2. What are the markers?
3. What is that mothership thing?
4. What are the little things flying around?
5. What is this about raiding?
6. Could Torrent Raiders be used by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA to incriminate people using Bit Torrent?
7. What are the controls?
What is Bit Torrent?
Bit Torrent is a network protocol that is popularly used to share files over the Internet. When a user opens a .torrent file, they are connected to a network of other users all sharing the same files that the .torrent file points to. Users on these torrents are referred to as "peers" and the network formed around a .torrent file is referred to as a "swarm".
Bit Torrent divides the large files that the .torrent file points to into many small pieces. These pieces are what you might think of as the basic unit of transaction in a torrent swarm. Once a peer has completed just a single piece, they are eligible to begin uploading that piece to other users who need it. In this way, Bit Torrent distributes the bandwith required to share files across the torrent swarm. The result is much faster and more reliable file sharing. Learn more here
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OK. So what are these little markers sticking out of the Earth in Torrent Raiders?
Good question. The markers that you see scattered around the globe represent geolocated peers on the torrent swarm. The pink ones are peers that you currently are connected to. The red ones are peers that you aren't connected to. The purple ones are peers that you are no longer connected to but when you were, you had some kind of meaningful data transaction with them. The proportion of blue to red in the stem that connects the peer to the Earth indicates that peers download progress for the files being shared. Completely red means that the peer has not completed any pieces while completely blue means that the peer has completed all the pieces.
Keep in mind that Torrent Raiders is not visualizing every peer on a given torrent swarm, just the ones that your computer is actively engaged with. Some of the most popular torrent swarms often have upwards of 30,000 people on them. Displaying this kind of information would require a different kind of visualization approach.
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What about that Mothership thing?
The Mothership that can be seen hovering above the Earth represents the file (or files) on your hard drive that is being shared on the torrent swarm. The arms visually display which of the pieces you have downloaded so far. When you begin, the arms will be completely red and by the time you have finished the download, they will have filled in completely blue.
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And the little things flying around?
Ah yes. Those little space trucks represent the data moving in and out of your computer. Each one represents one kilobyte so that you can get a visual representation of the data rate. For example, if you were downloading from a peer at 12 kilobytes per second, then over the course of a second, twelve of the space trucks would emit from that peer. The space trucks that fly up and into the mothership represent data coming into your computer from other peers while the space trucks the emit from the top of the mothership and go back into peers represents data you are uploading to other peers. The color and texture of each space truck indicates the Bit Torrent software it originated from (see the image towards the top of this page).
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What is this about raiding?
Bit Torrent is mostly used for sharing copyrighted material and has encountered a lot of controversy since its inception. Many copyright holders actively surveil the activity on torrent swarms and the resulting evidence is used in lawsuits against file-sharers. In visualizing Bit Torrent, I wanted to foreground this ongoing conflict because it is such an essential component of Bit Torrent's cultural context. To this end, as a Torrent Raider you take on the role of a mercenary copyright enforcer. Your mission is to collect evidence on the peers with whom you are sharing files. Once you have collected enough evidence against a peer, you can turn it in for a bounty. You are fictionally busting copyright violators for an activity that you are complicit in... kind of like a narc.
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Could Torrent Raiders be used by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA to incriminate people using Bit Torrent?
No. Torrent Raiders allows you to see the IP addresses of the users on a torrent swarm, but this information is easily viewable using almost any other Bit Torrent software. This transparency is just a part of how Bit Torrent works.
The Torrent Raiders software also sends information about torrent activity to the Torrent Raiders server. However, all IP addresses are hashed before ever being sent to the server. Hashing is a technique where a string of data is irreversibly scrambled into a new unique string of data. Hashing is one way only so once a piece of data has been hashed, it cannot be converted back to its original form. You can learn more about Hash functions here. The Torrent Raiders information gathering is all purely in the interest of visualizing the data and the hashing is in there to make sure this information cannot be used in any other way. If you think this is all kind of creepy, keep in mind that many torrent swarms really are being watched by people who want to take peers to court (or force them into an expensive settlement).
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What are the controls?
You can use either the arrow keys or the W, S, A and D keys to orbit your ship around the Earth. If you move your reticle onto a peer, you can open an information readout by clicking the Right Mouse Button. You can close these readouts by clicking the same peers with the Middle Mouse Button. You can fire your lasers at the space trucks with the Left Mouse Button. This will disengage the trucks cab (the payload always makes it to its destination) and it will linger for a moment. During this moment, you will want to capture it as evidence by clicking and holding down the Right Mouse Button and dragging the reticle over the lingering cab. You can grab many of these at a time. Release the Right Mouse Button to bring them back in. Once you have enough evidence against a peer, you will be notified that you can collect a bounty. To collect the bounty, click and hold the Right Mouse Button on the peer to charge up a Bounty Blast. Release the Right Mouse Button when you are ready.
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