this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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I found I2P much better than Tor network, and now it supports BitTorrent protocol too https://geti2p.net/en/docs/applications/bittorrent .

Why haven't the pirates migrated to I2P? Why are we still using clearnet and making people backout of seeding cause of DMCA?

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[–] [email protected] 121 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The main reason is that libtorrent, which is the literal backbone of most torrenting clients, has implemented supported for I2P only recently in its latest v2.x branch.... It takes time for libtorrent to iron out bugs and stablize and it takes more for clients to upgrade their embedded libtorrent to v2.x.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

libtorrent 2 also has some issues. On unRAID for instance it causes crashes so I am forced to use v1 builds. And on other systems it has high memory usage so it's not exactly ready for prime time.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hate to put it this way because libtorrent is a wonderful piece of open-source software maintained by volunteers but as is typical with its history, releases are going to be bumpy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah my comment wasn't a knock at the software or devs. I just think libtorrent v2 is not quite ready for widespread use yet. Since OP is talking people migrating to I2P then it needs to be more stable before that can happen. A few years from now I'm sure it will be a great option.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

This is the best answer. The software just has to mature a little bit more. But it's a matter of time.

Once we reach the phase where most mainstream bittorrent clients support I2P by default, it will become the new standard.

Most people don't use bleeding edge features.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Probably mostly cause:

  • Slow speed unless you you keep your router 24/7
  • People are used to download torrents fast
  • Clearnet has much bigger torrent database
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • if you configure your node correctly, you won't see much difference in bandwidth.
  • i2psnark can be fast.
  • but clearnet comes with an issue of tracking.
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I think your response answers the question.

If configured correctly. Can be fast. IMO, once those statements are less conditional and prone to error, we might see the pro of privacy carry more weight.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

People don't understand sometimes how much of a tech-ethusiast bubble we got going on here

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (7 children)

What kind of speeds are you seeing per torrent and global with a few torrents running? I didn't try torrenting on I2p yet but even with my node on 24/7 even browsing was hella slow ( i was port forwarded too)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Chicken or egg problem isn't it. Most of these issues wouldn't exist if more people used it I feel.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

3 billion devices run Java.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There is a more performant C++ implementation but it's been a long while since I've used either it or the java implementation. Worth checking out.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (7 children)

i've messed around with i2p, it requires much more technical knowledge than just torrenting and there's a bit of a learning curve to navigating and configuring it. plus it honestly hasn't changed much in years, and i'm not sure how much i trust the developers working on it. i do agree that it's better than tor though

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Tor was really struggling and I wasn't looking forward to learning how to use something else safely. I2P was such a massively huge improvement at least for my use case.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Agreed. Even getting support over an issue (initially) was troublesome. But somehow I ended up solving it through other channels. But just like torrenting, or any other tech, once you get enough experience to solve issues on your own, things get a bit easy.

A tech being easy to grasp can be an issue too, leading to more script kitties messing in with the protocol.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I would like I2P to be implemented as a default by pirates, but it looks like people (including myself) are lazy

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I just can't be bothered to switch when torrenting works fine as is.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

From what I have read on the upcoming implementation on i2p in qbit, I do not forsee it being adopted by the core torrent user base. The main issue I have with it is that while you can download from clearnet peers, you are only able to seed to other i2p peers. This completely eliminates any adoption by anyone using private trackers. Its not like the guys in brazil are going to jump through an extra hoop to hide their ip since they never needed to in the first place, so they can be ruled out for adoption as well. What I really fear is that its going to create a completely unnecessary schism in the userbase with a sort of 'leechnet' walled garden of i2p users which would hurt the greater availability of seeders. I also haven't gotten a straight answer from anyone how ports are going to work in i2p, since normally its imperative to have a forwarded port in order to be a full participant. Unless i2p users can seed to clearnet users without issue, I am going to be worried about the impact on torrent health as a whole.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think non technical people find the concept of a network within a network confusing. I think its more of i2p itself.

I do think it is the future of filesharing and if I was to create a torrent I'd use i2p. Hopefully with more clients implementing support it sees further adoption.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I do think it is the future of filesharing

In internet years, Torrenting is old. I2P is old. Even torrenting in I2P is old. Nothing about this is "the future".

Ideally, the future of file sharing would involve a fully/natively integrated anonymous network with content-addressable distributed filesystem.

But this will probably not happen, as that architecture didn't see large scale success before, except in Japan where at least some elements of this architecture are used in their popular P2P networks.

The I2P crowd themselves tried with Tahoe-LAFS, but that was never really a network, even aMule over I2P had more traction, and by traction I mean tens or hundreds of users, not thousands or beyond.

Ironically, the one content-addressable distributed filesystem that gained some attraction (outside Japan) is IPFS, which doesn't offer anonymity, or replication, or anything special really. Yet for some reason, some hype-susceptible techies liked it, together with the NFT crowd, a great fit.

The future of file sharing will depend on where most content will land where it will be easily accessible and quickly grabbable. How those networks will look like? Nobody knows.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This as fuck. Plus it’s not mainstream so people don’t feel pressure to try it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is exactly what I'm looking forward too!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

It supported torrent for ages, but it has only one tracker that doesn't really have very much content. Now qBitTorrent or something else supports it out of the box.

I2P is very slow, slower than Tor. Maybe after more people join, it will be faster. Last time I tried it was painfully slow to even load most eepsites.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Likely because Usenet still works and so does xdcc via irc.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

2 main issues with it:

Too slow for the average user. A lot less torrents available.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Because I'm not knowledgeable enough to make it work. I've managed to install it and figured out that I need to run the restartable version. Lots of text with screenshots or a video(s) would help. I'm not a digital native. This is one of many retirement projects. Listening to more music than I can afford to buy greatly improves the quality of my life.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've used it to test, I don't do it because I can torrent fine on clearnet and I feel like doing it is needlessly congesting the network, consuming traffic that I don't really need.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Your not congesting the network, when you run a router to access I2P you also help the network

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because people believe a VPN or a seedbox is gonna save them from legal repercussions. They paid for it with their real information and credit card too, for convenience. They compromised their private tracker identity and must abandon the trackers the moment the legal landscape incentives companies to pursue individual copyright infringements. But most probably won't, and face the consequences if that ever happens.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would also say that this is because anonimity is not needed by all countries. I know that in Spain torrenting is not a big issue and ISPs don't care that much (even though distributed Copyrighted content is still not allowed). They usually go after people profiting from distributing copyrighted company rather than people downloading or distributing for free.

Disclaimer: I think some of my info is a bit outdated so if anyone has more recent info about Spain's situation please tell me.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The more people who use I2P for relatively normal reasons like piracy, the safer it is for people who want to avoid censorship.

Its reputation of Dread bezo addicts is probably why nobody uses it unfortunately

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