CLOSER: A Collaborative Locality-aware Overlay SERvice

Current Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing systems make use of a considerable percentage of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) bandwidth. This paper presents the Collaborative Locality-aware Overlay SERvice (CLOSER), an architecture that aims at lessening the usage of expensive international links by exploiting traffic locality (i.e., a resource is downloaded from the inside of the ISP whenever possible). The paper proves the effectiveness of CLOSER by analysis and simulation, also comparing this architecture with existing solutions for traffic locality in P2P systems. While savings on international links can be attractive for ISPs, it is necessary to offer some features that can be of interest for users to favor a wide adoption of the application. For this reason, CLOSER also introduces a privacy module that may arouse the users' interest and encourage them to switch to the new architectur

Online Media Piracy: Convergence, Culture, and the Problem of Media Change

This thesis proposes that there is a symbiotic relationship between the emergence of online media piracy and the industrial, economic and legal changes that have shaped contemporary popular media in the early 21st century. The Internet is at the heart of most recent transformations of the popular media environment, such as the emergence of video-on-demand formats for film and television consumption and the impact this has had on the nature of those media forms. This thesis discusses the powerful role played by online media piracy in shaping these developments, both through changing the expectations of consumers, and the options that are available for distributors of media content. As well as exploring the diverse forms and practices of online media piracy today, this thesis also explores theories of media change, considering how we might understand such piracy as a force underpinning media change, and how the changes it has helped shape might be placed in a broader historical context. To that end, the history and impact of online media piracy are considered alongside other examples, such as the arrival of video recording devices and the expansion of cable television in the 1980s and 90s, and the significance of international trade deals impacting access to media via “geoblocking” and other techniques of access management. Finally, this thesis also examines debates around copyright, and the potential political significance of piracy as a tool for accessing media and culture, viewing online media piracy as a crucial practice appearing at a nexus of industrial and popular interests, tied to technological, economic and legal developments, and to changing consumer behavior and expectations

Resistance commons : file-sharing litigation and the social system of commoning

textThis dissertation is an investigation into the practice of peer-to-peer file-sharing and the litigation campaign targeting individual file-sharers carried out by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from 2003 to 2008. The competing conceptualizations of social relations which motivate the conflict over peer-to-peer file-sharing are explored using a combination of Autonomist Marxist theory and structuration theory. Peer-to-peer file-sharing is framed as part of the social system of commoning stemming from the recent ascendancy of immaterial labor within that sector of the economy dedicated to the production and distribution of informational and cultural goods. The RIAA litigation campaign is framed as a reaction to the emergence of new forms of social relations which are seen by the content-producing industries as subversive of revenue streams premised on commodity exchange in informational and cultural goods. The history of the RIAA litigation campaign is presented in detail with careful attention given to those instances in which defendants and other interested parties fought back against RIAA legal actions. The acts of resistance within the legal arena affected the ultimate potential of the litigation campaign to control the spread of file-sharing activities. Subsequent legal campaigns which have been based on the RIAA litigation model are also examined. These later file-sharing cases have been met with similar forms of resistance which have likewise mitigated the impact of legal efforts to combat file-sharing. In addition, a survey of file-sharers is included in this research as part of an attempt to understand the relationship between legal actions targeting peer-to-peer systems and individual file-sharers and the technological and social development of peer-to-peer systems. This research argues that file-sharing litigation has proven ineffective in turning back the flood of file-sharing and may have increased the technological sophistication and community ties among file-sharers. In the end, the conflict over peer-to-peer file-sharing is cast as a manifestation of a larger dynamic of capitalist crisis as content-producing industries attempt to come to terms with the contradictory tendencies of immaterial labor and the production of common pools of digital resources.Radio-Television-Fil

Amateur-to-Amateur

Copyright, it is commonly said, matters in society because it encourages the production of socially beneficial, culturally significant expressive content. Our focus on copyright\u27s recent history, however, blinds us to the social information practices that have always existed. In this Article, we examine these social information practices, and query copyright\u27s role within them. We posit a functional model of what is necessary for creative content to move from creator to user. These are the functions dealing with the creation, selection, production, dissemination, promotion, sale, and use of expressive content. We demonstrate how centralized commercial control of information content has been the driving force behind copyright\u27s expansion. All of the functions that copyright industries once controlled, however, are undergoing revolutionary decentralization and disintermediation. Different aspects of information technology, notably the digitization of information, widespread computer ownership, the rise of the Internet, and the development of social software, threaten the viability and desirability of centralized control over every one of the content functions. These functions are increasingly being performed by individuals and disaggregated groups. This raises an issue for copyright as the main regulatory force in information practices: copyright assumes a central control requirement that no longer applies for the development of expressive content. We examine the normative implications of this shift for our information policy in this new post-copyright era. Most notably, we conclude that copyright law needs to be adjusted in order to recognize the opportunity and desirability of decentralized content, and the expanded marketplace of ideas it promises

