BitTorrent client and bitcoin blockchain submission idea!

[remotemass]

I have an idea for the next version of the BitTorrent client. I hope "Justin Sun" will read this.

When creating a torrent: the BitTorrent client would ask you if you wanted to opt-in to publish the magnet link in the bitcoin blockchain.
You would pay some satoshis and your magnet link would be put on the bitcoin blockchain.

On top of that, on the other hand, when you added a new magnet link to get a file the client would scan the bitcoin blockchain to find the first bitcoin address that published that magnet link in the bitcoin blockchain and display highlighted that address asking for donations to the publisher of it.

People would get used to pay the publisher of nice media contents with small donations making BitTorrent and Bitcoin great!

If torrent clients had this logic to highlight a specific premium BTC address for donations, there would be much more content to get from torrents. This would also be making bitcoin more popular attaching a bitcoin address for donations on each torrent file.

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[davis196]

The people,who use torrents use them to get paid digital content for free.Implementing donations to the torrent client or torrent websites won't make any difference,because most of the people won't give any donations.Donations or any other form of payment will only motivate more people to violate copyright laws and to upload more pirated content on the torrents just for sake of getting paid.
Don't get me wrong,I like the torrent technology,but your idea isn't original.

[remotemass]

I think that publishers that had many files that were in demand could get some good donations.
The BitTorrent client should also make it easy to see a list of all magnet links submitted to the bitcoin blockchain by that bitcoin address.
This way, you could grasp if he/she/they was a publisher worth supporting, according to the files published and its timestamps.
The idea of donations is not original but as described here, it is.

[tomahawk9]

People would get used to pay the publisher of nice media contents with small donations making BitTorrent and Bitcoin great!

good 'ol piracy combined with bitcorn, a match made in heaven, eh? 

[pooya87]

this is an interesting idea and i had a similar one before but it works best in an altcoin not in bitcoin because bitcoin blockchain is not meant for data storage and should not be used that way by principle. it will also be against another correct way of using bitcoin which is to avoid address reuse.

it will also be a much better design if a dedicated altcoin or at least a sidechain with a point system and a reward system were designed to do this.
we can define an "account system" in such altcoin/side-chain where people can find their favorite releases "account" and their releases.
public files like Ubuntu for example could be under an Ubuntu address on that blockchain and downloading it would be as simple as looking inside the blockchain and fetching the hash.
private files (like for P2P sale) could be done by first sending coins to that address while revealing your own public key, then the receiver (who has the hash of the file) can send you the torrent hash encrypted by your pubkey.

[zasad@]

Torrent is a program for exchanging files between users. The files are not located on servers on the Internet, but on users' computers, so it is impossible to fight the torrent.
What is torrent used for? Basically for getting paid content for free (games, movies, music, software, etc.).
Why cryptocurrency in this area?
The legislation of many countries is fighting counterfeit and this fight is intensifying every year. Why associate cryptocurrency with crime?

[richarleson]

Good idea, this reminds me when they gave me an idea for a entrepreneurship, that"s how my entrepreneurship started on the MintMe platform. This platform allowed me to start my entrepreneurship and monetize it through tokens. I remember that time when i started my entrepreneurship. Anyone who wants to know more about this platform can ask.

[coupable]

Torrent is a program for exchanging files between users. The files are not located on servers on the Internet, but on users' computers, so it is impossible to fight the torrent.
What is torrent used for? Basically for getting paid content for free (games, movies, music, software, etc.).
Why cryptocurrency in this area?

From what i can understand, op is suggesting a way to reward torrent users who share their files for free, in form of donation usingthe bitcoin blockchain. I think the idea isn't that bad if we can make it more anonymous, maybe using another crypto can help as bitcoin can be traced, or even building a dedicated blockchain for this purpose. I am not sure if this can properly work, i am just discussing the idea from a non biased point.

[Artemis3]

Torrent is a program for exchanging files between users. The files are not located on servers on the Internet, but on users' computers, so it is impossible to fight the torrent.
What is torrent used for? Basically for getting paid content for free (games, movies, music, software, etc.).
Why cryptocurrency in this area?
The legislation of many countries is fighting counterfeit and this fight is intensifying every year. Why associate cryptocurrency with crime?

