[ih] reinventing the wheel, was Internet History Lives on the Internet?

[Jack Haverty]

I've never used Bittorrent, but it may already have a lot of the needed
technology. 

>From what I've read, some of the differences between my "Benevolent
BotNet" and BitTorrent seem to be:

    - Content is stored outside of BitTorrent per se, e.g., on web
servers.  Torrent servers essentially act as caches for material in
transit.  So if there is no server online which has stored the content
you seek, and it's not recently in transit, it's unavailable until a
server with that content come online.  That's not persistent.  
BitTorrent is a distribution mechanism, rather than a storage mechanism
which does replication of material to achieve persistence.

    - There isn't any obvious (to me) way to restrict what your personal
machine might store or serve.  People willing to donate their resources
to, for example, host historical material, might not be willing to
handle all the other stuff that zips around in BitTorrent.

    - BitTorrent has a somewhat dubious reputation as a vehicle for
illegal activities.  Again, people may be reluctant to use it for
historical purposes.

I may be wrong in the above, since I've never dug deeply into the
technology.  But clearly BitTorrent has a lot of the underlying
technology that could be used to do what I described (which is what I've
been trying to say).  People do use it to distribute content, but I
believe that they have to handle the persistent storage themselves by
keeping the material stored on probably several servers.

The other missing pieces might simply be promoting it as a way to store
historical material and then start using it.  I suspect some amount of
"how-to" documentation appropriate for non-techies might be needed too.

/Jack


On 2/24/19 6:53 PM, John Levine wrote:
>> That's what I find intriguing about my Benevolent BotNet notion.  Rather
>> than depending on finding an institution interested in, competent at,
>> and willing to save history, and hoping that it has longevity, you rely
>> on a network of volunteers to provide that survivable infrastructure by
>> volunteering their excess computing resources. 
> Hi again.  Please look at Bittorrent and tell us how it is different
> from what you're proposing.
>
> Bittorrent has the advantage of already existing and being deployed
> all over the world.  It's notorious for pirated music but it's also
> widely used for sharing linux distributions and the like.
>
> R's,
> John
>