P2p File Sharing - PUBLIC EDUCATION School
- Public Access Systems

"There are many legitimate uses for P2P technology.

Among the entities that use BitTorrent are NASA, Red Hat Fedora, NetBSD and ironically Time-Warner

 

How to Teach Webcraft and Programming to Free-Range Students

Greg Wilson of Software Carpentry and Beautiful Code fame, is teaching an online course called How to Teach Webcraft and Programming to Free-Range Students via P2PU: What do we know about how novices learn webcraft and programming, and how can we apply that knowledge to teaching free-range learners?
Greg is great lecturer and all about being data-driven. Learn about the data behind the demographics of programming and some recent grassroots outreach efforts to get more women into programming communities. Everyone is welcome to participate or follow along.

This group will explore how we, as mentors, can best help them. Topics will include:

* What does research tell us about how people learn?
* Why are the demographics of programming so unbalanced?
* What best practices in instructional design are relevant to
free-range learners?
* What skills do people need in order to bake their own web?
* How are grassroots groups trying to teach these things now?
* What's working and what isn't?

What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True

 

Pirate Bay to abandon .torrent files for magnet links 2012
Filesharing titan the Pirate Bay has promised to remove all .torrent files from its site. But it's not to placate rights-holders it's going to replace them with "magnet links" instead.
Back in 2009, the Pirate Bay shut down its tracker a server that helps people who want a file to find a person who has it. While a tracker doesn't actually host any files, operating one for the purposes of helping people share copyrighted content has generally been found to break the law in the countries where cases have gone to court. Trackers have largely been made redundant by magnet links which allow for TorIindex a "trackerless" torrent.

TorIindex is still in very early beta, but we aim to be the best search-engine to locate content using magnet URI:s.
All content is automatically indexed by our crawler. You may tell our crawler where to look by manually adding a torrent file URL or providing a torrent file to our indexing engine, and it will be added to our search index. We will soon add support to provide our crawler with RSS feeds URL:s that will be included in the crawling. Our indexing engine automatically determents what type the contents of a magnet URI is, there is no moderating or filtering of incoming results, everything is fully automatic to keep everything as simple as possible. Swarm peer statistics is primarily collected directly from the DHT cloud, to make sure that swarms that are widely available are displayed before smaller swarms in search results, but also if needed we collect peer statistics from the included trackers. As we only index magnet URI:s, we don't index from torrent files that have the private flag set because it's incompatible with the magnet URI:s.

Originally, BitTorrent users would download a .torrent file which, when opened in your BitTorrent software on your computer, calculates a "torrent hash" that identifies the files required. The software then sends that hash to a server, and connects to people who have the files that you want. They then download.
Magnet links differ by making the torrent hash calculation on the server, sending that data within the link itself. In the same way that opening a link to a Spotify track sends that data to Spotify, a magnet link sends the relevant data to your BitTorrent client, so that the download can begin.
The other function that a tracker provides is helping people find other people that are downloading the same files, so that they can share completed chunks of those files. That role has been superceded by technologies like DHT and Peer Exchange (PEX), which share information on who is downloading what over the network. Instead of asking a central server who has what file, you ask the people you're already downloading from, who ask the people they're downloading from, and so on. The downside is that it can take a little longer for downloads to "get going," but the network effect means that this information can generally be found very quickly, especially for popular files. The development of these technologies means that .torrent files are pretty redundant now. That has side benefits, too.
Side Effects: It shrinks the size of the Pirate Bay massively allowing copies of the site to be hosted with significantly less bandwidth, so that it's even harder to shut down. It's even feasible that you could carry a copy of the site on a USB stick. It's worth noting that .torrent files will never disappear entirely. One person needs to use a .torrent for each new file to inject crucial information about a download into the "swarm" of people downloading. For most practical purposes, though, and for most users, they'll soon become a thing of the past.

Judge Slams RIAA, $675k Fine Ruled Unconstitutional
July 09, 2010 Another break happened today in the RIAA's case against Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum, as the $675k fine was reduced by 90%. The judge in the case criticised the RIAA and held that the jury's damages were unconstitutional. Even the reduced fine is described as “severe, even harsh” by the District Judge. Reducing the jury's $675,000 award, however, also sends another no less important message: The Due Process Clause does not merely protect large corporations, like BMW and State Farm, from grossly excessive punitive awards. It also protects ordinary people like Joel Tenenbaum.

ISPs Don't Have To Block The Pirate Bay, Court Rules
July 10, 2010 Two ISPs have won their court battle against an anti-piracy group which had demanded that they block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. Yesterday a judge at the Antwerp Commercial Court rejected the blocking demands and labeled them “disproportionate”. The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation has reacted angrily, accusing the ISPs of siding with The Pirate Bay.

Pirate Bay and MegaUpload Escape Domain Seizure by US
July 07, 2010
As part of an initiative to crack down on Internet piracy and counterfeiting, the US Government recently took action against sites making available movies and TV shows. Arrests did not feature in the action, but controversially the authorities seized site domain names instead. TorrentFreak has learned that both The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload domains were also on the target list.

 

May 2010 BitTorrent has decided to open source its new uTorrent protocol, which has now entered a public beta. The software is available at GitHub and the license can be viewed here. Reportedly this is the MIT License. BitTorrent has decided to open source its new uTorrent  protocol, which has now entered a public beta. The new software supports streaming as files are downloading, by downloading portions of a file in order. The software also has features ISPs might like. It's more aware of congestion [1], and will automatically rein itself in. This dynamic throttling capability may make some downloads slower, but Ars Technica notes [2] uTorrent will also grab 100% of available bandwidth when that's available, so some might be faster.

