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Darknet

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A darknet refers to any type of closed, private group of people communicating; however, since 2002[1], the term has evolved to more specifically refer to file sharing networks in general, whether that network is private or readily accessible to the public. The phrase "the darknet" is used to refer collectively to all covert communication networks.

History

Originally coined[citation needed] in the 1970s to designate networks which were isolated from ARPANET (which evolved into the Internet) for security purposes, darknets were able to receive data from ARPANET but had addresses which did not appear in the network lists and would not answer pings or other inquiries. The name is derived or related to the term black box[citation needed], which meant a system or device whose contents were unknown.

The term gained public acceptance following publication of The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution, a 2002 article by Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman, four employees of Microsoft who described the concept as follows:

The idea of the darknet is based upon three assumptions:

  1. Any widely distributed object will be available to a fraction of users in a form that permits copying.
  2. Users will copy objects if it is possible and interesting to do so.
  3. Users are connected by high-bandwidth channels.

The darknet is the distribution network that emerges from the injection of objects according to assumption 1 and the distribution of those objects according to assumptions 2 and 3.

The Microsoft researchers argued that the presence of the darknet was the primary hindrance to the development of workable DRM technologies. The term has since been widely adopted and seen usage in major media sources, including Rolling Stone and Wired, and is also the title of a book by J.D. Lasica.

Terms

Darknets that take information from the larger net are also known as Data Motels, a reference to an advertising slogan for the commercial insect trap Roach Motel, where "roaches check in, but they don't check out."

When used to describe a file sharing network, the term is often used as a synonym for "friend-to-friend" -- both describing networks where direct connections are only established between trusted friends. However, "darknet" is also commonly used in a broader sense to describe any private file sharing network. The most widespread file sharing networks, such as Kazaa, are not true darknets since peers will communicate with anyone else on the network. Popular darknet software includes Nullsoft's WASTE and Freenet. The current version of Freenet, unlike typical darknets, claims to be capable of supporting potentially millions of users using an application of small world theory.

Early versions of Apple's iTunes allowed users to specify the IP of a remote subnet and share music with users in that subnet in a darknet-like fashion. Newer versions disable that functionality, but still allow users to stream music within their own subnet; hacks such as ourTunes allow users on the same iTunes network to download each others' music with no loss of quality. (With the release of iTunes 9 and Home Sharing it has once again become possible to copy media legitimately without the need for 3rd party software.)

See also

Software

Defunct Software

References

  1. ^ http://msl1.mit.edu/ESD10/docs/darknet5.pdf The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution
  • Darknet: Remixing the Future of Entertainment, J. D. Lasica, 2005, John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-68334-5
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