HBO trying to subdue Bittorrents of ROME

[Melbosa]

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/hbo_attacking_bittorrent.html

HBO is actively poisoning the BitTorrent downloads of the new show Rome. In addition to an older tactic of offering bogus downloads that never complete, HBO is now obstructing the downloads offered by other people. BitTorrent downloads are peer-to-peer, but the peers are introduced to each other by a tracker ("you're looking for Rome Season 1 Episode 2, talk to 127.0.0.1"). HBO runs peers that tell the tracker they have all the chunks of the show, but then send garbage data when a downloader requests a chunk. The downloading client can detect that it's garbage and will try another peer for the chunk, but the end result is that it takes much much longer to download shows. This isn't HBO's first move to stop online distribution (see this story of a guy who received a "you're busted" letter from HBO) but it's the most active effort I've heard about. It's also very effective--to test this, I randomly selected a healthy torrent for the 2nd episode of Rome, and after hundreds of failed chunks the download stalled at around 30%.

Thx Slashdot and Cova

[Fedora Gal]

This makes sense for movies and what not but I still don't see the point in going to this much effort to block the downloading of something you broadcast on television. You can't stop a person from popping in a VHS and taping the episode when it's on TV, and personally I like the fact that if I miss a broadcast of the show on movie central I can most likely snoop around on the I-net and find it so I'm up to date.



I see that they are trying to stop pirating, or at least hinder it but with TV shows I really do think it's a waste of effort. If I really like the show I'll probably end up buying the DVD box set anyway regardless of how many episodes I've happened to download already. Besides, anybody who pays for cable or satelite gets to see it for free anyway!

[Cova]

If Rome was playing on regular TV I'd agree Shaeleam, but HBO is a premium monthly-subscription channel.



And BTW - Movie Central is showing Rome here for Shaw subscribers (also an extra monthly subscription channel though)

[Shayne]

Ive had no issues downloading my episodes of ROME from tvtorrents.com

[Melbosa]

This makes sense for movies and what not but I still don't see the point in going to this much effort to block the downloading of something you broadcast on television. You can't stop a person from popping in a VHS and taping the episode when it's on TV, and personally I like the fact that if I miss a broadcast of the show on movie central I can most likely snoop around on the I-net and find it so I'm up to date.



I see that they are trying to stop pirating, or at least hinder it but with TV shows I really do think it's a waste of effort. If I really like the show I'll probably end up buying the DVD box set anyway regardless of how many episodes I've happened to download already. Besides, anybody who pays for cable or satelite gets to see it for free anyway!

The issue with you downloading TV Shows is that they remove the commercials, which removes the revenue aspect of the Show for the network.  ROME is another story, but as Cova pointed out, its a higher tier subscription base (and yeah Star/Bell get this on Showcase/Movie Central), without commercials, so that is the source of the revenue.

[Lazybones]

Not really al that new, this has been going on for years now on eDonkey and Gnutella networks..  It just results in smarter clients and more block lists.



It does somewhat degrade performance but only until the hosts are identified.

[Darren Dirt]

Never heard of this "Rome" program. I'm at this point trying to persuade myself not to watch Season 5 of "24", then I've got no TV addictions anymore





I'm a bit disturbed by how HBO just presumes to have the right to send out fraudulent information to people they have never met. They surely feel they are justified, to protect their property, but I thought "2 wrongs don't make a right"... Heck, why not send in a virus, so their fear of damages (i.e. lost profits) justify willfully causing damage to others' computers :rolleyes:







What are your guys' thoughts on the "Letter" linked above?

http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2005/08/29/15h13m51s

(seems that guy's blog is gonzo now, big shock)



one comment re. the Letter sez:

One thing people are not taking into account regarding HBO (Media Sentry) sending bad data. Even if you only connect to a tracker to keep stats of peers and seeders (not to actually download), the bad seeders still have bots designed to capture your IP address, send it to the bad seeders and start sending you the bad data packets, unrequested!. This turns into a flood with 40-50+ packets per second or more. I monitored this with peer gaurdian and an IP packet analyzer. Even if you disconnect from the tracker it does not stop. I watched these packets continue for 10+ hours after the fact until I finally changed my IP. This is also known as a DISTRIBUTED DENIAL OF SERVICE attack and is unquestionably illegal. Remember, you do not have to be actively downloading to be attacked by this method. The flood of packets did prevent me from using my browser to surf the net during the experiment so I was being denied the service I had paid for. I hope somebody with more legal means than I can look at this aspect of HBO / Media Sentry and start a class action lawsuit for DDOS'ing. :-)

Wow, HBO behind a DOS attack? Willfully?  :shock:

[Melbosa]

Never heard of this "Rome" program. I'm at this point trying to persuade myself not to watch Season 5 of "24", then I've got no TV addictions anymore Wink





I'm a bit disturbed by how HBO just presumes to have the right to send out fraudulent information to people they have never met. They surely feel they are justified, to protect their property, but I thought "2 wrongs don't make a right"... Heck, why not send in a virus, so their fear of damages (i.e. lost profits) justify willfully causing damage to others' computers :rolleyes:





What are your guys' thoughts on the "Letter" linked above?

http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2005/08/29/15h13m51s

Well I don't know about the one linked above... couldn't find it , but the one linked below... meh scare tactics.

[Cova]

Frist off, keep in mind that HBO is in the right in their sending of corrupt data.  They own the rights to the material, and they don't want people illegally copying it.  And they aren't doing whats been done for years on every other P2P network (flooding the networks with files with good-looking filenames but no content) - they are sending data packets for GOOD torrents, but with corrupt data in them.  What they don't realize they're doing though is starting a game or contest between hackers - the result of this is that Bit-torrent will become a stronger protocol, with better/more efficient error tracking and correction.  eg. currently every client on a torrent is keeping its own list of known bad clients, snubbing them after receiving 2 or 3 bad packets from an IP - I expect one of the first responses (after everyone upgrades their clients to have at least that functionality) is for every client to start reporting bad clients to the tracker, which will stop the current method HBO is using pretty quick (though it will require all clients and trackers to be upgraded)



As for the DDOS thing - that could prove to be very interesting.  I can't see anyone going to court and saying "I was downloading this show, but after I finished HBO kept DOS'ing my connection for the next week".  But if say someone spoofed a bunch of packets to the poisoning bit-torrent clients with IP's of say, a lot of large companies - well those companies I'm sure would turn on HBO and have all those bit-torrent clients turned off in no-time, and probably sue them for lost revenue during any downtime as well.

[Darren Dirt]

I maybe confused, but it seemed that one posting was saying that he and presumably other people were not doing *any* downloading at the time of HBO's actions, but by those actions they were themselves "innocently" (as innocently as a regular BTer can get, I guess) being DDOSed.



I think that's the worrisome detail. Innocent bystanders, at least innocent at the time of the attack. And I'm sure fear of assumptions of guilt will keep those victims quiet, surely HBO knows this too :|