Just like Bitcoin, Bittorrent has some sort of reputation. But what you say isn't all there is, just like Bitcoin isn't used solely for "dark web" deals. I has been widely used for Free and Open Source distribution, several Linux distros release using this protocol. Also has been used in high profile cases such as game updates (World of Warcraft among others, IIRC).

Bittorrent is a highly efficient decentralized transfer protocol, it excels in delivering popular content to infinite people at the same time, compared to centralized methods with finite bandwidth capacity. If you need to distribute something many people would want that your servers simply can't ever cope with, use Bittorrent.

Yes, of course media content would be an obvious case use, as long as its popular. It isn't so well suited for rare content almost nobody wants.

Of course, a key factor is that the content delivered is identical for everyone, so drmed content isn't well suited for it (since they make it different to each customer to track it). So that model isn't going to work.

Donations can already be made using Bitcoin. In fact, an anonymous donation will always net far more money to the content creator, than using a typical commercial channel. Ie: a small tip to your favorite singer, gives him/her far more than you buying their CD (often the labels don't give them anything, so they only get money from touring or selling t-shirts etc). It is part of the disease of the old system. Something similar happens with movies.

I think the best thing artists and producers can do, it put a donation address. In the long run, they are probably getting far more that way than spending money in system destined to be defeated anyway, or chasing people in countries their lawyers can't reach.

Crowdsourcing has also been a very interesting model for content creation, why depend on views/seats/sales when the whole thing could be paid in advance?

It might be interesting to do "something" regarding a torrent, but i guess simply adding a donation address in the torrent info would do. However they could do the same thing in the main page where you are getting to torrent from in the first place, and its not like people couldn't just undo the official torrent and make a new one with THEIR address instead, which is even worse.

[Tipstar]

Bittorrent has already implemented incentive for seeders with BTT coin if the content up-loader are paying for it. And optional donation this way for content up-loader from the leechers could easily be implemented. Bitcoin would have been a good coin but the problem with bitcoin is micropayment is no feasible at the moment and centralizing the donation system would add up resources. BTT is a good coin for micro donations and rewarding.

[Paperweight]

Yeah, baby! This is classic application for cryptocurrencies. It would even better if the original authors got the donations, so they at least get *something* from those pesky pirates. Imagine a decentralized iTunes.

As above posters have noted, BitTorrent Inc. is thrashing around this space with their BTT token and I haven't tried it but it's probably junk.

Problem: Scanning the whole blockchain for a magnet hash is inefficient. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that the Bitcoin address attached to it is the same as the torrent creator.

Solution: The Bitcoin donation address can simply be encoded in the torrent metadata itself, which is hashed into the magnet link by the torrent creator, thus ensuring that they are the ones who inserted the address.

Code:

{
  "announce": "http://tracker.site1.com/announce",
  "info": {
    "files": [
      {"length": 111, "path": ["111.txt"]},
      {"length": 222, "path": ["222.txt"]}
    ],
    "name": "my-music",
    "piece length": 262144,
    "pieces": <binary SHA1 hashes>
  },
  "donations": {
    "xbt": <bitcoin address>,
    "xmr": <monero address>
  }
}

Whaddya know!? Frostwire and qBittorrent already do this! https://blog.frostwire.com/2014/02/27/frostwire-integrates-bitcoin-donations-and-creative-commons-licensing-into-torrent-files/

There's also the weakness that the torrent is only hashed with SHA-1, but that's another discussion.

References:
https://www.bittorrent.com/token/btt/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_file

[Carlton Banks]

I think the best thing artists and producers can do, it put a donation address. In the long run, they are probably getting far more that way than spending money in system destined to be defeated anyway, or chasing people in countries their lawyers can't reach.

Crowdsourcing has also been a very interesting model for content creation, why depend on views/seats/sales when the whole thing could be paid in advance?

The issue is that the pay-per-physical-copy model was more profitable compared to the Crowdfunding model, artists (especially established artists) who, frankly, became quite wealthy in the pay-per-copy era aren't happy with the new deal. The moguls (i.e. the record companies & movie studios) are even more belligerent/desperate, as the writing is on the wall for them. Artists will always exist, but the moguls will not (their only talent is in controlling the product, and *ahem* the means of production).

What's needed is a way to maximize revenues, and I believe it's possible, but voluntary donations is not it.




Some kind of cryptographic mechanism can be devised, such that music/film fans must pay the price that the artists want for their work before the digital copy is made available.

That maybe sounds impossible, but there is (I believe) a way of doing just that.