OS and Software > All Things Unix > Novell Strips BitTorrent DHT Technology From openSUSE

Novell Strips BitTorrent DHT Technology From openSUSE

said by Ernesto :

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The Pirate Bay’s tracker closure has spurred several discussions about DHT, BitTorrent’s fallback technology for when central trackers are unavailable. According to some, DHT has some problems of its own. Novell, for example, decided to ship openSUSE with the BitTorrent client Transmission, but not before stripping DHT support.

Sponsored by Novell, openSUSE is a free and Open Source operating system, based on Linux. Following in the footsteps of Ubuntu, OpenSUSE recently decided to include Transmission as the default BitTorrent client.

However, the addition of Transmission to openSUSE was not straightforward. Since Transmission comes with DHT support – a technology that helps BitTorrent users to find peers – Novell thought that the application could possibly make openSUSE liable for copyright infringement under German law.

In order to avoid legal problems, Novell and openSUSE therefore decided to ship the operating system with a DHT-less version of Transmission while they tried to work out a solution with their lawyer.

“This month’s new release of their openSUSE Linux distro now ships with Transmission as the default BitTorrent client, but with DHT support removed at compile-time due to perceived German legal risks,” Transmission developer Charles Kerr told TorrentFreak.

After discussion with Novell’s German lawyer, it was agreed to include Transmission with DHT in future releases, but with an added popup informing users that they should only use the BitTorrent client for legal transfers. This means that the next openSUSE release will include a fully-functional BitTorrent client.

Charles Kerr told TorrentFreak that he is happy with the outcome, especially since Transmission will also add support for Magnet links in their upcoming 1.8 release.

“Magnet links are much more useful when DHT is available, so I’m glad it will be included in the next openSUSE release,” he said, adding that openSUSE have been very helpful and communicative, which is why there’s a better resolution in the works for the next openSUSE release.

Still, one can’t help but wonder if Novell had legitimate concerns, or was maybe a little paranoid in handling the DHT issue. That said, if BitTorrent indeed comes to rely more on trackerless torrents and DHT in the future, could BitTorrent clients potentially become a target for the entertainment industry?

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I wonder if any other distro's released transmission without DHT support?

reply to SUMware
Both Ktorrent and Transmission with DHT are available from Packman.
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When you do something, do it right!

reply to SUMware
Lame.

reply to SUMware
This is not terribly new news; back when KTorrent introduced trackerless support and DHT/PEX support, SUSE stripped it out too (years ago) for legal reasons.

As said, there's other ways for the community to get their enabled builds of their favorite torrent program.

Ubuntu FWIW ships Transmission with DHT support (as well as KTorrent); but Ubuntu doesn't have a German commercial product presence though.
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council

reply to SUMware
I see this as a non-issue. Limitations imposed by distributions are easily circumvented by the power and intrinsic openness of Open Source software. Even with distribution limitations our hands are not tied to the same level as prominent closed-sourced products.

Much of this discussion reminds me of the Debian non-free or Ubuntu multiverse. (Kind of wish they called it Underverse, sponsored by the holy half-dead Lord Marshall).

reply to SUMware
Many of these legal limitations are usually distros being overly cautious. However, they get to avoid the risk of any legal trouble, while the users can pretty quickly find ways to circumvent the limitations of the distro, so it's a win-win.
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My pbase gallery

»trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/2222

quote:

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> Am Montag, 10. August 2009 16:41:45 schrieb Charles Kerr:
>> Hi Adrian,
>>
>> I have a question about a three-year old bug ticket that you once
>> commented on
>>
>> I'm one of the programmers on the BitTorrent client "Transmission" and
>> am looking to find out what Novell would find acceptable and unacceptable
>> wrt the DHT feature. Since your comments are the only *firsthand* statement
>> I've found on the subject, I was wondering if you were able to elaborate or,
>> more likely, would be able to pass me along in the right direction to someone
>> who can give a definitive answer.

> Hi Ciaran,
>
> can you help Charles here ?
>
> thanks
> adrian

Sure,

first off, the DHT issue has been popping up every so often over the past
couple of years (ktorrent etc). It was decided that, whereas there are good reasons for accepting packages with DHT support from upstream, from a US legal perspective, the situation in Germany makes it risky to do this.

As it is quite frustrating to review packages for DHT functionality, I talked to our german attorney about this a few months ago. It was agreed that shipping DHT enable package is possible, but that we should ensure that we at least inform the user that the package ($BITTORRENT_CLIENT) should only be used for legal file transfer. As this solution would entail hacking these messages into n packages, it was thereafter decided that we could maybe instead display a message on $DE first startup to ask the user to respect other peoples property (need not necessarily target P2P specifically - just a general notice).

As this wasn't implemented (AFAIK coolo was against the idea as e.g. the KDE first startup pop-up was supposed to be chopped anyway), the situation remains as it was before - i.e. we need some way of avoiding a "Störerhaftung" in german law. One way of avoiding this is to inform the user. If your client displayed a notice on startup it might suffice - of course, it would be much more elegant to have the distro do this so that there would be no need to change all currently available P2P clients.

HTH

Ciaran

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I have no idea what a Störerhaftung is, but it certainly sounds like something to be avoided.

LOL. Agreed.

reply to KodiacZiller

said by KodiacZiller:

I have no idea what a Störerhaftung is, but it certainly sounds like something to be avoided.

He didn't say either was factually accused (whatever that means) of any copyright infringement or violation. Those are your words and you're completely hung up on word usage instead of the issue.

Let it go and move on.

reply to Brano

reply to No_Strings

said by El Quintron:

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DHT = Copyright Violator.
Sounds pretty accusatory to me.

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reply to rawwhide