How it works
When users search for content on Tribler, results come directly from other peers instead of a central server.
By clicking on the desired search result, the meta-data is downloaded from another peer.
“No matter what crazy laws may pass in the future, people will always be able to share,” says TorrentFreak.
Tribler only has a few thousand users at present and is looking for people to act as “superpeers” to distribute lists of active downloaders.
Read more at news.com.au.