 

Should ISPs (including the university in its role as an ISP for faculty, staff, and students) have the responsbility for proactively blocking illegal traffic?  If so, how can they distinguish between, say, a stolen Time-Warner movie and the legitimate copy that's being redistributed via BitTorrent at Time-Warner's explicit request?
Do we give up one of the fundamental tenets of the Internet architeture, the notion that endpoints determine what traffic flows, rather than the center?  In this regard, it is worth remembering that the three most radical Internet innovations -- the Web, Napster, and Skype -- came not from ISPs, "official" standards bodies (i.e., the IETF or the ITU), or major research labs or universities, but from the edges of the Net.  (Yes, I know that CERN is a major research lab, but for physics!)" ~ Steve Bellovin

At PCPS we use both WinGuardian and Fortress to prevent students from installing or deleting software on our public access systems.

1. First, I install Windows 95 Custom to insure that I pick the componants I desire. If you are purchasing Dell's Windows will come pre-installed. Go to the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs and check the installation componants, adding the ones you want and deleting the ones you don't.
2. Second, I use TweakUI, to set up the desktop and other options the way I want.
3. Third, I install all of the application software and set-up the defaults the way I want them.
4. Fourth, I use PolEdit from the MicroSoft PowerToys to set various policies for my users.
5. Fifth, I use regedit to make an export copy of the Current_User/Software and Local_Machine /Software keys. This creates two files with a *.reg name. When a student changes the software setting double-click on the two *.reg files and back to default.
   Please note that unless you disable Password caching every user & set the Password profile to every user uses the same profile, they will get a copy of the desktop, start menu & registry in their profile directory.
   
6. Sixth, I install either WinGuardian or Fortress, (different departments wanted different protection schemes) and set the protection policies needed.
7. Seventh, I use Ghost to copy the hard drive of the standard system to all of the others. I keep the one standard system for testing purposes and reuse Ghost whenever, a new machine comes in or I wish to upgrade or change an application.

Roy G. Schriftman, MS, MBA
Instructor Computer Science, Manager Computer Laboratory
[e] r.schrif at usip dot edu

FYI

Textbook Torrents, promises more than 5,000 textbooks for download in PDF format, complete with the original textbook layout and full-color illustrations. Users must simply set up a free account and download a free software program that uses a popular peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent.

MediaSentry, is the service that scours peer-to-peer networks for the Internet-protocol numbers of copyright infringers used by Steven Marks, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America who goes after college students.NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Is Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG 'investigator' MediaSentry operating illegally in your state?. The Massachusetts State police has already banned the company, and it's been accused of operating without a license in Oregon, Florida, Texas, and New York. Similar charges have now been leveled the organization in Michigan. Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth, in response to a complaint, has confirmed that MediaSentry is not licensed in Michigan, and referred the complainant to the local prosecutor."

Jimmy Lovine will no longer be employed by Universal Music.  He will run LimeWire, the P2P service based on the Gnutella protocol. All the music you can eat for about $10.00 a month. About Gnutella, P2P GNU, Bit Torrent, Darknet and Waste an encrypted p2p application meant chiefly for secure communication.

FILE SHARING APPLICATIONS AND RESOURCES

 

 

 

1. Educational CyberPlayGround: TRENDS IN COMPUTING F**k Big Media: Rolling Your Own
of a program into the network of P2P clients, and they handle the work themselves. More than this, because of the P2P technology used by the BBC
 
2. Educational CyberPlayGround: Free Music Downloads, MP3's, Music Piracy, Peer to
Revenue decline due to P2P. P2P - Much of the 'piracy' that ... tracks. More important, P2P networks enable sharing of content
 
3. Educational CyberPlayGround: Digital Rights Management and FREE MUSIC DOWNLOADS
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing restrictions After all ... network, but not P2P? How about P2P applications reconfigured to share songs ... can recognize P2P transmissions by their unique
 
4. Educational CyberPlayGround: Copyleft and the Creative Commons License
 
5. Educational CyberPlayGround: NetHappenings NewsLetter
writes about using p2p networks, specifically bittorrent, to create ... the power of P2P distribution to create a global ... network of P2P clients, and the p2p network peers distribute
 
6. Educational CyberPlayGround: INTERNET II News Articles
powered, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology for academia has ... peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, many college students have ... Direct Connect, a P2P system designed to exploit Internet2's
 
7. Educational CyberPlayGround: Security - TOOLS
procedure to tighten up P2P What they will find out about you when you use p2p and are tracked. - See What You Share ... the World YaCy a p2p-based distributed Web Search Engine
 
8. Educational CyberPlayGround: Internet ll - P2P - California Colleges Building Own

9. Educational CyberPlayGround: Free Music Downloads, MUSIC SITES ONLINE, Burn CD's
Video Game Music Archive Music Commercials Listening Online P2P BITTORRENT, KaZaA , Grokster , Morpheus , Emusic which works with Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, allows users
 
10. Educational CyberPlayGround: Music Deals, Music Contract Law, Copyright Law, Free ...
LYRICS FOR EVERY SONG About DeCSS and P2P Ripping and EnCoding CD Audio DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGMENT - DRM ABOUT DeCSS and DVD's K12 Classroom

Find P2P File Sharing Applications

Fileshareing List

Open Source - Classroom Curriculum Sharing Tools

Internet Tools

Stanford Videos