Pirates, Hydras, Trolls, and... Authors? On the Authorial Capacities of Digital Media Piracy

In this thesis, I undertake a positive analysis of digital media piracy to examine the movement’s authorial capacities. Proposed by James Meese as a way of looking beyond the traditional “piracy is theft” framework, this perspective offers new insights about how the increasingly mundane act of downloading and sharing media files can incite social change. I begin by examining what it means to be a digital media pirate, and how that question is part of the construction of the piracy movement. In the second chapter, I explore the complex relationship between piracy and information capitalism, highlighting how piracy arises from within information capitalism. In the third chapter, I look to how moral panic discourse has been used to demonize pirates, but also how this process has been appropriated by pirates to circulate counter-hegemonic discourse. In the fourth chapter, I examine how pirates are the authors of alternative ethical criteria within private filesharing communities, and how pirates mobilize moral and ethical discourse to push back against attempts to impede their ability to pursue a good piratical life. The final chapter of this thesis takes up the ethnographically rich moment of the Kickass Torrents shutdown in July 2016. Looking at the shut down as an event that like digital media piracy is both meaningful yet mundane, we see how pirates, though contesting romanticized and naturalized norms of property and authorship, push for a new form of authorship constituted by p2p communication in online spaces. Through these perspectives on the piracy movement in the summer of 2016, I argue that through the agglomerated effects of individual acts of piracy, the broader piracy movement radically changes the ways we understand and engage with cultural media objects

A framework for the dynamic management of Peer-to-Peer overlays

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications have been associated with inefficient operation, interference with other network services and large operational costs for network providers. This thesis presents a framework which can help ISPs address these issues by means of intelligent management of peer behaviour. The proposed approach involves limited control of P2P overlays without interfering with the fundamental characteristics of peer autonomy and decentralised operation. At the core of the management framework lays the Active Virtual Peer (AVP). Essentially intelligent peers operated by the network providers, the AVPs interact with the overlay from within, minimising redundant or inefficient traffic, enhancing overlay stability and facilitating the efficient and balanced use of available peer and network resources. They offer an “insider‟s” view of the overlay and permit the management of P2P functions in a compatible and non-intrusive manner. AVPs can support multiple P2P protocols and coordinate to perform functions collectively. To account for the multi-faceted nature of P2P applications and allow the incorporation of modern techniques and protocols as they appear, the framework is based on a modular architecture. Core modules for overlay control and transit traffic minimisation are presented. Towards the latter, a number of suitable P2P content caching strategies are proposed. Using a purpose-built P2P network simulator and small-scale experiments, it is demonstrated that the introduction of AVPs inside the network can significantly reduce inter-AS traffic, minimise costly multi-hop flows, increase overlay stability and load-balancing and offer improved peer transfer performance

Using current uptime to improve failure detection in peer-to-peer networks

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks share computer resources or services through the exchange of information between participating nodes. These nodes form a virtual network overlay by creating a number of connections with one another. Due to the transient nature of nodes within these systems any connection formed should be monitored and maintained to ensure the routing table is kept up-to-date. Typically P2P networks predefine a fixed keep-alive period, a maximum interval in which connected nodes must exchange messages. If no other message has been sent within this interval then keep-alive messages are exchanged to ensure the corresponding node has not left the system. A fixed periodic interval can be viewed as a centralised, static and deterministic mechanism; maintaining overlays in an predictable, reliable and non-adaptive fashion. Several studies have shown that older peers are more likely to remain in the network longer than their short-lived counterparts. Therefore using the distribution of peer session times and the current age of peers as key attributes, we propose three algorithms which allow connections to extend the interval between successive keep-alive messages based upon the likelihood that a corresponding node will remain in the system. By prioritising keep-alive messages to nodes that are more likely to fail, our algorithms reduce the expected delay between failures occurring and their subsequent detection. Using extensively empirical analysis, we analyse the properties of these algorithms and compare them to the standard periodic approach in unstructured and structured network topologies, using tracedriven simulations based upon measured network data. Furthermore we also investigate the effect of nodes that misreport their age upon our adaptive algorithms and detail an efficient keep-alive algorithm that can adapt to the limitations network address translation devices